You Can't Go Home Again/Book V

◄  BOOK IV. - THE QUEST OF THE FAIR MEDUSA

You Can't Go Home Again BOOK V. - EXILE AND DISCOVERY written by Thomas Wolfe

BOOK VI. - "I HAVE A THING TO TELL YOU"  ►

The Sun Dial Press 1942 (pages 509-618)

After four longyears in Brooklyn, George Webber came out of the wilderness, looked round him, and concluded he had had enough of it. During this period he had learned much, both about himself and about America, but now he was seized again with wanderlust. His life had always seemed to shift between the poles of anchored loneliness and foot-loose voyagings—between wandering for ever, and then the earth again—and now the old and restless urgings of “Where shall we go? And what shall we do?” again became insistent, would not down, and demanded of him a new answer.

Ever since his first book bad been published be had been looking for a way to form and shape his next. Now he thought that he had found it. It was not the way, perhaps, but it was a way. The hundreds and thousands of separate and disjointed notes that he had written down had fallen at last into a pattern in his mind. He needed only to weave them all together, and fill in the blanks, and he would have a book. He felt that be could do this final job of organisation and revision better if he made a clean break in the monotony’of his life. New scenes, new faces, and new atmospheres might clear his head and sharpen his perspective.

It would be a good thing, too, to get away from America for a while. Too much was happening here—it was too exciting and disturbing. The whole thing was in such a state of flux, in such a prophetic condition of becoming, that the sheer exhilaration of watching it made it hard to concentrate upon the immediate job he had to do. Perhaps in the older civilisation of Europe, where life was fixed and certain, moulded by the heritage of centuries, there would be fewer distractions to keep him from his work. He decided to go abroad, to England, and there drop anchor, there find even keel in placid waters—there complete his book.

So in the late summer of 1934 he sailed from New York, went straight to London, took a flat, and settled down to hard, intensive labour. All through the autumn and winter of that year he lived in London in his self-imposed exile. It was a memorable time for him, a time during which, as he was later to realise, he discovered an entire new world. All the events, the experiences, and the people that he met became engraved indelibly upon his life.

And the event which exercised the most profound influence upon him in that alien air was his meeting with the great American author, Mr. Lloyd McHarg. Everything seemed to lead up to that. And what made his meeting with Mr. McHarg so important to him was that now, for the first time, he met a living embodiment of his own dearest and most secret dream. For when Mr. Lloyd McHarg swept like a cyclone through his life, George knew that he was having his first encounter in the flesh with that fair Medusa, Fame herself Never before had he beheld the lady, or witnessed the effects of her sweet blandishments. Now he saw the whole thing for himself.

32. The Universe of Daisy Purvis

On arriving in London, George had the good fortune to sublet a flat in Ebury Street. The young military gentleman who condescended to let him have the place possessed one of those resounding double-jointed names that one comes across so often among the members of the upper or would-be-upper branches of English society. George was never able to get all the mouth-filling syllables of that grand name quite straight, but suffice it to say that his landlord was a Major Somebody Somebody Somebody Bixley-Dunton.

He was a good-looking man, tall, young, ruddy, with the lean and well-conditioned figure of a cavalryman. He was an engaging kind of fellow, too—so engaging that when he made the arrangements which permitted George to take over the premises, he managed to insinuate into his bill for rent a thumping sum that covered all the electricity and gas he had used in the preceding two quarters. And electricity and gas, as George was to discover, came high in London. You read and worked by one, sometimes not only through the night, but also through the pea-soup opacity of a so-called day. And you bathed and shaved and cooked and feebly warmed yourself by the other. George never did figure out just exactly how the engaging Major Bixley-Dunton did it, but he managed it so adroitly that George was half-way back to America some six months later before it dawned on his unsuspecting mind that he had occupied the modest dwelling only two quarters but had paid four whacking assessments for the whole year’s gas and electricity.

George thought he was getting a bargain at the time, and perhaps he was. He paid Major Bixley-Dunton in quarterly instalments—in advance, of course—at the rate of two pounds ten shillings a week, and for this sum he had the advantage of being the sole occupant, at night at least, of a very small but distinctly authentic London house. It was really a rather tiny house, and certainly a very inconspicuous one, in a section noted for the fashionable spaciousness and magnificence of its dwellings. The building was three storeys tall, and George had the top floor. Below him a doctor had his offices, and the ground floor was occupied by a small tailor shop. These other tenants both lived elsewhere and were present only during the day, so at night George had the whole house to himself.

He had a good deal of respect for the little tailor shop. The venerable and celebrated Irish writer, Mr. James Burke, had his pants pressed there, and George had the honour of being present in the shop one night when the great man called for them. It was a considerable moment in Webber’s life. He felt that he was assisting at an impressive and distinguished ceremony. It was the first time he had ever been in such intimate contact with such exalted literary greatness, and most fairminded people will agree that there are few things in the world more intimate than a pair of pants. Also, even at the moment that Mr. Burke entered the shop and demanded his trousers, George was requesting the return of his own. This homely coincidence gave him a feeling of perfectly delightful understanding and identity of purpose with a gentleman whose talents had for so many years been an object of his veneration. It gave him an easy and casual sense of belonging to the inner circle, and he could imagine someone saying to him:

“Oh, by the way, have you seen anything of James Burke lately?”

“Oh yes,” he could nonchalantly reply, “I ran into him the other day in the place where we both go to have our pants pressed.”

And night after night as he worked in his sitting-room on the third floor, at that hour the solitary lord and master of that little house, toiling on the composition of a work which he hoped, but did not dare believe, might rival in celebrity some of James Burke’s own, he would get at times the most curious and moving sense of companionship, as if a beneficent and approving spirit were there beneath that roof with him; and through the watches of the night it would speak to him with the eloquence of silence, saying:

“Toil on, son, and do not lose heart or hope. Let nothing you dismay. You are not utterly forsaken. I, too, am here—here in the darkness waiting, here attentive, here approving of your labour and your dream.”

Ever sincerely yours,

James Burke’s Pants

One of the most memorable experiences of George Webber’s six months in London was his relationship with Daisy Purvis.

Mrs. Purvis was a charwoman who lived at Hammersmith and for years had worked for “unmarried gentlemen” in the fashionable districts known as Mayfair and Belgravia. George had inherited her, so to speak, from Major Bixley-Dunton, and when he went away he gave her back to him, to be passed on to the next young bachelor gentleman—a man, George hoped, who would be worthy of her loyalty, devotion, idolatry, and humble slavery. He had never had a servant in his life before. He had known Negro servants during his boyhood in the South; since then he had had people come in once or twice a week to clean up the various places where he had lived; but never before had he owned a servant body and soul, to the degree that her interests became his interests and her life his life; never before had he had anyone whose whole concern was the preservation of his comfort and welfare.

In appearance, Mrs. Purvis might have been the prototype of a whole class. She was not one of those comic figures so often pictured in the drawings of Belcher and Phil May, those pudgy old women who wear shawls and little Queen Victoria bonnets perched upon their heads, whose most appropriate locale seems to be the pub, and whom one actually does see in London pubs, sodden with beer and viciousness. Mrs. Purvis was a self-respecting female of the working class. She was somewhere in her forties, a woman inclined to plumpness, of middling height, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and pink-complexioned, with a pleasant, modest face, and a naturally friendly nature, but inclined to be somewhat do her dignity with strangers. At first, although she was at all times courteous, her manner towards her new employer was a little distant. She would come in in the morning and they would formally discuss the business of the day—what they were going to have for lunch, the supplies they were going to “git in”, the amount of money it would be necessary to “lay out”.

“What would you like for lunch to-day, sir?” Mrs. Purvis would say. “’Ave you decided?”

“No, Mrs. Purvis. What would you suggest? Let’s see. We had the chump chop yesterday, didn’t we, and the sprouts?”

“Yes, sir,” Mrs. Purvis would reply, “and the day before—Monday, you may recall—we’ad rump steak with potato chips.”

“Yes, and it was good, too. Well, then, suppose we have rump steak again?”

“Very good, sir,” Mrs. Purvis would say, with perfect courtesy, but with a rising intonation of the voice which somehow suggested, delicately and yet unmistakably, that he could do as he pleased, but mat she rather thought his choice was not the best.

Feeling this, George would immediately have doubts. He would say:

“Oh, wait a minute. We’ve been having steak quite often, haven’t we?”

“You’ave’ad it quite a bit, sir,” she would say quietly, not with reproof, but with just a trace of confirmation. “Still, of course——” She would not finish, but would pause and wait.

“Well, rump steak is good. All that we’ve had was first-rate. Still, maybe we could have something else to-day, for a change. What do you think?”

“Should think so, sir, if you feel that way,” she said quietly. “After all, one does like a bit of variety now and then, doesn’t one?”

“Of course. Well, then, what shall it be? What would you suggest, Mrs. Purvis?”

“Well, sir, if I may say so, a bit of gammon and peas is rather nice sometimes,” with just a trace of shyness and diffidence, mixed with an engaging tinge of warmth as she relented into the informality of mild enthusiasm. “I’ad a look in at the butcher’s as I came by this mornin’, and the gammon was nice, sir. It was a prime bit, sir,” she said now with genuine warmth. “Prime.”

After this, of course, he could not tell her that he had not the faintest notion what gammon was. He could only look delighted and respond:

“Then, by all means, let’s have gammon and peas. I think it’s just the thing to-day.”

“Very good, sir.” She had drawn herself up again; the formal intonation of the words had put her back within the fortress of aloofness, and had put him back upon his heels.

It was a curious and disquieting experience, one that he was often to have with English people. Just when he thought that finally the bars were down and the last barriers of reserve broken through, just when they had begun to talk with mutual warmth and enthusiasm, these English would be back behind the barricade, leaving him to feel that it was all to do over again.

“Now for your breakfast to-morrow mornin’,” Mrs. Purvis would continue. “’Ave you decided what you’d like?”

“No, Mrs. Purvis. Have we anything on hand? How are our supplies holding out?”

“They are a bit low, sir,” she admitted. “We’ave eggs. There is still butter left, and’arf a loaf of bread. We’re gittin’low on tea, sir. But you could’ave eggs, sir, if you like.”

Something in the faint formality of the tone informed him that even though he might like to have eggs, Mrs. Purvis would not approve, so he said quickly:

“Oh, no, Mrs. Purvis. Get the tea, of course, but no more eggs. I think we’ve had too many eggs, don’t you?”

“You 'ave, sir, you know,” she said gently—“for the last three mornin’s, at any rate. Still—” Again she paused, as if to say that if he was determined to go on having eggs, he should have them.

“Oh, no. We mustn’t have eggs again. If we keep on at this rate, we’ll get to the point where we can’t look an egg in the face again, won’t we?”

She laughed suddenly, a jolly and full-throated laugh. “We will, sir, won’t we?” said Mrs. Purvis, and laughed again. “Excuse me for larfin’, sir, but the way you put it, I’ad to larf. It was quite amusin’, really.”

“Well, then, Mrs. Purvis, maybe you’ve got some ideas. It’s not going to be eggs, that’s one thing sure.”

“Well, sir,’ave you tried kippers yet? Kippers are quite nice, sir,” she went on, with another momentary mellowing into warmth. “If you’re lookin’for a change, you could do worse than kippers. Really you could, sir.”

“Well, then, we’ll have kippers. They’re the very thing.”

“Very good, sir,” She hesitated a moment and then said: “About your supper, sir—I was thinkin’——”

“Yes, Mrs. Purvis?”

“It just occurred to me, sir, that, seein’as I’m not here at night to cook you a’ot meal, we might lay in somethin’you could prepare for yourself. I was thinkin’the other day, sir, workin’as you do, you must get’ungry in the middle of the night, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea, would it, sir, if you could have somethin’on’and?”

“I think it would be a wonderful idea, Mrs. Purvis. What do you have in mind?”

“Well, sir,” she paused briefly again, reflecting quietly, “we might git in a bit of tongue, you know. A bit of cold tongue is very tasty. I should think you’d find it most welcome in the middle of the night. Or a bit of’am. Then, sir, you would’ave your bread and butter and your mustard pickle, and I could even git in a jar of chutney, if youlike, and you know’ow to make tea yourself, don’t you, sir?”

“Of course. It’s a good idea. By all means, get in tongue or ham and chutney. Is that all, now?”

“Well, sir,” she reflected a moment longer, went to the buffet sideboard, opened it, and looked in. “I was just wonderin’'ow you are for beer, sir…Ah-h,” she exclaimed, nodding with satisfaction, “it is gittin’a bit low, sir. You’ave only two bottles left. Shall we lay in a’arf-dozen bottles?”

“Yes. No—wait a minute. Better make it a dozen, then you won’t have to be running out to order it again so soon.”

“Very good, sir.” Again the formal rising intonation, this time, he thought, with approval. “And what do you prefer, the Worthington or Bass?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Which is better?”

“They’re both first-rate, sir. Some people prefer one kind and some another. The Worthington, perhaps is a trifle lighter, but you won’t go wrong, sir, whichever one you order.”

“All right, then, I’ll tell you what you do—suppose you order half a dozen of each.”

“Very good, sir.” She turned to go.

“Thank you, Mrs. Purvis.”

“’Kew,” she said, most formally and distantly now, and went out quietly, closing the door gently but very firmly after her.

As the weeks went by, her excessive formality towards George began to thaw out and drop away. She became more and more free in communicating to him whatever was on her mind. Not that she ever forgot her “place”. Quite the contrary. But, while always maintaining the instinctive manner of an English servant towards her master, she also became increasingly assiduous to her slavish attentions, until at last one would almost have thought that her duty towards him was her very life.

Her devotion, however, was not quite as whole and absolute as it appeared to be. For three or four hours of the day she had another master, who shared with George her service and her expense. This was the extraordinary little man who kept doctor’s offices on the floor below. In truth, therefore, Mrs. Purvis had a divided loyalty, and yet, in a curious way, she also managed to convey to each of her employers a sense that her whole-souled obligation belonged to him, and to him alone.

The little doctor was a Russian of the old regime, who had been a physician at the court of the Czar, and had accumulated a large fortune, which of course had been confiscated when he fled the country during the revolution. Penniless, he had come to England, and had made another fortune by a practice about which Mrs. Purvis, with a kind of haughty aloofness mixed with loyalty, had invented a soothing little fiction, but concerning which the doctor himself became in time quite candid. From one o’clock in the afternoon until four or thereabouts, the door-bell tinkled almost constantly, and Mrs. Purvis was kept busy padding up and down the narrow stairs, admitting or ushering out an incessant stream of patients.

George had not been long in the place before he made a surprising discovery concerning this thriving practice. He and the little doctor had the same telephone, by a plug-in arrangement which permitted each to use the instrument in his own quarters while sharing the same number and the same bill. Sometimes the telephone would ring at night, after the doctor had departed for his home in Surrey, and George observed that the callers were always women. They would demand the doctor in voices that varied from accents of desperate entreaty to tones that fairly crooned with voluptuous and sensual complaint. Where was the doctor? When George informed them that he was at his home, some twenty miles away, they would moan that it couldn’t be true, that it wasn’t possible, that fate could assuredly not play them so cruel a joke. When told that it was indeed so, they would then sometimes suggest that perhaps George himself could render them some assistance on his own account. To these requests he was forced to reply, often with reluctance, that he was not a physician, and that they would have to seek help in some other quarter.

These calls sharpened his curiosity, and he began to keep his eye peeled during the doctor’s office hours in the afternoon. He would go to the window and look out each time the door-bell rang, and in a little while he became convinced of what he had already begun to suspect, “that the doctor’s practice was devoted exclusively to women”. Their ages ranged from young womanhood to elderly haghood, they were of all kinds and conditions, but the one thing that was true of these patients was that they all wore skirts. No man ever rang that door-bell.

George would sometimes tease Mrs. Purvis about this unending procession of female visitors, and would openly speculate on the nature of the doctor’s practice. She had a capacity for self-deception which one often encounters among people of her class, although the phenomenon is by no means confined to it. No doubt she guessed some of the things that went on below stairs, but her loyalty to anyone she served was so unquestioning that when Geprge pressed her for information her manner would instantly become vague, and she would confess that, although she was not familiar with the technical details of the doctor’s practice, it was, she believed, devoted to “the treatment of nervous diseases”.

“Yes, but what kind of nervous diseases?” George would ask. “Don’t the gentlemen ever get nervous, too?”

“Ah-h,” said Mrs. Purvis, nodding her head with an air of knowing profundity that was very characteristic of her. “Ah-h,  there you’ave it!”

“Have what, Mrs. Purvis?”

“’Ave the hanswer,” she said. “It’s this Moddun Tempo. That’s what Doctor says,” she went on loftily, in that tone of unimpeachable authority with which she always referred to him and quoted his opinions. “It’s the pace of Moddun Life—cocktail parties, stayin’up to all hours, and all of that. In America, I believe, conditions are even worse,” said Mrs. Purvis. “Not, of course, that they really are,” she added quickly, as if fearing that her remark might inadvertently have wounded the patriotic sensibilities of her employer. “I mean, after all, not’avin’been there myself, I wouldn’t know, would I?”

Her picture of America, derived largely from the pages of the tabloid newspapers, of which she was a devoted reader, was so delightfully fantastic that George could never find it in his heart to disillusion her. So he dutifully agreed that she was right, and even managed, with a few skilful suggestions, to confirm her belief that almost all American women spent their time going from one cocktail party to another—in fact, practically never got to bed.

“Ah, then,” said Mrs. Purvis, nodding her head wisely with an air of satisfaction, “then you know what this Moddun Tempo means!” And, after a just perceptible pause: “Shockin’I calls it!”

She called a great many things shocking. In fact, no choleric Tory in London’s most exclusive club could have been more vehemently and indignantly concerned with the state of the nation than was Daisy Purvis. To listen to her talk one might have thought she was the heir to enormous estates that had been chief treasures of her country’s history since the days of the Norman conquerors, but which were now being sold out of her hands, cut up piece-meal, ravaged and destroyed because she could no longer pay the ruinous taxes which the government had imposed. She would discuss these matters long and earnestly, with dire forebodings, windy sighs, and grave shakings of the head.

George would sometimes work the whole night through and finally get to bed at six or seven o’clock in the dismal fog of a London morning. Mrs. Purvis would arrive at seven-thirty. If he was not already asleep he would hear her creep softly up the stairs and go into the kitchen. A little later she would rap at his door and come in with an enormous cup, smoking with a beverage in whose soporific qualities she had the utmost faith.

“’Ere’s a nice’ot cup of Ovaltine,” said Mrs. Purvis, “to git you off to sleep.”

He was probably nearly “off to sleep” already, but this made no difference. If he was not “off to sleep”, she had the Ovaltine to “git him off”. And if he was “off to sleep”, she woke him up and gave him the Ovaltine to “git him off” again.

The real truth of the matter was that she wanted to talk with him, to exchange gossip, and especially to go over the delectable proceedings of the day’s news. She would bring him fresh copies of The Times and the Daily Mail, and she would have, of course, her own tabloid paper. Then, while he propped himself up in bed and drank his Ovaltine, Mrs. Purvis would stand in the doorway, rattle her tabloid with a premonitory gesture, and thus begin:

“Shockin’, I calls it!”

“What’s shocking this morning, Mrs. Purvis?”

“Why,’ere now, listen to this, if you please!” she would say indignantly, and read as follows: "’It was announced yesterday, through the offices of the Messrs. Merigrew & Raspe, solicitors to’Is Grace, the Duke of Basingstoke, that’Is Grace’as announced for sale’is estate at Chipping Cudlington in Gloucestershire. The estate, comprisin’sixteen thousand acres, of which eight thousand are in’untin’preserve, and includin’Basingstoke Hall, one of the finest examples of early Tudor architecture in the kingdom,’as been in the possession of’Is Grace’s family since the fifteenth century. Representatives of the Messrs. Merigrew & Raspe stated,’owever, that because of the enormous increase in the estate and income taxes since the war,’Is Grace feels that it is no longer possible for’im to maintain the estate, and’e is accordingly puttin’it up for sale. This means, of course, that the number of’Is Grace’s private estates’as now been reduced to three, Fothergill’All in Devonshire, Wintringham in Yawkshire, and the Castle of Loch McTash,’is’untin’preserve in Scotland.’Is Grace, it is said,’as stated recently to friends that if somethin’is not done to check the present ruinous trend towards’igher taxation, there will not be a single great estate in England remainin’in the’ands of its original owners within a’undred years…

“Ah-h,” said Mrs. Purvis, nodding with an air of knowing confirmation as she finished reading this dolorous item. “There you’ave it! Just as’Is Grace says, we’re losin’all our great estates. And what’s the reason? Why the owners can no longer afford to pay the taxes. Ruinous’e calls’em, and’e's, right. If it keeps up, you mark my words, the nobility’ll’ave no place left to live. A lot of’em are migratin’already,” she said darkly.

“Migrating where, Mrs. Purvis?”

“Why,” she said, “to France, to Italy, places on the Continent. There is Lord Cricklewood, livin’somewhere in the south of France. And why? Because the taxes got too’igh for’im. Let all’is places go’ere. Ah-h, lovely places they were, too,” she said, with appetising tenderness. “And the Earl of Pentateuch, Lady Cynthia Wormwood, and’Er Ladyship, the Dowager Countess of Throttlemarsh—where are they all? They’ve all left, that’s where they are. Packed up and got out. Let their estates go. They’ve gone abroad to live. And why? Because the taxes are too’igh. Shockin’, I calls it!”

By this time Mrs. Purvis’s pleasant face would be pink with indignation. It was one of the most astonishing demonstrations of concern George had ever seen. Again and again he would try to get to the bottom of it. He would bang down his cup of Ovaltine and burst out:

“Yes, but good Lord, Mrs. Purvis, why should you worry so much about it. Those people aren’t going to starve. Here you get ten shillings a week from me and eight shillings more from the doctor. He says he’s retiring and going abroad to live at the end of this year. I’ll be going back to America pretty soon after that. You don’t even know where you’ll be or what you’ll be doing this time next year. Yet you come in here day after day and read me this stuff about the Duke of Basingstoke or the Earl of Pentateuch having to give up one of his half-dozen estates, as if you were afraid the whole lot of them would have to go on the dole. You’re the one who will have to go on the dole if you get out of work. Those people are not going to suffer, not really, not the way you’ll have to.”

“Ah-h yes,” she answered quietly, in a tone that was soft and gentle, as if she were speaking of the welfare of a group of helpless children, “but then, we’re used to it, aren’t we? And they, poor things, they’re not.”

It was appalling. He couldn’t fathom it. He just felt as if he’d come up smack against an impregnable wall. You could call it what you liked—servile snobbishness, blind ignorance, imbecilic stupidity—but there it was. You couldn’t shatter it, you couldn’t even shake it. It was the most formidable example of devotion and loyalty he had ever known.

These conversations would go on morning after morning until there was scarcely an impoverished young viscount whose grandeurs and miseries had not undergone the reverent investigation of Mrs. Purvis’s anguished and encyclopaedic care. But always at the end—after the whole huge hierarchy of saints, angels, captains of the host, guardians of the inner gate, and chief lieutenants of the right hand had been tenderly inspected down to the minutest multicoloured feather that blazed in their heraldic wings—silence would fall. It was as if some great and unseen presence had entered the room. Then Mrs. Purvis would rattle her crisp paper, clear her throat, and with holy quietness pronounce the sainted name of “’E”.

Sometimes this moment would come as a sequel to her fascinated discussion of America and the Moddun Tempo, as, after enlarging for the hundredth time upon the shocking and unfortunate lot of the female population in the United States, she would add:

“I must say, though,” tactfully, after a brief pause, “that the American ladies are very smart, aren’t they, sir? They’re all so well-turned out. You can always tell one when you see one. And then they’re very clever, aren’t they, sir? I mean, quite a number of’em’ave been received at court,’aven’t they, sir? And some of’em’ave married into the nobility, too. And of course”—her voice would fall to just the subtlest shade of unction, and George would know what was coming—“of course, sir,’E…”

Ah, there it was! Immortal “’E”, who lived and moved and loved and had his being there at the centre of Daisy Purvis’s heaven! Immortal “’E”, the idol of all the Purvises everywhere, who, for their uses,  their devotions, had no other name and needed none but “’E”.

“Of course, sir,” Mrs. Purvis said, “’E likes’em, doesn’t’E? I’m told’E's very fond of’em. The American ladiesmust be very clever, sir, because’E finds’em so amusin’. There was a picture of’Im in the news just recently with a party of’Is friends, and a new American lady was among’em. At least I’d never seen 'er face before. And very smart she was, too—a Mrs. Somebody-or-other—I can’t recall the name.”

Again, something in the day’s news would bring the reverent tone to her voice and the glow of tenderness to her face, as:

“Well, I see by the paper’ere that’E's got back from the Continent. I wonder what’E's up to now.” And suddenly she laughed, a jolly and involuntary laugh that flushed her pink cheeks almost crimson and brought a mist to her blue eyes. “Ah! I tell you what,” she said, “’E is a deep one. You never know what’E's been up to. You pick the paper up one day and read where’E's visitin’some friends in Yawkshire. The next day, before you know it,’E turns up in Vienna. This time they say’E's been in Scandinavia—it wouldn’t surprise me if’E's been over there visitin’one of them young princesses. Of course”—her tone was now tinged with the somewhat pompous loftiness with which she divulged her profounder revelations to the incondite Mr. Webber—“of course there’s been talk about that for some time past. Not that’E would care! Not 'Im!’E's too independent,  E is!’Is mother found that out long ago. She tried to manage’Im the way she does the others. Not Im! That chap’s got a will of’Is own.’E'll do what’E wants to do, and no one will stop’Im—that’s’ow independent’E is.”

She was silent a moment, reflecting with misty eyes upon the object of her idolatry. Then suddenly her pleasant face again suffused with ruddy colour, and a short, rich, almost explosive laugh burst from her as she cried:

“The dev-ill! You know, they do say’E was comin’'ome one night not long ago, and”—her voice lowered confidingly—“they do say’E'd’ad a bit too much, and”—her voice sank still lower, and in a tone in which a shade of hesitancy was mixed with laughter, she went on—“well, sir, they do say’E was’avin’'Is troubles in gittin’'ome. They say that really’E was’avin’to support’Imself, sir, by the fence round St. James’s Palace. But they do say, sir, that—ooh! ha-ha-ha!”—she laughed suddenly and throatily. “You must excuse me, sir, but I’ave to larf when I think of it!” And then, slowly, emphatically, with an ecstasy of adoration, Mrs. Purvis whispered: “They say, sir, that the bobby on duty just outside the palace saw’Im, and came up to’Im and said:’Can I’elp you, sir?’But notIm! ’E wouldn’t be’elped!’E's too proud,  E is! That’s the way’E's always been. I’ll tell you what—’E is a dev-ill!” And, still smiling, her strong hands held before her in a worn clasp, she leaned against the door and lapsed into the silence of misty contemplation.

“But, Mrs. Purvis,” George remarked presently, “do you think he’ll ever get married? I mean, do you really, now? After all, he’s no chicken any longer, is he? And he must have had lots of chances, and if he was going to do anything about it——”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Purvis, in that tone of somewhat lofty recognition that she always used at such a time. “Ah! What I always say to that is,’E will! ’E'll make up’Is mind to it when’E’as to, but not before!’E won’t be driven into it, not’Im! But’E'll do it when’E knows it is the proper time.”

“Yes, Mrs. Purvis, but what is the proper time?”

“Well,” she said, “after all, there is ’Is father, isn’t there? And’Is father is not as young as’e used to be,  is ’e?” She was silent for a moment, diplomatically allowing the tactful inference to sink in by itself. “Well, sir,” she concluded very quietly, “I mean to say, sir, a time will come, sir, won’t it?”

“Yes, Mrs. Purvis,” George persisted, “but will it? I mean, can you be sure? You know, you hear all sorts of things—even a stranger like myself hears them. For one thing, you hear he doesn’t want it very much, and then, of course, there is his brother, isn’t there?”

“Oh,  'im,” said Mrs. Purvis, “im!” For a brief interval she remained silent, but had she filled an entire dictionary with the vocabulary of bitter and unyielding hostility, she could not have said more than she managed to convey in the two letters of that mutilated little pronoun “im.”

“Yes,” George persisted somewhat cruelly, “but after all, he wants it, doesn’t he?”

“’E does,” said Mrs. Purvis grimly.

“And he is married, isn’t he?”

“’E is,” said Mrs. Purvis, if anything a trifle more grimly than before.

“And he has children, hasn’t he?”

“’E as, yes,” said Mrs. Purvis, somewhat more gently. In fact, for a moment her face glowed with its look of former tenderness, but it grew grim again very quickly as she went on: “But im! Not im!” She was deeply stirred by this imagined threat to the ascendancy of her idol. Her lips worked tremulously, then she shook her head with a quick movement of inflexible denial and said: “Not im.” She was silent for a moment more, as if a struggle were going on between her desire to speak and the cool barrier of her natural reserve. Then she burst out: “I tell you, sir, I never liked the look of’im! Not that one—no!” She shook her head again in a half-convulsive movement; then, in a tone of dark confidingness, she almost whispered: “There’s somethin’ sly about’is face that I don’t like!’E's a sly one,’e is, but’e don’t fool me!” Her face was now deeply flushed, and she nodded her head with the air of a person who had uttered her grim and final judgment and would not budge from it. “That’s my opinion, if you ask me, sir! That’s the way I’ve always felt about’im. And’er. Er! She wouldn’t like it,  would she? Not’arf she wouldn’t!” She laughed suddenly, the bitter and falsetto laugh of an angry woman. “Not er! Why, it’s plain as clay, it’s written all over’er! But a lot of good it’ll do’em,” she said grimly. “We know what’s what!” She shook her head again with grim decision. “The people know. They can’t be fooled. So let’em git along with it!”

“You don’t think, then, that they——”

“Them!” said Mrs. Purvis strongly. “Them! Not in a million years, sir! Never! Never!…’E”—her voice fairly soared to a cry of powerful conviction—“’E's the one!’E's always been the one! And when the time comes, sir,  'E—’E will be King!”

In the complete and unquestioning loyalty of her character, Mrs. Purvis was like a large and gentle dog. Indeed, her whole relation to life was curiously animal-like. She had an intense concern for every member of brute creation, and when she saw dogs or horses in the streets she always seemed to notice first the animal and then the human being that it belonged to. She had come to know and recognise all the people in Ebury Street through the dogs they owned. When George questioned her one clay about a distinguished-looking old gentleman with a keen hawk’s face whom he had passed several times on the street, Mrs. Purvis answered immediately, with an air of satisfaction:

“Ah-h, yes.’E's the one that’as the rascal in 27. Ah-h, and’e is a rascal, too,” she cried, shaking her head and laughing with affectionate remembrance. “Big, shaggy fellow’e is, you know, comin’along, swingin’'is big shoulders, and looking’as if butter wouldn’t melt in’is mouth.’E is a rascal.”

George was a little bewildered by this time and asked her if she meant the gentleman or the dog.

“Oh, the dog,” cried Mrs. Purvis. “The dog! A big Scotch shepherd’e is. Belongs to the gentleman you were speakin’of. Gentleman’s some sort of scholar or writer or professor, I believe. Used to be up at Cambridge. Retired now. Lives in 27.”

Or again, looking out of the window one day into the pea-soup drizzle of the street, George saw an astonishingly beautiful girl pass by upon the other side. He called Mrs. Purvis quickly, pointed out the girl, and excitedly demanded:

“Who is she? Do you know her? Does she live here on the street?”

“I can’t say, sir,” Mrs. Purvis answered, looking puzzled. “It seems I must’ave seen’er before, but I can’t be sure. But I will just keep my eyes open and I’ll let you know if I find out where she lives.”

A few days later Mrs. Purvis came in from her morning’s shopping tour, beaming with satisfaction and full of news. “Ah-h,” she said, “I’ave news for you. I found out about the girl.”

“What girl?” he said, looking up startled from his work.

“The girl you asked about the other day,” said Mrs. Purvis. “The one you pointed out to me.”

“Oh yes,” he said, getting up. “And what about her? Does shelive here in the street?”

“Of course,” said Mrs. Purvis. “I’ve seen’er a’undred times. I should’ave known’er in a second the other day, only she didn’t’ave 'im with’er.”

“Him? Who?”

“Why, the rascal down at 46. That’s who she is.”

“That’s who who is, Mrs. Purvis?”

“Why, the great Dane, of course. You must’ave seen 'im.’E's big as a Shetland pony,” she laughed. “’E's always with’er. The only time I ever saw’er without’im was the other day, and that’s why,” she cried triumphantly, “I didn’t know’er. But to-day, they were out takin’a walk together and I saw’em comin’…Then I knew who she was. They’re the ones in 46. And the rascal”—here shelaughed affectionately—“ah-h, what a rascal’e is! Oh, a fine fellow, you know. So big and strong’e is. I sometimes wonder where they keep’im,’ow they found a’ouse big enough to put’im in.”

Hardly a morning passed that she didn’t return from her little tour of the neighbourhood flushed with excitement over some new “rascal”, some “fine fellow”, some dog or horse she had observed and watched. She would go crimson with anger over any act of cruelty or indifference to an animal. She would come in boiling with rage because she had passed a horse that had been tightly bridled:

“…And I gave’im a piece of my mind, too,” she would cry, referring to the driver. “I told’im that a man as mistreated a hanimal in that way wasn’t fit to’ave one. If there’d been a constable about, I’d’ave’ad’im took in custody, that’s what I’d’ave done. I told’im so, too. Shockin’, I calls it. The way some people can b’ave to some poor,’elpless beast that’as no tongue to tell what it goes through. Let’em’ave a bridle in their mouth a bit! Let’em go round for a while with their faces shut up in a muzzle! Ah-h,” she would say grimly, as if the idea afforded her a savage pleasure, “that’d teach’em! They’d know then, all right!”

There was something disturbing and unwholesome about the extravagance of this feeling for animals. George observed Mrs. Purvis closely in her relations with people and found out that she was by no means so agitated at the spectacle of human suffering. Her attitude towards the poor, of whom she was one, was remarkable for its philosophic acceptance. Her feeling seemed to be that the poor are always with us, that they are quite used to their poverty, and that this makes it unnecessary for anybody to bother about it, least of all the miserable victims themselves. It had certainly never entered her head that anything should be done about it. The sufferings of the poor seemed to her as natural and as inevitable as the London fog, and to her way of thinking it was just as much a waste of honest emotion to get worked up about the one as about the other.

Thus, on the same morning that she would come in blazing with indignation over the mistreatment of a dog or horse, George would sometimes hear her speak sharply, curtly, and without a trace of feeling to the dirty, half-starved, and half-naked devil of a boy who always delivered the beer from the liquor shop. This wretched child was like some creature out of Dickens—a living specimen of that poverty which, at its worst, has always seemed to be lower and more degraded in England than anywhere else. The thing that gives it its special horror is that in England people of this type appear to be stogged to their misery, sucked down in a swamp of inherited wretchedness which is never going to be any better, and from which they know they can never escape.

So it was with this God-forsaken boy. He was one of the Little People—that race of dwarfs and gnomes which was suddenly and’terribly revealed to George that winter in London. George discovered that there arc really two different orders of humanity in England, and they are so far apart that they hardly seem to belong to the same species. They are the Big People and the Little People.

The Big People are fresh-skinned, ruddy, healthy, and alert; they show by their appearance that they have always had enough to eat. At their physical best, they look like great bulls of humanity. On the streets of London one sees these proud and solid figures of men and women, magnificently dressed and cared for, and one observes that their faces wear the completely vacant and imperturbable expressions of highly bred cattle. These are the British Lords of Creation. And among the people who protect and serve them, and who are really a part of their own order, one also sees some magnificent specimens—strapping Guardsmen, for example, six feet five inches tall and as straight as lances, with the same assured look in their faces, which says plainly that though they may not be the Lords of Creation themselves, at any rate they are the agents and instruments of the Lords.

But if one stays in England long enough, all of a sudden one day he is going to discover the Little People. They are a race of gnomes who look as if they have burrowed in tunnels and lived for so many centuries in underground mines that they have all become pale and small and wizened. Something in their faces and in the gnarled formations of their bodies not only shows the buried lives they live, but also indicates that their fathers and mothers and grandparents for generations before them were similarly starved of food and sunlight and were bred like gnomes in the dark and deep-delved earth.

One hardly notices them at first. But then, one day, the Little People swarm up to the surface of the earth, and for the first time one sees them. That is the way the revelation came to George Webber, and it was an astounding discovery. It was like a kind of terrible magic to realise suddenly that he had been living in this English world and seeing only one part of it, thinking it was the whole. It was not that the Little People were few in number. Once he saw them, they seemed to be almost the whole population. They outnumbered the Big People ten to one. And after he saw them, he knew that England could never look the same to him again, and that nothing he might read or hear about the country thereafter would make sense to him if it did not take the Little People into account.

The wretched boy from the liquor shop was one of them. Everything about him proclaimed eloquently that he had been born dwarfed and stunted into a world of hopeless poverty, and that he had never had enough to eat, or enough clothes to warm him, or enough shelter to keep the cold fogs from seeping through into the very marrow of his bones. It was not that he was actually deformed, but merely that his body seemed to be shrivelled and shrunk and squeezed of its juices like that of an old man. He may have been fifteen or sixteen years old, though there were times when he seemed younger. Always, however, his appearance was that of an under-grown man, and one had the horrible feeling that his starved body had long since given up the unequal struggle and would never grow any more.

He wore a greasy, threadbare little jacket, tightly buttoned, from the sleeves of which his raw wrists and large, grimy, work-reddened hands protruded with almost indecent nakedness. His trousers, tight as a couple of sausage skins, were equally greasy and threadbare, and were inches too short for him. His old and broken shoes were several sizes too big, and from the battered look of them they must have helped to round the edges of every cobble-stone in stony-hearted London. This costume was completed by a shapeless old hulk of a cap, so large and baggy that it slopped over on one side of his head and buried the ear.

What his features were like it was almost impossible to know, because he was so dirty. His flesh, what one could see of it through the unwashed grime, had a lifeless, opaque pallor. The whole face was curiously blurred and blunted, as if it had been moulded hastily and roughly out of tallow. The nose was wide and flat, and turned up at the end to produce great, flaring nostrils. The mouth was thick and dull, and looked as if it had been pressed into the face with a blunt instrument. The eyes were dark and dead.

This grotesque little creature even spoke a different language. It was Cockney, of course, but not sharp, decisive Cockney; it was a kind of thick, catarrhal jargon, so blurred in the muttering that it was almost indecipherable. George could hardly understand him at all. Mrs. Purvis could make better sense of it, but even she confessed that there were times when she did not know what he was talking about. George would hear her beginning to rail at him the instant he came staggering into the house beneath the weight of a heavy case of beer:

“’Ere, now, mind where you’re goin’, won’t you? And try not to make so much noise with those bottles! Why can’t you wipe those muddy boots before you come in the’ouse? Don’t come clumpin’up the stairs like an’orse!…Oh,” she would cry in despair, turning to George, “’e is the clumsiest chap I ever saw!…And why can’t you wash your face once in a while?” she would say, striking again at the urchin with her sharp tongue. “A great, growin’chap like you ought to be ashamed goin’about where people can see you with a face like that!”

“Yus,” he muttered sullenly, “goin’abaht wiv a fyce lahk that. If you’ad to go abaht the wye I do, you’d wash your fyce, wouldn’t yer?”

Then, still muttering resentfully to himself, he would clump down the stairs and go away, and from the front window George would watch him as he trudged back up the street towards the wine and liquor shop in which he worked.

This store was small, but since the neighbourhood was fashionable the place had that atmosphere of mellow luxury and quiet elegance—something about it a little worn, but all the better for being a little worn—that one finds in small, expensive shops of this sort in England. It was as if the place were mildly tinctured with fog, touched a little with the weather, and with the indefinable but faintly exciting smell of soft coal smoke. And over everything, permeating the very woods of the counter, shelves, and floor, hung the fragrance of old wines and the purest distillations of fine liquors.

You opened the door, and a little bell tinkled gently. You took a half-step down into the shop, and immediately its atmosphere made you feel at peace. You felt opulent and secure. You felt all the powerful but obscure seductions of luxury (which, if you have money, you can feel in England better than anywhere else). You felt rich and able to do anything. You felt that the world was good, and overflowing with delectable delicacies, and that all of them were yours for the asking.

The proprietor of this luxurious little nest of commerce seemed just exactly the man for such an office. He was middle-aged, of medium height, spare of build, with pale brown eyes and brown moustaches—wispy, rather long, and somewhat lank. He wore a wing collar, a black necktie, and a scarf-pin. He usually appeared in shirt-sleeves, but he dispelled any suggestion of improper informality by wearing arm protectors of black silk. This gave him just the proper touch of unctuous yet restrained servility. He was middle class—not middle class as America knows it, not even middle class as the English usually know it—but a very special kind of middle class, serving middle class, as befitted a purveyor of fine comforts to fine gentlemen. He was there to serve the gentry, to live upon the gentry, to exist by, through, and for the gentry, and always to bend a little at the waist when gentry came.

As you entered the shop, he would come forward behind his counter, say “Good evening, sir,” with just the proper note of modified servility, make some remark about the weather, and then, arching his thin, bony, sandily-freckled hands upon the counter, he would bend forwards slightly—wing collar, black necktie, black silk arm protectors, moustache, pale brown eyes, pale, false smile, and all the rest of him—and with servile attentiveness, not quite fawning, would wait to do your bidding.

“What is good to-day? Have you a claret, a sound yet modestly-priced vintage you can recommend?”

“A claret, sir?” in silken tones. “We have a good one, sir, and not expensive either. A number of our patrons have tried it. They all pronounce it excellent. You’ll not go wrong, sir, if you try this one.”

“And how about a Scotch whisky?”

“A Haig, sir?” Again the silken tones. “You’ll not go wrong on Haig, sir. But perhaps you’d like to try another brand, something a trifle rare, a little more expensive, perhaps a little more mature. Some of our patrons have tried this one, sir. It costs a shilling more, but if you like the smoky flavour you’ll find it worth the difference.”

Oh, the fond, brisk slave! The fond, neat slave! The fond slave bending at the waist, with bony fingers arched upon his counter! The fond slave with his sparse hair neatly parted in the middle, and the narrow forehead arched with even corrugations of pale wrinkles as the face lifted upwards with its thin, false smile! Oh, this fond, brisk pander to fine gentlemen—and that wretched boy! For suddenly, in the midst of all this show of eager servitude, this painted counterfeit of warmth, the man would turn like a snarling cur upon that miserable child, who stood there sniffling through his catarrhal nose, shuffling his numbed feet for circulation, and chafing his reddened, chapped, work-coarsened hands before the cheerful, crackling fire of coals:

“Here, now, what are you hanging round the shop for? Have you delivered that order to Number 12 yet? Be on your way, then, and don’t keep the gentleman waiting any longer!”

And then immediately the grotesque return to silken courtesy, to the pale, false smile again, to the fawning unctions of his “Yes, sir. A dozen bottles, sir. Within thirty minutes, sir. To Number 42—oh, quite so, sir. Good night.”

And good night, good night, good night to you, my fond, brisk slave, you backbone of a nation’s power. Good night to you, staunch symbol of a Briton’s rugged independence. Good night to you, and to your wife, your children, and your mongrel tyranny over their lives. Good night to you, my little autocrat of the dinner-table. Good night to you, my lord and master of the Sunday leg of mutton. Good night to you, my gentlemen’s pander in Ebury Street.

And good night to you, as well, my wretched little boy, my little dwarf, my gnome, my grimy citizen from the world of the Little People.

The fog drifts thick and fast to-night into the street. It sifts and settles like a cloak, until one sees the street no longer. And where the shop light shines upon the fog, there burns a misty glow, a blurred and golden bloom of radiance, of comfort, and of warmth. Feet pass the shop, men come ghostwise from the fog’s thick mantle, are for a moment born, are men again, are heard upon the pavement, then, wraithlike, vanish into fog, are ghosts again, are lost, are gone. The proud, the mighty, and the titled of the earth, the lovely and protected, too, go home—home to their strong and sheltered walls behind the golden nimbus of other lights, fog-flowered. Four hundred yards away the tall sentries stamp and turn and march again. All’s glory here. All’s strong as mortared walls. All’s loveliness and joy within this best of worlds.

And you, you wretched child, so rudely and unfitly wrenched into this world of glory, wherever you must go to-night, in whatever doorway you must sleep, upon whatever pallet of foul-smelling straw, within whatever tumbled warren of old brick, there in the smoke, the fog-cold welter, and the swarming web of old, unending London—sleep well as can be, and hug the ghosts of warmth about you as you remember the forbidden world and its imagined glory. So, my little gnome, good night. May God have mercy on us all.

33. Enter Mr. Lloyd McHarg

During the late autumn and early winter of that year occurred an event which added to Webber’s chronicle the adventure of an extraordinary experience. He had received no news from America for several weeks when, suddenly in November, he began to get excited letters from his friends, informing him of a recent incident that bore directly on his own career.

The American novelist, Mr. Lloyd McHarg, had just published a new book which had been instantly and universally acclaimed as a monument of national significance, as well as the crowning achievement in McHarg’s brilliant literary career. George had read in the English press brief accounts of the book’s tremendous success, but now he began to receive enlargements on the news from his friends at home. Mr. McHarg, it seemed, had given an interview to reporters, and to the astonishment of everyone had begun to talk, not about his own book, but about Webber’s. Cuttings of the interview were sent to George. He read them with astonishment, and with the deepest and most earnest gratitude.

George had never met Mr. Lloyd McHarg. He had never had occasion to communicate with him in any way. He knew him only through his books. He was, of course, one of the chief figures in American letters, and now, at the zenith of his career, when he had won the greatest ovation one could win, he had seized the occasion, which most men would have employed for purposes of self-congratulation, to praise enthusiastically the work of an obscure young writer who was a total stranger to him and who had written only one book.

It seemed to George then, as it seemed to him ever afterwards, one of the most generous acts he had ever known, and when he had somewhat recovered from the astonishment and joy which this unexpected news had produced in him, he sat down and wrote to Mr. McHarg and told him how he felt. In a short time he had an answer from him—a brief note, written from New York. Mr. McHarg said that he had spoken as he had because he felt that way about Webber’s book, and that he was happy to have had the opportunity of giving public acknowledgment to his feeling. He said that he was about to be awarded an honorary degree by one of America’s leading universities—an event which, he confessed with pardonable pride, pleased him all the more because the award was to be made out of season, in special recognition of his last book, and because the ceremony attending it was not to be part of the usual performance of trained seals at commencement time. He said that he was sailing for Europe immediately afterwards and would spend some time on the Continent, that he would be in England a little later, and that he hoped to see Webber then. George wrote back and told him he was looking forward to their meeting, gave him his address, and there for a time the matter rested.

Mrs. Purvis was a party to George’s elation, which was so exultant that he could not have kept the reason a secret from her if he had tried. She was almost as excited about his impending meeting with Mr. McHarg as he was. Together they would scan the papers for news of Mr. McHarg. One morning she brought the “nice’ot cup” of Ovaltine, rattled the pages of her tabloid paper, and said:

“I see where’e is on’is way.’E's sailed already from New York.”

A few days later George smacked the crisp sheets of The Times and cried: “He’s there! He’s landed! He’s in Europe! It won’t be long now!”

Then came the never-to-be-forgotten morning when she brought the usual papers, and with them the day’s mail, and in the mail a letter from Fox Edwards, enclosing a long clipping from The New York Times. This was a full account of the ceremonies at which Mr. McHarg had been awarded his honorary degree. Before a distinguished gathering at the great university Mr. McHarg had made a speech, and the clipping contained an extended quotation of what he had had to say. George had not foreseen it. He had not imagined it could happen. His name shot up at him from the serried columns of close print and exploded in his eyes like shrapnel. A hard knot gathered in his throat and choked him. His heart leaped, skipped, hammered at his ribs. McHarg had put Webber in his speech, had spoken of him there at half a column’s length. He had hailed the younger man as a future spokesman of his country’s spirit, an evidence of a fruition that had come, of a continent that had been discovered. He called Webber a man of genius, and held his name before the mighty of the earth as a pledge of what America was, and a token of where it would go.

And suddenly George remembered who he was, and saw the journey he had come. He remembered Locust Street in Old Catawba twenty years before and Nebraska, Randy, and the Potterhams, Aunt Maw and Uncle Mark, his father and the little boy that he had been, with the hills closing in round him, and at night the whistles wailing northward towards the world. And now his name, whose name was nameless, had become a shining thing, and a boy who once had waited tongueless in the South had, through his language, opened golden gateways to the Earth.

Mrs. Purvis felt it almost as much as he did. He pointed speechless to the clipping. He tapped the shining passages with trembling hand. He thrust the clipping at her. She read it, flushed crimson in the face, turned suddenly, and went away.

After that they waited daily for McHarg’s coming. Week lengthened into week. They searched the papers every morning for news of him. He seemed to be making a tour of Europe, and everywhere he went he was entertained and feted and interviewed and photographed in the company of other famous men. Now he was in Copenhagen. Now he was staying in Berlin a week or two. Later he had gone to Baden-Baden for a cure.

“Oh Lord!” George groaned dismally. “How long does that take?”

Again he was in Amsterdam; and then silence. Christmas came.

“I should’ave thought,” said Mrs. Purvis, “’e'd be’ere by now.”

New Year’s came, and still there was no word from Lloyd McHarg.

One morning about the middle of January, after George had worked all night, and now, in bed, was carrying on his usual chat with Mrs. Purvis, he had just spoken of McHarg’s long-deferred arrival rather hopelessly—when the phone rang. Mrs. Purvis went into the sitting-room and answered it. George could hear her saying formally:

“Yes. Who shall I say? Who’s callin’, please?” A waiting silence. Then, rather quickly: “Just a moment, sir.” She entered George’s room, her face flushed, and said: “Mr. Lloyd Mc’Arg is on the wire.”

To say that George got out of bed would be to give a hopelessly inadequate description of a movement which hurled him into the air, bedclothes and all, as if he had been shot out of a cannon. He landed squarely in his bedroom slippers, and in two strides, still shedding bedclothes as he went, he was through the door, into the sitting-room, and had the receiver in his hand.

“Hello, hello, hello!” he stammered. “Who—what—is that?”

McHarg was even quicker. His voice, rapid, feverish, somewhat nasal and high-pitched, unmistakably American, stabbed nervously across the wire and said:

“Hello, hello. Is that you, George?” He called him by his first name immediately. “How are you, son? How are you, boy? How are they’treating you?”

“Fine, Mr. McHarg!” George yelled. “It is Mr. McHarg, isn’t it? Say, Mr. McHarg——-”

“Now take it easy! Take it easy!” he cried feverishly. “Don’t shout so loud!” he yelled. “I’m not in New York, you know!”

“I know you’re not,” George screamed. “That’s what I was just about to say!”—laughing idiotically. “Say, Mr. McHarg, when can we——”

“Now wait a minute, wait a minute! Let me do the talking. Don’t get so excited. Now listen, George!” His voice had the staccato rapidity of a telegraph ticker. Even though one bad never seen him, one would have got instantly an accurate impression of his feverishly nervous vitality, wire-taut tension, and incessant activity. “Now listen!” he barked. “I want to see you and talk to you. We’ll have lunch together and talk things over.”

“Fine! F-fine!” George stuttered. “I’ll be delighted! Any time you say. I know you’re busy. I can meet you to-morrow, next day, Friday—next week if that suits you better.”

“Next week, hell 1” he rasped. “How much time do you think I’ve got to wait around for lunch? You’re coming here for lunch to-day. Come on! Get busy! Get a move on you!” he cried irritably. “How long will it take you to get here, anyway?”

George asked him where he was staying, and he gave an address on one of the streets near St. James’s and Piccadilly. It was only a ten-minute ride in a taxi, but since it was not yet ten o’clock in the morning George suggested that he arrive there around noon.

“What? Two hours? For Christ’s sake!” McHarg cried in a high-pitched, irritated voice. “Where the hell do you live anyway? In the north of Scotland?”

George told him no, that he was only ten minutes away, but that he thought he might want to wait two or three hours before he had his lunch.

“Wait two or three hours?” he shouted. “Say, what the hell is this, anyway? How long do you expect me to wait for lunch? You don’t keep people waiting two or three hours every time you have lunch with them, do you, George?” he said, in a milder but distinctly aggrieved tone of voice. “Christ, man! A guy’d starve to death if he had to wait on you!”

George was getting more and more bewildered, and wondered if it was the custom of famous writers to have lunch at ten o’clock in the morning, but he stammered hastily:

“No, no, certainly not, Mr. McHarg. I can come any time you say. It will only take me t y minutes or half an hour.”

“I thought you said you were only ten minutes away?”

“I know, but I’ve got to dress and shave first.”

“Dress! Shaver” McHarg yelled. “For Christ’s sake, you mean to tell me you’re not out of bed yet? What do you do? Sleep till noon every day? How in the name of God do you ever get any work done?”

By this time George felt so crushed that he did not dare tell McHarg that he was not only not out of bed, but that he’d hardly been to bed yet; somehow it seemed impossible to confess that he had worked all night. He did not know what new explosion of derision or annoyance this might produce, so he compromised and mumbled some lame excuse about having worked late the night before.

“Well, come on, then!” he cried impatiently, before the words were out of George’s mouth. “Snap out of it! Hop into a taxi and come on up here as soon as you can. Don’t stop to shave,” he said curtly. “I’ve been with a Dutchman for the last three days and I’m hungry as hell!”

With these cryptic words he banged the receiver up in George’s eat, leaving him to wonder, in a state of stunned bewilderment, just why being with a Dutchman for three days should make anyone hungry as hell.

Mrs. Purvis already had a clean shirt and his best suit of clothes laid out for him by the time he returned to his room. While he put them on she got out the brush and the shoe polish, took his best pair of shoes just beyond the open door into the sitting-room, and went right down on her knees and got to work on them. And while she laboured on them she called in to him, a trifle wistfully:

“I do’ope’e gives you a good lunch. We was’avin’gammon and peas again to-day. Ah-h, a prime bit, too. I’ad just put’em on when’e called.”

“Well, I hate to miss them, Mrs. Purvis,” George called back, as he struggled into his trousers. “But you go on and eat them, and don’t worry about me. I’ll get a good lunch.”

“’E'll take you to the Ritz, no doubt,” she called again a trifle loftily.

“Oh,” George answered easily as he pulled on his shirt, “I don’t think he likes those places. People of that sort,” he shouted with great assurance, as if he were on intimate terms with “people of that sort”—“they don’t go in for swank as a rule. He’s probably bored stiff with it, particularly after all he’s been through these past few weeks. He’d probably much rather go to some simple place.”

“Um. Shouldn’t wonder,” said Mrs. Purvis reflectively. “Meetin’all them artists and members of the nobility. Probably fed up with it, I should think,” she said. “I know I should be,” which meant that she would have given only her right eye for the opportunity. “You might take’im to Simpson’s, you know,” she said in the offhand manner that usually accompanied her most important contributions.

“There’s an idea,” George cried. “Or to Stone’s Chop House in Panton Street.”

“Ah yes,” she said. “That’s just off the’Ay Market, isn’t it?”

“Yes, runs between the Hay Market and Leicester Square,” George said, tying his tie. “An old place, you know, two hundred years or more, not quite so fancy as Simpson’s, but he might like it better on that account. They don’t let women in,” he added with a certain air of satisfaction, as if this in itself would probably recommend the place to his distinguished host.

“Yes, and their ale, they say, is grand,” said Mrs. Purvis.

“It’s the colour of mahogany,” George said, throwing on his coat, “and it goes down like velvet. I’ve tried it, Mrs. Purvis. They bring it to you in a silver tankard. And after two of them you’d send flowers to your own mother-in-law.”

She laughed suddenly and heartily and came bustling in with the shoes, her pleasant face suffused with pink colour.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said, setting the shoes down. “But you do’ave a way of puffin’things. I’ave to larf sometimes…1 Still, in Simpson’s—you won’t go wrong in Simpson’s, you know,” said Mrs. Purvis, who had never seen any of these places in her whole life. “If’e likes mutton—ah-h, I tell you what,” she said with satisfaction, “you do get a prime bit of mutton there.”

He put on his shoes and noted that only ten minutes had passed since Mr. McHarg hung up. He was now dressed and ready, so he started out the door and down the stairs, flinging on lovercoat as he descended. Despite the early hour, his appetite ad been whetted by his conversation, and he felt that he would be able to do full justice to his lunch. He had reached the street and was hailing a taxi when Mrs. Purvis came running after him, waving a clean handkerchief, which she put neatly in the breast-pocket of his coat. He thanked her and signalled again to the taxi.

It was one of those old, black, hearselike contraptions with a baggage rack on top which, to an American, used to the gaudy, purring thunderbolts of the New York streets, seem like Victorian relics, and which are often, indeed, driven by elderly Jehus with walrus moustaches who were driving hansom cabs at the time of Queen Victoria’s jubilee. This ancient vehicle now rolled sedately towards him, on the wrong side of the street as usual—which is to say, on the right side for the English.

George opened the door, gave the walrus the address, and told him to make haste, that the occasion was pressing. He said: “Very good, sir,” with courteous formality, wheeled the old crate round, and rolled sedately up the street again at exactly the same pace, which was about twelve miles an hour. They passed the grounds of Buckingham Palace, wheeled into the Mall, turned up past St. James’s Palace into Pall Mall, thence into St. James’s Street, and in a moment more drew up before McHarg’s address.

It was a bachelors’chambers, one of those quiet and sedate-looking places that one finds in England, and that are so wonderfully comfortable if one has the money. Inside, the appointments suggested a small and very exclusive club. George spoke to a man in the tiny office. He answered:

“Mr. McHarg? Of course, sir. He is expecting you…John,” to a young man in uniform and brass buttons, “take the gentleman up.”

They entered the lift. John closed the door carefully, gave a vigorous tug to the rope, and sedately they crept up, coming to a more or less accurate halt, after a few more manipulations of the rope, at one of the upper floors. John opened the door, stepped out with an “If you please, sir,” and led off down the hall to a door which stood partially open and from which there came a confused hum of voices. John rapped gently, entered in response to the summons, and said quietly:

“Mr. Webber calling, sir.”

There were three men in the room, but so astonishing was the sight of McHarg that at first George did not notice the other two. McHarg was standing in the middle of the floor with a glass in one hand and a bottle of Scotch whisky in the other, preparing to pour himself a drink. When he saw George he looked up quickly, put the bottle down, and advanced with his hand extended in greeting. There was something almost terrifying in his appearance. George recognised him instantly. He had seen McHarg’s pictures many times, but he now realised how beautifully unrevealing are the uses of photography. He was fantastically ugly, and to this ugliness was added a devastation of which George had never seen the equal.

The first and most violent impression was his astonishing redness. Everything about him was red—hair, large protuberant ears, eyebrows, eyelids, even his bony, freckled, knuckly hands. (As George noticed the hands he understood why everyone who knew him called him “Knuckles”.) Moreover, it was a most alarming redness. His face was so red that it seemed to throw off heat, and if at that moment smoke had begun to issue from his nostrils and he had burst out in flames all over, George would hardly have been surprised.

His face did not have that fleshy and high-coloured floridity that is often seen in men who have drunk too long and too earnestly. It was not like that at all. McHarg was thin to the point of emaciation. He was very tall, six feet two or three, and his excessive thinness and angularity made him seem even taller. George thought he looked ill and wasted. His face, which was naturally a wry, puckish sort of face—as one got to know it better, a pugnacious but very attractive kind of face, full of truculence, but also with an impish humour and a homely, Yankee, freckled kind of modesty that were wonderfully engaging—this face now looked as puckered up as if it were permanently about to swallow a half-green persimmon, and it also seemed to be all dried out and blistered by the fiery flames that burned in it. And out of this face peered two of the most remarkable-looking eyes in all the world. Their colour must originally have been light blue, but now they were so bleached and faded that they looked as if they had been poached.

He came towards George quickly, with his bony, knuckled hand extended in greeting, his lips twitching and bared nervously over his large teeth, his face turned wryly upwards and to one side in an expression that was at once truculent, nervously apprehensive, and yet movingly eloquent of something fiercely and permanently wounded, something dreadfully lacerated, something so tender and unarmed in the soul and spirit of the man that life had got in on him at a thousand points and slashed him to ribbons. He took George’s hand and shook it vigorously, at the same time bristling up to him with his wry and puckered face like a small boy to another before the fight begins, as if to say: “Go on, now, go on. Knock that chip off my shoulder. I dare and double-dare you.” This was precisely his manner now, except that he said:

“Why you—why you monkeyfied—why you monkeyfied bastard, you! Just look at him!” he cried suddenly in a high-pitched voice, half-turning to his companions. “Why you—who the hell ever told you you could write, anyway?” Then cordially: “George, how are you? Come on in, come on over here!”

And, still holding Webber’s hand in his bony grip, and taking his arm with his other hand, he led him across the room towards his other guests. Then, suddenly releasing him, and striking a pompous oratorical attitude, he began to declaim in the florid accents of an after-dinner speaker:

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is my peculiar privilege, and I may even say my distinguished honour, to present to the members of the Hog Head Hollow Ladies Leeterary, Arteestic, and Mutual Culshural Society our esteemed guest of honour—a man who writes books that are so God-damned long that few people can even pick’em up. A man whose leeterary style is distinguished by such a command of beautiful English as she is wrote that he has rarely been known to use less than twenty-one adjectives where four would do.”

He changed abruptly, dropped his oratorical attitude, and laughed a sudden, nervous, dry, falsetto laugh, at the same time mauling Webber in the ribs with a bony finger. “How do you like that, George?” he said with immediate friendly warmth. “Does that get’em? Is that the way they do it? Not bad, eh?” He was obviously pleased with his effort.

“George,” he now continued in a natural tone of voice, “I want you to meet two friends of mine. Mr. Bendien, of Amsterdam,” he said, presenting Webber to a heavy-set, red-faced, elderly Dutchman, who sat by the table within easy reaching distance of a tall brown crock of Holland gin, of which, to judge from his complexion, he had already consumed a considerable quantity.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” cried McHarg, striking another attitude, “allow me to introduce that stupendous, that death-defying, that thrill-packed wonder of the ages, that hair-raising and spine-tingling act which has thrilled most of the crowned heads of Europe and all of the deadheads of Amsterdam. Now appearing absolutely for the first time under the big tent. Ladies and gentlemen, I now take pleasure in introducing Mynheer Cornelius Bendien, the Dutch maestro, who will perform for you his celebrated act of balancing an eel on the end of his nose while he swallows in rapid succession, without pausing for breath, three—count’em—three brown jugs of the finest imported Holland gin. Mr. Bendien, Mr. Webber…How was that, boy, how was that?” said McHarg, laughing his shrill falsetto, and turning and prodding Webber again with an eager finger.

Then, somewhat more curtly, he said: “You may have met Mr. Donald Stoat before. He tells me that he knows you.”

The other man looked out from underneath his heavy eyebrows and inclined his head pompously. “I believe,” he said, “I have had the honour of Mr. Webber’s acquaintance.”

George remembered him, although he had seen him only once or twice, and that some years before. Mr. Stoat was not the kind of man one easily forgets.

It was plain to see that McHarg was on edge, terribly nervous, and also irritated by Stoat’s presence. He turned away abruptly, muttering: “Too—too—too—much—too much.” And then, wheeling about suddenly: “All right, George. Have a drink. What’s it going to be?”

“My own experience,” said Mr. Stoat with unctuous pomposity, “is that the best drink in the morning”—he leered significantly with his bushy eyebrows—“a gentleman’s drink, if I may say so—is a glawss of dry sherry.” He had a “glawss” of this beverage in his hand at the moment, and, lifting it with an air of delicate connoisseurship, at the same time working his eyebrows appraisingly, he sniffed it—an action which seemed to irritate McHarg no end. “Allow me,” continued Mr. Stoat, with rotund deliberation, “to recommend it to your consideration.”

McHarg began to pace rapidly up and down. “Too much—too much,” he muttered. “All right, George,” he said irritably, “what’ll you have to drink—Scotch?”

Mynheer Bendien put in his oar at this point. Holding up his glass and leaning forward with a hand on one fat knee, he said with guttural solemnity: “You should trink chin. Vy don’t you try a trink of Holland chin?”

This advice also seemed to annoy Mr. McHarg. He glared at Bendien with his flaming face, then, throwing up his bony hands with a quick, spasmodic movement, he cried: “Oh, for God’s sake!” He turned and began to pace up and down again, muttering: “Too much—too much—too—too—too much.” Then abruptly, in a voice shrill with irritation: “Let him drink what he wants, for Christ’s sake! Go ahead, Georgie,” he said roughly. “Drink what you like. Pour yourself some Scotch.” And suddenly turning to Webber, his whole face lighting up with an impish smile, his lips flickering nervously above his teeth: “Isn’t it wonderful, Georgie? Isn’t it marvellous? K-k-k-k-k”—prodding Webber in the ribs with bony forefinger, and laughing a high, dry, feverish laugh—“Can you beat it?”

“I confess,” said Mr. Donald Stoat at this point, with rotund unction, “that I have not read our young friend’s opus, which, I believe”—unction here deepening visibly into rotund sarcasm—“which, I believe, has been hailed by certain of our cognoscenti as a masterpiece. After all, there are so many masterpieces nowadays, aren’t there? Scarcely a week goes by but what I pick up my copy of The Times—I refer, of course, to The Times of London, as distinguished from its younger and somewhat more immature colleague,  The New York Times—to find that another of our young men has enriched English literature with another masterpiece of im—perish—able prose.”

All this was uttered in ponderous periods with leerings and twitchings of those misplaced moustaches that served the gentleman for eyebrows. McHarg was obviously becoming more and more annoyed, and kept pacing up and down, muttering to himself. Mr. Stoat, however, was too obtuse by nature, and too entranced by the rolling cadences of his own rhetoric, to observe the warning signals. After leering significantly with his eyebrows again, he went on:

“I can only hope, however, that our young friend here is a not too enthusiastic devotee of the masters of what I shall call The School of Bad Taste.”

“What are you talking about?” said McHarg, pausing suddenly, half-turning, and glaring fiercely. “I suppose you mean Hugh Walpole, and John Galsworthy, and other dangerous radicals of that sort, eh?”

“No, sir,” said Mr. Stoat deliberately. “I was not thinking of them. I was referring to that concocter of incoherent nonsense, that purveyor of filth, the master of obscenity, who wrote that book so few people can read, and no one can understand, but which some of our young men are hailing enthusiastically as the greatest masterpiece of the century.”

“What book are you talking about anyway?” McHarg said irritably. “Its name, I believe,” said Mr. Stoat pompously, “is Ulysses. Its author, I have heard, is an Irishman.”

“Oh,” cried McHarg with an air of enlightenment, and with an impish gleam in his eye that was quite lost on Mr. Stoat. “You’re speaking of George Moore, aren’t you?”

“That’s it! That’s it!” cried Mr. Stoat quickly, nodding his head with satisfaction. He was getting excited now. His eyebrows twitched more rapidly than ever. “That’s the fellow! And the book”—he sputtered—“pah!” He spat out the word as though it had been brought up by an emetic, and screwed the eyebrows round across his domy forehead in an expression of nausea. “I tried to read a few pages of it once,” he whispered sonorously and dramatically, “but I let it fall. I let it fall. As though I bad touched a tainted thing, I let it fall. And then,” he said hoarsely, “I washed my hands, with a very—strong—soap.”

“My dear sir,” cried McHarg suddenly, with an air of sincere conviction, at the same time being unable to keep his eye from gleaming more impishly than ever, “you are absolutely right. I absolutely agree with you.”

Mr. Stoat, who had been very much on his dignity up to now, thawed visibly under the seducing cajolery of this unexpected confrrmation of his literary judgment.

“You are positively and unanswerably correct,” said Knuckles, now standing in the middle of the room with his long legs spread wide apart, his bony hands hanging to the lapels of his coat. “You have hit the nail right smack—dead—square on the top of its head.” As he uttered these words, he jerked his wry face from side to side to give them added emphasis. “There has never been a dirtier—filthier—more putrid—and more corrupt writer than George Moore. And as for that book of his,  Ulysses,” McHarg shouted, “that is unquestionably the vilest——”

“—the rottenest——” shouted Mr. Stoat——

“—the most obscene——” shrilled McHarg——

“—the most vicious——” panted Mr. Stoat——

“—unadulterated——”

“—piece of tripe——” choked Mr. Stoat with rapturous agreement——

“—tha t has ever polluted the pages, defiled the name, and besmirched the record——”

“—of English literature!” gasped Mr. Stoat happily, and paused, panting for breath. “Yes,” he went on when he had recovered his power of speech, “and that other thing—that play of his—that rotten, vile, vicious, so-called tragedy in five acts—what was the name of that thing, anyway?”

“Oh,” cried McHarg with an air of sudden recognition “you mean The Importance of Being Earnest, don’t you?”

“No, no,” said Mr. Stoat impatiently. “Not that one. This one came later on.”

“Oh yes!” McHarg exclaimed, as if it had suddenly come to him. “You’re speaking of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, aren’t you?”

“That’s it, that’s it!” cried Mr. Stoat. “I took my wife to see it—I took my wife—my own wife——”

“His own wife!” McHarg repeated, as if astounded, “Well I’ll be God-damned,” he said. “What do you know about that!”

“And would you believe it, sir?” Mr. Stoat’s voice again sank to a whisper of loathing and revulsion, and his eyebrows worked ominously about his face. “I was so ashamed—I was so ashamed—that I could not look at her. We got up and left, sir, before the end of the first act—before anyone could see us. I went away with head bowed, as one who had been forced to take part in some nasty thing.”

“Well what do you know about that?” said McHarg sympathetically. “Wasn’t that just too damned bad? I call it perfectly damned awful!” he shouted suddenly, and turned away, his jaw muscles working convulsively as he muttered again: “Too much—too much.” He halted abruptly in front of Webber with his puckered face aflame and his lips twitching nervously, and began to prod him in the ribs, laughing his high, falsetto laugh. “He’s a publisher,” he squeaked. “He publishes books. K-k-k-k-k—Can you beat it, Georgie?” he squeaked almost inaudibly. Then, jerking a bony thumb in the direction of the astonished Stoat, he shrieked: “In the name of Christ Almighty—a publisher!”—and resumed his infuriated pacing of the room.

34. The Two Visitors

Ever since George entered the room he had been wondering about the presence of McHarg’s two strangely assorted visitors. Anyone could see at a glance that Bendien and Stoat were not clever men, not men of the spirit, and that neither possessed any qualities of intellect or of perception that could interest a person like Lloyd McHarg. What, then, were they doing here in this simulation of boon companionship so early in the morning?

Mynheer Bendien was obviously just a business man, a kind of Dutch Babbitt. He was, indeed, a hard-bargaining, shrewd importer who plied a constant traffrc between England and Holland, and was intimately familiar with the markets and business practices of both countries. His occupation had left its mark upon him, that same mark which is revealed in a coarsening of perception and a blunting of sensitivity among people of his kind the world over.

As George observed the signs that betrayed what Bendien was beyond any mistaking, he felt confirmed in an opinion that had been growing on him of late. He had begun to see that the true races of mankind are not at all what we are told in youth that they are. They are not defined either by national frontiers or by the characteristics assigned to them by the subtle investigations of anthropologists. More and more George was coming to believe that the real divisions of humanity cut across these barriers and arise out of differences in the very souls of men.

George had first had his attention called to this phenomenon by an observation of H. L. Mencken. In his extraordinary work on the American language, Mencken gave an example of the American sporting writers’jargon—“Babe Smacks Forty-second with Bases Loaded”—and pointed out that such a headline would be as completely meaningless to an Oxford don as the dialect of some newly discovered tribe of Eskimos. True enough; but what shocked George to attention when he read it was that Mencken drew the wrong inference from his fact. The headline would be meaningless to the Oxford don, not because it was written in the American language, but because the Oxford don had no knowledge of baseball. The same headline might be just as meaningless to a Harvard professor, and for the same reason.

It seemed to George that the Oxford don and the Harvard professor had far more kinship with each other—a far greater understanding of each other’s ways of thinking, feeling, and living—than either would have with millions of people of his own nationality. This observation led George to realise that academic life has created its own race of men who are set apart from the rest of humanity by the affinity of their souls. This academic race, it seemed to him, had innumerable peculiar characteristics of its own, among them the fact that, like the sporting gentry, they had invented their own private languages for communication with one another. The internationalism of science was another characteristic: there is no such thing as English chemistry or American physics or (Stalin to the contrary notwithstanding) Russian biology, but only chemistry, physics and biology. So, too, it follows that one tells a good deal more about a man when one says he is a chemist than when one says he is an Englishman.

In the same way, Babe Ruth would probably feel more closely akin to the English professional cricketer, Jack Hobbs, than to a professor of Greek at Princeton. This would be true also among prize-fighters. George thought of that whole world that is so complete within itself—the fighters, the trainers, the managers, the promoters, the touts, the pimps, the gamblers, the grafters, the hangers-on, the newspaper “experts” in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, and Buenos Aires. These men were not really Americans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, and Argentines. They were simply citizens of the world of prize-fighting, more at home with one another than with other men of their respective nations.

Throughout all the years of his life, George Webber had been soaking up experience like a sponge. This process never ceased with him, but within the last few years he had noticed a change in it. Formerly, in his insatiable hunger to know everything—to see all the faces in a crowd at once, to remember every face that passed him on a city street, to hear all the voices in a room and through the vast, perplexing blur to distinguish what each was saying—he had often felt that he was drowning in some vast sea of his own sensations and impressions. But now he was no longer so overwhelmed by Amount and Number. He was growing up, and out of the very accumulation of experience he was gaining an essential perspective and detachment. Each new sensation and impression was no longer a single, unrelated thing: it took its place in a pattern and sifted down to form certain observable cycles of experience. Thus his incessantly active mind was free to a much greater degree than ever before to remember, digest, meditate, and compare, and to seek relations between all the phenomena of living. The result was an astonishing series of discoveries as his mind noted associations and resemblances, and made recognitions not only of surface similarities but of identities of concept and of essence.

In this way he had become aware of the world of waiters, who, more than any other class of men, seemed to him to have created a special universe of their own which had almost obliterated nationality and race in the ordinary sense of those words. For some reason George had always been especially interested in waiters. Possibly it was because his own beginnings had been small-town middle class, and because he had been accustomed from birth to the friendship of working people, and because the experience of being served at table by a man in uniform had been one of such sensational novelty that its freshness had never worn off. Whatever the reason, he had known hundreds of waiters in many different countries, had talked to them for hours at a time, had observed them intimately, and had gathered tremendous stores of knowledge about their lives—and out of all this had discovered that there are not really different nationalities of waiters but rather a separate race of waiters, whole and complete within itself. This seemed to be true even among the French, the most sharply defined, the most provincial, and the most unadaptive nationality George had ever known. It surprised him to observe that even in France the waiters seemed to belong to the race of waiters rather than to the race of Frenchmen.

This universe of waiterdom has produced a type whose character is as precisely distinguished as that of the Mongolian. It has a spiritual identity that unites it as no mere feelings of patriotism could ever do. And this spiritual identity—a unity of thought, of purpose, and of conduct—has produced unmistakable physical characteristics. After George became aware of this, he got so that he could recognise a waiter no matter where he saw him, whether in the New York subway or on a Paris bus or in the streets of London. He tested his observation many times by accosting men he suspected of being waiters and engaging them in conversation, and nine times out of ten he found that his guess had been right. Something in the feet and legs gave them away, something in the way they moved and walked and stood. It was not merely that these men had spent most of their lives standing on their feet and hurrying from kitchen to table in the execution of their orders. Other classes of men, such as policemen, also lived upon their feet, and yet no one could mistake a policeman in mufti for a waiter. (The police of all countries, George discovered, formed another separate race.)

The gait of an old waiter can best be described as gingery. It is a kind of gouty shuffle, painful, rheumatic, and yet expertly nimble, too, as if the man has learned by every process of experience to save his feet. It is the nimbleness that comes from years of “Yes, sir. Right away, sir,” or of “Oui, monsieur. Je viens. Toute de suite.” It is the gait of service, of despatch, of incessant haste to be about one’s orders, and somehow the whole soul and mind and character of the waiter is in it.

If one wishes an instant insight into the emotional and spiritual differences between the race of waiters and the race of policemen, all one needs to do is to observe the gaits of each. Compare a waiter as he approaches a table at the peremptory command of an impatient customer, and a policeman, whether in New York, London, Paris, or Berlin, as he approaches the scene of a disorder or accident. A man is lying stretched out on the pavement, let us say: he has had a heart attack, or has been struck by a motor-car, or has been assaulted and beaten by thugs. People are standing round in a circle. Watch the policeman as he comes up. Does he hurry? Does he rush to the scene? Does he come forward with the quick, shuffling, eager, and solicitous movement of the waiter? He does not. He advances deliberately, ponderously, with a heavy and flat-footed tread, taking the scene in slowly as he approaches, with an appraising and unrelenting look. He is coming not to take orders but to give them. He is coming to assume command of the situation, to investigate, to disperse the crowd, to do the talking, and not to be talked to. His whole bearing expresses a certain primitive brutality of vested authority, as well as all the other related mental and spiritual qualities that proceed from the exercise of licensed power. And in all these things which issue from his own peculiar vision of life and of the world, he is almost the exact reverse of the waiter.

Since this is true, can anyone doubt that waiters and policemen belong to separate races? Does it not follow that a French waiter is more closely akin to a German waiter than to a French gendarme?

Mynheer Bendien had attracted George’s interest from the first. It was not merely that he was Dutch. That fact was unmistakable. He had a Halsian floridity, a Halsian heartiness and gusto, a Halsian heaviness— a kind of Dutch grossness that is quite different from German grossness in that it is mixed with a certain delicacy, or rather smallness. This delicacy or smallness is most often evident in the expression and shape of the mouth. So, now, with Mynheer Bendien. His lip was full and pouting, but also a little prim and smug. It was the characteristic Dutch lip—the lip of a small and cautious people, with a very good notion about which side their bread is buttered on. In any town throughout Holland one can see them behind the shuttered windows of their beautiful and delicate houses—see them quietly and privily enjoying the very best of everything and smacking those full, pouting, sensual little lips together.

Holland is a wonderful little country, and the Dutch are a wonderful little people. Just the same it is a little country, they are a little people, and George did not like little countries or little people. For in the look of those little, fat, wet, pouting mouths there is also something cautious and self-satisfied, something that kept nicely out of war in 1914 while its neighbours were bleeding to death, something that feathered its nest and fattened its purse at the expense of dying men, something that maintained itself beautifully clean, beautifully prim, and beautifully content to live very quietly and simply in those charming, beautiful houses, without any show or fuss whatever upon the best of everything.

In all these respects Mynheer Bendien was indubitably Dutch. But he was also something else as well, and this was what made George observe him with fascinated interest. For, alongside his Dutchness, he also wore that type look which George had come to recognise as belonging to the race of small business men. It was a look which he had discovered to be common to all members of this race whether they lived in Holland, England, Germany, France, the United States, Sweden, or Japan. There was a hardness and grasping quality in it that showed in the prognathous jaw. There was something a little sly and tricky about the eyes, something a little amoral in the sleekness of the flesh, something about the slightly dry concavity of the face and its vacuous expression in repose which indicated a grasping self-interest and a limited intellectual life. It was the kind of face that is often thought of as American. But it was not American. It belonged to no nationality. It belonged simply and solely to the race of small business men everywhere.

He was obviously the kind of man who would have found an instant and congenial place for himself among his fellow business men in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, or Kalamazoo. He would have felt completely at home at one of the weekly luncheons of the Rotary Club. He would have chewed his cigar with the best of them, wagged his head approvingly as the president spoke of some member as having “both feet on the ground”, entered gleefully into all the horseplay, the heavy-handed kind of humour known as “kidding”, and joined in the roars of laughter that greeted such master-strokes of wit as collecting all the straw hats in the cloak-room, bringing them in, throwing them on the floor, and gleefully stamping them to pieces. He would also have nodded his red face in bland agreement as the speaker aired again all the quackery about “service”, “the aims of Rotary”, and its “plans for world peace”.

George could easily imagine Mynheer Bendien pounding across the continental breadth of the United States in one of the crack trains, striking up a conversation with other men of substance in the smoking room of the pullman car, pulling fat cigars from his pocket and offering them to his new-found companions, chewing on his own approvingly and nodding with ponderous affirmation as someone said: “I was talking to a man in Cleveland the other day, one of the biggest glue and mucilage producers in the country, a fellow who has learned his business from the ground up and knows what he’s talking about——” Yes, Mynheer Bendien would have recognised his brother, his kinsman, his twin spirit wherever he found him, , and would instantly have established a connection and a footing of proper familiarity with him, as McHarg and Webber could never have done, even though the stranger might be an American like themselves.

George knew McHarg’s antipathy for this kind of man. It was an antipathy which he had savagely expressed in swingeing and satiric fiction—an antipathy which, George had felt, had a quality of almost affectionate concern in its hatred, but which was hatred nonetheless. Why, then, had McHarg invited this man to his room? Why had he sought out his companionship?

The reason became plain enough as he thought about it. Although McHarg and Webber could never belong to Bendien’s world, there was something of Bendien in both of them—more in McHarg, perhaps, than in himself. Though they belonged to separate worlds, there was still another world to which each of them could find a common entry. This was the world of natural humanity, the world of the earthly, eating, drinking, companionable, and company-loving man. Every artist feels the need of this world desperately. His nature is often torn between opposing poles of loneliness and gregariousness. Isolation he must have to do his work. But fellowship is also a necessity without which he is lost, since the lack of it removes him from all the naturalness of life which he demands more than any other man alive, and which he must share in if he is to grow and prosper in his art. But his need for companionship often betrays him through its very urgency. His hunger and thirst for life often lay him open to the stupidity of fools and the trickery and dishonesty of Philistines and rascals.

George could see what had happened to McHarg. He himself had gone through the same experience many times. McHarg, it is true, was a great man, a man famous throughout the world, a man who had now attained the highest pinnacle of success to which a writer could aspire. But on just this account his disillusionment and disappointment must have been so much the greater and the more crushing.

And what disillusionment, what disappointment, was this? It was a disappointment that all men know—the artist most of all—The disappointment of reaching for the flower and having it fade the moment your fingers touch it. It was the disappointment that comes from the artist’s invincible and unlearning youth, from the spirit of indomitable hope and unwavering adventure, the spirit that is defeated and cast down ten thousand times but that is lost beyond redemption never, the spirit that, so far from learning wisdom from despair, acceptance from defeat, cynicism from disillusionment, seems to grow stronger at every rebuff, more passionate in its convictions the older it grows, more assured of its ultimate triumphant fulfilment the more successive and conclusive its defeats.

McHarg had accepted his success and his triumph with the exultant elation of a boy. He had received the award of his honorary degree, symbolising the consummation of his glory, with blazing images of impossible desire. And then, almost before he knew it, it was over. The thing was his, it had been given to him, he had it, he had stood before the great ones of the earth, he had been acclaimed and lauded,  all had happened—and yet, nothing had happened.

Then, of course, he took the inevitable next step. With a mind surcharged with frre, with a heart thirsting for some impossible fulfilment, he took his award, and copies of all the speeches, programmes, and tributes, sailed for Europe, and began to go from place to place; looking for something that he had no name for, something that existed somewhere, perhaps—but where he did not know. He went to Copenhagen—wine, women, aquavit, and members of the Press, then women, wine, members of the Press, and aquavit again. He went to Berlin—members of the Press, wine, women, whisky, women, wine, and members of the Press. So then to Vienna—women, wine, whisky, members of the Press. Finally to Baden-Baden for a “cure”—cure, call it, if you will, for wine, women, and members of the Press—cure, really, for life-hunger, for life-thirst, for life-triumph, for life-defeat, life-disillusionment, life-loneliness, and lifeboredom—cure for devotion to men and for disgust of them, cure for love of life and for weariness of it—last of all, cure for the cureless, cure for the worm, for the flame, for the feeding mouth, for the thing that eats and rests not ever till we die. Is there not some medicine for the irremediable? Give us a cure, for God’s sake, for what ails us! Take it! Keep it! Give it back again! Oh, let us have it! Take it from us, damn you, but for God’s sake bring it back! And so good night.

Therefore this wounded lion, this raging cat of life, forever prowling past a million portals of desire and destiny, had flung himself against the walls of Europe, seeking, hunting, thirsting, starving, and lashing himself into a state of frenzied bafflement, and at last had met—a red-faced Dutchman from the town of Amsterdam, and had knocked about with the red-faced Dutchman for three days on end, and now hates red-faced Dutchman’s guts and would to God that he could pitch him out of the window, bag and baggage, and wonders how in God’s name the whole thing began, and how he can ever win free from it and be alone again—and so now is here, pacing the carpet of his hotel room in London.

The presence of Mr. Donald Stoat was more puzzling. Mynheer Bendien at least had a certain earthy congeniality to recommend him to McHarg’s interest. Mr. Stoat had nothing. Everything about the man was calculated to rub McHarg the wrong way. He was pompous and pretentious, his judgments, such as they were, were governed by a kind of moral bigotry that was infuriating, and, to cap it all, he was a complete and total fool.

He had inherited from his father a publishing business with a good name and a record of respected accomplishment. Under his leadership it had degenerated into a business largely devoted to the fabrication of religious tracts and text-books for the elementary grades. Its fiction list was pitiful. Mr. Stoat’s literary and critical standards were derived from a pious devotion to the welfare of the jeune fille. “Is it a book,” he would whisper hoarsely to any aspiring new author, at the same time rolling his eyebrows about—“is it a book that you would be willing for your young daughter to read?” Mr. Stoat had no young daughter, but in his publishing enterprises he always acted on the hypothesis that he did have, and that no book should be printed which he would be unwilling to place in her hands. The result, as may be imagined, was fudge and taffy, slop and goo.

George had met Mr. Stoat quite casually some years before he had later been invited to his house. He was married to a large, full-bosomed female with a grim jaw who wore a perpetually frozen grin round the edges of her mouth and eyeglasses which were attached to a cord of black silk. This formidable lady was devoted to art and had not let her marriage to Mr. Stoat interfere with that devotion. Indeed she had not let marriage interfere even with her name, but had clung to her resounding maidenly title of Cornelia Fosdick Sprague. She and Mr. Stoat maintained a salon, to which a great many people who shared Cornelia Fosdick Sprague’s devotion to art repaired at regular intervals, and it was to one of these meetings of the elect that George had been invited. He still remembered it vividly. Mr. Stoat had telephoned him a few days after their first casual meeting and had pressed the invitation upon him.

“You must come, my boy,” Mr. Stoat had wheezed over the wire. “You can’t afford to miss this, you know. Henrietta Saltonstall Spriggins is going to be there. You must meet her. And Penelope Buchanan Pipgrass is going to give a reading from her poems. And Hortense Delancey McCracken is going to read her latest play. You simply must come, by all means.”

So urged, George accepted and went, and it was quite an occasion. Mr. Stoat met him at the door and with a pontifical flourish of the eyebrows led him into the presence of Cornelia Fosdick Sprague. After he had made his obeisances Mr. Stoat piloted the young man about the room and with repeated flourishes of the eyebrows introduced him to the other guests. There was an astonishing number of formidable-looking females, and, like the imposing Cornelia, most of them had three names. As Mr. Stoat made the introductions he fairly smacked his lips over the triple-barrelled sonority of their titles.

George noticed with amazement that all of these women bore a marked resemblance to Cornelia Fosdick Sprague. Not that they really looked like her in feature. Some were tall, some were short, some were angular, some were fat, but all of them had a certain overwhelming quality in their bearing. This quality became a crushing air of absolute assurance and authority when they spoke of art. And they spoke of art a great deal. Indeed, it was the purpose of these meetings to speak of art. Almost all of these ladies were not only interested in art, but were “artists” themselves. That is to say, they were writers. They wrote one-act plays for the Little Theatre, or they wrote novels, or essays and criticism, or poems and books for children.

Henrietta Saltonstall Spriggins read one of her wee stories for tiny tots about a little girl waiting for Prince Charming. Penelope Buchanan Pipgrass read some of her poems, one about a quaint organ-grinder, and another about a whimsical old rag man. Hortense Delancey McCracken read her play, a sylvan fantasy laid in Central Park, with two lovers sitting on a bench in the springtime and Pan prancing round in the background, playing mad music on his pipes and leering slyly out at the lovers from behind trees. In all of these productions there was not a line that could bring the blush of outraged modesty to the cheek of the most innocent young girl. Indeed, the whole thing was just too damned delightful for words.

After the readings they all sat round and drank pale tea and discussed what they had read in fluty voices. George remembered vaguely that there were two or three other men present, but they were pallid figures who faded into the mist, hovering in the background like wan ghosts, submissive and obscure attendants, husbands even, to the possessors of those sonorous and triple-barrelled names.

George never went back again to Cornelia Fosdick Sprague’s salon, and had seen nothing more of Mr. Donald Stoat. Yet here he was, the last person in the world he would have expected to find in Lloyd McHarg’s apartment. If Mr. Stoat had ever read any of McHarg’s books—a most improbable circumstance—his moral conscience must have been outraged by the mockery with which, in almost every one of them, McHarg had assaulted the cherished ideals and sacred beliefs that Mr. Stoat held dear. Yet here he was sipping his dry sherry in McHarg’s room with all the aplomb of one who was accustomed to such familiar intimacy.

What was he doing here? What on earth did it mean?

George did not have to wait long for an answer. The telephone rang. McHarg snapped his fingers sharply and sprang for the instrument with an exclamation of overwrought relief.

“Hello, hello!” He waited a moment, his inflamed and puckered face twisted wryly to one side. “Hello, hello, hello!” he said feverishly and rattled the receiver hook. “Yes, yes. Who? Where?” A brief pause. “Oh, it’s New York,” he cried, and then impatiently: “All right, then! Put them through!”

George had never before seen the transatlantic telephone in operation, and he watched with feelings of wonder and disbelief. A vision of the illimitable seas passed through his mind. He remembered storms that he had been in and the way great ships were tossed about; he thought of the enormous curve of the earth’s surface and of the difference in time; and yet in a moment McHarg, his voice calm now, began to speak quietly as if he were talking to someone in the next room:

“Oh, hello Wilson,” he said. “Yes, I can hear you perfectly. Of course…Yes, yes, it’s true. Of course it is!” he cried, with a return to his former manner of feverish annoyance. “No, I’ve broken with him completely…No, I don’t know where I’m going. I haven’t signed up with anyone yet…All right, all right,” impatiently. “Wait a minute,” he said curtly. “Let me do the talking. I won’t do anything until I see you…No that’s not a promise to go with you,” he said angrily. “It’s just a promise that I won’t go anywhere else till I see you.” A moment’s pause while McHarg listened intently. “You’re sailing when?…Oh, to-night! The Berengaria. Good. I’ll see you here then next week…All right. Good-bye, Wilson,” he snapped, and hung up.

Turning away from the phone, he was silent a moment, looking a little rueful in his wry, puckered way. Then, with a shrug of his shoulders and a little sigh, he said:

“Well, cat’s out of the bag, I guess. The news has got round. They all know I’ve left Bradford-Howell. I suppose they’ll all be on my tail now. That was Wilson Fothergill,” he said, mentioning the name of one of America’s largest publishers. “He’s sailing to-night.” Suddenly his face was twisted with demonic glee. He laughed a high, dry cackle. “Christ, Georgie!” he squeaked, prodding Webber in the ribs. “Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t it marvellous? Can you beat it?”

Mr. Donald Stoat cleared his throat with premonitory emphasis and arched his eyebrows significantly. “I hope,” he said, “that before you come to any terms with Fothergill, you will talk to me and listen to what I have to say.” There was a weighty pause, then he concluded pontifically: “Stoat—the House of Stoat—would like to have you on its list.”

“What’s that? What’s that?” said McHarg feverishly. “Stoat!” he cried suddenly. “Stoat?” He winced nervously in a kind of convulsion of jangled nerves, then paused, trembling and undecided, as if he did not know whether to spring upon Mr. Stoat or to spring out the window. Snapping his bony fingers sharply, he turned to Webber and shrieked again in a shrill, falsetto cackle: “Did you hear it, Georgie? Isn’t it wonderful? K-k-k-k-k—Stoat!” he squeaked, prodding Webber in the ribs again. “The House of Stoat! Can you beat it? Isn’t it marvellous? Isn’t it—All right, all right,” he said, breaking off abruptly and turning upon the astounded Mr. Stoat. “All right, Mr. Stoat, we’ll talk about it. But some other time. Come in to see me next week,” he said feverishly.

With that he grasped Mr. Stoat by the hand, shook it in farewell, and with his other arm practically lifted that surprised gentleman from his chair and escorted him across the room. “Good-bye, goodbye! Come in next week…Good-bye, Bendien!” he now said to the Dutchman, seizing him by the hand, lifting him from the chair, and repeating the process. He herded the two before him with his bony arms outstretched as if he were shooing chickens, and finally got them out of the door, talking rapidly all the time, saying: “Goodbye, good-bye. Thanks for coming in. Come back to see me again. Georgie and I have to go to lunch now.”

At last he closed the door on them, turned, and came back in the room. He was obviously unstrung.

35. A Guest in Spite of Himself

When Bendien and Stoat were so suddenly and unceremoniously ushered from the room, George rose from his chair in some excitement, not knowing what to do with himself. McHarg now looked at him wearily.

“Sit down, sit down!” McHarg gasped, and fell into a chair. He crossed his bony legs with a curiously pathetic and broken attitude. “Christ!” he said, letting out a long sigh, “I’m tired. I feel as if I’ve been run through a sausage grinder. That damned Dutchman! I went out with him in Amsterdam, and we’ve been going it ever since. God, I can’t remember having eaten since I left Cologne. That was four days ago.”

He looked it, too. George was sure that he had spoken the literal truth and that he had not paused to eat for days. He was a wreck of jangled nerves and utterly exhausted weariness. As he sat there with his bony shanks crossed like two pieces of limp string, his gaunt figure had the appearance of being broken in two at the waist. He looked as if he would never be able to get out of that chair again without assistance. Just at that moment, however, the telephone rang sharply, and McHarg leaped up as if he had received an electric shock.

“Jesus Christ!” he shrilled. “What’s that?” He darted for the phone, snatched it up savagely, and snapped: “Hello, who’s there?” Then feverishly but very cordially: “Oh, hello; hello, Rick—you bastard, you! Where the hell have you been, anyway? I’ve been trying to reach you all morning…No! No! I just got here last night…Of course I’m going to see you. That’s one of the reasons I’m here…No, no, you don’t need to come for me. I’ve got my own car here. We’ll drive down. I’m bringing someone with me…Who?” he cackled suddenly in his shrill falsetto. “You’ll see, you’ll see. Wait till we get there…For dinner? Sure, I’ll make it. How long does it take?…Two hours and a half? Seven o’clock. We’ll be there with time to spare. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What’s the address? Wait till I get it down.”

He seated himself abruptly at the writing-desk, fumbled for a moment with pen and paper, and then passed them impatiently towards George, saying: “Write it down, George, as I give it to you.” The address was in Surrey, a farm on a country road several miles away from a small town. The directions for finding it were quite complicated, involving detours and cross-roads, but George finally got it all down correctly. Then McHarg, feverishly assuring his host that they would be there for dinner, with time to spare, hung up.

“Well, now,” he said impatiently, springing to his feet with another exhibition of that astounding vitality which seemed to burn in him all the time, “come on, Georgie! Let’s snap out of it! We’ll have to get going!”

“W-w-w-we?” George stammered. “Y-y-y-you mean me, Mr. McHarg?”

“Sure, sure!” McHarg said impatiently. “Rick’s expecting us to dinner. We can’t keep him waiting. Come on! Come on! Let’s get started! We’re getting out of London! We’re going places!”

“P-p-p-places?” George stammered again, dumbfounded. “But w-w-w-where are we going, Mr. McHarg?”

“West of England,” he barked out instantly. “We’ll go down to Rick’s and spend the night. But to-morrow—to-morrow,” he muttered, pacing up and down and speaking with ominous decision, “we’ll be on our way. West of England,” he muttered again, pacing and hanging to his coat lapels with bony fingers. “Cathedral towns,” he said. “Bath, Bristol, Wells, Exeter, Salisbury, Devonshire, coast of Cornwall,” he cried feverishly, getting his geography and his cathedrals hopelessly confused, but covering, nevertheless, a large portion of the kingdom in a single staccato sentence. “Keep out of cities,” he went on. “Stay away from swank hotels—joints like this one. Hate them. Hate all of them. Want the country—the English countryside,” he said with relish.

George’s heart sank. He had not bargained for anything like this. He had come to England to finish his new book. The work had been going well. He had established the beat and cadence of daily hours at his writing, and the prospect of breaking the rhythm of it just when he was going at full swing was something that he dreaded. Moreover, God only knew where such a jaunt as McHarg spoke of would end. McHarg, meanwhile, was still talking, pacing nervously back and forth and letting his enthusiasm mount as his mind built up the idyllic picture of what he had suddenly taken it into his head to do.

“Yes, the English countryside—that’s the thing,” he said with relish. “We’ll put up at night by the side of the road and cook our own meals, or stay at some old inn—some real English country inn,” he said with deliberate emphasis. “Tankards of musty ale,” he muttered. “A well-done chop by the fireside. A bottle of old port, eh Georgie?” he cried, his scorched face lighting up with great glee. “Did it all before one time. Toured the whole country several years ago with my wife. Used a trailer. Went from place to place. Slept in our trailer at night and did our own cooking. Wonderful! Marvellous!” he barked. “The real way to see the country. The only way.”

George said nothing. At the moment he was unable to say anything. For weeks he had looked forward to his meeting with McHarg. He had leaped to his bidding when McHarg had summoned him to get out of bed instantly and come to lunch. But he had never dreamed of being abducted as a travelling and talking companion on an expedition that might last for days and even weeks, and end up almost anywhere. He had no desire or intention of going with McHarg if he could avoid it. And yet—his mind groped frantically for a way out— what was he to do? He did not want to offend him. He had too great an admiration and respect for McHarg to do anything that might, wittingly or unwittingly, hurt him or wound his feelings. And how could he reject the invitation of a man who, with the most generous and unselfish enthusiasm, had used the power and elevation of his high place to try to lift him out of the lower channel in which his own life ran?

In spite of the brevity of their acquaintance, George had already seen dearly and unmistakably what a good and noble human being McHarg really was. He knew how much integrity and courage and honesty was contained in that tormented tenement of fury and lacerated hurts. Regardless of all that was jangled, snarled, and twisted in his life, regardless of all that had become bitter, harsh, and acrid, McHarg was obviously one of the truly good, the truly high, the truly great people of the world. Anyone with an atom of feeling and intelligence, George thought, must have seen this at once. And as he continued to watch and study McHarg, and took in again the shock of his appearance—the inflamed face, the poached blue eyes, the emaciated figure and nervously shaking hands—an image flashed into his mind which seemed to represent the essential quality of the man, and this, curiously, was the image of Abraham Lincoln. Save for McHarg’s tallness and gauntness, there was no physical similarity to Lincoln. The resemblance came, George thought, from a certain homely identity, from a kind of astonishing ugliness which was so marked that it was hard to see how it escaped the grotesque, and yet it was not grotesque. It was an ugliness which somehow, no matter what extravagances of gesture, tone, and manner McHarg indulged in, never lost its quality of enormous, latent dignity. This strange and troubling resemblance became strikingly evident in repose.

For now, his decision having been arrived at with explosive violence, McHarg sat quietly in a chair, his bony legs crossed lankly, and with the fingers of one freckled and large-knuckled hand fumbled in the breast pocket of his coat for his cheque-book and his wallet. He got them out at last, his hands still shaking as with palsy, but even that did not disturb the suggestion of quiet dignity and strength. He put wallet and cheque-book on his knees, fumbled in a pocket of his vest, took out an old, worn spectacle-case, snapped it open, and deliberately extracted a pair of spectacles. They were the most extraordinary spectacles George had ever seen. They looked as if they might have belonged to Washington, or to Franklin, or to Lincoln himself. The rims, the nose clasp, and the handles were of plain old silver. McHarg opened them carefully, and then, using both hands, slowly adjusted them and settled the handles over his large and freckled ears. This done, he bent his head, took up the wallet, opened it, and very carefully began to count the contents. The transforming effect of this simple act was astonishing. The irritable, rasping, overwrought man of a few minutes before was gone completely. This lank and ugly figure in the chair, with its silver-rimmed spectacles, its wry and puckered face lowered in calculation, its big bony hands deliberately fingering each note inside the wallet, was an image of Yankee shrewdness, homely strength, plain dignity, and assured power. His very tone had changed. Still counting his money, without lifting his head, he spoke to George, saying quietly:

“Ring that bell over there, George. We’ll have to get some more money. I’ll send John out to the bank.”

George rang, and shortly the young man with buttons rapped at the door and entered. McHarg glanced up and, opening his chequebook and, taking out his fountain pen, said quietly:

“I need some money, John. Will you take this cheque round to the bank and cash it?”

“Very good, sir,” said John. “And’Enry is’ere, sir, with the car.’E wants to know if’e should wait.”

“Yes,” said McHarg, still writing out the cheque. “Tell him I’ll need him. Tell him we’ll be ready in twenty minutes.” He tore out the cheque and handed it to the man. “And by the way,” he said, “when you come back will you pack some things—shirts, underwear, socks, and so on—in a small bag? We’re going out of town.”

“Very good, sir,” John said quietly, and went out.

McHarg was silent and thoughtful for a moment. Then he capped his fountain pen, restored it to his pocket, put away his wallet and cheque-book, took off his old spectacles with the same grave and patient movement, folded them and laid them in the case, snapped it to and put it in the pocket of his vest, and then, with a much quieter and more genial friendliness than he had yet displayed, brought one hand down smartly on the arm of his chair and said:

“Well, George, what are you doing now? Working on another book?”

Webber told him that he was.

“Going to be good?” he demanded.

Webber said he hoped so.

“A nice, big, fat one like the first? Lots of meat on it, is there? Lots of people?”

Webber told him that there would be.

“That’s the stuff,” he said. “Go to it and give’em people,” he said quietly. “You’ve got the feeling for’ern. You know how to make’em live. Go on and put’em in. You’ll hear a lot of bunk,” he went on. “You’ve probably heard it already. There’ll be a lot of bright young men who will tell you how to write, and tell you that what you do is wrong. They’ll tell you that you have no style, no sense of form. They’ll tell you that you don’t write like Virginia Woolf, or like Proust, or like Gertrude Stein, or like someone else that you ought to write like. Take it all in, as much of it as you can. Believe all of it that you’re able to believe. Try to get all the help from it you can, but if you know it’s not true, don’t pay too much attention to it.”

“Will you be able to know whether it’s true or not?”

“Oh, yes,” he said quietly. “You always know if it’s true. Christ, man, you’re a writer, you’re not a bright young man. If you were a bright young man you wouldn’t know whether it was true or not. You’d only say you did. But a writer always knows. The bright young men don’t think he does. That’s the reason they’re bright young men. They think a writer is too dumb or too pig-headed to listen to what they say, but the real truth of the matter is that the writer knows much more about it than they can ever know. Once in a while they say something that hits the nail on the head. But that’s only one time in a thousand. When they do, it hurts, but it’s worth listening to. It’s probably something that you knew about yourself, that you knew you’d have to look at finally, but that you’ve been trying to dodge and that you hoped no one else would discover. When they punch one of those raw nerves, listen to them, even though its hurts like hell. But usually you’ll find that you’ve known everything they say a long time before they say it, and that what they think is important doesn’t amount to a damn.”

“Then what’s a man to do?” Webber said. “It looks pretty much as if he’s got to be his own doctor, doesn’t it? It looks as if he’s got to find the answer for himself.”

“I never found any other way,” said McHarg. “I don’t think you will, either. So get going. Keep busy. For Christ’s sake, don’t freeze up. Don’t stall around. I’ve known a lot of young fellows who froze up after their first book, and it wasn’t because they had only that one book in them, either. That’s what the bright young men thought. That’s what they always think, but it just ain’t true. Good God, man, you’ve got a hundred books in you! You can keep on turning them out as long as you live. There’s no danger of your drying up. The only danger is of freezing up.”

“How do you mean? Why should a man freeze up?”

“Usually,” said McHarg, “because he loses his nerve. He listens to the bright young men. His first book gets him pretty good reviews. He takes them seriously. He begins to worry about every little bit of criticism that’s sandwiched in with the praise. He begins to wonder if he can do it again. His next book is really going to be’as good as his first, maybe better. He has been a natural slugger to begin with, with a one-ton punch. Now he begins to shadow-box. He listens to everything they tell him. How to jab and how to hook. How to counter with his right. How to keep out of the way. How to weave and how to bob. How to take care of his feet. He learns to skip the rope, but forgets to use that paralysing punch that he was born with, and the first thing you know some palooka comes along and knocks him for a row of ash-cans. For God’s sake, don’t let it happen to you. Learn all you can. Improve all you can. Take all the instruction you can absorb. But remember that no amount of instruction can ever take the place of the wallop in the old right hand. If you lose that, you may learn all the proper ways that other men have used to do the job, but you’ll have forgotten your own way. As a writer, you’ll be through. So for God’s sake, get going and keep going. Don’t let them slow you down. Make your mistakes, take your chances, look silly, but keep on going. Don’t freeze up.”

“You think that can happen? Do you think a man can freeze up if he really has talent?”

“Yes,” McHarg said quietly, “that can happen. I’ve seen it happen. You’ll find out, as you go on, that most of the things they say, most of the dangers that they warn you of, do not exist. They’ll talk to you, for instance, about prostituting your talent. They’ll warn you not to write for money. Not to sell your soul to Hollywood. Not to do a dozen other things that have nothing whatever to do with you or with your life. You won’t prostitute yourself. A man’s talent doesn’t get prostituted just because someone waves a fat cheque in his face. If your talent is prostituted, it is because you are a prostitute by nature. The number of writers in this world who weep into their Scotch and tell you of the great books they would have written if they hadn’t sold out to Hollywood or to theSaturday Evening Post is astonishingly large. But the number of great writers who have sold out is not large. In fact, I don’t believe there are any at all. If Thomas Hardy had been given a contract to write stories for theSaturday Evening Post, do you think he would have written like Zane Grey or like Thomas Hardy? I can tell you the answer to that one. He would have written like Thomas Hardy. He couldn’t have written like anyone else but Thomas Hardy. He would have kept on writing like Thomas Hardy whether he wrote for the Saturday Evening Post or Captain Billy’s Whizbang. You can’t prostitute a great writer, because a great writer will inevitably be himself. He couldn’t sell himself out if he wanted to. And a good many of them, I suppose,  have wanted to, or thought they did. But he can freeze up. He can listen too much to the bright young men. He can learn to shadow-box, to feint and jab and weave, and he can lose his punch. So whatever you do, don’t freeze up.”

There was a rap at the door, and in response to McHarg’s summons John came in, carrying in his hand a bundle of crisp, brand-new Bank of England notes.

“I think you will find these right, sir,” he said, as he handed the money to McHarg. “I counted them. One’undred pounds, sir.”

McHarg took the notes, folded them into a wad, and thrust it carelessly into his pocket. “All right, John,” he said. “And now will you pack a few things?”

He got up, looked about him absently, and then, with a sudden resumption of his former feverish manner, he barked out:

“Well, George, get on your coat! We’ve got to be on our way!”

“B-b-but”—George began to temporise—“don’t you think we’d better get some lunch before we start out, Mr. McHarg? If you haven’t eaten for so long, you’ll need food. Let’s go somewhere now and get something to eat.”

George spoke with all the persuasiveness he could put into his voice. By this time he was beginning to feel very hungry, and thought longingly of the “prime bit” of gammon and peas that Mrs. Purvis had prepared for him. Also he hoped that if he could only get McHarg to have lunch before starting, he could use the occasion diplomatically to dissuade him from his intention of departing forthwith, and taking him along willy-nilly, on a tour that was apparently designed to embrace a good portion of the British Isles. But McHarg, as if he foresaw Webber’s design, and also feared, perhaps, the effect of further delay upon his almost exhausted energies, snapped curtly, with inflexible decision:

“We’ll eat somewhere on the road. We’re getting out of town at once.”

George saw that it was useless to argue, so he said nothing more. He decided to go along, wherever McHarg was going, and to spend the night, if need be, at his friend’s house in the country, trusting in the hope that the restorative powers of a good meal and a night’s sleep would help to alter McHarg’s purpose. Therefore he put on his coat and hat, descended with McHarg in the lift, waited while he left some instructions at the desk, and then went out with him to the automobile that was standing at the kerb.

McHarg had chartered a Rolls-Royce. When George saw this magnificent car he felt like roaring with laughter, for if this was the vehicle in which he proposed to explore the English countryside, cooking out of a frying-pan and sleeping beside the road at night, then the tour would certainly be the most sumptuous and the most grotesque vagabondage England had ever seen. John had already come down and had stowed away a small suitcase on the floor beside the back seat. The driver, a little man dressed appropriately in livery, touched the visor of his cap respectfully, and he and George helped McHarg into the car. He had suddenly gone weak, and almost fell as he got in. Once in, he asked George to give the driver the address in Surrey, and, having said this, he collapsed: his face sank forward on his chest, and he had again that curious broken-in-two look about the waist. He had one hand thrust through the loop of a strap beside the door, and if it had not been for this support he would have slumped to the floor. George got in and sat down beside him, still wondering desperately what to do, how in the name of God he was going to get out of it.

It was well after one o’clock when they started off. They rolled smoothly into St. James’s Street, turned at the bottom into Pall Mall, went round St. James’s Palace and into the Mall, and headed towards Buckingham Palace and Webber’s own part of town. Coming out of the Mall and wheeling across the great place before the palace, McHarg roused himself with a jerk, peered through the drizzle and the reek—it was a dreary day—at the magnificent sentries stamping up and down in front of the palace, stamping solemnly, facing at the turns, and stamping back again, and was just about to slump back when George caught him up sharply.

At that moment Ebury Street was very near, and it seemed very dear to him. George thought with desire and longing of his bed, of Mrs. Purvis, and of his untouched gammon and peas. That morning’s confident departure already seemed to be something that had happened long ago. He smiled bitterly as he remembered his conversation with Mrs. Purvis and their speculations about whether Mr. McHarg would take him to lunch at the Ritz, or at Stone’s in Panton Street, or at Simpson’s in the Strand. Gone now were all these Lucullan fantasies. At that point he would joyfully have compromised on a pub and a piece of cheese and a pint of bitter beer.

As the car wheeled smoothly past the palace, he felt his last hope slipping away. Desperately he jogged his companion by the elbow before it should be too late and told him he lived just round the corner in Ebury Street, and could he please stop off a moment there to get a tooth-brush and a safety-razor, that it would take only a minute. McHarg meditated this request gravely and finally mumbled that he could, but to “make it snappy”. Accordingly, George gave the driver the address, and they drove down round the palace, turned into Ebury Street, and slowed down as they approached his modest little house. McHarg was beginning to look desperately ill. He hung on grimly to his strap, but when the car stopped he swayed in his seat and would have gone down if George had not caught him.

“Mr. McHarg,” George said, “you ought to have something to eat before we go on farther. Won’t you come upstairs with me and let the woman give you something? She has fixed me a good lunch. It’s all ready. We could eat and be out again in twenty minutes.”

“No food,” he muttered and glared at George suspiciously. “What are you trying to do—run out on me?”

“No, of course not.”

“Well, get your tooth-brush then, and hurry up. We’re going to get out of town.”

“All right. Only I think you’re making a mistake not to eat first. It’s there waiting for you if you’ll take it.”

George made it as persuasive as he could. He stood at the open door, with one foot upon the running-board. McHarg made no answer; he lay back against the seat with his eyes closed. But a moment later he tugged on the strap, pulled himself partly erect, and, with just a shade of obstinate concession, said:

“You got a cup of tea up there?”

“Of course. She’ll have it for you in two minutes.”

He pondered this information for a moment, then half unwillingly said: “Well, I don’t know. I might take a cup of tea. Maybe it would brace me up.”

“Come on,” George said quickly, and took him by the arm.

The driver and George helped him out of the car. George told the man to wait for them, that they would be back within thirty minutes, which McHarg quickly amended to fifteen. Then George opened the street door with his key and, slowly, carefully, helping the exhausted man, began to propel the tall and angular form up the narrow stairs. They finally got there. George opened the door, led him through into his sitting-room, and seated McHarg in his most comfortable chair, where he immediately let his head slump forward on his breast again. George lit the little open gas radiator which provided the room with the only heat it had, called Mrs. Purvis, who had heard them and was already coming from the kitchen, whispered quickly to her the circumstance of his being there and the identity of his distinguished visitor, and dispatched her at once to make the tea.

When she left the sitting-room McHarg roused himself a little and said: “Georgie, I fell all shot to hell. God, I could sleep a month.”

“I’ve just sent Mrs. Purvis for the tea,” George answered. “She’ll have it ready in a minute. That’ll make you feel better.”

But almost instantly, as if the effort to speak had used up his last energies, McHarg sank back in the chair and collapsed completely. By the time Mrs. Purvis entered with her tray and teapot, he no longer needed tea. He was buried in comatose oblivion—past tea or travel now, past everything.

She saw instantly what had happened. She put the tray down quietly and whispered to George: “’E's not goin’anywhere just yet.’E will be needin’sleep.”

“Yes,” George said. “That’s what he does need, badly.”

“It’s a shame to leave’im in that chair. If we could only get’im up, sir,” she whispered, “and into your room,’e could lie down in your bed. It’d be more comfortable for’im.”

George nodded, stooped beside the chair, got one of McHarg’s long, dangling arms round his neck and his own arm round McHarg’s waist, and, heaving, said encouragingly: “Come on, Mr. McHarg. You’ll feel better if you lie down and stretch out.” He made a manful effort and got out of the chair, and took the few steps necessary to enter the bedroom and reach the bed, where he again collapsed, this time face downwards. George rolled him over on his back, straightened him out, undid his collar, and took off his shoes. Then Mrs. Purvis covered him from the raw chill and cold, which seemed to soak right into the little bedroom from the whole clammy reek of fog and drizzle outside. They piled a number of blankets and comforters upon him, brought in a small electric heat reflector and turned it on in such a way that its warmth would reach him, the they pulled the curtains together at the window, darkened the room, closed the doors, and left him.

Mrs. Purvis was splendid.

“Mr. McHarg is very tired,” George said to her. “A little sleep will do him good.”

“Ah, yes,” she said, and nodded wisely and sympathetically. “You can see it’s the strain’e's been under. Meetin’all them people. And then’avin’to travel so much. It’s easy to see,” she went on loftily, “that’e's still sufferin’from the fatigue of the journey. But you,” she said quickly—“should think you’d feel tired yourself, what with the excitement and’avin’no lunch and all. Do come,” she said persuasively, “and’ave a bite to eat. The gammon is nice, sir. I could’ave it for you in a minute.”

Her proposal had George’s enthusiastic endorsement. She hastened to the kitchen, and soon came in again and told him lunch was ready. He went at once to the little dining-room and ate a hearty meal—gammon, peas, boiled potatoes, a crusty apple tart with a piece of cheese, and a bottle of Bass ale.

After that he returned to the sitting-room and decided to stretch out on the sofa. It was a small sofa and much too short for him, but he had had no sleep for more than twenty-four hours and it looked inviting. He lay down with his legs dangling over the end, and almost instantly fell asleep.

Later he was faintly conscious that Mrs. Purvis had come softly in, had put his feet upon a chair, and had spread a blanket over him. He was also dimly aware that she had drawn the curtains, darkened the room, and gone softly out.

Later still, as she prepared to leave for the day, George heard her open the door and listen for a moment; then, very quietly, she tiptoed across the floor and opened the bedroom door and peered in. Evidently satisfied that all was well, she tiptoed out again, closing the doors gently as she went. He heard her creep softly down the stairs, and presently the street door closed. He fell asleep again and slept soundly for some time.

When George woke again it had grown completely dark outside, and McHarg was up and stirring about in the bedroom, evidently looking for the light. George got up and switched the light on in the sitting-room, and McHarg came in.

Again there was an astonishing transtormation in him. His short sleep seemed to have restored his vitality, and restored it to a degree and in a direction George had not wanted. He had hoped that a few hours of sleep would calm McHarg and make him see the wisdom of getting a really sound rest before proceeding farther on his travels. Instead, the man had wakened like a raging lion, and was now pacing back and forth like a caged beast, fuming at their delay and demanding with every breath that George get ready to depart instantly.

“Are you coming?” he said. “Or are you trying to back out of it? What are you going to do, anyway?”

George had waked up in a semi-daze, and he now became conscious that the door-bell was ringing, and had been ringing for some time. It was probably this sound which had aroused them both. Telling McHarg that he’d be back in a moment, George ran down the stairs and opened the door. It was, of course, McHarg’s chauffeur. In the excitement and fatigue of the afternoon’s event he had completely forgotten him, and the poor fellow had been waiting all this time there in his glittering chariot drawn up before Webber’s modest door. It was not yet quite five o’clock in the afternoon, but dark comes early in the dismal wintry days of London’s ceaseless fog and drizzle, and it was black as midnight outside. The street lights were on, and the shop fronts were shining out into the fog with a blurred and misty radiance. The street itself was still and deserted, but high up over the rooftops the wind was beginning to swoop in fitful gusts, howling faintly in a way that promised a wild night.

The little chauffeur stood patiently before George when he opened the door, holding his visored cap respectfully in his hands, but he had an air of restrained anxiety about him which he could not conceal. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, “but I wonder if you know whether Mr. Mc’Arg’as changed’is plans?”

“Plans? Plans?” George stammered, still not quite awake, and he shook his head like a dog coming out of the water in an effort to compose himself and bring order to his own bewilderment. “What plans?”

“About going to Surrey, sir,” the little man said gently, yet giving George a quick and rather startled look. Already the painful suspicion, which later in the evening was to become a deep-rooted conviction, that he was alone and under the criminal direction of two dangerous maniacs, had begun to shape itself in the chauffeur’s consciousness, but as yet he betrayed his apprehension only by an attitude of solicitous and somewhat tense concern. “You know, sir,” he continued quietly, in a tone of apologetic reminder, “that’s where we started for hearlier in the hafternoon.”

“Oh, yes, yes. Yes, I remember,” George said, running his fingers through his hair and speaking rather distractedly. “Yes, we did, didn’t we?”

“Yes, sir,” he said gently. “And you see,” he went on, almost like a benevolent elder speaking to a child—“you see, sir, one is not supposed to park’ere in the street for so long a time as we’ve been’ere. The bobby,” he coughed apologetically behind his hand, “’as just spoken to me, sir, and’as told me that I’ve been’ere too long and will’ave to move. So I thought it best to tell you, sir, and to find out if you know what Mr. Mc’Arg intends to do.”

“I—I think he intends to go on with it,” George said. “That is, to go on to Surrey as we started out to do. But—you say the bobby has ordered you to move?”

“Yes, sir,” the chauffeur said patiently, and held his visored cap and looked up at George and waited.

“Well, then—” George thought desperately for a moment, and then burst out: “Look here, I’ll tell you what you do. Drive round the block—drive round the block——”

“Yes, sir,” the chauffeur said, and waited.

“And come back here in five minutes. I’ll be able to tell you then what we’re going to do.”

“Very good, sir.” He inclined his head in a brief nod of agreement, put on his cap, and got into his car.

George closed the door and went back up the stairs. When he entered the sitting-room, McHarg had on his overcoat and hat and was pacing restlessly up and down.

“It was your driver,” George said. “I forgot about him, but he’s been waiting there all afternoon. He wants to know what we’re going to do.”

“What we’re going to do?” McHarg shrilled. “We’re going to get a move on! Christ Almighty, man, we’re four hours late already! Come on, come on, George!” he rasped. “Let’s get going!”

George saw that he meant it and that it was useless to try to change his purpose. He took his brief-case, crammed tooth-brush, toothpaste, razor, shaving cream and brush, and a pair of pyjamas into it, put on his hat and coat, switched off the lights, ands led the way into the hall, saying: “All right. I’m ready if you are. Let’s go.”

When they got out into the foggy drizzle of the street, the car was just wheeling to a halt at the kerb. The chauffeur jumped out and opened the door for them. McHarg and Webber got in. The chauffeur climbed back into his seat, and they drove swiftly away, down the wet street, with a smooth, cupped hissing of the tyres. They reached Chelsea, skirted the Embankment, crossed Battersea Bridge, and began to roll south-westward through the vast, interminable ganglia of outer London.

It was a journey that Webber remembered later with nightmare vividness. McHarg had begun to collapse again before they crossed the Thames at Battersea. And no wonder! For weeks, in the letdown and emptiness that had come upon him as a sequel to his great success, he had lashed about in a frenzy of seeking for he knew not what, going from place to place, meeting new people, hurling himself into fresh adventures. From this impossible quest he had allowed himself no pause or rest. And at the end of it he had found exactly nothing. Or, to be more exact, he had found Mynheer Bendien in Amsterdam. It was easy to see just what had happened to McHarg after that. For if, at the end of the trail, there was nothing but a red-faced Dutchman, then, by God, he’d at least find out what kind of stuff a red-faced Dutchman was made of. Then for several days more, in his final fury of exasperation, he had put the Dutchman to the test, driving him even harder than he had driven himself, not even stopping to eat, until at last the Dutchman, sustained by gin and his own phlegmatic constitution, had used up what remained of McHarg’s seemingly inexhaustible energies. So now he was all in. The flare of new vitality with which he had awakened from his nap had quickly burnt itself out: he lay back in the seat of the car, drained and emptied of the fury which had possessed him, too exhausted even to speak, his eyes closed, his head rolling gently with the motion of the car, his long legs thrust out limply before him. George sat beside him, helpless, not knowing what to do or where he was going or how and when it would end, his gaze fixed upon the head of the little driver, who was hunched up behind the wheel, intent upon the road, steering the car skilfully through the traffic and the fog-bound night.

The enormous ganglia of unending London rolled past them—street after street wet with a dull gleam of rain-fogged lamps, mile after mile of brick houses, which seemed steeped in the fog and soot and grime of uncounted days of dismal weather, district after district in the interminable web, a giant congeries of uncounted villages, all grown together now into this formless, monstrous sprawl. They would pass briefly through the high streets of these far-flung warrens. For a moment there would be the golden nimbus of the fog-blurred lights, the cheerful radiance of butcher shops, with the red brawn of beef, the plucked plumpness and gangling necks of hung fowls, and the butchers in their long white aprons; then the wine and liquor stores, and the beer-fogged blur and warmth and murmur of the pubs, with the dull gleam of the rain-wet pavement stretching out in front; then pea-soup darkness again, and again the endless rows of fog-cheat houses.

At last they began to come to open country. There was the darkness of the land, the smell of the wet fields, the strung spare lights of night across the countryside. They began to feel the force of the wind as it swooped down at them across the fields and shivered against the sides of the car. It was blowing the fog away and the sky was lifting. And now, against the damp, low, thick, and dismal ceiling of the clouds, there was an immense corrupted radiance, as if all the swelter, smoke, and fury of London’s unending life had been caught up and resumed there. With every revolution of the wheels the glow receded farther behind them.

And now, with the lonely countryside all round him, George became conscious of the mysterious architecture of night. As he felt the abiding strength and everlastingness of the earth, he began to feel also a sense of exultation and release. It was a feeling he had had many times before, a feeling that every man who lives in a vast modern city must feel when, after months within the hive of the city’s life—months of sweat and noise and violence, months of grimy brick and stone, months of the incessant thrust and intershift and weaving of the endless crowd, months of tainted air and tainted life, of treachery, fear, malice, slander, blackmail, envy, hatred, conflict, fury, and deceit, months of frenzy and the tension of wire-taut nerves and the changeless change—he leaves the city and is free at last, out beyond the remotest filament of that tainted and tormented web. He that has known only a jungle of mortared brick and stone where no birds sing, where no blade grows, has now found earth again. And yet, unfathomable enigma that it is, he has found earth and, finding it, has lost the world. He has found the washed cleanliness of vision and of soul that comes from earth. He feels himself washed free of all the stains of ancient living, its evil and its lust, its filth and cruelty, its perverse and ineradicable pollution, But curiously, somehow, the wonder and the mystery of it all remains, its beauty and its magic, its richness and its joy, and as he looks back upon that baleful glow that lights the smoky blanket of the sky, a feeling of loss and loneliness possesses him, as if in gaining earth again he has relinquished life.

The car sped onwards and still onwards, until finally the last outpost of London was left behind and the glow in the sky was gone. They were driving through dark country and night towards their journey’s end. McHarg had not uttered a word. He still sat with legs sprawled out and head thrown back, swaying from the motion of the car but held in position by one limp arm which was hooked in the strap beside him. George was getting more and more alarmed at the thought of bringing him in this exhausted state to the house of an old friend whom he had not seen for years. At last he stopped the car and told the driver to wait while he pleaded with his master.

He switched on the overhead light and shook him, and to his surprise McHarg opened his eyes right away and by his responses showed that his mind was completely clear and alert. George told him that, worn out as he must be, he could not possibly enjoy a visit with his friend. He begged him to change his mind, to return to London for the night, to let him telephone his friend from the nearest town to say that he had been delayed and would see him in a day or two, but by all means to defer his visit until he felt better able to make it. After McHarg’s former display of obstinate determination, George had little hope of success, but to his amazement McHarg now proved most reasonable. He agreed to everything George said, confessed that he himself thought it would be better not to see his friend that night, and said he was prepared to embrace any alternative George might propose, except—on this he was most blunt and flat—he would not go back to London. All day his desire to get out of London had had the force and urgency of an obsession, so George pressed no further on that point. He agreed that they should not turn back, but asked McHarg if he had any preference about where they should go. McHarg said he didn’t care, but after meditating with chin sunk forward on breast for several moments, he said suddenly that he would like the sea.

This remark did not seem at all astonishing to George at the time. It became astonishing only as he thought of it later. He accepted the proposal of going to the sea as naturally as a New Yorker might accept a suggestion of riding on a Fifth Avenue bus to see Grant’s tomb. If McHarg had said he wanted to go to Liverpool or to Manchester or to Edinburgh, it would have been the same—George would have felt no astonishment whatever. Once out of London, both of these Americans, in their unconscious minds, were as little impressed by the dimensions of England as they would have been by a half-acre lot. When McHarg said he’d like the sea, George thought to himself: “Very well. We’ll just drive over to the other side of the island and take a look at it.”

So George thought the idea an excellent one and fell in with it enthusiastically, remarking that the salt air, the sound of the waves, and a good night’s sleep would do them both a world of good, and would make them fit and ready for further adventures in the morning. McHarg, too, began to show whole-hearted warmth for the plan. George asked him if he had any special place in mind. He said no, that it didn’t matter, that any place was good as long as it was on the sea. In rapid order they named over seacoast towns which they had either heard of or at one time or another had visited—Dover, Folkestone, Bournemouth, Eastbourne, Blackpool, Torquay, Plymouth.

“Plymouth! Plymouth!” cried McHarg with enthusiastic decision. “That’s the very place! I’ve been in there in ships dozens of times, but never stopped off. True, it’s in the harbour, but that doesn’t matter. It always looked like a nice little town. Let’s go there for the night.”

“Oh, sir,” spoke up the chauffeur, who till now had sat quietly at his wheel, listening to two maniacs dismember the geography of the British Isles. “Oh, sir,” he repeated, with an intonation of quite evident alarm, “you can’t do that, you know. Not to-night, sir. It’s quite himpossible to make Plymouth to-night.”

“What’s the reason it is?” McHarg demanded truculently.

“Because, sir,” said the driver, "it’s a good two’undred and fifty miles, sir. In this weather, what with rain and never knowing when the fog may close in again, it would take ite all of eight hours, sir, to do it. We should not arrive there, sir, until the small hours of the morning.

“Well, then, all right,” McHarg cried impatiently. “We’ll go somewhere else. How about Blackpool? Blackpool, eh, Georgie?” he said, turning to Webber feverishly, his lips lifting in a grimace of puckered nervousness. “Let’s try Blackpool. Never been there. Like to see the place.”

“But, sir”—the driver was now obviously appalled—“Blackpool—Blackpool, sir, is in the north of England. Why, sir,” he whispered, “Blackpool is even farther away than Plymouth is. It must be all of three’undred miles, sir,” he whispered, and the awe in his tone could not have been greater if they had just proposed an overnight drive from Philadelphia to the Pacific coast. “We couldn’t reach Blackpool, sir, before to-morrow morning.”

“Oh, well, then,” said McHarg in disgust. “Have it your own way. You name a place, George,” he demanded.

Webber thought earnestly for a long minute, then, fortified with memories of scenes from Thackeray and Dickens, he said hopefully: “Brighton. How about Brighton?”

Instantly he knew that he had hit it. The driver’s voice vibrated with a tone of unspeakable relief. He turned round in his seat and whispered with almost fawning eagerness:

“Yes, sir! Yes, sir! Brighton! We can do that very nicely, sir.”

“How long will it take?” McHarg demanded.

“I should think, sir,” said the driver, “I could do it from’ere in about two and a’arf hours. A bit late for dinner, sir, but still, it is within reach.”

“Good. All right,” McHarg said, nodding his head with decision and settling back in his seat. “Go ahead.” He waved one bony hand in a gesture of dismissal. “We’re going to Brighton.”

They started off again, and at the next cross-road charged their course to hunt for the Brighton road.

From that time on, their journey became a nightmare of halts and turnings and changes of direction. The little driver was sure they were headed towards Brighton, but somehow he could not find the road. They twisted this way and that, driving for miles through towns and villages, then out into the open country again, and getting nowhere. At last they came to an intricate and deserted cross-road where the driver stopped the car to look at the signs. But there was none to Brighton, and he finally admitted that he was lost. At these words, McHarg roused and pulled himself wearily forward in his seat, peered out into the dark night, then asked George what he thought they ought to do. The two of them knew even less about where they were than the driver, but they had to go somewhere. When George hazarded a guess that Brighton ought to be off to the left somewhere, McHarg commanded the man to take the first left fork and see where he came out, then sank back in his seat and closed his eyes again. At each intersection after that McHarg or Webber would tell the driver what to do, and the little Londoner would obey them dutifully, but it was evident that he harboured increasing misgivings at the thought of being lost in the wilds of Surrey and subject to the unpredictable whim of two strange Americans. For some inexplicable reason it never occurred to either of them to stop and ask their way, so they only succeeded in getting more lost than ever. They shuttled back and forth, first in one direction, then in another, and after a while George had the feeling that they must have covered a good part of the whole complex system of roads in the region south of London.

The driver himself was being rapidly reduced to a nervous wreck. The little man was now plainly terrified. He agreed with frenzied eagerness to everything that was said to him, but his voice trembled when he spoke. From his manner, he obviously felt that he had fallen into the clutches of two madmen, that he was now at their mercy in the lonely countryside, and that something dreadful was likely to happen at any moment. George could see him bent over the wheel, his whole figure contracted with the tenseness of his terror. If either of the crazy Americans on the back seat had chosen to let out a bloodcurdling war whoop, the wretched man would not have been surprised, but he would certainly have died instantly.

Under these special circumstances the very geography of the night seemed sinister and was conducive to an increase of his terror. As the hours passed, the night grew wilder. It became a stormy and demented kind of night, such as one sometimes finds in England in the winter. A man alone, if he had adventure in his soul, might have found it a thrilling and wildly beautiful night. But to this quiet little man, who was probably thinking bitterly of a glass of beer and the snug haven of his favourite pub, the demoniac visage of the night must have been appalling. It was one of those nights when the beleaguered moon drives like a spectral ship through the scudding storm rack of the sky, and the wind howls and shrieks like a demented fiend. They could hear it roaring all round them through the storm-tossed branches of the barren trees. Then it would swoop down on them with an exultant scream, and moan and whistle round the car, and sweep away again while gusts of beating rain drove across their vision. Then they would hear it howling far away—remote, demented, in the upper air, rocking the branches of the trees. And the spectral moon kept driving in and out, now casting a wild, wan radiance over the stormy landscape, now darting in behind a billowing mass of angry-looking clouds and leaving them to darkness and the fiendish howling of the wind. It was a fitting night for the commission of a crime, and the driver, it was plain to see, now feared the worst.

Somewhere along the road, after they had spent hours driving back and forth and getting nowhere, McHarg’s amazing reserves of energy and vitality ran completely out. He was sitting sprawled out as before, with head thrown back, when suddenly he groped blindly with a hand towards George and said:

“I’m done in, George! Stop the car! I can’t go on.”

George stopped the car at once. There by the roadside in the darkness, in stormy wind and scudding rain, they halted. In the van and fitful light of the spectral moon McHarg’s appearance was ghastly. His face now looked livid and deathlike. George was greatly alarmed and suggested that he get out of the car and see if the cold air wouldn’t make him feel better.

McHarg answered very quietly, with the utter finality of despair. “No,” he said. “I just feel as if I’d like to die. Leave me alone.” He slumped back into his corner, dosed his eyes, and seemed to resign himself entirely into George’s keeping. He did not speak again during the remainder of that horrible journey.

In the half-darkness, illuminated only by the instrument panel of the car and the eerie light of the moon, George and the driver looked at each other in mute and desperate interrogation. Presently the driver moistened his dry lips and whispered:

“What are we to do now, sir? Where shall we go?”

George thought for a moment, then answered: “We’ll have to go back to his friend’s house, I think. Mr. McHarg may be very ill. Turn round quickly, and let’s get there as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir! Yes, sir!” the driver whispered. He backed the car round and started off again.

From that point on, the journey was just pure nightmare. The directions they had received were complicated and would have been hard enough to follow if they had kept to the road they had first intended to take. But now they were lost and off their course, and had somehow to find their way back to it. Through what seemed to George nothing less than a miracle, this was finally accomplished. Then their instructions required them to look carefully for several obscure cross-roads, make the proper turns at each, and at the end of all this find the lonely country lane up which McHarg’s friend lived. In attempting it, they lost their way again and had to go back to a village, where the driver got his bearings and the true directions. It was after ten-thirty before they finally found the lane leading up to the house which was their destination.

And now the prospect was more sinister and weird than any they had seen. George could not believe that they were still in England’s Surrey. He had always thought of Surrey as a pleasant and gentle place, a kind of mild and benevolent suburb of London. The name had called to his mind a vision of sweet, green fields, thick-sown with towns and villages. It was, he had thought, a place of peace and tranquil spires, as well as a kind of wonderful urbs in rure, a lovely countryside of which all parts were within an hour’s run of London, a place where one could enjoy bucolic pleasures without losing any of the convenient advantages of the city, and a place where one was never out of hailing distance of his neighbour. But the region they had now come to was not at all like this. It was densely wooded, and as wild and desolate on that stormy night as any spot he had ever seen. As the car ground slowly up the tortuous road, it seemed to George that they were climbing the fiendish slope of Nightmare Hill, and he rather expected that when the moon broke from the clouds again they would find themselves in a cleared and barren circle in the forest, surrounded by the whole witches’carnival of Walpurgis Night. The wind howled through the rocking trees with insane laughter, the broken clouds scudded across the heavens like ghosts in flight, and the car lurched, bumped, groaned, and lumbered its way up a road which must have been there when the Romans came to Rye, and which, from the feel of it, had not been repaired or used since. There was not a house or a light in sight.

George began to feel that they were lost again, and that surely no one would choose to live in this inaccessible wilderness. He was ready to give up and was about to command the driver to turn back when, as they rounded a bend, he saw, away on the right, a hundred yards or so off the road and at some elevation above it, a house—and from its windows issued the beaconing assurance of light and warmth.

36. The House in the Country

The chauffeur brought the car to a jolting halt. “This must be it, sir,” he whispered. “It’s the only’ouse there is.” His tone indicated heightened tension rather than relief.

George agreed that it was probably the place they were looking for.

All the way up the hill McHarg had given no signs of life. George was seriously alarmed about him, and his anxiety had been increased the last few miles by the inanimate flappings and jerkings of the long, limp arms and bony hands of the exhausted figure every time the car hit a new bump in the road or lurched down into another rut. George spoke to him, but there was no answer. He did not want to leave him, so he suggested to the chauffeur that he’d better get out and go up to the house and find out if Mr. McHarg’s friend really lived there; if so, George told him to ask the man to come down to the car.

This request was more than the chauffeur could bear in his already, terrified state. If before he had been frightened to be with them, he seemed now even more frightened at the thought of being without them. What he was afraid of George did not know, but he spoke as if he thought the other members of their bloody gang were in that house, just waiting for him.

“Oh, sir,” he whispered, “I couldn’t go up there, sir. Not to that’ouse,” he shuddered. “Really, sir, I couldn’t. I’d much rather you’d go, sir.”

Accordingly, George got out, took a deep breath to brace himself, and started reluctantly up the path. He felt trapped in a grotesque and agonising predicament. He had no idea whom he was going to meet. He did not even know the name of McHarg’s friend. McHarg had spoken of him only as Rick, which George took to be an abbreviation or a nickname. And he could not be certain that the man lived here. All he knew was that after a day filled with incredible happenings, and a nightmarish ride in a Rolls-Royce with a terrified driver, he was now advancing up a path with rain and wind beating in his face towards a house he had never seen before to tell someone whose name he did not know that one of the most distinguished of American novelists was lying exhausted at his door, and would he please come out and see if he knew him.

So he went on up the path and knocked at the door of what appeared to be a rambling old farm-house that had been renovated. In a moment the door opened and a man stood before him, and George knew at once that he must be, not a servant, but the master of the place. He was a well-set and well-kept Englishman of middle age. He wore a velvet jacket, in the pockets of which he kept his hands thrust while he stared out with distrust at his nocturnal visitor. He had on a wing collar and a faultless bow tie in a polka-dot pattern. This touch of formal spruceness made George feel painfully awkward and embarrassed, for he knew what a disreputable figure he himself must cut. He had not shaved for two days, and his face was covered with a coarse smudge of stubbly beard. Save for the afternoon’s brief nap, he had not slept for thirty-six hours, and his eyes were red and bloodshot. His shoes were muddy, and his old hat, which was jammed down on his head, was dripping with the rain. And he was tired out, not only by physical fatigue, but by nervous strain and worry as well. It was plain that the Englishman thought him a suspicious character, for he stiffened and stood staring at him without a word.

“You’re—I——” George began—“that is to say, if you’re the one I’m looking for——”

“Eh?” the man said in a startled voice. “What!”

“It’s Mr. McHarg,” George tried again. “If you know him——”

“Eh?” he repeated, and then almost at once, “Oh!” The rising intonation of the man’s tone and the faint howl of surprise and understanding that he put into the word made it sound like a startled, sharply uttered “Owl” He was silent a moment, searching George’s face. “Ow!” he said again, and then quietly: “Where is he?”

“He—he’s out here in his car,” George said eagerly, feeling an overwhelming sense of relief.

“Ow!” the Englishman cried again, and then, impatiently: “Well, then, why doesn’t he come in? We’ve been waiting for him.”

“I think if you’d go down and speak to him——” George began, and paused.

“Ow!” the gentleman cried, looking at George with a solemn air. “Is he—that is to say—?…Ow!” he cried, as if a great light had suddenly burst upon him. “Hm-m!” he muttered meditatively. “Well, then,” he said in a somewhat firmer voice, stepping out into the path and closing the door carefully behind him, “suppose we just go down and have a look at him. Shall we?”

The last squall of rain had passed as quickly as it had blown up, and the moon was sailing clear again as they started down the path together. Half-way along, the Englishman stopped, looked apprehensive, and shouted to make himself heard above the wind:

“I say—is he—I mean to say,” he coughed, “is he—sick?”

George knew by the emphasis on that final word, as well as from previous experience with the English, that when he said “sick” he meant only one thing. George shook his head.

“He looks very ill,” he said, “but he is not sick.”

“Because,” the gentleman went on with howling apprehensiveness, “if he’s sick—ow, dear me!” he exclaimed. “I’m very fond of Knuck, you know—I’ve known him for years—but if he’s going to get sick!” He shuddered slightly. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not. I don’t want to know about it!” he shouted rapidly. “I—I don’t want to hear about it! I—I don’t want to be round when it’s going on! I—I—I wash my hands of the whole business!” he blurted out.

George reassured him that Mr. McHarg had not been sick but was merely desperately ill, so they went on down the path until they got to the car. The Englishman, after a moment’s hesitation, stepped up and opened the door, thrust his head inside, and, peering down at McHarg’s crumpled figure, called out:

“Knuck! I say, Knuck!”

McHarg was silent, save for his hoarse breathing, which was almost a snore.

“Knuck, old chap!” the Englishman cried again. “I say, Knuck!” he cried more loudly. “Are you there, old boy?”

McHarg very obviously was there, but he gave no answer.

“I say, Knuck! Speak up, won’t you, man? It’s Rick!”

McHarg only seemed to snore more hoarsely at this announcement, but after a moment he shifted one long jack-knifed leg a few inches and, without opening his eyes, grunted: “’Lo, Rick.” Then he began to snore again.

“I say, Knuck!” the Englishman cried with sharper insistence. “Won’t you get up, man? We’re waiting for you at the house!”

There was no response except the continued heavy breathing. The Englishman made further efforts but nothing happened, and at length he withdrew his head out of the car and, turning to George, said:

“I think we’d better help him inside. Knuck has worn himself out again, I fancy.”

“Yes,” said George anxiously. “He looks desperately ill, as if he were on the point of complete physical and nervous collapse. We’d better call a doctor, hadn’t we?”

“Ow, no,” said the Englishman cheerfully. “I’ve known Knuck a long time and seen this happen before when he got all keyed up. He drives himself mercilessly, you know—won’t rest—won’t stop to eat—doesn’t know how to take care of himself. It would kill anybody else, the way he lives. But not Knuck. It’s nothing to worry about, really. He’ll be all right. You’ll see.”

With this comforting assurance they helped McHarg out of the car and stood him on his feet. His emaciated form looked pitifully weak and frail, but the cold air seemed to brace him up. He took several deep breaths and looked about him.

“That’s fine,” said the Englishman encouragingly. “Feel better now, old chap?”

“Feel Godawful,” said McHarg. “All in. Want to go to bed.”

“Of course,” said the Englishman. “But you ought to eat first. We’ve kept dinner waiting. It’s all ready.”

“No food,” said McHarg brusquely. “Sleep. Eat to-morrow.”

“All right, old man,” the Englishman said amiably. “Whatever you say. But your friend here must be starved. We’ll fix you both up. Do come along,” he said, and took McHarg by the arm.

The three of them started to move up the path together.

“But, sir,” spoke a plaintive voice at George’s shoulder, for he was on the side nearest the car. Full of their own concerns, they had completely forgotten the little driver. “But, sir,” he now leaned out of the window and whispered: “what shall I do with the car, sir? Will”—he moistened his lips nervously—“will you be needing it again tonight, sir?”

The Englishman took immediate charge of the situation.

“No,” he said crisply, “we shan’t be needing it. Just drive it up behind the house, won’t you, and leave it there.”

“Yes, sir, yes, sir,” the driver gasped. What he was still afraid of not even he could have said. “Drive it up be’ind the’ouse, sir,” he repeated mechanically. “Very good, sir. And—and—” again he moistened his dry lips.

“And, ow yes!” the Englishman cried, suddenly recollecting. “Go into the kitchen when you’re through. My butler will give you something to eat.”

Then, turning cheerfully and taking McHarg by the arm again, he led the way up the path, leaving the stricken driver behind to mutter: “Yes, sir, yes, sir,” to the demented wind and scudding moon.

After the blind wilderness of storm and trouble, the house, as they entered it, seemed very warm and bright with lights. It was a lovely house, low-ceilinged, panelled with old wood. Its mistress, a charming and very beautiful woman much younger than her husband, came forward to greet them. McHarg spoke a few words to his hostess and then immediately repeated his desire for sleep. The woman seemed to take in the situation at once and led the way upstairs to the guest-room, which had already been prepared for them. It was a comfortable room with deep-set windows. A fire had been kindled in the grate. There were two beds, the covers of which had been folded neatly down, the white linen showing invitingly.

The woman left them, and her husband and George did what they could to help McHarg get to bed. He was dead on his feet. They took off his shoes, collar, and tie, then propped him up while they got his coat and vest off. They laid him on the bed, straightened him out, and covered him. By the time all this was done and they were ready to leave the room, McHarg was lost to the world in deep and peaceful slumber.

The two men went downstairs again, and now for the first time remembered that in the confusion of their meeting they had not thought to introduce themselves. George told his name, and was pleased and flattered to learn that his host knew it and had even read his book. His host had the curious name of Rickenbach Reade. He informed George later in the evening that he was half-German. He had lived in England all his life, however, and in manner, speech, and appearance he was pure British.

Reade and Webber had been a little stiff with each other from the start. The circumstances of Webber’s arrival had not been exactly conducive to easy companionship or the intimacy of quick understanding. After introductions were completed with a touch of formal constraint, Reade asked Webber if he did not want to wash up a bit, and ushered him into a small wash-room. When George emerged, freshened up as much as soap and water and comb and brush could accomplish, his host was waiting for him and, still with a trace of formality, led him into the dining-room, where the lady had preceded them. They all sat down at the table.

It was a lovely room, low-ceilinged, warm, panelled with old wood. The lady was lovely, too. And the dinner, although it had been standing for hours, was nevertheless magnificent. While they were waiting for the soup to come on, Reade gave George a glass of fine dry Sherry, then another, and still another. The soup came in at last, served by a fellow with a big nose and a sharp, shrewd, Cockney sort of face, correctly dressed for the occasion in clean but somewhat faded livery. It was a wonderful soup, thick tomato, the colour of dark mahogany. George could not conceal his hunger. He ate greedily, and, with the evidence of that enthusiastic appetite before them all the stiffness that was left began to melt away.

The butler brought in an enormous roast of beef, then boiled potatoes and Brussels sprouts. Reade carved a huge slab of meat for George, and the lady garnished his platc generously with the vegetables. They ate, too, but it was evident that they had already had their dinner. They took only small portions and left their plates unfinished, but they went through the motions just to keep George company. The beef vanished from his own plate in no time at all.

“I say!” cried Reade, seizing the carving knife again. “Do let me give you some more. You must be starved.”

“I should think you’d be famished,” said his wife in a musical voice. So George ate again.

The butler brought in wine—old, full-toned Burgundy in a cobwebbed bottle. They polished that off. Then for dessert there was a deep and crusty apple pudding and a large slice of cheese. George ate up everything in sight. When he had finished he heaved a great sigh of satisfied appeasement and looked up. At that instant their three pairs of eyes suddenly met, and with one accord they leaned back in their chairs and roared with laughter.

It was the mutual and spontaneous kind of laughter that one almost never hears. It was a booming, bellowing, solid, and ungovernable “haw-haw-haw” that exploded out of them in a rib-splitting paroxysm and bounded and reverberated all round the walls until the very glasses on the sideboard started jingling. Once begun, it swelled and rose and mounted till it left them exhausted and aching, reduced to wheezing gasps of almost inaudible mirth, and then, when it seemed that they didn’t have another gasp left in them and that their weary ribs could stand no more, it would begin again, roaring and rolling and reverberating round the room with renewed force. Twice while this was going on the butler came to the swinging-door, opened it a little, and craftily thrust his startled face round. Each time the sight of him set them off again. At length, when they were subsiding into the last faint wheezes of their fit, the butler thrust his face round the door again and said:

“Please, sir. The driver’s’ere.”

This wretched little man now reappeared, standing nervously in the doorway, fingering his cap, and moistening his dry lips apprehensively.

“Please, sir,” he finally managed to whisper. “The car. Will you be wanting it to stay be’ind the’ouse all night, sir, or shall I take it to the nearest village?”

“How far is the nearest village?” George wheezed faintly.

“It’s about six miles, sir, I understand,” he whispered, with a look of desperation and terror in his eyes.

The expression on his face was too much for them. A strangled scream burst from Webber’s throat. Mrs. Reade bent forward, thrusting her wadded napkin over her mouth. As for Rickenbach Reade, he just lay back in his chair with lolling head and roared like one possessed.

The driver stood there, rooted to the spot. It was clear that he thought his time had come. These maniacs had him at their mercy now, but he was too paralyzed to flee. And they could do nothing to allay his nameless fear. They could not speak to him, they could not explain, they could not even look at him. Every time they tried to say something and glanced in his direction and caught sight of the little man’s blanched and absurdly tortured face, they would strangle with new whoops and yells and shrieks of helpless laughter.

But at last it was over. The mood was spent. They felt drained and foolish and sober and ashamed of themselves because of the needless fright they had given the little driver. So, calmly and gently, they told him to leave the car where it was and forget about it. Reade asked his butler to take care of the driver and put him up for the night in his own quarters.

“Yes, sir, yes, sir,” mumbled the little driver automatically.

“Very good, sir,” said the butler briskly, and led the man away.

They now arose from the table and went into the living-room. In a few minutes the butler brought in a tray with coffee. They sat round a cheerful fire and drank it, and had brandy afterwards. It was wonderfully warm and comforting to sit there and listen to the fury of the storm outside, and under the spell of it they felt drawn together, as if they had all known each other a long time. They laughed and talked and told stories without a trace of self-consciousness. Reade, seeing that George was still worried about McHarg, tried in various ways to allay his fears.

“My dear fellow,” he said, “I’ve known Knuck for years. He drives himself to exhaustion and I’ve seen him do it a dozen times, but it always comes out all right in the end. It’s astonishing how he does it. I’m sure I couldn’t. No one else could, but he can. The man’s vitality is amazing. Just when you think he’s done himself in, he surprises you by bounding up and beginning all over again, as fresh as a daisy.”

George had already seen enough to know that this was true. Reade told of incidents which verified it further. Some years before, McHarg had come to England to work on a new book. Even then his way of life had been enough to arouse the gravest apprehensions among those who knew him. Few people believed that he could long survive it, and his writing friends did not understand how he could get any work done.

“We were together one night,” Reade continued, “at a party that he gave in a private room at the Savoy. He had been going it for days, driving himself the way he does, and by ten o’clock that night he was all in. He just seemed to cave in, and went to sleep at the table. We laid him out on a couch and went on with the party. Later on, two of us, with the assistance of a couple of porters, got him out of the place into a taxi and took him home. He had a flat in Cavendish Square. The next day,” Reade went on, “we had arranged to have lunch together. I had no idea—not the faintest—that the man would be able to make it. In fact, I very much doubted whether he would be out of his bed for two or three days. Just the same, I stopped in a little before one o’clock to see how he was.”

Reade was silent a moment, looking into the fire. Then, with a sharp expiration of his breath, he said:

“Well! He was sitting there at his desk, in front of his typewriter, , wearing an old dressing-gown over his baggy old tweeds, and he was typing away like mad. There was a great sheaf of manuscript beside him. He told me he’d been at it since six o’clock and had done over twenty pages. As I came in, he just looked up and said:’Hello, Rick. I’ll be with you in a minute. Sit down, won’t you?’…Well!”—again the sharp expiration of his breath—“I had to sit down! I simply fell into a chair and stared at him. It was the most astonishing thing I had ever seen.”

“And was he able to go to lunch with you?”

“Was he able!” cried Reade. “Why, he fairly bounded from his chair, flung on his coat and hat, pulled me out of my seat, and said:’Come on! I’m hungry as a bear.’And what was most astounding,” Reade continued, “was that he remembered everything that had happened the night before. He remembered everything that had been said, too—even the things that were said during the time when I should have sworn he was unconscious. It is an astonishing creature! Astonishing!” cried the Englishman.

In the warming glow of the fire and their new-found intimacy they had several more brandies, smoked endless cigarettes, and talked on and on for hours, forgetting the passage of time. It was the kind of talk which, freed of all constricting traces of self-consciousness, lets down the last barriers of natural reserve and lays bare the souls of men. George’s host was in high spirits and told the most engaging stories about himself, his wife, and the good life they were making here in the isolated freedom of their rural retreat. He made it seem not only charming and attractive, full of wholesome country pleasures, but altogether desirable and enviable. It was an idyllic picture that he painted—such a picture of rugged independence, with its simple joys and solid comforts, as has at one time or another haunted the imagination of almost every man in the turmoil, confusion, and uncertainties of the complex world we live in. But as George listened to his host and felt the nostalgic attractiveness of the images that were unfolded before him, he also felt a disquieting sense of something else behind it all which never quite got into the picture, but which lent colourings of doubt and falsity to every part of it.

For Rickenbach Reade, George began to see after a while, was one of those men who are unequal to the conditions of modern life, and who have accordingly retreated from the tough realities which they could not face. The phenomenon was not anew one to George. He had met and observed a number of people like this. And it was now evident to him that they formed another group or family or race, another of those little worlds which have no boundary lines of country or of place. One found a surprising number of them in America, particularly in the more sequestered purlieus of Boston, Cambridge, and Harvard University. One found them also in New York’s Greenwich Village, and when even that makeshift Little Bohemia became too harsh for them, they retired into a kind of desiccated country life.

For all such people the country became the last refuge. They bought little farms in Connecticut or Vermont, and renovated the fine old houses with just a shade too much of whimsey or of restrained good taste. Their quaintness was a little too quaint, their simplicity a little too subtle, and on the old farms that they bought no utilitarian seeds were sown and no grain grew. They went in for flowers, and in time they learned to talk very knowingly about the rarer varieties. They loved the simple life, of course. They loved the good feel of “the earth”. They were just a shade too conscious of “the earth”, and George had heard them say, the women as well as the men, how much they loved to work in it.

And work in it they did. In spring they worked on their new rock garden, with the assistance of only one other man—some native of the region who had hired himself out for wages, and whose homely virtues and more crotchety characteristics they quietly observed and told amusing stories about to their friends. Their wives worked in the earth, too, attired in plain yet not unattractive frocks, and they even learned to clip the hedges, wearing canvas gloves to protect their hands. These dainty and lovely creatures became healthily embrowned: their comely forearms took on a golden glow, their faces became warm with soaked-up sunlight, and sometimes they even had a soft, faint down of gold just barely visible above the cheek-bone. They were good to see.

In winter there were also things to do. The snows came down, and the road out to the main highway became impassable to cars for three weeks at a time. Not even the trucks of the A. & P. could get through. So for three whole weeks on end they had to plod their way out on foot, a good three-quarters of a mile, to lay in provisions. The days were full of other work as well. People in cities might think that country life was dull in winter, but that was because they simply did not know. The squire became a carpenter. He was working on his play, of course, but in between times he made furniture. It was good to be able to do something with one’s hands. He had a workshop fitted up in the old barn. There he had his studio, too, where he could carry on his intellectual labours undisturbed. The children were forbidden to go there. And every morning, after taking the children to school, the father could return to his barn-studio and have the whole morning free to get on with the play.

It was a fine life for the children, by the way. In summer they played and swam and fished and got wholesome lessons in practical democracy by mingling with the hired man’s children. In winter they went to an excellent private school two miles away. It was run by two very intelligent people, an expert in planned economy and his wife, an expert in child psychology, who between them were carrying on the most remarkable experiments in education.

Life in the country was really full of absorbing interests which city folk knew nothing about. For one thing, there was local politics, in which they had now become passionately involved. They attended all the town meetings, became hotly partisan over the question of a new floor for the bridge across the creek, took sides against old Abner Jones, the head selectman, and in general backed up the younger, more progressive element. Over week-ends, they had the most enchanting tales to tell their ciry friends about these town meetings. They were full of stories, too, about all the natives, and could make the most sophisticated visitor howl with laughter when, after coffee and brandy in the evening, the squire and his wife would go through their two-part recital of Seth Freeman’s involved squabble and lawsuit with Rob Perkins over a stone fence. One really got to know his neighbours in the country. It was a whole world in itself. Life here was simple, yet it was so good.

In this old farm-house they ate by candle-light at night. The pine panelling of the dining-room had been there more than two hundred years. They had not changed it. In fact, the whole front part of the house was just the same as it had always been. All they had added was the new wing for the children. Of course, they had had to do a great deal when they bought the place. It had fallen into shocking disrepair. The floors and sills were rotten and had had to be replaced. They had also built a concrete basement and installed an oil furnace. This had been costly, but it was worth the price. The people who had sold them the house were natives of the region who had gone to seed. The farm had been in that one family for five generations. It was incredible, though, to see what they had done to the house. The sitting-room had been covered with an oilcloth carpet. And in the dining-room, right beside the beautiful old revolutionary china chest, which they had persuaded the people to sell with the house, had been an atrocious gramophone with one of those old-fashioned horns. Could one imagine that?

Of course they had had to furnish the house anew from cellar to garret. Their city stuff just wouldn’t do at all. It had taken time and hard work, but by going quietly about the countryside and looking into farmers’houses, they had managed to pick up very cheaply the most exquisite pieces, most of them dating back to revolutionary times, and now the whole place was in harmony at last. They even drank their beer from pewter mugs. Grace had discovered these, covered with cobwebs, in the cellar of an old man’s house. He was eighty-seven, he said, and the mugs had belonged to his father before him. He’d never had no use for’em himself, and if she wanted’em he calc’lated that twenty cents apiece would be all right. Wasn’t it delicious! And everyone agreed it was.

The seasons changed and melted into one another, and they observed the seasons. They would not like to live in places where no seasons were. The adventure of the seasons was always thrilling. There was the day in late summer when someone saw the first duck flying south, and they knew by this token that the autumn of the year had come. Then there was the first snowflake that melted as it fell to usher in the winter. But the most exciting of all was the day in early spring when someone discovered that the first snowdrop had opened or that the first starling had come. They kept a diary of the seasons, and they wrote splendid letters to their city friends:

“I think you would like it now. The whole place is simply frantic, with spring. I heard a thrush for the first time to-day. Overnight almost, our old apple-trees have burst into full bloom. If you wait another week, it will be too late. So do come, won’t you? You’ll love our orchard and our twisted, funny, dear old apple-trees. They’ve been here, most of them, I suspect, for eighty years. It’s not like modern orchards, with their little regiments of trees. We don’t get many apples. They are small and sharp and tart, and twisted like the trees themselves, and there are never too many of them but always just enough. Somehow we love them all the better for it. It’s so New England.”

So year followed year in healthy and happy order. The first year the rock garden got laid down and the little bulbs and alpine plants set out. Hollyhocks were sown all over the place, against the house and beside the fences. By the next year they were blooming in gay profusion. It was marvellous how short a time it took. That second year he built the studio in the barn, doing most of the work with his own hands, with only the simple assistance of the hired man. The third year—the children were growing up now; they grow fast in the country—he got the swimming-pool begun. The fourth year it was finished. Meanwhile he was busy on his play, but it went slowly because there was so much else that had to be done.

The fifth year—well, one did miss the city sometimes. They would never think of going back there to This place was wonderful, except for three months in the winter. So this year they were moving in and taking an apartment for the three bad months. Grace, of course, loved music and missed the opera, while he liked the theatre, and it would be good to have again the companionship of certain people whom they knew. That was the greatest handicap of country life—the natives made fine neighbours, but one sometimes missed the intellectual stimulus of city life. And so this year he had decided to take the old girl in. They’d see the shows and hear the music andrenew their acquaintance with old friends and find out what was going on. They might even run down to Bermuda for three weeks in February. Or to Haiti. That was a place, he’d heard, that modern life had hardly touched. They had windmills and went in for voodoo worship. It was all savage and most primitively colourful. It would get them out of the rut to go off somewhere on a trip. Of course they’d be back in the country by the first of April.

Such was the fugitive pattern in one of its most common manifestations. But it also took other forms. The American expatriates who had taken up residence in Europe were essentially the same kind of people, though theirs was a more desolate and more embittered type of escapism. George Webber had known them in Paris, in Switzerland, and here in England, and it seemed to him that they represented one of the extremest breeds among the race of futilitarians. These were the Americans who had gone beyond even the pretence of being nature-lovers and earth-discoverers and returners to the simple life of native virtue in rural Yankeedom. These were the ones to whom nothing was left except an encyclopedic sneer—a sneer at everything American. It was a sneer which was derived from what they had read, from what others had said, or from some easy rationalization of self-defence. It was a sneer that did not have in it the sincerity of passion or the honesty of true indignation, and it became feebler year after year. For these people had nothing left but drink and sneering, the dreary round of cafe life with its repetition of racked saucers—nothing left but a blurred vision of the world, a sentimental fantasy of “Paris”, or of “England”, or of “Europe”, which was as unreal as if all their knowledge had been drawn from the pages of a fairy-tale, and as if they had never set foot upon these shores which they professed to understand so well and to cherish so devotedly.

And always with this race of men it seemed to George that the fundamental inner structure Of illusion and defeat was the same, whether they followed the more innocuous formula of flight to the farm, with its trumped-up interest in rock gardening, carpentry, hollyhock culture, and the rest of it, or whether they took the more embittered route of retreat to Europe and the racked saucers. And it made no difference whether they were Americans, Englishmen, Germans, or Hottentots. All of them betrayed themselves by the same weaknesses. They fled a world they were not strong enough to meet. If they had talent, it was a talent that was not great enough to win for them the fulfilment and success which they pretended to scorn, but for which each of them would have sold the pitifully small remnant of his meagre soul. If they wanted to create, they did not want it hard enough to make and shape and finish something in spite of hell and heartbreak. If they wanted to work, they did not want it genuinely enough to work and keep on working till their eyeballs ached and their brains were dizzy, to work until their loins were dry, their vitals hollow, to work until the whole world reeled before them in a grey blur of weariness and depleted energy, to work until their tongues clove to their mouths and their pulses hammered like dry mallets at their temples, to work until no work was left in them, until there was no rest and no repose, until they could not sleep, until they could do nothing and could work no more—and then work again. They were the pallid half-men of the arts, more desolate and damned than if they had been born with no talent at all, more lacking in their lack, possessing half, than if their lack had been complete. And so, half full of purpose, they eventually fled the task they were not equal to—and they pottered, tinkered, gardened, carpentered, and drank.

Such a man, in his own way, was this Englishman, Rickenbach Reade. He was, as he confided to George later in the evening, a writer—as he himself put it, with a touch of bitter whimsey, “a writer of sorts”. He had had a dozen books published. He took them from their shelves with a curious eagerness that was half apology and showed them to George. They were critical biographies of literary men and politicians, and were examples of the “debunking school” of historical writing. George later read one or two of them, and they turned out to be more or less what he had expected. They were the kind of books that debunked everything except themselves. They were the lifeless products of a padded Stracheyism: their author, lacking Strachey’s wit and shirking the labours of his scholarship, succeeded at best in a feeble mimicry of his dead vitality, his moribund fatigue, his essential foppishness. So these books, dealing with a dozen different lives and periods, were really all alike, all the same—the manifestations of defeat, the jabs of an illusioned disillusion, the sceptical evocations of a fantastic and unliving disbelief.

Their author, being the kind of man he was, could not write otherwise than as he had written. Having no belief or bottom in himself, he found no belief or bottom in the lives he wrote about. Everything was bunk, every great man who ever lived had been built up into the image of greatness by a legend of concocted bunk; truth, therefore, lay in the debunking process, since all else was bunk, and even truth itself was bunk. He was one of those men who, by the nature of their characters and their own defeat, could believe only the worst of others. If he had written about Caesar, he could never have convinced himself that Caesar looked—as Caesar looked; he would assuredly have found evidence to show that Caesar was a miserable dwarf, the butt of ridicule among his own troops. If he had written about Napoleon, he would have seen him only as a fat and pudgy little man who got his forelock in the soup and had grease spots on the lapels of his marshal’s uniform. If he had written about George Washington, he would have devoted his chief attention to Washington’s false teeth, and would have become so deeply involved with them that he would have forgotten all about George Washington. If he had written about Abraham Lincoln, he would have seen him as a deified Uriah Heep, the grotesque product of backwoods legendry, a country lawyer come to town, his very fame a thing of chance, the result of a fortuitous victory and a timely martyrdom. He could never have believed that Lincoln really said the things that Lincoln said, or that he really wrote what he is known to have written. Why? Because the things said and written were too much like Lincoln. They were too good to be true. Therefore they were myths. They had not been said at all. Or, if they had been said, then somebody else had said them. Stanton had said them, or Seward had said them, or a newspaper reporter had said them—anybody could have said them except Lincoln.

Such was the tone and temper of Reade’s books, and such was the quality of disbelief that had produced them. In consequence, they fooled no one except the author. They did not even have the energy of an amusing or persuasive slander. They were stillborn the moment they issued from the press. No one read them or paid any attention to them.

And how did he rationalise to himself his defeat and failure? In the easy, obvious, and inevitable way. He had been rash enough, he told George with a smile of faint, ironic bitterness, to expose some of the cherished figures of public worship and, with his cold, relentless probing for the truth, to shatter the false legends that surrounded them. Naturally, his reward had been anathema and abuse, the hatred of the critics and the obstinate hostility of the public. It had been a thankless business from beginning to end, so he was done with it. He had turned his back on the prejudice, bigotry, stupidity, and hypocrisy of the whole fickle and idolatrous world, and had come here to the country to find solitude and seclusion. One gathered that he would write no more.

And this life certainly had its compensations. The old house which Reade had bought and renovated, making it a trifle too faultlessly agricultural, with a work-bench for mending harness in the kitchen, was nevertheless a charming place. His young wife was gracious and lovely, and obviously cared a great deal for him. And Reade himself, apart from the literary pretensions which had embittered his life, was not a bad sort of man. When one understood and accepted the nature of his illusions and defeat, one saw that he was a likable and good-hearted fellow.

It was growing late, but they had not noticed and were surprised when the clock in the hall chimed two. The three of them talked quietly for a few minutes after that, had a final glass of brandy, then said good night. George went upstairs, and shortly afterwards he heard Mr. and Mrs. Reade come softly up and go to their room.

McHarg lay motionless, just as they had left him. He had not stirred a muscle, but seemed to be sunk in the untroubled sleep of childhood. George spread another blanket over him. Then he undressed, turned out the lights, and crawled into his own bed.

He was exhausted, but so excited by all the strange events of the day that he was beyond the desire for sleep. He lay there thinking over what had happened and listening to the wind. It would rush at the house and shiver the windows, then swoop round the corners and the eaves, howling like a banshee. Somewhere a shutter flapped and banged insanely. Now and then, in the momentary lulls between the rushes of the wind, a dog barked mournfully in the faint distance. He heard the clock in the downstairs hall chime three.

It was some time after that when he finally dropped off. The storm was still howling like a madman round the house, but he was no longer aware of it.

37. The Morning After

George lay in merciful and dreamless sleep, as leaden as if he had GEORGE knocked senseless by a heavy club. How long he had slept he did not know, but it hardly seemed five minutes when he was awakened suddenly by someone shaking him by the shoulder. He opened his eyes and started up. It was McHarg. He stood there in his underwear, prancing round on his stork-like legs like an impatient sprinter straining at the mark.

“Get up George, get up!” he cried shrilly. “For Christ’s sake, man, are you going to sleep all day?”

George stared at him dumbfounded. “What—what time is it?” he managed finally to say.

“It’s after eight o’clock,” McHarg cried. “I’ve been up an hour. Shaved and had a bath, and now,” he smacked his bony hands together with an air of relish and sniffed zestfully at the breakfast-laden air, “boy, I could eat a horse! Don’t you smell it?” he cried gleefully. “Oatmeal, eggs and bacon, grilled tomatoes, toast and marmalade, coffee. Ali!” he sighed with reverent enthusiasm. “There’s nothing like an English breakfast. Get up, George, get up!” he cried again with shrill insistence. “My God, man, I let you sleep a whole hour longer than I did because you looked as if you needed it! So get your clothes on! We don’t want to keep breakfast waiting!”

George groaned, dragged his legs wearily from the covers, and stood groggily erect. He felt as if he wanted nothing so much as to sleep for two days on end. But under the feverish urging of this red fury, he had nothing left to do except to awake and dress. Like a man in a trance, he pulled on his clothes with slow, fumbling motions, and all the while McHarg fumed up and down, demanding every two seconds that he get a move on and not be all day about it.

When they got downstairs the Reades were already at the table. McHarg bounced in as if he had a rubber core, greeted both of them cheerfully, took a seat, and instantly fell to. He put away an enormous breakfast, talking all the time and crackling with electricity. His energy was astounding. It was really incredible. It seemed impossible that the exhausted wreck of a few hours before could now be miraculously transformed into this dynamo of vitality. He was in uproarious spirits, and full of stories and adventures. He told wonderful yarns about the ceremonies at which his degree had been presented and about all the people there. Then he told about Berlin, and about people he had met in Germany and in Holland. He told of his meeting with Mynheer Bendien, and gave a side-splitting account of their madhouse escapades. He was full of plans and purposes. He asked about everyone he knew in England. His mind seemed to have a thousand brilliant facets. He took hold of everything, and whatever he touched began to crackle with the energy and alertness of his own dynamic power. He was a delightful companion. George realised that he was now seeing McHarg at his best, and his best was wonderfully and magnificently good.

After breakfast they all took a walk together. It was a rare, wild morning. The temperature had dropped several degrees during the night and the fitful rain had turned to snow, which was now coming down steadily, swirling and gusting through the air upon the howling wind and piling up in soft, fleecy drifts. Overhead, the branches of the bare trees thrashed about and moaned. The countryside was impossibly wild and beautiful. They walked long and far, filled with the excitement of the storm, and with a strange, wild joy and sorrow, knowing that the magic could not last.

When they came back to the house, they sat beside the fire and talked together. McHarg’s gleeful exuberance of the morning had subsided, but in its place had come a quiet power—the kind of Lincolnesque dignity of repose and strength which George had observed in him the day before. He took out his old silver-rimmed spectacles and put them on his homely, wry, and curiously engaging face. He read some letters which he had in his pocket and had not opened, and after that he talked to his old friend. What they talked about was not important in itself. What wasimportant, and what George would always remember, was the way McHarg looked, and the way he sat and talked, with his bony knuckles arched and clasped before him in an attitude of unconscious power, and the dignity, wisdom, and deep knowledge of his speech. Here was a man with greatness in him, a man who was now showing the basic sources of his latent strength. His speech was full of quiet affection for his old friend. One felt something unshakable and abiding in him—a loyalty that would not change, that would remain always the same, even though he might not see his friend again for twenty years.

They had a good lunch together. Wine was served, but McHarg partook sparingly of it. After lunch, to Webber’s great relief, McHarg told him quietly that they were returning to London in the afternoon. He said nothing about the projected tour of England which he had depicted in such glowing colours the day before. Whether that had been just a passing whim, or whether he had given up the idea because he sensed George’s lack of enthusiasm for it, George did not know. McHarg did not refer to it at all. He merely announced their return to London as a fact and let it go at that.

But now, as if the thought of going back to the city was more than he could bear, he immediately underwent another of his astonishing transformations. Almost at once his manner again became feverish and impatient. By three o’clock, when they left, he had worked himself into a state of inflamed distemper. He seemed on edge, like one who wanted to get some disagreeable business over and done with.

They drove cautiously down the whitened, trackless lane, over which no car had passed that day, leaving behind them the low-eaved comfort of that fine old house, now warmly fleeced in its blanket of snow, and George felt again the almost unbearable sadness that always came to him when he said good-bye to people whom he knew he would never see again. The lovely woman stood in the doorway and watched them go, with Reade beside her, his hands thrust deep in the pockets of his velvet jacket. As the car took the turn McHarg and George looked back. Reade and his wife waved, and they waved back, and something tightened in George’s throat. Then they were out of sight. McHarg and George were alone again.

They reached the high road and turned north and sped onward towards London. Both men were silent, each absorbed in his own thoughts. McHarg sat back in his corner, quiet, abstracted, sunk deep into his inner world. Darkness came, and they said nothing.

And now the lights were up, and there against the sky George saw again the vast corrupted radiance of the night—the smoke, the fury, and the welter of London’s unending life. And after a little while the car was threading its way through the jungle warren of that monstrous sprawl, and at last it turned into Ebury Street and stopped. George got out and thanked McHarg; they shook hands, exchanged a few words, and then said good-bye. The little driver shut the door, touched his cap respectfully, and climbed back into his seat. The big car purred and drove off smoothly into the darkness.

George stood at the kerb and looked after it until it disappeared. And he knew that he and McHarg might meet and speak and pass again, but never as they had in this, their first meeting; for something had begun which now was finished, and henceforth they would have to take their separate courses, he to his own ending, McHarg to his—and which to the better one no man knew.