"I hope Charles took the hint."
"Yes--that is to say, her husband wrote later on, and thanked me for being a little kind to her, and actually gave me her silver vinaigrette.
Don"t you think that is extraordinarily generous? It has made me like him very much. He hopes that this will not be the end of our acquaintance, but that you and I will go and stop with Evie some time in the future. I like Mr. Wilc.o.x. He is taking up his work--rubber--it is a big business. I gather he is launching out rather. Charles is in it, too. Charles is married--a pretty little creature, but she doesn"t seem wise. They took on the flat, but now they have gone off to a house of their own."
Helen, after a decent pause, continued her account of Stettin. How quickly a situation changes! In June she had been in a crisis; even in November she could blush and be unnatural; now it was January and the whole affair lay forgotten. Looking back on the past six months, Margaret realised the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It a.s.sumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed. The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty. Margaret hoped that for the future she would be less cautious, not more cautious, than she had been in the past.
CHAPTER XIII
Over two years pa.s.sed, and the Schlegel household continued to lead its life of cultured, but not ign.o.ble, ease, still swimming gracefully on the grey tides of London. Concerts and plays swept past them, money had been spent and renewed, reputations won and lost, and the city herself, emblematic of their lives, rose and fell in a continual flux, while her shallows washed more widely against the hills of Surrey and over the fields of Hertfordshire. This famous building had arisen, that was doomed. To-day Whitehall had been transformed; it would be the turn of Regent Street to-morrow. And month by month the roads smelt more strongly of petrol, and were more difficult to cross, and human beings heard each other speak with greater difficulty, breathed less of the air, and saw less of the sky. Nature withdrew; the leaves were falling by midsummer; the sun shone through dirt with an admired obscurity.
To speak against London is no longer fashionable. The Earth as an artistic cult has had its day, and the literature of the near future will probably ignore the country and seek inspiration from the town. One can understand the reaction. Of Pan and the elemental forces, the public has heard a "little too much--they seem Victorian, while London is Georgian--and those who care for the earth with sincerity may wait long ere the pendulum swings back to her again. Certainly London fascinates.
One visualises it as a tract of quivering grey, intelligent without purpose, and excitable without love; as a spirit that has altered before it can be chronicled; as a heart that certainly beats, but with no pulsation of humanity. It lies beyond everything; Nature, with all her cruelty, comes nearer to us than do these crowds of men. A friend explains himself; the earth is explicable--from her we came, and we must return to her. But who can explain Westminster Bridge Road or Liverpool Street in the morning--the city inhaling--or the same thoroughfares in the evening--the city exhaling her exhausted air? We reach in desperation beyond the fog, beyond the very stars, the voids of the universe are ransacked to justify the monster, and stamped with a human face. London is religion"s opportunity--not the decorous religion of theologians, but anthropomorphic, crude. Yes, the continuous flow would be tolerable if a man of our own sort--not any one pompous or tearful--were caring for us up in the sky.
The Londoner seldom understands his city until it sweeps him, too, away from his moorings, and Margaret"s eyes were not opened until the lease of Wickham Place expired. She had always known that it must expire, but the knowledge only became vivid about nine months before the event.
Then the house was suddenly ringed with pathos. It had seen so much happiness. Why had it to be swept away? In the streets of the city she noted for the first time the architecture of hurry and heard the language of hurry on the mouths of its inhabitants--clipped words, formless sentences, potted expressions of approval or disgust. Month by month things were stepping livelier, but to what goal? The population still rose, but what was the quality of the men born? The particular millionaire who owned the freehold of Wickham Place, and desired to erect Babylonian flats upon it--what right had he to stir so large a portion of the quivering jelly? He was not a fool--she had heard him expose Socialism--but true insight began just where his intelligence ended, and one gathered that this was the case with most millionaires.
What right had such men--But Margaret checked herself. That way lies madness. Thank goodness, she, too, had some money, and could purchase a new home.
Tibby, now in his second year at Oxford, was down for the Easter vacation, and Margaret took the opportunity of having a serious talk with him. Did he at all know where he wanted to live? Tibby didn"t know that he did know. Did he at all know what he wanted to do? He was equally uncertain, but when pressed remarked that he should prefer to be quite free of any profession. Margaret was not shocked, but went on sewing for a few minutes before she replied:
"I was thinking of Mr. Vyse. He never strikes me as particularly happy.
"Ye--es." said Tibby, and then held his mouth open in a curious quiver, as if he, too, had thought of Mr. Vyse, had seen round, through, over, and beyond Mr. Vyse, had weighed Mr. Vyse, grouped him, and finally dismissed him as having no possible bearing on the Subject under discussion. That bleat of Tibby"s infuriated Helen. But Helen was now down in the dining room preparing a speech about political economy. At times her voice could be heard declaiming through the floor.
"But Mr. Vyse is rather a wretched, weedy man, don"t you think? Then there"s Guy. That was a pitiful business. Besides"--shifting to the general--"every one is the better for some regular work."
Groans.
"I shall stick to it," she continued, smiling. "I am not saying it to educate you; it is what I really think. I believe that in the last century men have developed the desire for work, and they must not starve it. It"s a new desire. It goes with a great deal that"s bad, but in itself it"s good, and I hope that for women, too, "not to work" will soon become as shocking as "not to be married" was a hundred years ago."
"I have no experience of this profound desire to which you allude,"
enunciated Tibby.
"Then we"ll leave the subject till you do. I"m not going to rattle you round. Take your time. Only do think over the lives of the men you like most, and see how they"ve arranged them."
"I like Guy and Mr. Vyse most," said Tibby faintly, and leant so far back in his chair that he extended in a horizontal line from knees to throat.
"And don"t think I"m not serious because I don"t use the traditional arguments--making money, a sphere awaiting you, and so on--all of which are, for various reasons, cant." She sewed on. "I"m only your sister.
I haven"t any authority over you, and I don"t want to have any. Just to put before you what I think the Truth. You see"--she shook off the pince-nez to which she had recently taken--"in a few years we shall be the same age practically, and I shall want you to help me. Men are so much nicer than women."
"Labouring under such a delusion, why do you not marry?"
"I sometimes jolly well think I would if I got the chance."
"Has n.o.body arst you?"
"Only ninnies."
"Do people ask Helen?"
"Plentifully."
"Tell me about them."
"No."
"Tell me about your ninnies, then."
"They were men who had nothing better to do," said his sister, feeling that she was ent.i.tled to score this point. "So take warning; you must work, or else you must pretend to work, which is what I do. Work, work, work if you"d save your soul and your body. It is honestly a necessity, dear boy. Look at the Wilc.o.xes, look at Mr. Pembroke. With all their defects of temper and understanding, such men give me more pleasure than many who are better equipped, and I think it is because they have worked regularly and honestly."
"Spare me the Wilc.o.xes," he moaned.
"I shall not. They are the right sort."
"Oh, goodness me, Meg--!" he protested, suddenly sitting up, alert and angry. Tibby, for all his defects, had a genuine personality.
"Well, they"re as near the right sort as you can imagine."
"No, no--oh, no!"
"I was thinking of the younger son, whom I once cla.s.sed as a ninny, but who came back so ill from Nigeria. He"s gone out there again, Evie Wilc.o.x tells me--out to his duty."
"Duty" always elicited a groan.
"He doesn"t want the money, it is work he wants, though it is beastly work--dull country, dishonest natives, an eternal fidget over fresh water and food... A nation that can produce men of that sort may well be proud. No wonder England has become an Empire.
"EMPIRE!"
"I can"t bother over results," said Margaret, a little sadly. "They are too difficult for me. I can only look at the men. An Empire bores me, so far, but I can appreciate the heroism that builds it up. London bores me, but what thousands of splendid people are labouring to make London--"
"What it is," he sneered.
"What it is, worse luck. I want activity without civilisation. How paradoxical! Yet I expect that is what we shall find in heaven."
"And I," said Tibby, "want civilisation without activity, which, I expect, is what we shall find in the other place."
"You needn"t go as far as the other place, Tibbikins, if you want that.
You can find it at Oxford."
"Stupid--"
"If I"m stupid, get me back to the house-hunting. I"ll even live in Oxford if you like--North Oxford. I"ll live anywhere except Bournemouth, Torquay, and Cheltenham. Oh yes, or Ilfracombe and Swanage and Tunbridge Wells and Surbiton and Bedford. There on no account."
"London, then."
"I agree, but Helen rather wants to get away from London. However, there"s no reason we shouldn"t have a house in the country and also a flat in town, provided we all stick together and contribute. Though of course--Oh, how one does maunder on and to think, to think of the people who are really poor. How do they live? Not to move about the world would kill me."