"_Au revoir_."
No answer.
"Oh," said I, and went out of the room leaving my lady for good and all and I"m not sorry.
In the pa.s.sage met Miss ----. "What?" she said, "going already?"
"Farewell," I said sepulchrally. "A very tragic farewell," which left her wondering.
_June_ 29.
_At the Albert Hall_
Went with R---- to the Albert Hall to the _Empress of Ireland_ Memorial Concert with ma.s.sed bands. We heard the Symphonie Pathetique, Chopin"s Funeral March, Trauermarsch from Gotterdammerung, the Ride of the Valkyries and a solemn melody from Bach.
This afternoon I regard as a mountain peak in my existence. For two solid hours I sat like an Eagle on a rock gazing into infinity--a very fine sensation for a London Sparrow....
I have an idea that if it were possible to a.s.semble the sick and suffering day by day in the Albert Hall and keep the Orchestra going all the time, then the constant exposure of sick parts to such heavenly air vibrations would ultimately restore to them the lost rhythm of health.
Surely, even a single exposure to--say Beethoven"s Fifth Symphony--must result in some permanent reconst.i.tution of ourselves body and soul. No one can be quite the same after a Beethoven Symphony has streamed thro"
him.
If one could _develop_ a human soul like a negative the effect I should say could be seen.... I"ll tell you what I wish they"d do--seriously: divide up the arena into a series of cubicles where, un.o.bserved and in perfect privacy, a man could execute all the various movements of his body and limbs which the music prompts. It would be such a delicious self-indulgence and it"s torture to be jammed into a seat where you can"t even tap one foot or wave an arm.
The concert restored my moral health. I came away in love with people I was hating before and full of compa.s.sion for others I usually condemn. A feeling of immeasurable well being--a jolly bonhomie enveloped me like incandescent light. At the close when we stood up to sing the National Anthem we all felt a genuine spirit of camaraderie. Just as when Kings die, we were silent musing upon the common fate, and when the time came to separate we were loath to go our several ways, for we were comrades who together had come thro" a great experience. For my part I wanted to shake hands all round--happy travellers, now alas! at the journey"s end and never perhaps to meet again--never.
R---- and I walked up thro" Kensington Gardens like two young G.o.ds!
"I even like that b.l.o.o.d.y thing," I said, pointing to the Albert Memorial.
We pointed out pretty girls to one another, watched the children play ring-a-ring-a-roses on the gra.s.s. We laughed exultingly at the thought of our dismal colleagues ... tho" I said (as before!) I loved "em all--G.o.d bless "em--even old ----. R---- said it was nothing short of insolence on their part to have neglected the opportunity of coming to the Concert.
Later on, an old gaffer up from the country stopped us to ask the way to Rotten Row--I overwhelmed him with directions and happy descriptive details. I felt like walking with him and showing him what a wonderful place the world is.
After separating from R---- very reluctantly--it was horrible to be left alone in such high spirits, walked up towards the Round Pond, and caught myself avoiding the shadows of the trees--so as to be every moment out in the blazing sun. I scoffed inwardly at the timorousness of pale, anaemic folk whom I pa.s.sed hiding in the shadows of the elms.
At the Round Pond, came across a Bulldog who was biting out great chunks of water and in luxuriant waste-fulness letting it drool out again from each corner of his mouth. I watched this old fellow greedily (it was very hot), as well pleased with him and his liquid "chops" as with anything I saw, unless it were a girl and a man lying full length along the gra.s.s and kissing beneath a sunshade. I smiled; she saw me, and smiled, too, in return, and then fell to kissing again.
_June_ 30.
_Dinosaurs_
There are books which are Dinosaurs--Sir Walter Raleigh"s _History of the World_, Gibbon"s _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. There are men who are Dinosaurs--Balzac completing his Human Comedy, Napoleon, Roosevelt. I like them all. I like express trains and motor lorries. I enjoy watching an iron girder swinging in the air or great cubes of ice caught up between iron pincers. I must always stop and watch these things. I like everything that is swift or immense: London, lightning, Popocatepetl. I enjoy the smell of tar, of coal, of fried fish, or a bra.s.s band playing a Liszt Rhapsody. And why should those foolish Maenads shout Women"s Rights just because they burn down a church? All bonfires are delectable. Civilisation and top hats bore me. My own life is like a tame rabbit"s. If only I had a long tail to lash it in feline rage! I would return to Nature--I could almost return to Chaos. There are times when I feel so dour I would wreck the universe if I could.[1]
(1917: I think after three years of Armageddon I feel quite ready to go back to top hats and civilisation.)
_July_ 8.
_Sunset in Kensington Gardens_
The instinct for worship occurs rhythmically--at morning and evening.
This is natural, for twice a day at sunrise and sunset--however work-sodden we may be, however hypnotised by daily routine--our natural impulse is (provided we are awake) to look to the horizon at the sun and stand a moment with mute lips. During the course of the day or night, we are too occupied or asleep--but sunrise is the great hour of the departure and sunset is the arrival at the end. Everything puts on a mysterious appearance--to-night the tops of the elms seemed super-naturally high and, pushing up into the sky, had secret communion with the clouds; the clouds seemed waiting for a ceremony, a way had been prepared by the tap.i.s.sier, a moment of suspense while one cloud stretched to another like courtiers in whispered conversation; a rumour of the approach; then slowly the news came thro" that the sun had arrived for immediate departure.
_July_ 14.
Have finished my essay. But am written out--obviously. To-night I struggled with another, and spent two hours sucking the end of my pen.
But after painfully mountainous parturition, all I brought forth were the two ridiculous mice of one meretricious trope and one grammatical solecism. I can sometimes sit before a sheet of paper, pen in hand, unable to produce a word.
_July_ 19.
For a walk with R---- in the country, calling for tea at his Uncle"s house at ----. Played clock golf and made the acquaintance of Miss ----, a tall, statuesque lady, with golden hair, as graceful as an antelope and very comely, her two dear little feet clad in white shoes peeping out (as R---- said) like two white mice one after the other as she moved across the lawn.
Coming home I said to R---- histrionically, "Some golden-haired little boy will some day rest his head upon her bosom, beautiful in line and depth, all unconscious of his luck or of his part in a beautiful picture--would that I were the father to make that group a _fait accompli_" R----, with meticulous accuracy, always refers to her as "that elegant virgin."
_July_ 25.
While sketching under Hammersmith Bridge yesterday, R---- heard a whistle, and, looking up, saw a charming "young thing" leaning over the Bridge parapet smiling like the blessed Damozel out of Heaven.
"Come down," he cried.
She did, and they discussed pictures while he painted. Later he walked with her to the Broadway, saw her into a "bus and said "Good-bye,"
without so much as an exchange of names.
"Even if she _were_ a wh.o.r.e," I said, "it"s a pity your curiosity was so sluggish. You should have seen her home, even if you did not go home with her. Young man, you preferred to let go of authentic life at Hammersmith Broadway, so as to return at once to your precious water-colour painting."
"Perhaps," replied he enigmatically.
"Whatever you do, if ever you meet her again," I rejoined, "don"t introduce her to that abominable ----. He is abominably handsome, and I hate him for it. To all his other distinctions he is welcome--parentage, money, success, but I can never forgive him his good looks and the inevitable marriage to some beautiful fair-skinned woman."
R. (reflectively): "Up to now, I was inclined to think that envy as a _pa.s.sion_ did not exist."
"Have you none?"
"Not much," he answered, and I believe it.
"Smug wretch, then. All I can say is, I may have instincts and pa.s.sions but I am not a pale water-colour artist.... What"s the matter with you,"
I foamed, "is that you like pictures. If I showed you a real woman, you would exclaim contemplatively, "How lovely;" then putting out one hand to touch her, unsuspectingly, you"d scream aghast, "Oh! it"s alive, I hear it ticking." "Yes, my boy," I answer severely with a flourish, "_That_ is a woman"s heart.""
R---- exploded with laughter and then said, "A truce to your desire for more life, for actual men and women. ... I know this that last night I would not have exchanged the quiet armchair reading the last chapter of Dostoieffsky"s _The Possessed_ for a Balaclava Charge."
"A matter of temperament, I suppose," I reflected, in cold detachment.
"You see, I belong to the raw meat school. _You_ prefer life cooked for you in a book. You prefer the confectioner"s shop to cutting down the wheat with your own scythe."
_July_ 26.
The B.M. is a ghastly hole. They will give me none of the apparatus I require. If you ask the Trustees for a thousand pounds for the propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts they say, "Yes." If you ask for twenty pounds for a new microscope they say, "No, but we"ll cut off your nose with a big pair of scissors."
_July_ 27.