This Is the End

This Is the End.

by Stella Benson.

This is the end, for the moment, of all my thinking, this is my unfinal conclusion. There is no reason in tangible things, and no system in the ordinary ways of the world. Hands were made to grope, and feet to stumble, and the only things you may count on are the unaccountable things. System is a fairy and a dream, you never find system where or when you expect it. There are no reasons except reasons you and I don"t know.

I should not be really surprised if the policeman across the way grew wings, or if the deep sea rose and washed out the chaos of the land. I should not raise my eyebrows if the daily press became the Little Sunbeam of the Home, or if Cabinet Ministers struck for a decrease of wages. I feel no security in facts, precedent seems no protection to me. The wisdom you can find in an Encyclopedia, or in Selfridge"s Information Bureau, seems to me just a transitory adaptation to quicksand circ.u.mstances.

But if the things which I know in spite of my education were false, if the eyes of the sea forgot their secret, or if the accent of the steep woods became vulgar, if the fairy adventures that happen in my heart fell flat, if the good friends my eyes have never seen failed me,--then indeed should I know emptiness, and an astonishment that would kill.

I want to introduce you to Jay, a "bus-conductor and an idealist. She is not the heroine, but the most constantly apparent woman in this book. I cannot introduce you to a heroine because I have never met one.

She was a person who took nothing in the world for granted, but as she had only a slight connection with the world, that is not saying very much. Her answer to everything was "Why?" The fundamental facts that you and I accept from our youth upwards, like Be Good and You Will Be Happy, or Change Your Boots When You Come In Out Of The Wet, or Respect Your Elders, or Love Your Neighbour, or Never Cross Your Legs Above The Knee, did not impress Jay.

I never knew her as a baby, but I am sure she must have been born a propounder of questions, and a smiler at the answers she received. I daresay she used to ask questions--without result--long before she could talk, but I am quite sure she was not embittered by the lack of result.

Nothing ever embittered Jay, not even her own pessimism. There is a finality about bitterness, and Jay was never final. Her last word was always on a questioning note. Her mind was always open, waiting for more.

"Oh no," she would tell her pillow at night, "there must be a better answer than that ..."

Perhaps it is hardly necessary to add that she had quarrelled with her Family, and run away from home. Her Family knew neither what she was doing nor where she was doing it. Families are incurably conceited, and this one supposed that, having broken away from it, Jay was going to the bad. On the contrary, she was a "bus-conductor, but I only tell you this in confidence. I repeat the Family did not know it, and does not know it yet.

The Family sometimes said that Jay was an idealist, but it did not really think so. The Family sometimes said that she was rather mad, but it did not know how mad she was, or it would have sent her away to live in a doctor"s establishment at Margate. It never realised that it had only come in contact with about one-fifth of its young relation, and that the other four-fifths were shut away from it. Shut away in a shining bubble world with only room in it for one--for One, and a shining bubble Story.

I do not know how universal an experience a Secret Story and a Secret Friend may be. Perhaps this wonder is a commonplace to you, only you are more reticent about it than Jay or I. But to me, even after twenty years"

intimacy with what I can only describe as a supplementary life that I cannot describe, it still seems so very wonderful that I cannot believe I share it with every man and woman in the street.

The great advantage of a Secret Story over other stories is that you cannot put it into print. So I can only show you the initial letter, and you may if you choose look upon it as an imaginary hieroglyphic. Or you may not.

Just this, that a bubble world can contain a round and russet horizon of high woods which you can attain, and from the horizon a long view of an unending sea. You can run down across the dappled fields, you can run down into the cove and stroke the sea and hear the intimate minor singing of it. And when you feel as strong as the morning, you can shout and run against the wind, against the flying sand that never blows above your knees. And when you feel as tired as the night, you can climb slowly up the cliff path and go into the House, the House you know much better than any house your ordinary eyes have seen, and there you will find your Secret Friends. The best part about Secret Friends is that they will never weary you by knowing you. You share their House, your pa.s.sing hand helps to polish the base of that wooden figure that ends the banisters, you know the childish delight of that wide short chimney in the big turret room, a chimney so wide and so short that you can stand inside the great crooked fireplace and whisper to the birds that look down from the edge of the chimney only a yard or two above you. You know how comfy those big beds are, you sit at the long clothless table in the brown dining-room. With all these things you are intimate, and yet you pa.s.s through the place as a ghost, your bubble enchantment encloses you, your Secret Friends have no knowledge of you, their story runs without you.

Your unnecessary ident.i.ty is tactfully ignored, and you know the heaven of being dispa.s.sionate and detached among things you love.

All these things can a bubble world contain. You have to get inside things to find out how limitless they are. And I think if you don"t believe it all, it is none the less true for that, because in that case you are the sort of person who believes a thing less the truer it is.

If Jay"s Family did not know she was a "bus-conductor, and did not know she was a story-possessor, what did it know about her? It knew she disliked the smell of bananas, and that she had not taken advantage of an expensive education, and that she was Stock Size (Small Ladies"), and that she was christened Jane Elizabeth, and that she took after her father to an excessive extent, and that she was rather too apt to swallow this Socialist nonsense. As Families go, it was fairly well informed about her.

The Family was a rather promiscuous one. It had more tortuous relationships than most families have, although there were only four in it, not counting Mr. Russell.

I might as well introduce you to the Family before I settle down to the story. From careful study of the press reviews I gather that a story is considered a necessary thing in a novel, so this time I am going to try and include one.

You may, if you please, meet the Family after breakfast at Mr. Russell"s house in Kensington, about three months after Jay had run away. There were four people in the room. They were Cousin Gustus, Mrs. Gustus, Kew, and Mr. Russell.

It behoves me to try and tell you very simply about Mrs. Gustus, because she prided herself on simplicity. Spelt with a capital S, it const.i.tuted her Deity; her heaven was a severe and shadowless eternity, and plain words were the flowers that grew in her Elysian fields. She had simplified her life and her looks. Even her smile was shorn of all accessories like dimples or twinkles. Her hair, which was not abundant, was the colour of corn, straight and shining. Her eyes were a cold dark grey.

Now to be simple is all very well, but turn it into an active verb and you spoil the whole idea. To simplify seems forced, and I think Mrs.

Gustus struck harder on the note of simplification than that of simplicity. I should not dare to criticise her, however, and Cousin Gustus was satisfied, so criticism in any case would be intrusive. It is just possible that he occasionally wished that she would dress herself in a more human way--patronise in winter the humble Viyella stripe, for instance, or in summer the flippant sprig. But a large proportion of Mrs.

Gustus"s faith was founded on simple strong colours in wide expanses, introduced, as it were, one to another by judicious black. Anybody but Mrs. Gustus would have been drowned in her clothes. But she was conceived on a generous scale, she was almost gorgeous, she barely missed exaggeration. In her manner I think she did not miss it. She had therefore the gift of coping with colour. It remains for me to add that her age was five-and-forty, and that she was a novelist. The recording angel had probably noted the fact of her novelism among her virtues, but she had an imperceptible earthly public. She wrote laborious books, full of short peevish sentences, of such very pure construction that they were extremely difficult to understand. She wore spectacles with aggressive tortoise-sh.e.l.l rims. She said, "I am short-sighted. I am obliged to wear spectacles. Why should I try to conceal the fact? I will not have a pair of rimless ghosts haunting my face. I will wear spectacles without shame." But the real truth was that the tortoise-sh.e.l.l rims were more becoming to her. Mrs. Gustus was known to her husband"s family as Anonyma. The origin of this habit was an old joke, and I have forgotten the point of it.

Cousin Gustus was second cousin once removed to Kew and Kew"s sister Jay, and had kindly brought them up from childhood. He was now at the further end of the sixties, and embittered by many things: an unsuitable marriage, the approach of the psalmist"s age-limit, incurably modern surroundings, an internal complaint, and a haunting wish to relieve the Government of the management of the War. These drawbacks were to a certain extent linked, they accounted for each other. The complaint hindered him from offering his services as Secretary of State; it made of him a slave, so he could not pretend to be a master. He cherished his slavery, for it happened to be painless, and supplied him with a certain dignity which would otherwise have been difficult to secure. During the summer the complaint hibernated, and ceased to interest either doctors or relations, which was naturally hard to bear. To these trials you may add the disgraceful behaviour of his young cousin Jay, and admit that Cousin Gustus had every excuse for encouraging pessimism of the most p.r.o.nounced type.

Jay"s brother Kew was twenty-five, and from this it follows that he had already drunk the surprising beverage of War. His military history included a little splinter of hate in the left shoulder, followed by a depressing period almost entirely spent in the society of medical boards, three months of light duty consisting of weary instruction of fools in an East coast town, and now an interval of leave at the end of which the battalion to which he had lately been attached hoped to go to France. In one way it was a pity he ever joined the Army, for khaki clashed badly with most of Mrs. Gustus"s colour theories. But he had never noticed that: his eye and his ear and his mind were all equally slow to appreciate clashings of any kind. He was rather aloof from comparison and criticism, but not on principle. He had no principles--at least no original ones, just the ordinary stuffy old principles of decency and all that. He never turned his eyes inward, as far as the pa.s.ser-by could see; he lived a breezy life outside himself. He never tried to make a fine Kew of himself; he never propounded riddles to his Creator, which is the way most of us make our reputations.

Mr. Russell, the host and adopted member of the Family, was fifty-two. He did not know Jay, having only lately been culled by Mrs. Gustus--that a.s.siduous collector--and placed in the bosom of the Family. She had found him blossoming unloved in the wilderness of a War Work Committee. He was well informed, yet a good listener; perhaps he possessed both these virtues to excess. At any rate Mrs. Gustus had decided that he was worthy of Family friendship, and, being naturally extravagant, she conferred it upon him with both hands. Mr. Russell was married to a woman who had not properly realised the fact that she was Mrs. Russell. She spent her life in distant lands, helping the world to become better. At present she was understood to be propagating peace in the United States, and was never mentioned by or to her husband. My first impression of Mr. Russell was that he was rather fat, but I never could trace this impression to its origin. He had not exactly a double chin, but rather a chin and a half, and the rest of him followed this moderate example. His grey hair retired in a p.r.o.nounced estuary over each temple, leaving a beautifully brushed peninsula between. He had no sense of humour, but hid this deformity skillfully. Hardly anybody knew that he was a poet, except presumably his dog. He often talked to his dog; he told it every speakable thought that he had. This was his only bad habit. Occasionally his dog was heard to reply in a small curious voice proceeding also from Mr. Russell.

These four people looked out at Kensington Gardens, which were rejoicing in the very babyhood of the year. The naked trees were like pillars in the mist, the gra.s.s was grey and whitened to the distance, the world had mislaid its horizon, and one"s eye slid up without check between the trees to where the last word of a daylight moon whispered in the sky.

"I glory in a view that dispenses with colour," said Mrs. Gustus severely. She always spoke as though she were sure of the whole of what she intended to say. When she did hesitate, it only meant that she was seeking for the simplest word, and she would cap her pause with a monosyllable as curt as an explosion.

But glory is the right word, I think, for London in some moods. Do you know the feeling of a heart beating too high, when you see the great cliffs of London under rain or vague sunshine, or rising out of yellow air? Do you ever want, as I do, to stand with arms out against the London wind, and shout your own unmade poetry on the top of a "bus?

With this sort of grotesque glorying does London inspire me, so that I spend whole days together feeling that the essential _I_ is too big for what encloses it.

Anonyma never felt like this. She often spoke the right word, but she nearly always spoke it coldly.

"This morning," said Kew, "when I looked out, I felt the futility of bed, so I made an a.s.signation with the Hound when I met it trooping along with Russ in single file to the bathroom. Why does your Hound always accompany you there, Russ? Dogs must think us awfully irrational beasts, and yet--does that Hound really think you could elope for ever and be no more seen, with nothing on but pyjamas and a towel? I suppose he thinks "You can"t be too careful." It makes one humble to live with a dog. I always blush when I see a dog dreaming, because I"m afraid they give us an undignified place in their dreams. Your Hound, Russ, dreams of you plunging into the Serpentine after a Canadian Goose, with your topper floating behind you, or Anonyma with her tongue hanging out, scratching at a little mousehole in Piccadilly. It is humiliating, isn"t it? Anyway, before breakfast, Russ"s Hound and I went and jumped over things in the Gardens. The park-keeper mistook us for young lambs."

Russell"s Hound was called so by courtesy, in order to lend him a dignity which he lacked. He may have been twelve inches high at the shoulder, and he thought that he was exactly like a lion, except for a trifling difference in size. Dignity is not, of course, incompatible with small stature, but I think it was the twinkling gait of Mr. Russell"s Hound that robbed him of moral weight, and prevented you from attaching great importance to his views.

"Young lambs!" exclaimed Mrs. Gustus. "Really, my good Kew, had you nothing better to do?"

"Not at that time," replied Kew. "You weren"t up." And he sang to drown her sigh. Kew was the only person I ever knew who really sang to the tune of his moods. He sang Albert Hall sort of music very loudly when he was happy, and when he was extremely happy he roared so that his voice broke out of tune. When he was silent it was almost always because he was asleep, or because some other member of the Family was talking. When, by some accident, the whole Family was simultaneously silent, you could not help noticing what an oppressively still place London was. The sound of Russell"s Hound sneezing in the hall was like a bomb.

But at the present moment Kew only sang a few bars of Beethoven in a small voice. He was rather sad, because of Jay. He had not realised till he came home how very thoroughly Jay had disappeared. He led the conversation to Jay. It often happened that Kew led conversations, because conversations, like the public, generally follow the loudest voice.

"Why so sudden?" asked Kew, apparently of the Round Pond, so loud was his voice. "That"s what I can"t make out. She used to be such a human sort, and anybody with half an ear could hear the decisions bubbling about under the lid for weeks before they boiled over."

Everybody--even Cousin Gustus--knew that he was talking of Jay. Kew said so much that he might be excused for forgetting occasionally what he had not said. Besides, he had talked of little else but Jay since he rejoined his Family two days before.

"She used to be a good girl," sighed Cousin Gustus. "So few girls are good."

Cousin Gustus is an expert pessimist. Vice, accidents, and terrible ends are his speciality. All virtue is to him an exception, and by him is immediately forgotten. In sudden deaths you cannot catch him out. If you were tossed from the horns of a bull into the jaws of a crocodile, and died of pneumonia contracted during the flight, you would not surprise Cousin Gustus. He is never at a loss for a precedent. The only way you could really astonish him would be by living a blameless life without adventure, and dying of old age in your bed.

"There were warnings," said Anonyma. "Little disagreements with Gustus."

"She wanted to bring vermin into the house," mourned Cousin Gustus.

Kew suggested: "White mice?"

"Not vermin unattended," Anonyma explained. "She wanted to adopt Brown Borough babies. She had been working desultorily in the Brown Borough since War broke out."

"That might explain the peculiar and un-Jay-like remark in her letter to you--that she would settle in no home except the Perfect Home. I hate things in capital letters."

"Why didn"t she get married?" grumbled Cousin Gustus. "She was engaged for nearly three weeks to young William Morgan, a most respectable young man. So few young men--"

"She wrote to me that she couldn"t keep up that engagement," said Kew.

"Not even by looking upon it as War Work. She called him a "Surface young man," and that again seemed unlike her. She usen"t to mind surfaceness.

The War seems to have turned her upside down. But then, of course, the War has turned us all upside down, and in that position you generally get a rush of brains to the head. We"re all feverish, that"s what"s the matter with us. When I was in hospital I lived for three weeks on the top of a high temperature, laughing. I want to laugh now.... It"s a d.a.m.n funny world."

"I once knew a man who died of apoplexy while swearing," sniffed Cousin Gustus.

"You have been d.a.m.ned unlucky in your friends, Cousin Gustus," said Kew.