Chapter V: Part I: The Descent (3)

In the evening Mr. Wheeler asked me to come and smoke a cigar with him in his private room, and the invitation was not one to be evaded. I was subconsciously aware that it elicited a meaning exchange of glances between Marjory and her mother.

"Well, Mordan, I hope things go well with you in Fleet Street," said Mr. Wheeler, when his cigar was alight and we were both seated in his luxurious little den.

"Oh, tolerably," I said. "Of course, I am quite an obscure person there as yet; quite on the lowest rungs, you know."

"Quite so; quite so; and from all I hear, competition is as keen there as in the City, though the rewards are--rather different, of course."

I nodded, and we were silent for a few moments. Then he flicked a little cigar-ash into a tray and looked up sharply, with quite the Moorgate Street expression, I remember thinking.

"I think you are a good deal attracted by my youngest girl, Mordan?" he said; and his tone demanded a reply even more than his words.

"Yes, I certainly admire her greatly," I said, more than a little puzzled by the wording of the question; more than a little fluttered, it may be; for it seemed to me a welcoming sort of question, and I was keenly aware of my ineligibility as a suitor.

"Exactly. That is no more than I expected to hear from you. Indeed, I think anything less would--well, I shouldn't have been at all pleased with anything less."

His complaisance quite startled me. Somehow, too, it reminded me of my many baffled retirements of that day, before the elements in Sylvia's character which chilled and repelled me. I was almost glad that I had not committed myself to any warmer or more definite declaration. Mr. Wheeler weighed his cigar with nice care.

"Yes," he continued. "If you had disputed the attraction--the attachment, I should perhaps say--I should have found serious ground for criticizing your--your behaviour to my girl. As it is, of course, the thing is natural enough. You have been attracted; the child is attractive; and you have paid her marked attentions--which is what any young man might be expected to do."

"If he is going to suggest an engagement," I thought, "I must be very clear about my financial position, or want of position." Mr. Wheeler continued thoughtfully to eye his cigar.

"Yes, it is perfectly natural," he said; "and you will probably think, therefore, that what I am going to say is very unnatural and unkind. But you must just bear in mind that I am a good deal older than you, and, also, I am Sylvia's father."

I nodded, with a new interest.

"Well, now, Mordan, let me say first that I know my girls pretty well, and I am quite satisfied that Sylvia is not fitted to be a poor man's wife. You would probably think her far better fitted for that part than her sister, because Marjory is a lot more gay and frivolous. Well, you would be wrong. They are neither of them really qualified for the post, but Sylvia is far less so than Marjory. In point of fact she would be wretched in it, she would fail in it; and--I may say that the fact would not make matters easier for her husband."

There did not seem to me any need for a reply, but I nodded again; and Mr. Wheeler resumed, after a long draw at his cigar. He smoked a very excellent, rather rich Havana.

"Yes, girls are different now from the girls I sweethearted with; and girls like mine must have money. I dare say you think Sylvia dresses very prettily, in a simple way. My dear fellow, her laundry bill alone would bankrupt a newspaper reporter."

I may have indicated before, that Mr. Wheeler was not a person of any particular refinement. He had made the money which provided a tolerably costly upbringing for his children, but his own education I gathered had been of a much more exiguous character. There was, as I know, a good deal of truth in what he said of the girl of the period.

"Well, now, I put it to you, Mordan, whether, admitting that what I say about Sylvia is true--and you may take it from me that it is true--whether it would be very kind or fair on my part to allow you to go on paying attention to her at the rate of--say to-day's. Do you think it would be wise or kind of me to allow it? I say nothing about your side in the matter, because--well, because I still have some recollection of how a young fellow feels in such a case. But would it be wise of me to allow it?"

He was a shrewd man, this father of Sylvia, and of my old friend; and I have no doubt that the tactics I found so disarming had served him well before that day in the City. At the same time, instinct seemed to forbid complete surrender on my side.

"It is just consideration of the present difficulties of my position which has made me careful to avoid seeking to commit Sylvia in any way," I said.

It was probably an unwise remark. At all events, it struck the note of opposition, of contumacy, which it seemed my host had been anticipating; and he met it with a new inflection in his voice, as who should say: "Well, now to be done with explanations and the velvet glove. Have at you!" What he actually said was:

"Ah, there's a deal of mischief to be done without a declaration, my friend. But, however, I don't expect that you should share my view. I only suggested it on the off chance because--well, I suppose, because that would be the easiest way out for me, as host. But I don't know that I should have thought much of you if you had met me half-way. So now let me do my part and get it over, for it's not very pleasant. I have shown you my reasons, which, however they may seem to you, are undeniable to me. Now for my wishes in the matter, as a father; I am sure there is no need for me to say 'instructions,' so I say 'wishes.' They are simply that for the time--for a year or two, anyhow--you should not give me the pleasure of being your host, and that you should not communicate in any way with Sylvia. There, now it's said, and done, and I think we might leave it at that; for I don't think it's much more pleasant for me than for you. I'm sure I hope we shall have many a pleasant evening together--er--after a few years have passed. Now, what do you say--shall we have another cigar, or go in to the ladies?"

I flatter myself that, with all my shortcomings, I was never a sulky fellow. At all events, I elected to join the ladies; but my reward was not immediately apparent, for it seemed that Sylvia had retired for the night. At least, we did not meet again until breakfast-time next morning, when departure was imminent, and the week's work had, so to say, begun.

VIII

A STIRRING WEEK

Ay! we would each fain drive
At random, and not steer by rule.
Weakness! and worse, weakness bestows in vain.
Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive.
We rush by coasts where we had lief remain;
Man cannot, though he would, live chance's fool.

. . . . .

Even so we leave behind,
As, charter'd by some unknown Powers,
We stem across the sea of life by night.
The joys which were not for our use design'd;
The friends to whom we had no natural right,
The homes that were not destined to be ours.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

It goes without saying that Mr. Wheeler's attitude, and my being practically forbidden the house at Weybridge, strengthened and sharpened my interest in Sylvia. Nothing else so fans the flame of a young man's fancy as being forbidden all access to its object. Accordingly, in the weeks which followed that Sunday at Weybridge, I began an ardent correspondence with Sylvia, after inducing her to arrange to call for letters at a certain newspaper shop not far from the station.

It was a curious correspondence in many ways. Some of my long, wordy epistles were indited from the reporters' room at the _Daily Gazette_ office, in the midst of noisy talk and the hurried production of "copy." Others, again, were produced, long after--for my health's sake--I should have been in bed; and these were written on a corner of my little chest of drawers in the Bloomsbury lodging-house. I was a great reader of the poet Swinburne at the time, and I doubt not my muse was sufficiently passionate seeming. But, though I believe my phrases of endearment were alliteratively emphatic, and even, as I afterwards learned, somewhat alarming to their recipient, yet the real mainspring of my eloquence was the difference between our respective views of life, Sylvia's and mine.

In short, before very long my letters resolved themselves into fiery and vehement denunciation of Sylvia's particular and chosen _metier_ in religion, and equally vehement special pleading on behalf of the claims of humanity and social reform, as I saw them. I find the thing provocative of smiles now, but I was terribly in earnest then, or thought so, and had realized nothing of the absolute futility of pitting temperament against temperament, reason against conviction, argument against emotional belief.

We had some stolen meetings, too, in the evenings, I upon one side of a low garden wall, Sylvia upon the other. Stolen meetings are apt to be very sweet and stirring to young blood; but the sordid consideration of the railway fare to Weybridge forbade frequent indulgence, and such was my absorption in social questions, such my growing hatred of Sylvia's anti-human form of religion, that even here I could not altogether forbear from argument. Indeed, I believe I often left poor Sylvia weary and bewildered by the apparently crushing force of my representations, which, while quite capable of making her pretty head to ache, left her mental and emotional attitude as completely untouched as though I had never opened my lips.

Wrought up by means of my own eloquence, I would make my way back to London in a hot tremor of exaltation, which I took to be love and desire of Sylvia. And then, as like as not, I would receive a letter from my lady-love the next day, the refrain of which would be:

"How strange you are. How you muddle me! Indeed, you don't understand; and neither, perhaps, do I understand you. It seems to me you would drag sacred matters down to the dusty level of your politics."

The dusty level of my politics! That was it. The affairs of the world, of mortal men, they were as the affairs of ants to pretty Sylvia. A lofty and soaring view, you say? Why, no; not that exactly, for what remained of real and vital moment in her mind, to the exclusion of all serious interest in humanity? There remained, as a source of much gratification, what I called the daily dramatic performance at St. Jude's; and there remained as the one study worthy of serious devotion and interest--Sylvia Wheeler's own soul. She never sought to influence the welfare of another person's soul. Indeed, as she so often said to me, with a kind of plaintiveness which should have softened my declamatory ardour but did not, she did not like speaking of such matters at all; she regarded it as a kind of desecration.

No, it did not seem to me a lofty and inspiring view that Sylvia took. On the contrary, it exercised a choking effect upon me, by reason of what I regarded as its intense littleness and narrowness. The too often bitter and sordid realities of the struggle of life, as I saw it in London, had the effect upon me of making Sylvia's esoteric exclusiveness of interest seem so petty as to be an insult to human intelligence. I would stare out of the train windows, on my way back from Weybridge, at the countless lights, the endless huddled roofs of London; and, seeing in these a representation of the huge populace of the city, I would stretch out my arms in an impotent embrace, muttering:

"Yes, indeed, you _are_ real; you _are_ more important than any other consideration; you are _not_ the mere shadows she thinks you; your service is of more moment than any miracle, or than any nursing of one's own soul!"

And so I would make my way to Fleet Street, where I forced myself to believe I served the people by teaching them to despise patriotism, to give nothing, but to organize and demand, and keep on demanding and obtaining, more and more, from a State whose business it was to give, and to ask nothing in return. I was becoming known, and smiled at mockingly, for my earnest devotion to the extreme of the _Daily Gazette's_ policy, which, if it made for anything, made, I suppose, for anti-nationalism, anti-militarism, anti-Imperialism, anti-loyalty, and anti-everything else except State aid--by which was meant the antithesis of aid of the State.

"I've got quite a good job for you this afternoon, Mordan--something quite in your line," said Mr. Charles N. Pierce one morning. "A lot of these South African firebrands are having a luncheon at the Westminster Palace Hotel, and that fellow John Crondall is to give an address afterwards on 'Imperial Interests and Imperial Duties.' I'll give you your fling on this up to half a column--three-quarters if it's good enough; but, be careful. A sort of contemptuous good humour will be the best line to take. Make 'em ridiculous. And don't forget to convey the idea of the whole business being plutocratic. You know the sort of thing: Park Lane Israelites, scooping millions, at the expense of the overtaxed proletariat in England. Jingoism, a sort of swell bucket-shop business--you know the tone. None of your heroics, mind you. It's got to be news; but you can work in the ridicule all right."

I always think of that luncheon as one of the stepping-stones in my life. However crude and mistaken I had been up till then, I had always been sincere. My report of that function went against my own convictions. The writing of it was a painful business; I knew I was being mean and dishonest. Not that what I heard there changed my views materially. No; I still clung to my general convictions, which fitted the policy of the _Daily Gazette_. But the fact remained that in treating that gathering as I did, on the lines laid down by my news-editor, I knew that I was being dishonest, that I was conveying an untrue impression.

In this feeling, as in most of a young man's keen feelings, the personal element played a considerable part. I was introduced to the speaker, John Crondall, by a Cambridge man I knew, who came there on behalf of a Conservative paper, which had recently taken a new lease of life in new hands, and become the most powerful among the serious organs of the Empire party. It is a curious thing, by the way, that overwhelming as was the dominance of the anti-national party in politics, the Imperialist party could still claim the support of the greatest and most thoughtfully written newspapers.

John Crondall had no time to spare for more than a very few words with so obscure a person as myself; but in two minutes he was able to produce a deep impression upon me, as he did upon most people who met him. John Crondall had a great deal of personal charm, but the thing about him which bit right into my consciousness that afternoon was his earnest sincerity. As Crewe, the man who introduced me to him, said afterwards:

"There isn't one particle of flummery in Crondall's whole body."

It was an obviously truthful criticism. You might agree with the man or not, but no intelligent human being could doubt his honesty, the reality of his convictions, the strength and sincerity of his devotion to the cause of those convictions. It was perfectly well known then that Crondall had played a capable third or fourth fiddle in the maintenance, so far, of the Imperial interest in South Africa. His masterful leader, the man who, according to report, had inspired all his fiery earnestness in the Imperialist cause, was dead. But John Crondall had relinquished nothing of his activity as a lieutenant, and continued to spend a good share of his time in South Africa, while, wherever he was, continuing to devote his energies to the same cause.

As for his material interests, Crewe assured me that Crondall knew no more of business, South African or otherwise, than a schoolboy. He had inherited property worth about a couple of thousand a year, and had rather decreased than added to it. For, though he had acted as war correspondent in the Russo-Japan war, and through one or two "little wars," in outlying parts of the British Empire, circumstances had prevented such work being of profit to him. In the South African war he had served as an irregular, and achieved distinction in scouting and guiding work.

John Crondall's life, I gathered, had been the very opposite of my own sheltered progress from Dorset village to school, from school to University, and thence to my present street-bound routine in London. His views were clearly no less opposite to that vague tumult of resentment, protest, and aspiration which represented my own outlook upon life. Indeed, his speech that day was an epitome of the sentiment and opinions which I had chosen to regard with the utmost abhorrence.

With Crondall, every other consideration hinged upon and was subservient to the Imperialist idea of devotion to the bond which united all British possessions under one rule. The maintenance and furtherance of that tie, the absorption of all parts into that great whole, the subordination of all other interests to this: that I took to be John Crondall's great end in life. By association I had come to identify myself, and my ideals of social reform, entirely with those to whom mere mention of the rest of the Empire, or of the ties which made it an Empire, was as a red rag to a bull.

I have tried to explain something of the causes for this extraordinary attitude, but I am conscious that at the present time it cannot really be explained. It was there, however. We might interest ourselves in talk of Germany, we might enthusiastically admire and even model ourselves upon the conduct of a foreign people; but mention of the outside places of our own Empire filled us with anger, resentment, scorn, and contempt. It amounted to this: that we regarded as an enemy the man who sought to serve the Empire. He cannot do that without opposing us, we said in effect; as one who should say: You cannot cultivate my garden, or repair my fences, without injuring my house and showing yourself an enemy to my family. A strange business; but so it was.

Therefore, John Crondall's speech that day found me full enough of opposition, and not at all inclined to be sympathetic. But the thing of it was, I knew him for an honest and disinterested man; a man alight with high inspiration and lofty motive; a man immeasurably above sordid or selfish ends. And it was my task, first, to ridicule him; and, second, to attach sordidness and self-interest to him. That was the thing which made the day eventful for me.

John Crondall talked of British rule and British justice, as he had known them in the world's far places. He drew pictures of Oriental rule, Boer rule, Russian rule, savage rule; and, again, of the methods and customs of foreign Powers in their colonial administration. When he claimed this and that for British rule, and the Imperial unity which must back it, as such, sneers came naturally to me. The anti-British sentiment covered that. My qualms began, when he based his plea upon the value of British administration to all concerned, the danger to civilization, to mankind, of its being allowed to weaken.

Remember, he spoke in pictures, and in the first person; not of imaginings, but of what he had seen: how a single anti-British speech in London, meant a month's prolongation of bloody strife in one country, or an added weight of cruel oppression in another. Right or wrong, John Crondall carried you with him; for he dealt with men and things as he had brothered and known them, before ever he let loose, in a fiery peroration, that abstract idea of Empire patriotism which ruled his life.

But it was not all this that made my paltry journalistic task a hard one. It was my certainty of Crondall's lofty sincerity. From that afternoon I date the beginning of the end of my _Daily Gazette_ engagement. Some men in my shoes would have moved to success from this point; gaining from it either complete unscrupulousness, or the bold decision which would have made them important as friends or enemies. For my part I was simply slackened by the episode. I met John Crondall several times again. He chaffed me in the most generous fashion over my abominably unfair report of the luncheon gathering. He influenced me greatly, though my opinions remained untouched, so far as I knew.

I cannot explain just how John Crondall influenced me, but I am very conscious that he had a broadening effect on me--he enlarged my horizon. If he had remained in London things might have gone differently with me. One cannot tell. Among other things, I know his influence mightily reduced the number and length of my letters to Weybridge. In my mind I was always fighting John Crondall. It was my crowded millions of England against his lonely, sun-browned men and women outside--his world interests. The war in my heart was real, unceasing. And then there was pretty Sylvia and her little soul, and her meditations, and her daily miracles. The pin-point, bright as it was, became too tiny for me to concentrate upon it, when contrasted with these other tumultuous concerns.

Then came a crowded, confused week, in which I saw John Crondall depart by the South African boat-train from Waterloo. The first lieutenant of his dead leader out there had cabled for Crondall to come and hold his broad shoulders against the side of some political dam. My eyes pricked when John Crondall wrung my hand.

"You're all right, sonny," he said. "Don't you suppose I have the smallest doubt about you."

I had never given him anything but sneers and opposition--I, a little unknown scrub of a reporter; he a man who helped to direct policies and shape States. Here he was rushing off to the other side of the earth at his own expense, sacrificing his own interests and engagements at home, in the service of an Idea, an abstract Tie, a Flag. My philosophy had seemed spacious beside, say, Sylvia's: to secure better things for those about me, instead of for my own soul only. But what of Crondall? As I say, my eyes pricked, even while I framed some sentence in my mind expressing regret for his wrong-headedness. Ah, well!

The same week--the same day--brought me the gentlest little note of dismissal from Sylvia. Her duty to her father, and--my ideas seemed too much for her peace of mind; so bewildering. "I am no politician, you know; and truth to tell, these matters which seem so much to you that you would have them drive religion from me, they seem to me so infinitely unimportant. Forgive me!"

No doubt my vanity was wounded, but I will not pretend that I was very seriously hurt. Neither could I ponder long upon the matter, because another letter, received by the same post, claimed my attention. Sylvia's letter threw out a hint of better things for us in a year or two's time. Her notion of a break between us was "for the present." There were references to "later on, when you can come here again, and we need not hide things." But my other letter made more instant claims. It was type-written, and ran thus:

"DEAR MR. MORDAN:--Mr. Chas. N. Pierce directs me to inform you that
after the expiration of the present month your services will no
longer be required by the editor of the _Daily Gazette_.

"I am, Sir,
Yours faithfully,
JAMES MARTIN,
_Secretary_."

I pictured the little pale-eyed rabbit of a man typing the dictum of his Napoleon, his hero, and wondering in his amiable way how "Mr. Mordan" would be affected thereby, and how he had managed to displease the great man. As for "the editor of the _Daily Gazette_," I had not seen him since the day of my engagement. But I recalled now various recent signs of chill disapproval of my work on Mr. Pierce's part. And, indeed, I was aware myself of a slackness in my work, a kind of reckless, windmill-tilting tendency in my general attitude.

Meantime, there was the fact that I had recently encroached twice upon my tiny nest-egg; once to buy a wedding present for my sister Lucy, and once for a piece of silly extravagance.

It was quite a notable week.

IX

A STEP DOWN

"Cosmopolitanism is nonsense; the cosmopolite is a cipher, worse
than a cipher; outside of nationality there is neither art, nor
truth, nor life; there is nothing."--IVAN TURGENIEFF.

I have mentioned a piece of reckless extravagance; it was reckless in view of my straightened circumstances. And the reason I mention this apparent trifle is that it and its attendant circumstances influenced me in my conduct after the abrupt termination of the _Daily Gazette_ engagement.

One of my fellow knights of the reporters' room introduced me in a certain Fleet Street wine-bar to one of the characters of that classic highway--a man named Clement Blaine, who edited and owned a weekly publication called _The Mass_. I hasten to add that this journal had nothing whatever to do with any kind of religious observance. Its title referred to the people, or rather, to the section of the public which, at that time, we still described by the quaintly misleading phrase, "the working classes," as though work were a monopoly in the hands of the manual labourer.

_The Mass_ was a journal which had quite a vogue at that time. This was brought about, I suppose, by the wave of anti-nationalism which, in 1906, established the notorious administration which subsequently became known as "The Destroyers." It was maintained largely, I fancy, by Clement Blaine's genius for getting himself quoted in other journals of every sort and standing.

The existence of _The Mass_, and the popularity which it earned by outraging every civic and national decency, stands in my mind as a striking example of the extraordinary laxity and slackness of moral which had grown out of our boasted tolerance, broad-mindedness, and cosmopolitanism. We had waxed drunken upon the parrot-like asseveration of "rights," which our fathers had won for us, and we had no time to spare for their compensating duties. This misguided apotheosis of what we considered freedom and broad-mindedness, produced the most startling and anomalous situations in our national life, including the almost incredible fact that, while nominally at peace with the world, the State was being bitterly warred against by cliques and parties among its own subjects.

For instance, in any other State than our own, my new acquaintance, Clement Blaine, would have been safely disposed in a convenient prison cell, and his flamingly seditious journal would have been promptly and effectually squashed. In England the man was free as the Prime Minister, and a Department of State, the Post Office, was engaged in the distribution of the journal which he devoted exclusively to stirring up animosity against that State, and traitorous opposition to its constitution.

Further, Mr. Blaine's vitriolic outpourings, his unnatural defilement of his own nest, were gravely quoted in every newspaper in the Kingdom, without a hint of recognition of the fact that they were fundamentally criminal and a public offence. The sacrosanct "liberty of the subject" was involved; and though Mr. Blaine would have been forcibly restrained if he had shown any tendency to injure lamp-posts, or to lay hands upon his own worthless life, he was given every facility in his self-appointed task of inciting the public to all sorts of offences against the State, and to a variety of forms of national suicide.

It was the commonest thing for a Member of Parliament, a man solemnly sworn and consecrated to the loyal service of the Crown and State, to fill a signed column of Clement Blaine's paper, with an article or letter the whole avowed end of which would be the championing of some national enemy or rival, or the advocacy of means whereby a shrewd blow might be struck against British rule or British prestige in some part of the world.

I recall one long and scurrilous article by a Member of Parliament, urging rebellious natives in South Africa to take heart of grace and pursue with ever-increasing vigour their attacks upon the small and isolated white populace which upheld British rule in that part of the Continent. I remember a long and venomous letter from another Member of Parliament (a strong advocate of the State payment of members) defending in the most ardently sympathetic manner both the action and the sentiments of a municipal official who had torn down and destroyed the Union Jack upon an occasion of public ceremony.

We called this sort of thing British freedom in those chaotic days; and when our Continental rivals were not jeering at the grotesqueness of it, they were lauding this particular form of madness to the skies, as well they might, seeing that our insensate profligacy and incontinence meant their gain. The cause of a foreigner, good, bad, or indifferent--that was the cause Clement Blaine most loved to champion in his journal. An attack upon anything British, though the author of it might be the basest creature ever outlawed from any community--that was certain of ready and eager hospitality in the columns of _The Mass_.

I can conceive of no infamy which that journal was not ready to condone, no offence it would not seek to justify--save and except the crime of patriotism, loyalty, avowed love of Britain. And this obscene, mad-dog policy, so difficult even to imagine at this time, was by curious devious ways identified with Socialism. _The Mass_ was called a Socialist organ. The fact may have been a libel upon Socialism, if not upon Socialists; but so it was.

Be it said that at Cambridge I had rather surprised the evangelical section of my college (Corpus Christi) by the part I played in founding a short-lived institution called the Anonymous Society, the choicest spirits in which affected canvas shirts and abstention from the use of neckties. As Socialists, we invited the waiters of the college to a soiree, at which a judicious blend of revolutionary economics and bitter beer was relied upon to provide a flow of reasonable and inexpensive entertainment. The society lapsed after a time, chiefly owing, if I remember rightly, to an insufficiency of funds for refreshments. But I had remained rather a person to be reckoned with at the Union.

I regarded my meeting with Clement Blaine as something of an event, and I very cheerfully and quite gratuitously contributed an article to his journal dealing with some form of government subvention which I held to be a State duty. (We wasted few words over the duties of the citizen in those days.) It was as a result of that article that I was invited to a Socialist soiree in which the moving spirit, at all events in the refreshment-room, was Mr. Clement Blaine. Here I met a variety of queer fish who called themselves Socialists. They were of both sexes, and upon the whole they were a silly, inconsequent set. Their views rather wearied me, despite my predisposition to favour them.

They were a kind of tepid, ineffectual anarchists, unconvinced and wholly unconvincing. Broadly speaking, theirs was a policy of blind reversal. They were not constructive, but they were opposed vaguely to the existing order of things, and, particularly, to everything British. They pinned their faith to the foreigner in all things, even though the foreigner's whole energies might be devoted to the honest endeavour to raise conditions in his country to a level approaching the British standard. Any contention against the existing order, and, above all, anything against Britain, appealed directly to these rather tawdry people.

In this drab, ineffective gathering, I found one point of colour, like a red rose on a dingy white tablecloth. This was Beatrice, the daughter of Clement Blaine. I believe the man had a wife. One figures her as a worn household drudge. In any case, she made no appearance in any of the places in which I met Blaine, or his handsome daughter. Beatrice Blaine was a new type to me. One had read of such girls, but I had never met them. And I suppose novelty always has a certain charm for youth. One felt that Beatrice had crossed the Rubicon. Mentally, at all events, one gathered that she had thrown her bonnet over the windmill.

Physically, materially, I have no doubt that Beatrice was perfectly well qualified to take care of herself. But here was a very handsome girl who was entirely without reticence or reserve. With her, many things usually treated with respect were--"all rot." Beatrice's aim in life was pleasure, and she not merely admitted, but boasted of the fact. She did not think much of her father's friends as individuals. She probably objected to their dinginess. But she acclaimed herself a thoroughgoing Socialist, I think because she believed that Socialism meant the provision of plenty in money, dresses, pleasures, and so forth, for all who were short of these commodities.

Perhaps I was a shade less dingy than the others. At all events, Beatrice honoured me with her favour upon this occasion, and talked to me of pleasure. So far as recollection serves me she connected pleasure chiefly with theatres, restaurants, the habit of supping in public, and the use of hansom cabs. At all events, within the week I squandered two whole sovereigns out of my small hoard on giving this young pagan what she called a "fluffy" evening. It reminded me more than a little of certain rather frantic undergraduate excursions from Cambridge. But Beatrice quoted luscious lines of minor poetry, and threw a certain glamour over a quarter of the town which was a warren of tawdry immorality; the hunting-ground of a pallid-faced battalion of alien pimps and parasites.

England was then the one civilized country in the world which still welcomed upon its shores the outcast, rejected, refuse of other lands; and, as a matter of course, when foreign capitals became positively too hot for irreclaimable characters, they flocked into Whitechapel and Soho, there to indulge their natural bent for every kind of criminality known to civilization, save those involving physical risk or physical exertion for the criminal. There were then whole quarters of the metropolis out of which every native resident had gradually been ousted, in which the English language was rarely heard, except during a police raid.

Tens of thousands of these unclassed, denationalized foreigners lived and waxed fat by playing upon the foibles and pandering to the weaknesses of the great city's native population. Others, of a higher class, steadily ousted native labour in the various branches of legitimate commerce. We know now, to our cost, something of the malignant danger these foreigners represented. In indirect ways one would have supposed their evil influence was sufficiently obvious then. But I remember that the parties represented by such organs as the _Daily Gazette_ prided themselves upon their furious opposition to any hint of precautions making for the restriction of alien immigration.

England was the land of the free, they said. Yet, while boasting that England was the refuge of the persecuted (as well as the rejected) of all lands, we were so wonderfully broad-minded that we upheld anything foreign against anything British, and were intolerant only of English sentiment, English rule, English institutions. I believe Beatrice's conviction of the superiority of the Continent and of foreigners generally was based upon the belief that:

"On the Continent people can really enjoy themselves. There's none of our ridiculous English puritanism, and early closing, and rubbish of that sort there."

I am rather surprised that the crude hedonism of Beatrice should have appealed to me, for my weaknesses had never really included mere fleshly indulgence. But, as I have said, the girl had the charm of novelty for me. I remember satirically assuring myself that, upon the whole, her frank concentration upon worldly pleasure was more natural and pleasing than Sylvia's rapt concentration upon other kinds of self-ministration. Ours was a period of self-indulgence. Beatrice was, after all, only a little more naive and outspoken than the majority in her thirst for pleasure. And she was quite charming to look upon.

Almost the first man to whom I spoke regarding my dismissal from the staff of the _Daily Gazette_ was Clement Blaine. I met him in Fleet Street, and was asked in to his cupboard of an office.

"You are a man who knows every one in Fleet Street," I said. "I wish you would keep an eye lifting for a journalistic billet for me."

And then I told him that I was leaving the _Daily Gazette_, and spoke of the work I had done, and of my little journalistic experiences at Cambridge.

He combed his glossy black beard with the fingers of one hand; a white hand it was, save where cigarettes had browned the first and second fingers; a hand that had never known physical toil, though its owner always addressed "working" men as one of themselves. He wore a fiery red necktie, and a fiery diamond on the little finger of the hand that combed his beard. A self-indulgent life in the city was telling on him, but Clement Blaine was still rather a fine figure of a man, in his coarse, bold way. He had a varnished look, and, dressed for the part, would have made a splendid stage pirate.

"It's odd you should have come to me to-day," he said. "Look here!"

He handed me a cutting from a daily paper.

At Holloway, yesterday afternoon, an inquest was held on the body of
a man named Joseph Cartwright, who is said to have been a
journalist. This man was found dead upon his bed, fully dressed, on
Tuesday morning. The medical evidence showed death to be due to
heart failure, and indicated alcoholism as the predisposing cause. A
verdict was returned in accordance with the medical evidence.

"He was my assistant editor," said Clement Blaine, as I looked up from my perusal of this sorry tale.

"Really?" I said.

"Yes, a clever fellow; most accomplished journalist, but----" And Mr. Blaine raised his elbow with a significant gesture, by which he suggested the act of drinking.

Within the hour I had accepted an engagement as assistant editor of _The Mass_ with the magnificent sum of two pounds a week by way of remuneration.

"It's poor pay," said Blaine. "And I only wish I could double it. But that's all it will run to at present, and--well, of course, it counts for something to be working for the cause as directly as we do in _The Mass_."

I nodded, not without qualms. My education made it impossible for me to accept unreservedly the most scurrilous features of the journal. But the cause was good--I was assured of that; and I would introduce improvements, I thought. I was still very inexperienced. Meantime, I was not to know the carking anxiety of the out-of-work. I could still pay my way at the Bloomsbury lodging. This was something.

Beatrice expressed herself as delighted. I was to accumulate large sums in various vague ways, and enjoy innumerable "fluffy" evenings with her.

What a queer mad jumble of a shut-in world our London was, and how blindly self-centred we all were in our pursuit of immediate gain, in our absolute indifference to the larger outside movements, the shaping of national destinies, the warring of national interests! I remember that we were quite triumphant, in our little owlish way, that year; for the weight of socialistic and anti-national, anti-responsible feeling had forced a time-serving Cabinet into cutting down our Navy by a quarter at one stroke. The hurried scramblers after money and pleasure were much gratified.

"We can make defensive alliances with other Powers," they said. "Meantime--retrench, reduce, cut down, and give us more freedom in our race. Freedom, freedom--that's the thing; and peace for the development of commerce."

Undoubtedly, as a people, we were fey.

X

FACILIS DESCENSUS AVERNI

Love thou thy land, with love far-brought
From out the storied Past, and used
Within the Present, but transfused
Thro' future time by power of thought.

True love turned round on fixed poles,
Love that endures not sordid ends,
For English natures, freemen, friends,
Thy brothers and immortal souls.

But pamper not a hasty time,
Nor feed with crude imaginings
The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings
That every sophister can lime.

Deliver not the tasks of might
To weakness, neither hide the ray
From those, not blind, who wait for day,
Tho' sitting girt with doubtful light.

TENNYSON.

And now, as assistant editor of _The Mass_, I entered a period of my life upon which I look back as one might who, by chance rather than by reason of any particular fitness for survival, had won safely through a whirlpool. The next few years were a troublous time, a stormy era of transition, for most English people. For many besides myself the period was a veritable maelstrom of confusion, of blind battling with unrecognized forces, of wasted effort, neglected duty, futile struggles, and slavish inertia.

At an early stage I learned to know Clement Blaine for a sweater of underpaid labour, a man as grossly self-indulgent as he was unprincipled, as much a charlatan as he was, in many ways, an ignoramus. Yet I see now, more clearly than then, that even Clement Blaine was not all bad. He was not even completely a charlatan. He believed he was justified in making all the money he could, in any way that was possible. It must be remembered, however, that at that time most people really thought, whatever they might say, that the first and most obvious duty in life was to make money for themselves.

Then, too, I think Blaine really believed that the sort of anti-national, socialistic theories he advocated would make for the happiness of the people; for the profit and benefit of the majority. He was blinded by lack of knowledge of history and of human nature. He was an extreme example, perhaps, but, after all, his mistaken idea that happiness depended upon personal possession of this and that, upon having and holding, was very generally accepted at that time. The old saving sense of duty, love of country, national responsibility, and pride of race, had faded and become unreal to a people feverishly bent upon personal gain only. Nelson's famous signal and watchword was kept alive, in inscriptions; in men's hearts and minds it no longer had any meaning; it made no appeal. This is to speak broadly, of course, and of the majority. We had some noble exceptions to the rule.

In looking back now upon that period, it seems to me, as I suppose to all who lived through it, such a tragedy of confusion, of sordidness, and of futility, that one is driven to take too sweepingly pessimistic a view of the time. I have said a good deal of the anti-national sentiment, because it was undoubtedly in the ascendant then. As history shows us, this sentiment ruled; by it the ship of state was steered; by it the defences of the Empire were cut down and down to the ultimate breaking point. We call the administration of that period criminally unpatriotic. As such "The Destroyers" must always figure in history. But we must not forget that then, as now, we English people had as good a Government as we deserved. The spirit of selfish irresponsibility was not confined to Whitehall.

On the other hand, it must not be supposed that no patriotic party existed. There was a patriotic party, and the exigencies of the time inspired some of its leaders nobly. But the sheer weight of numbers, of indifference, and of selfishness to which this party was opposed was too much for it. The best method of realizing this nowadays is by the study of the newspaper files for the early years of the century. From these it will be seen that even the people and journals in whom devoted patriotism survived, even the leaders who gave up their time and energy (politics gave us such a man, the Army another, the Navy another, literature another, and journalism gave us an editor in whom the right fire burned brightly) to the task of warning and adjuring the public, and seeking to awaken the nation to the lost sense of its dangers, its duties, and its responsibilities; even these were forced by the weight of public selfishness into using an almost apologetic tone, with reference to the common calls of patriotism and Imperial unity.

People dismissed an obvious challenge of the national conscience with a hurried and impatient wave of the hand. They were tired of this; they had heard enough of the other; they were occupied with local interests of the moment, and could not be bothered with this or that consideration affecting the welfare of the world-wide shores of greater outside Britain. And, accordingly, we find that the most patriotic and public-spirited journal was obliged, for its life, to devote more attention to a football match at the Crystal Palace than to a change of public policy affecting the whole commercial future of a part of the Empire twenty times greater than Britain. There were other journals, organs of the self-centred majority, that would barely even mention an Imperial development of that sort, and then but casually, as a matter of no particular interest to their readers; as indeed it was.

I do not think that retrospection has coloured my view too darkly when I say that my brief experience in Fleet Street made me feel that the _Daily Gazette_ party, the supporters of "The Destroyers" (as naval folk had named the Government of the day) consisted of a mass of smugly hypocritical self-seekers; and that the party I served under Clement Blaine were a mass of blatantly frank self-seekers. Such generalizations can never be quite just, however. There were earnest and devoted men in every section of the community. But, as a generalization, as indicating the typical characteristics of the parties, I fear that my view has been proved correct.

It would be quite a mistake to suppose that in the political world the shortcomings were all on one side. Writers like myself, even men like Clement Blaine, had only too much justification for the contempt they poured upon the Conservative party. Selfishness, indolence, and the worship of the fossilized party spirit, had eaten into the very vitals of this section of the political world. The form of madness we called party loyalty made the best men we had willing to sacrifice national to personal interests. So-and-so must retain his place; loyalty to the party demands our support there and there. We must give it, whatever the consequences. The thing is not easy to understand; but it was so, and the strongest and best men of the day were culpable in this.

The farther my London experiences took me, the greater became the mass of my shattered illusions, broken ideals, and lost hopes. I remember my reflections during a brief visit I paid to my mother in Dorset, when I had spent an evening talking with my sister Lucy's husband. Doctor Woodthrop was a good fellow enough, and my sister seemed happier with him than one would have expected, remembering that it was rather the desire for freedom, than love, which gave her to him.

Woodthrop was popular, honest, steady-going; a fine, typical Englishman of the period, I suppose. In politics he was as his father before him, though the name had changed from Tory to Conservative. He talked politics for a week at election time. I would not say that he ever thought politics. I know that he had no knowledge, and less interest, where the affairs of his country were concerned, when I met and talked with him during that visit. The country's defences were actually of far less importance in his eyes than the country's cricket averages. As for either social reform interests in England, or the affairs of the Empire outside England, he simply could not be induced to give them even conversational breathing space. They were as exotic to my sister's husband as the ethics of esoteric Buddhism. But he was a thick and thin Conservative. To be sure, he would have said, nothing would cause him to waver in that.

As for myself, I defended the anti-national party in its repudiation of Imperial responsibility by arguing that the domestic needs of the country were too urgent and great to admit of any kind of expenditure, in money or energy, upon outside affairs. We did not recognize that internal reform and content were absolutely incompatible with shameless neglect of fundamental duties.

We were as sailors who should concentrate upon drying and cleaning their cabin, seeking at all hazards to make that comfortable, while refusing to spare time for the ship's pumps, though the water was rising in her hold from a score of external fissures. Our anti-nationalists and Little Englanders were little cabin-dwellers, shirkers from the open deck, careless of the ship's hull, and masts, and sails, busily bent only upon the enrichment of their particular divisions among her saloons.

In the early days of my engagement as assistant editor of _The Mass_, I think I may claim that I worked hard and with honest intent to make the paper represent truly what I conceived to be the good and helpful side of Socialism, of social progress and reform. But, if I am to be frank, I fear I must admit that within six months of my first engagement by Clement Blaine, I had ceased to entertain any sincere hope or ambition in this direction. And yet I remained assistant editor of _The Mass_.

The two statements doubtless redound to my discredit, and I have little excuse to offer. The work represented bread and butter for me, and that counted for something, of course. But I will admit that I think I could have found some more worthy employment, and should have done so but for Beatrice Blaine, my employer's daughter.

Time and time again my gorge rose at being obliged to play my part--very often, as a writer, the principal part--in what I knew to be an absolutely dishonest piece of journalism. Once I remember refusing to write a grossly malicious and untrue representation of certain actions of John Crondall's in the Transvaal. But I am ashamed to say I revised the proofs of the lying thing, and saw it to press, when a hireling of Clement Blaine's had prepared it. The man was a discharged servant of Crondall's, a convicted thief, as I afterwards learned, as well as a most abandoned liar. But his scurrilous fabrication, after publication in _The Mass_, was quoted at length by the _Daily Gazette_, and by the journals of that persuasion throughout the country.

I hardly know how to explain my relations with Blaine's daughter. I suppose the main point is she was beautiful, in the sense that certain cats are beautiful. I rarely heard of my Weybridge friends now, and never, directly, of Sylvia. My life seemed infinitely remote from that of the luxurious Wheeler _menage_. When I chanced to earn a few guineas with my pen outside the littered office of _The Mass_ (where the bulk of the editorial work fell to me), the money was almost invariably devoted to the entertainment of Beatrice. She was in several ways not unlike a kitten, or something feline, of larger growth: the panther, for example, in Balzac's thrilling story, "A Passion in the Desert."

I have never, before or since, met any woman so totally devoid of the moral sense as Beatrice. Yet she had a heart that was not bad; indeed it was a tender heart. But there was no moral sense to guide and balance her.