by George Moore
Saturday night is the night of dalliance in the Temple, and not unfrequently on Sunday morning, leaving a lady love, L’Estrange would go to church — top hat, umbrella, and prayer-book — and having a sense of humour, he was amused by the incongruity.
“I have left the accursed thing behind me,” he once said to Mr. Collier, and by such facetiousness had seriously annoyed the immense and most staid Mr. Collier.
A gaunt, hollow-eyed man was he, worn to a thread by diabetes; and to keep the disease in check, strictly dieted. His appearance was so suggestive of illness, that whenever he was present the conversation always turned on what he might eat and what he must refrain from touching. A large, gray-skinned man, handsome somewhat like a figure of Melancholy carved out of limestone. Since he had left Oxford, where he had taken a double first, he had failed — at the bar, in literature, and in love. It was said that he had once written an absurd letter asking a lady, who hoped to marry a duke, to go to South America with him. This letter had been his only adventure.
He was like a bookcase, a store of silent learning, with this difference — from the bookcase much may be extracted, from Mr. Edmund Collier nothing. He reminded you of a dry well, a London fog, an abandoned quarry, the desert of Sahara, and the North Pole; of all dull and lugubrious things he seemed the type. Nature had not afflicted him with passions nor any original thought, he therefore lived an exemplary existence, his mind fortified with exemplary opinions, doctrines, and old saws.
“I wonder if he is alive,” Mike had once said.
“Hé, hé, tout au plus,” Harding had replied, sardonically.
Collier was now learning Sanscrit and writing an article for the Quarterly. L’Estrange used, as he said, “to dig at him,” and after many exhausting efforts brought up interesting facts to the effect that he had just finished his treatise on the Greek participle, and was about to launch a volume of verses mainly addressed to children.
Collier had once possessed considerable property, but he had invested some in a newspaper of which he was editor, and he had squandered much in vague speculation. From the account he gave of his losses it was difficult to decide whether he had been moved by mercenary or charitable temptations. Now only the merest competence remained. He lived in a small garret where no solicitor had penetrated, studying uninteresting literatures, dimly interested in all that the world did not care for. He lived in the gloom of present failure, embittered by the memory of past successes, wearied with long illness, and therefore constrained to live like a hermit, never appearing anywhere except in Hall’s rooms.
Even Mr. Horace Baird, the recluse of the Temple, was sometimes met in Hall’s chambers. When he lifted his hat, the white locks growing amid the black, magnificent masses of hair caught the eye, and set the mind thinking on the brevity of youth, or wondering what ill-fortune had thus done the work of time. A passing glance told you that he was unsuccessful in his profession and unfortunate in his life, and if you spoke to him, an affected gaiety of manner confirmed the truth of the first impression. Near him sat a patriarchal barrister who had travelled in the colonies, had had political appointments, and in vague hopes of further political appointments professed advanced views, which he endeavoured to redeem with flavourless humour. There were also two young men who shared chambers and took in pupils. Fine tales their laundress told of the state of their sitting-room in the morning, the furniture thrown about, the table-cloth drenched in whiskey.
There was a young man whose hobby was dress and chorus girls. There was a young man whose hobby was pet birds; he talked about the beautiful South American bird he had just bought, and he asked you to come and see it taking its bath in the morning. Several persons were writing law-books, which their authors hoped would rival Chitty on Contracts.
The Temple, like a fatherland, never loses its influence over its children. He who has lived in the Temple will return to the Temple. All things are surrendered for the Temple. All distances are traversed to reach the Temple. The Temple is never forgotten. The briefless barrister, who left in despair and became Attorney-General of New South Wales, grows homesick, surrenders his position, and returns. The young squire wearies in his beautiful country house, and his heart is fixed in the dingy chambers, which he cannot relinquish, and for which wealth cannot compensate him. Even the poor clerks do not forget the Temple, and on Saturday afternoons they prowl about their old offices, and often give up lucrative employments. They are drawn by the Temple as by a magnet, and must live again in the shadow of the old inns. The laundresses’ daughters pass into wealthy domesticities, but sooner or later they return to drudge again in the Temple.
“How awfully jolly! — I do enjoy an evening like this,” said Mike, when the guests had departed.
At that moment a faint footstep was heard on the landing; Hall rushed to see who was there, and returned with two women. They explained that they wanted a drink. Mike pressed them to make themselves at home, and Hall opened another bottle.
“How comfortable you bachelors are here by yourselves,” said one.
“I should think we are just; no fear of either of us being such fools as to break up our home by getting married,” replied Mike.
Sometimes Mike and Hall returned early from the restaurant, and wrote from eight to eleven; then went out for a cup of coffee and a prowl, beating up the Strand for women. They stayed out smoking and talking at the corners till the streets were empty. Once they sent a couple of harlots to rouse a learned old gentleman who lived in Brick Court, and with bated breath listened from the floor beneath to the dialogue above.
But to continue this life, which he enjoyed so intensely that he had even lost his desire to gamble, Mike was forced to borrow. Knowing how such things are bruited about, Mike chose to go to a woman rather than to any of his men friends. Mrs. Byril lent him twenty pounds, wherefore he thought it necessary to lecture Hall for one whole evening on the immorality of ever accepting money from women; and he remained for weeks in idleness, smoking and drinking in restaurants and bar rooms, deaf to Frank’s many pleadings for “copy.” At last he roused a little, and feeling he could do nothing in London, proposed to come and stay with Frank in his cottage at Marlow, and there write the letters.
It was a bright October afternoon, Frank had gone to the station, and Lizzie, to appease the baby, had unbuttoned her dress. The little servant-girl who assisted with the house-work was busy in the kitchen; for the fatted calf had been killed — that is to say, a pair of soles, a steak, and a partridge were in course of preparation. Lizzie thought of the partridge. She had omitted soup from the dinner so that she might herself see to the fish; the steak, unless something quite unforeseen occurred, Annie would be able to manage, but the partridge! Lizzie determined she would find an excuse for leaving the room; Frank would not like it, but anything would be better than that the bird should appear in a raw or cindery condition, which would certainly be the case if she did not see to it. The jam-pudding was boiling and would be taken out of the pot at a fixed time. And with baby upon her breast, she watched Sally scrape and clean the fish and beat the steak; then, hearing the front door open, she buttoned her dress, put baby in his cot, and went to meet her visitor. Mike said he had never seen her looking so well; but in truth he thought she had grown fat and coarse; and in half an hour he had realized all the detail of their misfortune. He guessed that she had helped to cook the dinner, that the wine had come from the public-house, that they had given up their room to him, and were sleeping in some small cupboard-like place at the end of the passage.
Of the many various unpleasantnesses of married life which had crowded into his consciousness since he had been in the cottage, this impressed him the most. He went to sleep thinking of it, and when he sat down to write next morning (a little study had been arranged for him), it was the first thought that stirred in him.
“How fearfully unpleasant! — and after having been married for nearly two years! I could not do it. If I were married — even if I were to m
arry Lily, I should insist on having separate rooms. Even with separate rooms marriage is intolerable. How much better to see her sometimes, sigh for her from afar, and so preserve one’s ideal. Married! One day I should be sure to surprise her washing herself; and I know of no more degrading spectacle than that of a woman washing herself over a basin. Degas painted it once. I’d give anything to have that picture.”
But he could not identify Lily as forming part of that picture; his imagination did not help him, and he could only see her staid and gracious, outside all the gross materialism of life. He felt that Lily would never lose her dignity and loveliness, which in her were one, and in his mind she ever stood like a fair statue out of reach of the mud and the contumely of the common street; and ashamed, an unsuccessful iconoclast, he could not do otherwise than kneel and adore.
And when at the end of a week he received an invitation to a ball where he thought she would be, he must perforce obey, and go with tremulous heart. She was engaged in a quadrille that passed to and fro beneath blue tapestry curtains, and he noticed the spray of lilies of the valley in her bodice, so emblematic did they seem of her. Beneath the blue curtain she stood talking to her partner after the dance; and he did not go to speak to her, but remained looking. They only danced together twice; and that evening was realized by him in a strangely intense and durable perception of faint scent and fluent rhythm. The sense of her motion, of her frailness, lingered in his soul ever afterwards. And he remembered ever afterwards the moments he spent with her in a distant corner — the palm, the gold of the screen, the movement of her white skirt as she sat down. All was, as it were, bitten upon his soul — exquisite etchings! Even the pauses in the conversation were remembered; pauses full of mute affection; pauses full of thought unexpressed, falling in sharp chasms of silence. In such hours and in such pauses is the essence of our lives, the rest is adjunct and decoration. He watched, fearing each man that looked through the doorway might claim her for the next dance. His thought swept through his soul edgeways. Did he love her? Would he love her always? And he was conscious of the contrast his speech presented, to the tumult that raged and shrieked within him. Yet he couldn’t speak the word, and he cursed his little cowardice.
The ball came and went — a little year with its four seasons; and when in the hall he stood by her, helping her with her cloak (silk and gray fur, folding the delicate line of the neck), and became aware that even those last moments did not hold the word his soul was whispering, he cursed his cowardice, and, weary of himself, he turned down the dark street, feeling that he had lost his life.
“Now all is ended,” he thought, “I’m like a convict who attempted escape and has been brought back and yoked again in the sweaty and manacled gang; and I must continue in and bear with this life of gross sensuality and dirty journalism, ‘which I have borne and yet must bear’ — a wearisome repetition of what has been done and re-done a thousand times, ‘till death-like sleep shall steal on me,’ and I may hear some horrible lodging-house keeper ‘breathe o’er my dying brain a last monotony.’ And in various degradations my intellect will suffer, will decay; but with her refining and elevating influence, I might be a great writer. It is certain that the kernel of Art is aspiration for higher things; at all events, I should lead a cleanly life. If I were married to her I should not write this book. It certainly is a disgraceful book; and yet it amuses me.”
His thoughts paused, then an idea came, and with his pen he pursued it and the quickly rising flight which followed for a couple of hours.
“Why should I not write and ask her to marry me?” He smiled at the thought, but the thought was stronger than he, and he went to bed thinking of her, and he rose thinking of her; and the desire to write and tell her that he loved her and wanted her for wife persisted; he shook it off a dozen times, but it grew more and more poignant, until it settled on his heart, a lancinating pain which neither work nor pleasure could remove. Daily he grew feebler, losing at each effort some power of resistance. One day he took up the pen to write the irrevocable. But the reality of the ink and paper frightened him. “Will you be my wife?” seemed to him silly. Even in this crisis self-esteem lay uppermost in his mind; and he wrote many letters before he felt certain he had guarded himself against ridicule. At last he folded up a sheet upon which he had written— “Dearest Lily, you are the only woman I may love; will you allow me to love you for ever?” He put this into an envelope and directed it; nothing remained but to post it. The clock told him he could catch the post if he started away at once, but he drew back, frightened at the reality of the post-office, and decided to sleep over his letter.
The night was full of Lily — fair, chaste dreams, whence he rose as from a bath clothed in the samite of pure delight. While dressing he felt sure that marriage — marriage with Lily must be the realization of such dreams, and that it would be folly not to post his letter. Still, it might be as well to hear the opinion of one who had taken the important step, and after breakfast he drew Frank into conversation about Lizzie.
“I am quite happy,” he said. “Lizzie is a good wife, and I love her better to-day than the day I married her; but the price I paid for her was too high. Mount Rorke has behaved shamefully, and so has everybody but you. I never see any of the old lot now. Snowdown came once to dine about a year ago, but I never go anywhere where Lizzie is not asked. Mount Rorke has only written once since my marriage, and then it was to say he never wished to see me again. The next I heard was the announcement of his marriage.”
“So he has married again,” said Mike, looking at Frank, and then he thought— “So you who came from the top shall go to the bottom! Shall he who came from the bottom go to the top?”
“I have not heard yet of a child. I have tried to find out if one is expected; but what does it matter? — Mount Rorke wouldn’t give me a penny-piece to save me from starvation, and I should have time to starve a good many times before he goes off the hooks. I don’t mind telling you I’m about as hard up as a man possibly can be. I owe three quarters’ rent for my rooms in Temple Gardens, nearly two hundred pounds. The Inn is pressing me, and I can’t get three hundred for my furniture, and I’m sure I paid more than fifteen hundred for what there is there.”
“Why don’t you sell a share in the paper?”
“I have sold a small part of it, a very small part of it, a fifth, and there is a fellow called Thigh — you know the fellow, he has edited every stupid weekly that has appeared and disappeared for the last ten years — well, he has got hold of a mug, and by all accounts a real mug, one of the right sort, a Mr. Beacham Brown. Mr. Brown wants a paper, and has commissioned Thigh to buy him one. Thigh wants me to sell a half share in the Pilgrim for a thousand, but I shall have to give Thigh back four hundred; and I shall — that is to say, I shall if I agree to Thigh’s terms — become assistant editor at a salary of six pounds a week; two pounds a week of which I shall have to hand over to Thigh, who comes in as editor at a salary of ten pounds a week. All the staff will be engaged on similar conditions. Thigh is ‘working’ Beacham Brown beautifully — he won’t have a sixpence to bless himself with when Thigh has done with him.”
“And are you going to accept Thigh’s terms?”
“Not if I can possibly help it. If your articles send up the circulation and my new advertising agent can do the West End tradesmen for a few more advertisements, I shall stand off and wait for better terms. My new advertising agent is a wonder, the finest in Christendom. The other day a Bond Street jeweller who advertises with us came into my office. He said, ‘Sir, I have come to ask you if you circulate thirty thousand copies a week.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘perhaps not quite.’ ‘Then, sir,’ he replied, ‘you will please return me my money; I gave your agent my advertisement upon his implicit assurance that you circulated thirty thousand a week.’ I said there must be some mistake; Mr. Tomlinson happens to be in the office, if you’ll allow me I’ll ask him to step down-stairs. I touched the bell, and told the boy to ask Mr. Tomlinso
n to step into the office. ‘Mr. Tomlinson,’ I said, ‘Mr. Page says that he gave you his advertisement on our implicit assurance that we circulated thirty thousand copies weekly. Did you tell him that?’ Quite unabashed, Tomlinson answered, ‘I told Mr. Page that we had more than thirty thousand readers a week. We send to ten line regiments and five cavalry regiments — each regiment consists of, let us say, eight hundred. We send to every club in London, and each club has on an average a thousand members. Why, sir,’ exclaimed Tomlinson, turning angrily on the jeweller, ‘I might have said that we had a hundred thousand readers and I should have still been under the mark!’ The jeweller paid for his advertisement and went away crestfallen. Such a man as Tomlinson is the very bone and muscle of a society journal.”
“And the nerves too,” said Mike.
“Better than the contributors who want to write about the relation between art and morals.”
The young men laughed mightily.
“And what will you do,” said Mike, “if you don’t settle with Thigh?”
“Perhaps my man will be able to pick up another advertisement or two; perhaps your articles may send up the circulation. One thing is certain, things can’t go on as they are; at this rate I shall not be able to carry the paper on another six months.”
The conversation fell, and Mike remembered the letter in his side pocket; it lay just over his heart. Frank’s monetary difficulties had affected his matrimonial aspirations. “For if the paper ‘bursts up’ how shall I live, much less support a wife? Live! I shall always be able to live, but to support a wife is quite another matter. Perhaps Lily has some money. If she had five hundred a year I would marry her; but I don’t know if she has a penny. She must have some, a few thousands — enough to pay the first expenses. To get a house and get into the house would cost a thousand.” A cloud passed over his face. The householder, the payer of rates and taxes which the thought evoked, jarred and caricatured the ideal, the ideal Mike Fletcher, which in more or less consistent form was always present in his mind. He who had always received, would have to make presents. The engagement ring would cost five-and-twenty pounds, and where was he to get the money? The ring he would have to buy at once; and his entire fortune did not for the moment amount to ten pounds. Her money, if she had any, would pay for the honeymoon; and it was only right that a woman should pay for her honeymoon. They would go to Italy. She was Italy! At least she was his idea of Italy. Italy! he had never been there; he had always intended to keep Italy for his wedding tour. He was virgin of Italy. So much virginity he had at all events kept for his wife. She was the emblem and symbol of Italy.
