by George Moore
HUGH MONFERT
HENRIETTA MARR
SARAH GWYNN
ADVERTISEMENT
FOR THE UNFOLDING of my subject more than one story was needed; but the temperaments of the people in the stories are so closely related that I look upon this book as a single narrative divided into five chapters; and the book’s unity having been pointed out, it only remains for me to tell that the stories are all new with the exception of ten or a dozen pages borrowed from Celibates, a book written before I had reached my natural limits of literary expression, and that I found myself in the beginning of 1920 obliged to abandon any faintest hope I may have had of rewriting Celibates for the task of filling the gap with a new work entitled In Single Strictness. A gap in what rank? the reader asks, and I answer: In the books selected by me for the library edition which Mr. Horace Liveright is preparing, the first five narratives to be published this year. Mr. Liveright began by asking for twenty-five books, but I withstood him, saying that no author had more than twenty in him; and that gratitude to my American readers for their approval of my work when the English librarians stood aloof forbade the inclusion of books unworthy of their notice. But is there no other unworthy book among those I have agreed to publish? I asked myself. At the moment I was busy correcting the proofs of In Single Strictness and it was not till I had finished with them that I opened Impressons and Opinions, a book that I thought would pass, as the French say, like a letter in the post; but I turned against it as I had against Celibates, and fell to thinking like Marius among the ruins of Carthage. At last a book of talks began to shape itself in my mind. Another big job of work, I said, six or eight months at least, for little can be saved from Impressions and Opinions; and forthright I began to consider A Parley as a possible title for the new book, else Parleys, Soliloquies and Meditations, without however, being able to come to a decision. Time will sift out the title better than I can, I said, and laid the importunate question aside.
G. M.
WILFRID HOLMES
WILFRID HOLMES WAS by many years younger than his brothers and sisters, all of whom were making their way in the world, the girls marrying and the boys doing well in different professions; the Army had claimed one, the Law another, and as a Civil Servant the third was helping to run the Empire in India.
The Holmes were tall men with long faces and small eyes. Wilfrid, the last, was larger-framed, more heavily built than his brothers; his long, oval face was fuller, and in him the family eyes were not less intelligent than his brothers’ eyes, but weaker, announcing an indolence of mind and body so inveterate that he had just grown up in it without struggle, passing from childhood into boyhood and from boyhood into manhood clinging to the widow’s skirts. Mrs. Holmes’s husband having died when Wilfrid was a small child, Wilfrid had known a father’s influence and authority only derivatively through his eldest brother, whom he dreaded, for every time Hector returned to pay his mother a visit at Bushfield, the family place, the question was asked: What is Wilfrid going to do with himself? Has he not yet decided on a profession?
Mrs. Holmes tried to soften criticisms of her spoilt child with stories of Wilfrid’s different aspirations, and she told these with a gentle humour. Wilfrid, she said, is thinking of entering the Consular Service, and if you could get a letter from your old friend — But, said the brother, who was staying at Bushfleld at the moment, will Wilfrid try to pass the examination, for there is one? Mrs. Holmes parried the question, and when Hector returned six months or a year later and Wilfrid’s future was again discussed, she told with the same gentle humour that he was now thinking of astronomy as a profession, and had gone so far as to purchase a telescope. Every uncloudy night, she said, he has it out on the steps; Jupiter’s Satellites can be seen through it, and Saturn’s Ring. He knows the names of most of the stars, and speaks of the different ascensions. But, mother, what you tell me is mere star-gazing, otherwise idleness. Modern astronomy is little more than mathematics, and Wilfrid never showed any interest in mathematics at school, nor in classical studies, nor in games. Mrs. Holmes defended her yoe lamb, and spoke of a cricketing suit she had bought for Wilfrid — bats and wickets, shoes and gloves. Oh, he may have liked all these things, Hector answered, but not the game itself! And now that he has left school and come here to live with you, has he taken to riding or shooting? When you go to London does he attend dancing classes? You would like to know, Hector, if he wastes his time with young women? I am glad to say he does not.
A man — It was on Hector’s lips to say that a man who is indifferent to women is indifferent to all things, but he felt that words were unavailing and that Wilfrid would have to follow the course of his life like another. And to make his last days at home a pleasant thought for his mother — Hector was returning to India — he spoke kindly to Wilfrid, saying: — I shall always remember, Wilfrid, your showing me your telescope. In the train (his mother and brother were accompanying him to Portsmouth) he spoke of the canals in Mars, his words awakening certain qualms of conscience in him lest they should influence Wilfrid to worry his mother to buy him another telescope; but that night at the Theatre Royal, Portsmouth, one of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettes swept the firmament for ever from his mind, and his last words to Hector, whom he accompanied on board, were: I think I shall sell that telescope and buy a flute, words that darkened Hector’s face. The cry: — All ashore, however, enabled Wilfrid to escape without rebuke, and all that day and the next and till the end of the week Wilfrid could talk of nothing but flutes, and many and long were the walks that he and his mother took from instrument-maker to instrument-maker, Wilfrid never satisfied, till at last she said: — Now, Wilfrid, you must make up your mind what flute you want. And it was after the purchase of two flutes and a piccolo that mother and son returned to Bushfield Park, Wilfrid with the intention of devoting his life to musical composition.
As there was no teacher in the neighbourhood of whom he approved, he sent to London for the score of the opera he had heard at Portsmouth, and applied himself to it with an assiduity that seemed to his mother to betoken a new Wilfrid. He knew the airs of Patience, and by comparing the notes that his flute uttered with those upon paper he learnt their values, approximately, as he confessed to his mother one day on her asking him if he was reading or playing by ear. I can read at sight now, mother, for I have discovered that it makes a great deal of difference if the note is black or white. Yes, Wilfrid, it does; but you are giving yourself a great deal of trouble trying to learn by yourself what anybody could teach you in a few weeks. She spoke to him of her old governess, whom she would like to ask to Bushfield for her holidays. A music-master, he said, could teach him better than a woman; all the same, he learnt from Miss McCabe how to play the piano a little; and he continued his studies afterwards in London with an ancient bandmaster selected by himself, reaching within a year the stage of being able to write down a tune when it was dictated to him, without asking that it should be repeated unduly — three or four times were enough, if it was repeated slowly, and if he gave his ear,-which was a slow one, wholly to the capture of it. His mother allowed him three pounds a week, one of which went to pay for his music lessons; and when his mother climbed the five flights that led to him one morning between ten and eleven (Wilfrid was rarely able to persuade himself out of the bedclothes before eleven) he came to the door, in answer to her repeated knocking, in his shirt and trousers, asking in an aggrieved tone who was there. Oh, mother, I didn’t know it was you! he said, recognising her voice. Come in quickly, for I am making my cocoa, and if the milk boils over it will be spoilt. And the milk happening to boil over during his absence at the door, Mrs. Holmes expressed her regret. You will take an hour to dress yourself. Let me go and fetch the milk for you. It was my fault. She often spoke of this visit; afterwards, mildly amused at his solicitude for his cocoa, imitating very well the tone of his voice when he said, I must go at once to fetch some more milk. And she told how she had sat watching Wilfrid stirring his cocoa, hearin
g him say that it took a long time to find out when the cocoa was properly mixed, and that it was hardly less difficult to make tea. To make tea properly, he said, the water has to be really boiling. And he told a long story of what he had suffered from a charwoman, who not only forgot to pour his tea into a second teapot within two minutes (anything over two minutes made the tea worthless, undrinkable), but left it on the hob, to keep it ‘ot, she said; and when she did remember to put it into the second teapot she forgot to heat the pot first, and hotted it up upon the hob. I will make your tea for you in the future when you leave this garret and return with me to Bushfield, the mother answered. But she could not; persuade her son to leave his garret. He was still attached to music, and had composed a number of airs which he played to her on his flute whenever she called to see him. She listened to him patiently, like a mother, and after each tune she said: — I like that; that’s very pretty, a very pretty tune indeed, sometimes venturing upon a criticism: — But is not the last tune some what like the first that you played to me? Wilfrid played the two tunes over again and thought his mother fastidious, and she restrained herself always from saying: — But, Wilfrid, the top line is not enough? Modern music is in the harmony.
Harmony was a word that rarely came into Wilfrid’s talk about music, he being of the opinion that, whereas there were many harmonists, there were few melodists. Mrs. Holmes consulted the music-master, from whom she learnt that Wilfrid’s ear was slow; he could not hear simultaneously the different parts of a fugue, and on being pressed still further, the bandmaster gave it as his opinion that Wilfrid should never look upon music as anything more than a hobby, a verdict that Mrs. Holmes received without surprise, the bandmaster’s opinion having long been her opinion. But she loved her son too dearly to utter a word of discouragement. Instead she made provision for him in her will, confiding him to the care of her younger sister, who, when Wilfrid’s mother passed away, did not forget to send her nephew a cheque for fifty pounds each half-year. And upon this money Wilfrid lived his lonely life, trying always to make both ends meet, living aloof, avoiding his relations instinctively. If one of these called, Wilfrid welcomed him, begged of him to stay to tea; and after tea he accompanied his relative, sometimes a brother, sometimes a cousin, to the station, and parted from him with such a show of courtesy and friendliness that he was surprised that Wilfrid did not return to supper, as he had promised that he would, next Sunday.
But months, sometimes years, passed without their seeing him, and again somebody would go forth and return with the truant from family life, who would again disappear, leaving them to their gentle disputations round the fire, seeking reasons for Wilfrid’s aloofness, the true reason never spoken, everybody keeping it hidden away almost from himself. To speak it, or even to allow it a place in their thoughts, was to impugn their own conduct towards Wilfrid, to set themselves above him, to make it plain to him that he was their inferior. Whosoever cannot get his living dreads his relations, dreads their eyes and words, and of all their coming to bring him back to supper, for as they pass out of the squalor of his neighbourhood into fashionable London the windows and doorways begin to reproach him, and he detects a sneer in the eyes of the servant who opens the door to him. The pictures on the walls, the carpets under his feet, the food he eats, the wine he drinks, remind him of his inferiority; and one night on returning from Hampstead Wilfrid said, Never again will they walk me round their drawing-rooms, showing off their wealth! and he lay awake, attributing motives, and asking himself why they troubled to come to see him and to pester him with invitations. The answer to his questions came: — That they may better discuss me and pity me and gloat over my property. But I never apply to them for help. Perhaps if I did they would not be so eager to see me. In these thoughts he lay awake, passing into sleep towards morning, awakening out of sleep a happier man than when he lay down, for about him was the familiar room in which he read and wrote and played his flute.
As soon as he was out of bed his first task was the brushing of his clothes. A button to which he attached his braces hung by a single thread, but there was no need for Wilfrid to ask the landlady’s help — he could sew on a button. He could clean his boots, too, and very often did, for there were other lodgers besides him in the house in which he lived, and the landlady and her drudge could not attend upon them all. If the relations of overnight could see me now! Wilfrid said to himself as he brushed. I wish they could, for they would see that I can do many things that they cannot. If I cannot get my own living, I can at least get my own breakfast. I can light a fire, and not one of them would know how to do that. Whereupon he opened the oven (the grate was an old one, with convenient hobs), took out some dry sticks, and very soon a fire was blazing. And, still thinking of his relations, he went to the cupboard, cut his bacon, melted the butter in the pan before dropping in the eggs; and before the landlady knocked to ask if she might do his room Wilfrid had finished his breakfast and was nearly dressed. Yes, Mrs. Plowden, he answered, you can come in; I have only to tie my neck-tie and slip on my coat. And they fell to talking of the present prices of sausages, steak, and mutton chops. I think I shall treat myself to-day, Mrs. Plowden, to a little custard pudding. If you are busy with your music to-day, Mr. Holmes, I shall be glad to make your pudding for you, an offer which Wilfrid accepted, though he would have preferred to make his own pudding and cook it in his own room. But he knew that a lodger such as he was must become a friend of the landlady, and that he could do this by accepting and rendering services, by courtesy and by conversation; for Mrs. Plowden wearied of her servant’s talk, which was always, she confided to Wilfrid, about men, and was glad to come upstairs, to listen, as she put it, to a ‘toon’ on the flute.
He was, however, careful not to enter into conversation with Emma, for he was aware that in Mrs. Plowden’s eyes he was a big, fine-looking man; and he had also learnt by experience that women are jealous, and that the pleasure Mrs. Plowden took in coming upstairs for little private talks with him would be embittered if more than three words at a time were exchanged between him and Emma, and of all if he were to entertain Emma to an air on the flute; so he never played to her, and, by reticence, tact, and courtesy, and by never playing the flute late at night or when other lodgers were in the house, he had managed to obtain a position in No. 31 Goldhawk Road, Shepherd’s Bush, that seemed unassailable. But tact and reticence and courtesy give way sometimes under sudden stress of circumstance, and one day Wilfrid discovered the score of a French operette that he had sought vainly for years, in a rag-and-bone shop, and, bringing it home, he spent a great part of the night playing it over softly, so softly that he believed no one could hear him. In this he was mistaken, however, for next morning the landlady, when she came to do his room, wore a look of weariness upon her face, and not many words were exchanged between them before she told him that his room would be wanted at the end of the week.
Wilfrid’s courtesy and his promise not to play again after twelve o’clock, and never to play, morning or evening, till the lady on the drawing-room floor had left the house, softened Mrs. Plowden’s resolution. You see, Mrs. Plowden, I had been trying for years to get the score of Hervé’s La Reine de Navarre, and came upon it by chance, in an old rag-and-bone shop, the only score in existence, perhaps, certainly one of the very few, for the opera was only played three times — it was a complete failure in Paris. I have been seeking it for years. I shouldn’t have played last night, I know, but, Mrs. Plowden, I assure you I played so softly that I did not think anyone in the house could have heard. I will call upon the lady on the drawing-room floor, and if you would not like me to do that, I will apologise to her when I meet her on the stairs. I can assure her that, so far as I am concerned, she will never know another troubled night.
Mrs. Plowden’s face darkened, and as she tossed the bedclothes hither and thither she muttered that she was not sure that the drawing-room floor piano was not much more noisy in the house than Mr. Holmes’s flute, words that encourag
ed Wilfrid to believe that he had only to propitiate the lady on the drawing-room floor. And, meeting her on the staircase some five minutes after his interview with Mrs. Plowden, he told her how sorry he was his flute-playing had disturbed her rest, speaking with such courtesy that she regretted having made the complaint, and to make amends for it she invited him to her piano, saying that she would like to run through the score with him. Wilfrid accepted her invitation, and, when the slight interest of La Reine de Navarre was exhausted, their talk turned on composition, Wilfrid admitting that he had been engaged on an opera for some time. The lady urged him to run upstairs and fetch it, saying that it would interest her to play the accompaniments. But they are not written, he answered, only the top line.
For a moment this seemed a serious difficulty, but the lady offered to improvise; and Wilfrid came in in such excellent time and tune that she began to foresee a possible combination — Wilfrid supplying the melodies and she the accompaniments, in this way writing an opera between them, a hope that might have been fulfilled had not an unexpected and cruel accident caused Wilfrid to seek another lodging, and one as far as possible from Shepherd’s Bush. He went to Notting Hill overcome with shame, unable to understand how it was that Mrs. Plowden had declined to accept his word or Edith’s, her-daughter, who had returned to Shepherd’s Bush unexpectedly. He had intended to ask Mrs. Plowden for another blanket, but had forgotten to do so (the slight misunderstanding that had occurred between him and Mrs. Plowden on account of his flute had put everything else out of his mind), and, finding sleep impossible, he had bethought himself of a blanket from the spare room, never dreaming that Miss Plowden had returned home. To make matters worse it so happened that Mrs. Plowden was pressing her daughter to tell the whole story of her betrayal when Wilfrid appeared in his nightshirt on the threshold.
