II
“YOU ARE NOT BY ANY
CHANCE A FOOL, MY SON?”
The sun of St. John’s Wood reddened the walls of a substantial sitting room, and warmed the distracted faces of a family group, sitting in a rather huddled knot, deep in conversation. The birds in the trees outside the open windows sang the sparrow-songs which give the rows of private gardens in this northwest district their rustic sweetness. The shadow of “That Other Man” lay across the ugly lethargic city, but in the beautiful recesses of St. John’s Wood you could believe yourself in the Victorian middleclass paradise, where Mr. Gladstone, big-nosed and big-collared, chopped down trees for longevity, or where the towers of the Crystal Palace looked down upon crinolined throngs moving between the rhododendrons, and stopping to admire the swans upon the glassy lakes.
Could anyone have entered this apartment unperceived, and have stood there observing this agitated group, he would have heard from time to time, phrases in French escaping it, such as à la bonne heure, or par exemple, or mon pauvre petit, mon pauvre petit. This latter phrase in a faint voice fell from the lips of the dominant figure, a very old lady, reminiscent of an ancestral miniature, in her faded dignity. A period costume, of the severest black with the inevitable cameo, was too severe to be English. The pauvre petit of the above-mentioned exclamation was René Harding, who, crouching upon a low boat-like stool at the feet of the aged woman, looked unusually the reverse of petit. But she was his mother: and the intrusion of French phrases in the talk of these three people, of mother, son, and daughter, had a simple explanation. Mrs. Harding senior was French, which accounted also for the Gallic Christian name of her son, as it did for many other things about Professor René Harding. René’s sister Mary sat close up against Mrs. Harding, on the right-hand side. She was in her early forties, and more obviously handsome, with her well-cut nose and broad forehead, than her brother with his hair-sculptured, gothic mask.
Biologically incomplete, the missing male principle of this group was to be found in effigy upon the wall behind René. A large photograph hanging there, displayed the massive Nordic handsomeness, the solid brow, the clear Germanic of Mr. Harding senior, plainly related to the particular good looks of Mary Harding. On the other hand, the dark eyes and hair testified to the Latin strain, and a certain carriage of the head, and noble severity in Mary’s glance, belonged to the older civilizations, which her mother represented.
At his mother’s feet, René, like a suppliant, crouched gazing bleakly up into her face. His fingers entangled themselves in hers, and sometimes with both hands he would crush her small brown fists. His sister was pressed so close against their mother, that she seemed to share the prerogatives of motherhood, and it was usually four eyes which gazed back at his, and Mary visibly shared the distress of the greatly shocked parent.
“I have shut the door behind me,” he said. “There is no going back upon what I have said. I have been specific.The Council have been informed with a brutal clarity what my mind has become like. It is no longer an instrument which can be used in the way that my position requires that it should be. I am no longer able to teach a story of the world which they would find acceptable: they would not let me teach my students the things which I now know, so I have had to tell them that there is no longer anything that I can teach. To take one instance only, my position in the matter of economics would alone be more than sufficient to disqualify me. No, the die, I fear, is cast, I have to find other employment. That would be very difficult in England. So …”
There was a long silence, during which a few tears ran down the cheeks of René’s mother, who was sitting in a motionless rigor, staring into the distance as though she saw another René over the shoulder of her son; and Mary’s head was turned away with a grimace of despair.
René broke the silence shrilly, as if it frightened him; as though it had been a prophetess and not a mother that he had come to consult, and the processes of whose vaticination he was no longer able to bear.
“Please do not condemn me before you have heard me. I know that with my professorship and my budding notoriety as an author I am someone to whom my family looks … looks … for honour and not dishonour. I know that I have to give up part of myself to Mother, to sisters, to wife. I am a responsible man. There has been no levity in the action I have taken. I took it secretly because there can be no consultation with others in a matter of conscience. But I did nevertheless consult every one of you in my private mind. I heard what you had to say, for I knew what your feelings must be: I did not consult only my own ego, and take my orders from that.”
“I know you would not do that, my poor René.” His mother’s voice quavered hoarsely.
“I know that, too, René,” his sister echoed falteringly.
“My distress has been as great as anyone else’s can be. It has been terrible for me. I do not drop my career down the drain with as light a heart as it would seem, to see me do it. Of course not. Men are not made that way. They say goodbye to common ambition with horror. They become nobodies as if they were dying.”
“Do not speak like that,” his mother said.
“No, I feel just like you about myself. I consider myself mad, as you do. I am in two halves, one half of which is you.”
Mary began to sob, wiping her eyes quickly.
“I have had a first-rate job, as good as a man of my mental habits can have; my position in the world has been excellent; I shall never have as good a one again. These things have to be built up from early years, they cannot be remade once lost. I see with remarkable clarity what going to a colony must mean.
When I get to Canada I may have to teach Algebra or … oh yes, or history in an elementary school. Or of course I may prefer to earn my living as a waiter in some large hotel.”
He produced the cable he had received that morning.
“Here is a message from a colleague in Winnipeg. He is an Englishman who went out there recently. He is honest and reliable. The chances of my obtaining any satisfactory work in Canada are extremely slender.”
“Surely then …”
But René stopped his sister, saying, “Let me finish, Mary. Just a few words more. Let me finish the painting of my black picture. Because of the success of my book I am fairly widely known. It was reviewed, for instance, everywhere in Canada and the States. Over there it would be quite obvious to all its readers why I had resigned my post. As far as an academic appointment is concerned this is fatal. Colleges are very conventional places. It is no part of the educator’s equipment to have ‘ideas.’ But such ideas as mine are naturally anathema. Nowhere is unorthodoxy in politics and economics respectable: my kind of unorthodoxy, however, is especially revolting, to all those in a ‘position of trust.’ You see, I think in a manner in which one is not allowed to think. So I become an outsider, almost a pariah.”
He strained his arms up into the air above his head, and rotated upon his hips as if about to perform some eccentric dance. Then he continued, “You may ask, cannot I think differently? Why can I not purge myself of this order of thinking? Well, of course there are some things that everyone thinks which hot irons could not burn out of them. It is the circumstances of the time in which we live which have made it impossible for me to mistake my road: there have been signposts or rather lurid beacons all the way along it, leading to only one end, to one conclusion. How anyone, as historically informed as I am, can come to any very different conclusions from my own I find it hard to understand. They must have blind eyes for all the flaming signs. But really there is no more to say, I have resigned my professorship. On Monday I am going to the offices of the steamship company.”
“The picture you have painted certainly is black,” said Mary.
“En effet, il est bien noir,” the mother assented.
“The worst of it is” — and a smile it had had vanished from Mary’s face — “that it does not seem to be blacker than life. That is the worst of it.”
“Ma foi, oui. On ne pour
rait pas le depeindre autrement que noir. ”
The two women looked at one another. Then Mary spoke.
“What does Hester think about it?”
René felt the four eyes bracketed upon him and squinted a little as he answered, “She knows nothing. I have told her nothing, so far.”
There was a sudden relaxation. Mary smiled as she said, “Your wife is in ignorance. Was it your idea to leave Hester out of your calculations?”
René laughed very softly, his ho-ho laugh. “Hardly that,” he told her. “One cannot leave a wife out of one’s calculations.”
The mother smiled, and as she did so the furrows and bony accents of her face arranged themselves almost with a click in what was a miniature of his own characteristic mask.
“Les femmes, ça se trouve quelquepart, n’est-ce pas, avec les valises et les parapluies. ”
René ho-ho-ho’ed placidly. “Mais écoute, ma femme a moi n’est pas si commode.” When René and his mother spoke to one another in French their resemblance was accentuated.
“You think Hester may disagree with what you propose to do?” Mary asked him.
“Could be,” he rapped, looking away.
The relaxation was affirmed. Mary drew away a little from her mother.
“Naturally” — René then proceeded with great firmness — “I shall tell Essie what I propose to do before I go to the offices of the steamship company. I have no doubt that she will reproach me. But nothing that Essie says will cause me to change my plans.
In a case of this kind there is only one thing to do.”
The easier atmosphere was at an end. Mary looked anxiously towards her mother and drew closer to her again.
“I know I shall be distressing Hester a great deal. I realize all that side of it fully. She is a very conventional woman. She may even leave me.”
“René, will you not think this over, for our sake,” the old lady said in a trembling voice.
“I’m going to say something that will annoy you I’m afraid.” Mary leant towards him. “You know, René, that Mother and I will back you up if it comes to a showdown. It is because you know that, that I hope you will allow me to say what has been passing through my mind. As you were speaking it occurred to me that you might have allowed yourself to be influenced by the success of your book. Perhaps — and I only make this suggestion at the risk of seeming tiresome — but were you not perhaps ébloui, dazzled, by all the praise of what you have written. I’m not accusing you of vanity; please do not think that I mean that. But public applause might — excuse me if I am talking nonsense — even in the case of the strongest mind, and yours is a very firm mind, René, I know that, might play tricks with the firmest judgment. There is an intoxication ...”
“No.” René shook his head.
“I noticed,” she went on quickly, “in what you said just now that there was no mention of the possibility of making money by writing books. You spoke of being a waiter in a hotel, of doing all kinds of degrading things, but never of doing the obvious thing: that is, writing for your living.”
“No, but I should have mentioned that, of course. I was not concealing that possibility.” And he smiled at her obliquely.
“No, but there is always that.You could, I suppose, to judge by the success of your book, always make a living of some sort by writing. There is always that, so do not let us talk about hotel waiters and teaching Algebra in a secondary school. That obscures the issue. Surely the two ways of life which confront one another are, first, your being a professor, and secondly, your writing books.
Those are the two alternatives, are they not? Don’t be cross with me, I only want to make clear in my own mind what is occurring.
I have been very shocked by what you have said. We all admire you very much, and followed your academic career with great pride, mother and I. And all of us, of course. We don’t want you to make a mistake, a great mistake.”
“Because I have been intoxicated by the reception of my book?” René enquired gravely. “You mean that? That is what you mean, is it not?”
“Not quite that,” she protested. “That would be suggesting that you were vain indeed. No, I do not mean that you are chucking up your professorship for that reason, I can see that you are very distressed about something. All I mean is that if it were not for that other possibility of making a living in some other way, tempting you in the background, would you take this step with all that it signifies of ... of, well, of ruin?”
There was a sofa at René’s back and he transferred himself to that, sitting with his elbows upon his knees with his fingers stuck into his thick hair.
“You are quite wrong, Mary, about the part the author’s vanity plays in this business. That is not your fault and I know in working it out the way you have, it was in all kindness. It was because you wanted to help me that you did your bit of psychoanalysis on me. What you have not been able to allow for has been something that you could not be expected to understand.You see, I have been driven into this situation, I have not pushed myself into it or allowed myself to be led into it, lured there by ambition. Ambition plays no part in it at all.” He jumped down into the low boat-like seat before his mother’s knees.
“I am sorry to have turned out such a ‘problem child’ after all.”
There was silence. A great discouragement had set in; it was almost as if the two women had played their last card. They shrank together into a collective huddle again, and Mary looked away out of the farther window where the night was setting in, a redness upon the walls having turned into a livid grey, and Mr.
Harding senior seeming to have become a little forbidding in his faded brown frame.
The old lady evidently experienced great difficulty in finding any words at all. But at last she said, tremulous and slow, “There is nothing I can say.You know all the hopes we had placed in you; but what is the use of saying that. It is of course a reproach, and the last thing I wish to do is to reproach you. We will do all we can, your sisters and I, to make things a little easier, to the extent of our ability.”
“I know you will,” he muttered.
“What you said about a loan is a very difficult matter, René. In fact, I have hardly any available funds. Outside of my annuity, what have I? Let me see, I might be able to scrape together, oh, a matter of five hundred pounds. Of what use would that be to you?”
Mary at this point burst into tears, René sprang up and walked quickly about hither and thither exclaiming, “This is a nice way of behaving. I propose to rob my mother of her last savings. I grieve my sister.”
“Don’t, please, René.” His sister practically shouted through her tears.
“Next it will be Hester. Next it will be Hester!”
The telephone rang; he snatched it up and shouted,
“What is it, what is it?”
“Taxi! Taxi!”
He banged the receiver down and came back to the higher of the two seats. There he sat with his legs stuck out, looking upward in a typical lecturer’s position, arranging what he wanted to say.The two women watched him sorrowfully. Then he looked down at them.
“When one thinks these things out for oneself,” he began, “that is one thing. It is quite another thing when one begins to share one’s thoughts with other people. Complexities make their appearance immediately. I thought this all out for myself without consultation with anybody.”
“You certainly did,” Mary agreed. “There is no doubt about that.”
“Just as it would be impossible to write Paradise Lost or Hamlet, collectively, so it is impossible to plan some major change in the individual life, collectively.”
“Most people,” Mary objected, “do not lock themselves up at such a juncture. They talk it over with others, don’t they?”
“Most people think collectively, I agree. But they do not usually think very clearly. They have no pretensions to being individuals. They are a collective individual, a group of some sort.”
“Are you
not a group?” his sister asked, smiling.
“I was a group, a university. But when I wished, or when I felt compelled to cease to be that, I had to isolate myself, of course, and think the matter out by myself.”
“But ...”
“But there was the domestic group, that is what you were about to say, Mary. I know. But I had to think the matter out in isolation from that. For that group would merely have pushed me back into the other group. The morals of all groups are the same.
If you wish to act upon a heroic moral plane ...”
“Oh, là là!” Mary broke in with an unexpected boisterousness.
The Professor smiled at the sisterly heckle.
“I was not using the word ‘heroic’ with any sentimental accent. Only to define. The same applies to the word moral. You cannot help choosing the moral, rather than its opposite. I am afraid that I derive none of the average satisfactions from heroic moral action. I am a hero malgré moi.”
Self Condemned Page 4
