Philip looked forward to his return to London with impatience. During the
two months he spent at Blackstable Norah wrote to him frequently, long
letters in a bold, large hand, in which with cheerful humour she described
the little events of the daily round, the domestic troubles of her
landlady, rich food for laughter, the comic vexations of her
rehearsals--she was walking on in an important spectacle at one of the
London theatres--and her odd adventures with the publishers of novelettes.
Philip read a great deal, bathed, played tennis, and sailed. At the
beginning of October he settled down in London to work for the Second
Conjoint examination. He was eager to pass it, since that ended the
drudgery of the curriculum; after it was done with the student became an
out-patients' clerk, and was brought in contact with men and women as well
as with text-books. Philip saw Norah every day.
Lawson had been spending the summer at Poole, and had a number of sketches
to show of the harbour and of the beach. He had a couple of commissions
for portraits and proposed to stay in London till the bad light drove him
away. Hayward, in London too, intended to spend the winter abroad, but
remained week after week from sheer inability to make up his mind to go.
Hayward had run to fat during the last two or three years--it was five
years since Philip first met him in Heidelberg--and he was prematurely
bald. He was very sensitive about it and wore his hair long to conceal the
unsightly patch on the crown of his head. His only consolation was that
his brow was now very noble. His blue eyes had lost their colour; they had
a listless droop; and his mouth, losing the fulness of youth, was weak and
pale. He still talked vaguely of the things he was going to do in the
future, but with less conviction; and he was conscious that his friends no
longer believed in him: when he had drank two or three glasses of whiskey
he was inclined to be elegiac.
"I'm a failure," he murmured, "I'm unfit for the brutality of the struggle
of life. All I can do is to stand aside and let the vulgar throng hustle
by in their pursuit of the good things."
He gave you the impression that to fail was a more delicate, a more
exquisite thing, than to succeed. He insinuated that his aloofness was due
to distaste for all that was common and low. He talked beautifully of
Plato.
"I should have thought you'd got through with Plato by now," said Philip
impatiently.
"Would you?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.
He was not inclined to pursue the subject. He had discovered of late the
effective dignity of silence.
"I don't see the use of reading the same thing over and over again," said
Philip. "That's only a laborious form of idleness."
"But are you under the impression that you have so great a mind that you
can understand the most profound writer at a first reading?"
"I don't want to understand him, I'm not a critic. I'm not interested in
him for his sake but for mine."
"Why d'you read then?"
"Partly for pleasure, because it's a habit and I'm just as uncomfortable
if I don't read as if I don't smoke, and partly to know myself. When I
read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come
across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for ME,
and it becomes part of me; I've got out of the book all that's any use to
me, and I can't get anything more if I read it a dozen times. You see, it
seems to me, one's like a closed bud, and most of what one reads and does
has no effect at all; but there are certain things that have a peculiar
significance for one, and they open a petal; and the petals open one by
one; and at last the flower is there."
Philip was not satisfied with his metaphor, but he did not know how else
to explain a thing which he felt and yet was not clear about.
"You want to do things, you want to become things," said Hayward, with a
shrug of the shoulders. "It's so vulgar."
Philip knew Hayward very well by now. He was weak and vain, so vain that
you had to be on the watch constantly not to hurt his feelings; he mingled
idleness and idealism so that he could not separate them. At Lawson's
studio one day he met a journalist, who was charmed by his conversation,
and a week later the editor of a paper wrote to suggest that he should do
some criticism for him. For forty-eight hours Hayward lived in an agony of
indecision. He had talked of getting occupation of this sort so long that
he had not the face to refuse outright, but the thought of doing anything
filled him with panic. At last he declined the offer and breathed freely.
"It would have interfered with my work," he told Philip.
"What work?" asked Philip brutally.
"My inner life," he answered.
Then he went on to say beautiful things about Amiel, the professor of
Geneva, whose brilliancy promised achievement which was never fulfilled;
till at his death the reason of his failure and the excuse were at once
manifest in the minute, wonderful journal which was found among his
papers. Hayward smiled enigmatically.
But Hayward could still talk delightfully about books; his taste was
exquisite and his discrimination elegant; and he had a constant interest
in ideas, which made him an entertaining companion. They meant nothing to
him really, since they never had any effect on him; but he treated them as
he might have pieces of china in an auction-room, handling them with
pleasure in their shape and their glaze, pricing them in his mind; and
then, putting them back into their case, thought of them no more.
And it was Hayward who made a momentous discovery. One evening, after due
preparation, he took Philip and Lawson to a tavern situated in Beak
Street, remarkable not only in itself and for its history--it had memories
of eighteenth-century glories which excited the romantic imagination--but
for its snuff, which was the best in London, and above all for its punch.
Hayward led them into a large, long room, dingily magnificent, with huge
pictures on the walls of nude women: they were vast allegories of the
school of Haydon; but smoke, gas, and the London atmosphere had given them
a richness which made them look like old masters. The dark panelling, the
massive, tarnished gold of the cornice, the mahogany tables, gave the room
an air of sumptuous comfort, and the leather-covered seats along the wall
were soft and easy. There was a ram's head on a table opposite the door,
and this contained the celebrated snuff. They ordered punch. They drank
it. It was hot rum punch. The pen falters when it attempts to treat of the
excellence thereof; the sober vocabulary, the sparse epithet of this
narrative, are inadequate to the task; and pompous terms, jewelled, exotic
phrases rise to the excited fancy. It warmed the blood and cleared the
head; it filled the soul with well-being; it disposed the mind at once to
utter wit and to appreciate the wit of others; it had the vagueness of
music and the precision of mathematics. Only one of its qualities was
comparable to anything else: it had the warmth of a good heart; but its
taste, its smell, its feel, were not to be described in words. Charles
Lamb, with his infinite tact, attempting to, might have drawn charming
pictures of the life of his day; Lord Byron in a stanza of Don Juan,
aiming at the impossible, might have achieved the sublime; Oscar Wilde,
heaping jewels of Ispahan upon brocades of Byzantium, might have created
a troubling beauty. Considering it, the mind reeled under visions of the
feasts of Elagabalus; and the subtle harmonies of Debussy mingled with the
musty, fragrant romance of chests in which have been kept old clothes,
ruffs, hose, doublets, of a forgotten generation, and the wan odour of
lilies of the valley and the savour of Cheddar cheese.
Hayward discovered the tavern at which this priceless beverage was to be
obtained by meeting in the street a man called Macalister who had been at
Cambridge with him. He was a stockbroker and a philosopher. He was
accustomed to go to the tavern once a week; and soon Philip, Lawson, and
Hayward got into the habit of meeting there every Tuesday evening: change
of manners made it now little frequented, which was an advantage to
persons who took pleasure in conversation. Macalister was a big-boned
fellow, much too short for his width, with a large, fleshy face and a soft
voice. He was a student of Kant and judged everything from the standpoint
of pure reason. He was fond of expounding his doctrines. Philip listened
with excited interest. He had long come to the conclusion that nothing
amused him more than metaphysics, but he was not so sure of their efficacy
in the affairs of life. The neat little system which he had formed as the
result of his meditations at Blackstable had not been of conspicuous use
during his infatuation for Mildred. He could not be positive that reason
was much help in the conduct of life. It seemed to him that life lived
itself. He remembered very vividly the violence of the emotion which had
possessed him and his inability, as if he were tied down to the ground
with ropes, to react against it. He read many wise things in books, but he
could only judge from his own experience (he did not know whether he was
different from other people); he did not calculate the pros and cons of an
action, the benefits which must befall him if he did it, the harm which
might result from the omission; but his whole being was urged on
irresistibly. He did not act with a part of himself but altogether. The
power that possessed him seemed to have nothing to do with reason: all
that reason did was to point out the methods of obtaining what his whole
soul was striving for.
Macalister reminded him of the Categorical Imperative.
"Act so that every action of yours should be capable of becoming a
universal rule of action for all men."
"That seems to me perfect nonsense," said Philip.
"You're a bold man to say that of anything stated by Immanuel Kant,"
retorted Macalister.
"Why? Reverence for what somebody said is a stultifying quality: there's
a damned sight too much reverence in the world. Kant thought things not
because they were true, but because he was Kant."
"Well, what is your objection to the Categorical Imperative?" (They talked
as though the fate of empires were in the balance.)
"It suggests that one can choose one's course by an effort of will. And it
suggests that reason is the surest guide. Why should its dictates be any
better than those of passion? They're different. That's all."
"You seem to be a contented slave of your passions."
"A slave because I can't help myself, but not a contented one," laughed
Philip.
While he spoke he thought of that hot madness which had driven him in
pursuit of Mildred. He remembered how he had chafed against it and how he
had felt the degradation of it.
"Thank God, I'm free from all that now," he thought.
And yet even as he said it he was not quite sure whether he spoke
sincerely. When he was under the influence of passion he had felt a
singular vigour, and his mind had worked with unwonted force. He was more
alive, there was an excitement in sheer being, an eager vehemence of soul,
which made life now a trifle dull. For all the misery he had endured there
was a compensation in that sense of rushing, overwhelming existence.
But Philip's unlucky words engaged him in a discussion on the freedom of
the will, and Macalister, with his well-stored memory, brought out
argument after argument. He had a mind that delighted in dialectics, and
he forced Philip to contradict himself; he pushed him into corners from
which he could only escape by damaging concessions; he tripped him up with
logic and battered him with authorities.
At last Philip said:
"Well, I can't say anything about other people. I can only speak for
myself. The illusion of free will is so strong in my mind that I can't get
away from it, but I believe it is only an illusion. But it is an illusion
which is one of the strongest motives of my actions. Before I do anything
I feel that I have choice, and that influences what I do; but afterwards,
when the thing is done, I believe that it was inevitable from all
eternity."
"What do you deduce from that?" asked Hayward.
"Why, merely the futility of regret. It's no good crying over spilt milk,
because all the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it."
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