WE are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable and
only to be approached by the statistician or the poet. This story
deals with gentlefolk, or with those who are obliged to pretend
that they are gentlefolk.
The boy, Leonard Bast, stood at the extreme verge of gentility.
He was not in the abyss, but he could see it, and at times people
whom he knew had dropped in, and counted no more. He knew that he
was poor, and would admit it; he would have died sooner than
confess any inferiority to the rich. This may be splendid of him.
But he was inferior to most rich people, there is not the least
doubt of it. He was not as courteous as the average rich man, nor
as intelligent, nor as healthy, nor as lovable. His mind and his
body had been alike underfed, because he was poor, and because he
was modern they were always craving better food. Had he lived
some centuries ago, in the brightly coloured civilisations of the
past, he would have had a definite status, his rank and his
income would have corresponded. But in his day the angel of
Democracy had arisen, enshadowing the classes with leathern
wings, and proclaiming, "All men are equal--all men, that is to
say, who possess umbrellas," and so he was obliged to assert
gentility, lest he slip into the abyss where nothing counts, and
the statements of Democracy are inaudible.
As he walked away from Wickham Place, his first care was to prove
that he was as good as the Miss Schlegels. Obscurely wounded in
his pride, he tried to wound them in return. They were probably
not ladies. Would real ladies have asked him to tea? They were
certainly ill-natured and cold. At each step his feeling of
superiority increased. Would a real lady have talked about
stealing an umbrella? Perhaps they were thieves after all, and if
he had gone into the house they would have clapped a chloroformed
handkerchief over his face. He walked on complacently as far as
the Houses of Parliament. There an empty stomach asserted itself,
and told him that he was a fool.
"Evening, Mr. Bast."
"Evening, Mr. Dealtry."
"Nice evening."
"Evening."
Mr. Dealtry, a fellow clerk, passed on, and Leonard stood
wondering whether he would take the tram as far as a penny would
take him, or whether he would walk. He decided to walk--it is no
good giving in, and he had spent money enough at Queen's Hall--
and he walked over Westminster Bridge, in front of St. Thomas's
Hospital, and through the immense tunnel that passes under the
South-Western main line at Vauxhall. In the tunnel he paused and
listened to the roar of the trains. A sharp pain darted through
his head, and he was conscious of the exact form of his eye
sockets. He pushed on for another mile, and did not slacken speed
until he stood at the entrance of a road called Camelia Road
which was at present his home.
Here he stopped again, and glanced suspiciously to right and
left, like a rabbit that is going to bolt into its hole. A block
of flats, constructed with extreme cheapness, towered on either
hand. Farther down the road two more blocks were being built, and
beyond these an old house was being demolished to accommodate
another pair. It was the kind of scene that may be observed all
over London, whatever the locality--bricks and mortar rising and
falling with the restlessness of the water in a fountain as the
city receives more and more men upon her soil. Camelia Road would
soon stand out like a fortress, and command, for a little, an
extensive view. Only for a little. Plans were out for the
erection of flats in Magnolia Road also. And again a few years,
and all the flats in either road might be pulled down, and new
buildings, of a vastness at present unimaginable, might arise
where they had fallen.
"Evening, Mr. Bast."
"Evening, Mr. Cunningham."
"Very serious thing this decline of the birth-rate in
Manchester."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Very serious thing this decline of the birth-rate in
Manchester," repeated Mr. Cunningham, tapping the Sunday paper,
in which the calamity in question had just been announced to him.
"Ah, yes," said Leonard, who was not going to let on that he had
not bought a Sunday paper.
"If this kind of thing goes on the population of England will be
stationary in 1960."
"You don't say so."
"I call it a very serious thing, eh?"
"Good-evening, Mr. Cunningham."
"Good-evening, Mr. Bast."
Then Leonard entered Block B of the flats, and turned, not
upstairs, but down, into what is known to house agents as a
semi-basement, and to other men as a cellar. He opened the door,
and cried, "Hullo!" with the pseudo geniality of the Cockney.
There was no reply. "Hullo!" he repeated. The sitting-room was
empty, though the electric light had been left burning. A look of
relief came over his face, and he flung himself into the
armchair.
The sitting-room contained, besides the armchair, two other
chairs, a piano, a three-legged table, and a cosy corner. Of the
walls, one was occupied by the window, the other by a draped
mantelshelf bristling with Cupids. Opposite the window was the
door, and beside the door a bookcase, while over the piano there
extended one of the masterpieces of Maud Goodman. It was an
amorous and not unpleasant little hole when the curtains were
drawn, and the lights turned on, and the gas-stove unlit. But it
struck that shallow makeshift note that is so often heard in the
dwelling-place. It had been too easily gained, and could be
relinquished too easily.
As Leonard was kicking off his boots he jarred the three-legged
table, and a photograph frame, honourably poised upon it, slid
sideways, fell off into the fireplace, and smashed. He swore in a
colourless sort of way, and picked the photograph up. It
represented a young lady called Jacky, and had been taken at the
time when young ladies called Jacky were often photographed with
their mouths open. Teeth of dazzling whiteness extended along
either of Jacky's jaw's, and positively weighed her head
sideways, so large were they and so numerous. Take my word for
it, that smile was simply stunning, and it is only you and I who
will be fastidious, and complain that true joy begins in the
eyes, and that the eyes of Jacky did not accord with her smile,
but were anxious and hungry.
Leonard tried to pull out the fragments of glass, and cut his
fingers and swore again. A drop of blood fell on the frame,
another followed, spilling over on to the exposed photograph. He
swore more vigorously, and dashed into the kitchen, where he
bathed his hands. The kitchen was the same size as the
sitting-room; beyond it was a bedroom. This completed his home.
He was renting the flat furnished; of all the objects that
encumbered it none were his own except the photograph frame, the
Cupids, and the books.
"Damn, damn, damnation!" he murmured, together with such other
words as he had learnt from older men. Then he raised his hand to
his forehead and said, "Oh, damn it all--"which meant something
different. He pulled himself together. He drank a little tea,
black and silent, that still survived upon an upper shelf. He
swallowed some dusty crumbs of a cake. Then he went back to the
sitting-room, settled himself anew, and began to read a volume of
Ruskin.
"Seven miles to the north of Venice--"
How perfectly the famous chapter opens! How supreme its command
of admonition and of poetry! The rich man is speaking to us from
his gondola.
"Seven miles to the north of Venice the banks of sand which
nearer the city rise little above low-water mark attain by
degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields
of salt morass, raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and
intercepted by narrow creeks of sea."
Leonard was trying to form his style on Ruskin; he understood him
to be the greatest master of English Prose. He read forward
steadily, occasionally making a few notes.
"Let us consider a little each of these characters in succession,
and first (for of the shafts enough has been said already), what
is very peculiar to this church--its luminousness."
Was there anything to be learnt from this fine sentence? Could he
adapt it to the needs of daily life? Could he introduce it, with
modifications, when he next wrote a letter to his brother, the
lay-reader? For example:
"Let us consider a little each of these characters in succession,
and first (for of the absence of ventilation enough has been said
already), what is very peculiar to this flat--its obscurity."
Something told him that the modifications would not do; and that
something, had he known it, was the spirit of English Prose. "My
flat is dark as well as stuffy." Those were the words for him.
And the voice in the gondola rolled on, piping melodiously of
Effort and Self-Sacrifice, full of high purpose, full of beauty,
full even of sympathy and the love of men, yet somehow eluding
all that was actual and insistent in Leonard's life. For it was
the voice of one who had never been dirty or hungry, and had not
guessed successfully what dirt and hunger are.
Leonard listened to it with reverence. He felt that he was being
done good to, and that if he kept on with Ruskin, and the Queen's
Hall Concerts, and some pictures by Watts, he would one day push
his head out of the grey waters and see the universe. He believed
in sudden conversion, a belief which may be right, but which is
peculiarly attractive to a half-baked mind. It is the basis of
much popular religion; in the domain of business it dominates the
Stock Exchange, and becomes that "bit of luck" by which all
successes and failures are explained. "If only I had a bit of
luck, the whole thing would come straight... He's got a most
magnificent place down at Streatham and a 20 h.p. Fiat, but
then, mind you, he's had luck... I 'm sorry the wife's so late,
but she never has any luck over catching trains." Leonard was
superior to these people; he did believe in effort and in a
steady preparation for the change that he desired. But of a
heritage that may expand gradually, he had no conception; he
hoped to come to Culture suddenly, much as the Revivalist hopes
to come to Jesus. Those Miss Schlegels had come to it; they had
done the trick; their hands were upon the ropes, once and for
all. And meanwhile, his flat was dark, as well as stuffy.
Presently there was a noise on the staircase. He shut up
Margaret's card in the pages of Ruskin, and opened the door. A
woman entered, of whom it is simplest to say that she was not
respectable. Her appearance was awesome. She seemed all strings
and bell-pulls--ribbons, chains, bead necklaces that clinked and
caught and a boa of azure feathers hung round her neck, with the
ends uneven. Her throat was bare, wound with a double row of
pearls, her arms were bare to the elbows, and might again be
detected at the shoulder, through cheap lace. Her hat, which was
flowery, resembled those punnets, covered with flannel, which we
sowed with mustard and cress in our childhood, and which
germinated here yes, and there no. She wore it on the back of her
head. As for her hair, or rather hairs, they are too complicated
to describe, but one system went down her back, lying in a thick
pad there, while another, created for a lighter destiny, rippled
around her forehead. The face--the face does not signify. It was
the face of the photograph, but older, and the teeth were not so
numerous as the photographer had suggested, and certainly not so
white. Yes, Jacky was past her prime, whatever that prime may
have been. She was descending quicker than most women into the
colourless years, and the look in her eyes confessed it."
"What ho!" said Leonard, greeting the apparition with much
spirit, and helping it off with its boa.
Jacky, in husky tones, replied, "What ho!"
"Been out?" he asked. The question sounds superfluous, but it
cannot have been really, for the lady answered, "No," adding,
"Oh, I am so tired."
"You tired?"
"Eh?"
"I'm tired," said he, hanging the boa up.
"Oh, Len, I am so tired."
"I've been to that classical concert I told you about," said
Leonard.
"What's that?"
"I came back as soon as it was over."
"Any one been round to our place?" asked Jacky.
"Not that I've seen. I met Mr. Cunningham outside, and we passed
a few remarks."
"What, not Mr. Cunningham?"
"Yes."
"Oh, you mean Mr. Cunningham."
"Yes. Mr. Cunningham."
"I've been out to tea at a lady friend's."
Her secret being at last given--to the world, and the name of the
lady friend being even adumbrated, Jacky made no further
experiments in the difficult and tiring art of conversation. She
never had been a great talker. Even in her photographic days she
had relied upon her smile and her figure to attract, and now
that she was
"On the shelf,
On the shelf,
Boys, boys, I'm on the shelf,"
she was not likely to find her tongue. Occasional bursts of song
(of which the above is an example) still issued from her lips,
but the spoken word was rare.
She sat down on Leonard's knee, and began to fondle him. She was
now a massive woman of thirty-three, and her weight hurt him, but
he could not very well say anything. Then she said, "Is that a
book you're reading?" and he said, "That's a book," and drew it
from her unreluctant grasp. Margaret's card fell out of it. It
fell face downwards, and he murmured, "Bookmarker."
"Len--"
"What is it?" he asked, a little wearily, for she only had one
topic of conversation when she sat upon his knee.
"You do love me?"
"Jacky, you know that I do. How can you ask such questions!"
"But you do love me, Len, don't you?"
"Of course I do."
A pause. The other remark was still due.
"Len--"
"Well? What is it?"
"Len, you will make it all right?"
"I can't have you ask me that again," said the boy, flaring up
into a sudden passion. "I've promised to marry you when I'm of
age, and that's enough. My word's my word. I've promised to marry
you as soon as ever I'm twenty-one, and I can't keep on being
worried. I've worries enough. It isn't likely I'd throw you over,
let alone my word, when I've spent all this money. Besides, I'm
an Englishman, and I never go back on my word. Jacky, do be
reasonable. Of course I'll marry you. Only do stop badgering me."
"When's your birthday, Len?"
"I've told you again and again, the eleventh of November next.
Now get off my knee a bit; some one must get supper, I suppose."
Jacky went through to the bedroom, and began to see to her hat.
This meant blowing at it with short sharp puffs. Leonard tidied
up the sitting-room, and began to prepare their evening meal. He
put a penny into the slot of the gas-meter, and soon the flat was
reeking with metallic fumes. Somehow he could not recover his
temper, and all the time he was cooking he continued to complain
bitterly.
"It really is too bad when a fellow isn't trusted. It makes one
feel so wild, when I've pretended to the people here that you're
my wife--all right, all right, you SHALL be my wife--and I've
bought you the ring to wear, and I've taken this flat furnished,
and it's far more than I can afford, and yet you aren't content,
and I've also not told the truth when I've written home. He
lowered his voice. "He'd stop it." In a tone of horror, that was
a little luxurious, he repeated: "My brother'd stop it. I'm going
against the whole world, Jacky.
"That's what I am, Jacky. I don't take any heed of what any one
says. I just go straight forward, I do. That's always been my
way. I'm not one of your weak knock-kneed chaps. If a woman's in
trouble, I don't leave her in the lurch. That's not my street.
No, thank you.
"I'll tell you another thing too. I care a good deal about
improving myself by means of Literature and Art, and so getting a
wider outlook. For instance, when you came in I was reading
Ruskin's Stones of Venice. I don't say this to boast, but just to
show you the kind of man I am. I can tell you, I enjoyed that
classical concert this afternoon."
To all his moods Jacky remained equally indifferent. When supper
was ready--and not before--she emerged from the bedroom, saying:
"But you do love me, don't you?"
They began with a soup square, which Leonard had just dissolved
in some hot water. It was followed by the tongue--a freckled
cylinder of meat, with a little jelly at the top, and a great
deal of yellow fat at the bottom--ending with another square
dissolved in water (jelly: pineapple), which Leonard had prepared
earlier in the day. Jacky ate contentedly enough, occasionally
looking at her man with those anxious eyes, to which nothing else
in her appearance corresponded, and which yet seemed to mirror
her soul. And Leonard managed to convince his stomach that it was
having a nourishing meal.
After supper they smoked cigarettes and exchanged a few
statements. She observed that her "likeness" had been broken. He
found occasion to remark, for the second time, that he had come
straight back home after the concert at Queen's Hall. Presently
she sat upon his knee. The inhabitants of Camelia Road tramped to
and fro outside the window, just on a level with their heads, and
the family in the flat on the ground-floor began to sing, "Hark,
my soul, it is the Lord."
"That tune fairly gives me the hump," said Leonard.
Jacky followed this, and said that, for her part, she thought it
a lovely tune.
"No; I'll play you something lovely. Get up, dear, for a minute."
He went to the piano and jingled out a little Grieg. He played
badly and vulgarly, but the performance was not without its
effect, for Jacky said she thought she'd be going to bed. As she
receded, a new set of interests possessed the boy, and he began
to think of what had been said about music by that odd Miss
Schlegel--the one that twisted her face about so when she spoke.
Then the thoughts grew sad and envious. There was the girl named
Helen, who had pinched his umbrella, and the German girl who had
smiled at him pleasantly, and Herr some one, and Aunt some one,
and the brother--all, all with their hands on the ropes. They had
all passed up that narrow, rich staircase at Wickham Place to
some ample room, whither he could never follow them, not if he
read for ten hours a day. Oh, it was no good, this continual
aspiration. Some are born cultured; the rest had better go in for
whatever comes easy. To see life steadily and to see it whole was
not for the likes of him.
From the darkness beyond the kitchen a voice called, Len?"
"You in bed?" he asked, his forehead twitching.
"All right."
Presently she called him again.
"I must clean my boots ready for the morning," he answered.
Presently she called him again.
"I rather want to get this chapter done."
"What?"
He closed his ears against her.
"What's that?"
"All right, Jacky, nothing; I'm reading a book."
"What?"
"What?" he answered, catching her degraded deafness.
Presently she called him again.
Ruskin had visited Torcello by this time, and was ordering his
gondoliers to take him to Murano. It occurred to him, as he
glided over the whispering lagoons, that the power of Nature
could not be shortened by the folly, nor her beauty altogether
saddened by the misery of such as Leonard.
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