THE MYSTERY, like so many mysteries, was explained. Next day, just as they were dressed to go out to dinner, a Mr. Bast called. He was a clerk in the employment of the Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company. Thus much from his card. He had come “about the lady yesterday.” Thus much from Annie, who had shown him into the dining-room.
“Cheers, children!” cried Helen. “It’s Mr. Lanoline.”
Tibby was interested. The three hurried downstairs, to find, not the gay dog they expected, but a young man, colourless, toneless, who had already the mournful eyes above a drooping moustache that are so common in London, and that haunt some streets of the city like accusing presences. One guessed him as the third generation, grandson to the shepherd or ploughboy whom civilization had sucked into the town; as one of the thousands who have lost the life of the body and failed to reach the life of the spirit. Hints of robustness survived in him, more than a hint of primitive good looks, and Margaret, noting the spine that might have been straight, and the chest that might have broadened, wondered whether it paid to give up the glory of the animal for a tail coat and a couple of ideas. Culture had worked in her own case, but during the last few weeks she had doubted whether it humanized the majority, so wide and so widening is the gulf that stretches between the natural and the philosophic man, so many the good chaps who are wrecked in trying to cross it. She knew this type very well—the vague aspirations, the mental dishonesty, the familiarity with the outsides of books. She knew the very tones in which he would address her. She was only unprepared for an example of her own visiting-card.
“You wouldn’t remember giving me this, Miss Schlegel?” said he, uneasily familiar.
“No; I can’t say I do.”
“Well, that was how it happened, you see.”
“Where did we meet, Mr. Bast? For a minute I don’t remember.”
“It was a concert at the Queen’s Hall. I think you will recollect,” he added pretentiously, “when I tell you that it included a performance of the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven.”
“We hear the Fifth practically every time it’s done, so I’m not sure—do you remember, Helen?”
“Was it the time the sandy cat walked round the balustrade?”
He thought not.
“Then I don’t remember. That’s the only Beethoven I ever remember specially.”
“And you, if I may say so, took away my umbrella, inadvertently of course.”
“Likely enough,” Helen laughed, “for I steal umbrellas even oftener than I hear Beethoven. Did you get it back?”
“Yes, thank you, Miss Schlegel.” “The mistake arose out of my card, did it?” interposed Margaret.
“Yes, the mistake arose—it was a mistake.”
“The lady who called here yesterday thought that you were calling too, and that she could find you?” she continued, pushing him forward, for, though he had promised an explanation, he seemed unable to give one.
“That’s so, calling too—a mistake.”
“Then why—?” began Helen, but Margaret laid a hand on her arm.
“I said to my wife,” he continued more rapidly—“I said to Mrs. Bast: ‘I have to pay a call on some friends,’ and Mrs. Bast said to me: ‘Do go.’ While I was gone, however, she wanted me on important business, and thought I had come here, owing to the card, and so came after me, and I beg to tender my apologies, and hers as well, for any inconvenience we may have inadvertently caused you.”
“No inconvenience,” said Helen; “but I still don’t understand.”
An air of evasion characterized Mr. Bast. He explained again, but was obviously lying, and Helen didn’t see why he should get off. She had the cruelty of youth. Neglecting her sister’s pressure, she said: “I still don’t understand. When did you say you paid this call?”
“Call? What call?” said he, staring as if her question had been a foolish one, a favourite device of those in midstream.
“This afternoon call.”
“In the afternoon, of course!” he replied, and looked at Tibby to see how the repartee went. But Tibby, himself a repartee, was unsympathetic, and said: “Saturday afternoon or Sunday afternoon?”
“S—Saturday.”
“Really!” said Helen; “and you were still calling on Sunday, when your wife came here. A long visit.”
“I don’t call that fair,” said Mr. Bast, going scarlet and handsome. There was fight in his eyes. “I know what you mean, and it isn’t so.”
“Oh, don’t let us mind,” said Margaret, distressed again by odours from the abyss.
“It was something else,” he asserted, his elaborate manner breaking down. “I was somewhere else to what you think, so there!”
“It was good of you to come and explain,” she said. “The rest is naturally no concern of ours.”
“Yes, but I want—I wanted—have you ever read The Ordeal of Richard Feverel?”
Margaret nodded.
“It’s a beautiful book. I wanted to get back to the Earth, don’t you see, like Richard does in the end. Or have you ever read Stevenson’s Prince Otto?”
Helen and Tibby groaned gently.
“That’s another beautiful book. You get back to the Earth in that. I wanted—” He mouthed affectedly. Then through the mists of his culture came a hard fact, hard as a pebble. “I walked all the Saturday night,” said Leonard. “I walked.” A thrill of approval ran through the sisters. But culture closed in again. He asked whether they had ever read E. V. Lucas’s Open Road.
Said Helen: “No doubt it’s another beautiful book, but I’d rather hear about your road.”
“Oh, I walked.”
“How far?”
“I don’t know, nor for how long. It got too dark to see my watch.”
“Were you walking alone, may I ask?”
“Yes,” he said, straightening himself; “but we’d been talking it over at the office. There’s been a lot of talk at the office lately about these things. The fellows there said one steers by the Pole Star, and I looked it up in the celestial atlas, but once out of doors everything gets so mixed—”
“Don’t talk to me about the Pole Star,” interrupted Helen, who was becoming interested. “I know its little ways. It goes round and round, and you go round after it.”
“Well, I lost it entirely. First of all the street lamps, then the trees, and towards morning it got cloudy.”
Tibby, who preferred his comedy undiluted, slipped from the room. He knew that this fellow would never attain to poetry, and did not want to hear him trying. Margaret and Helen remained. Their brother influenced them more than they knew: in his absence they were stirred to enthusiasm more easily.
“Where did you start from?” cried Margaret. “Do tell us more.”
“I took the underground to Wimbledon. As I came out of the office I said to myself: ‘I must have a walk once in a way. If I don’t take this walk now, I shall never take it.’ I had a bit of dinner at Wimbledon, and then—”
“But not good country there, is it?”
“It was gas-lamps for hours. Still, I had all the night, and being out was the great thing. I did get into woods, too, presently.”
“Yes, go on,” said Helen.
“You’ve no idea how difficult uneven ground is when it’s dark.”
“Did you actually go off the roads?”
“Oh yes. I always meant to go off the roads, but the worst of it is that it’s more difficult to find one’s way.”
“Mr. Bast, you’re a born adventurer,” laughed Margaret. “No professional athlete would have attempted what you’ve done. It’s a wonder your walk didn’t end in a broken neck. Whatever did your wife say?”
“Professional athletes never move without lanterns and compasses,” said Helen. “Besides, they can’t walk. It tires them. Go on.”
“I felt like R. L. S. You probably remember how in Virginibus—”
“Yes, but the wood. This ’ere wood. How did you get out of it?”
“I managed one wood, and found a road the other side which went a good bit uphill. I rather fancy it was those North Downs, for the road went off into grass, and I got into another wood. That was awful, with gorse bushes. I did wish I’d never come, but suddenly it got light—just while I seemed going under one tree. Then I found a road down to a station, and took the first train I could back to London.”
“But was the dawn wonderful?” asked Helen.
With unforgettable sincerity he replied: “No.” The word flew again like a pebble from the sling. Down toppled all that had seemed ignoble or literary in his talk, down toppled tiresome R. L. S. and the “love of the earth” and his silk top-hat. In the presence of these women Leonard had arrived, and he spoke with a flow, an exultation, that he had seldom known.
“The dawn was only grey, it was nothing to mention—”
“Just a grey evening turned upside down, I know.”
“—and I was too tired to lift up my head to look at it, and so cold too. I’m glad I did it, and yet at the time it bored me more than I can say. And besides—you can believe me or not as you choose—I was very hungry. That dinner at Wimbledon—I meant it to last me all night like other dinners. I never thought that walking would make such a difference. Why, when you’re walking you want, as it were, a breakfast and luncheon and tea during the night as well, and I’d nothing but a packet of Woodbines. Lord, I did feel bad! Looking back, it wasn’t what you may call enjoyment. It was more a case of sticking to it. I did stick. I—I was determined. Oh, hang it all! what’s the good—I mean, the good of living in a room for ever? There one goes on day after day, same old game, same up and down to town, until you forget there is any other game. You ought to see once in a way what’s going on outside, if it’s only nothing particular after all.”
“I should just think you ought,” said Helen, sitting on the edge of the table.
The sound of a lady’s voice recalled him from sincerity, and he said: “Curious it should all come about from reading something of Richard Jefferies.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Bast, but you’re wrong there. It didn’t. It came from something far greater.”
But she could not stop him. Borrow was imminent after Jefferies—Borrow, Thoreau, and sorrow. R. L. S. brought up the rear, and the outburst ended in a swamp of books. No disrespect to these great names. The fault is ours, not theirs. They mean us to use them for sign-posts, and are not to blame if, in our weakness, we mistake the sign-post for the destination. And Leonard had reached the destination. He had visited the county of Surrey when darkness covered its amenities, and its cosy villas had re-entered ancient night. Every twelve hours this miracle happens, but he had troubled to go and see for himself. Within his cramped little mind dwelt something that was greater than Jefferies’s books—the spirit that led Jefferies to write them; and his dawn, though revealing nothing but monotones, was part of the eternal sunrise that shows George Borrow Stonehenge.
“Then you don’t think I was foolish?” he asked, becoming again the naïve and sweet-tempered boy for whom Nature had intended him.
“Heavens, no!” replied Margaret.
“Heaven help us if we do!” replied Helen.
“I’m very glad you say that. Now, my wife would never understand—not if I explained for days.”
“No, it wasn’t foolish!” cried Helen, her eyes aflame. “You’ve pushed back the boundaries; I think it splendid of you.”
“You’ve not been content to dream, as we have—”
“Though we have walked, too—”
“I must show you a picture upstairs—”
Here the door-bell rang. The hansom had come to take them to their evening party.
“Oh, bother, not to say dash—I had forgotten we were dining out; but do, do come round again and have a talk.”
“Yes, you must—do,” echoed Margaret.
Leonard, with extreme sentiment, replied: “No, I shall not. It’s better like this.”
“Why better?” asked Margaret.
“No, it is better not to risk a second interview. I shall always look back on this talk with you as one of the finest things in my life. Really. I mean this. We can never repeat. It has done me real good, and there we had better leave it.”
“That’s rather a sad view of life, surely.”
“Things so often get spoiled.”
“I know,” flashed Helen, “but people don’t.”
He could not understand this. He continued in a vein which mingled true imagination and false. What he said wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t right, and a false note jarred. One little twist, they felt, and the instrument might be in tune. One little strain, and it might be silent for ever. He thanked the ladies very much, but he would not call again. There was a moment’s awkwardness, and then Helen said: “Go, then; perhaps you know best; but never forget you’re better than Jefferies.” And he went. Their hansom caught him up at the corner, passed with a waving of hands, and vanished with its accomplished load into the evening.
London was beginning to illuminate herself against the night. Electric lights sizzled and jagged in the main thoroughfares, gas-lamps in the side streets glimmered a canary gold or green. The sky was a crimson battlefield of spring, but London was not afraid. Her smoke mitigated the splendour, and the clouds down Oxford Street were a delicately painted ceiling, which adorned while it did not distract. She has never known the clear-cut armies of the purer air. Leonard hurried through her tinted wonders, very much part of the picture. His was a grey life, and to brighten it he had ruled off a few corners for romance. The Miss Schlegels—or, to speak more accurately, his interview with them—were to fill such a corner, nor was it by any means the first time that he had talked intimately to strangers. The habit was analogous to a debauch, an outlet, though the worst of outlets, for instincts that would not be denied. Terrifying him, it would beat down his suspicions and prudence until he was confiding secrets to people whom he had scarcely seen. It brought him many fears and some pleasant memories. Perhaps the keenest happiness he had ever known was during a railway journey to Cambridge, where a decent-mannered undergraduate had spoken to him. They had got into conversation, and gradually Leonard flung reticence aside, told some of his domestic troubles, and hinted at the rest. The undergraduate, supposing they could start a friendship, asked him to “coffee after hall,” which he accepted, but afterwards grew shy, and took care not to stir from the commercial hotel where he lodged. He did not want Romance to collide with the Porphyrion, still less with Jacky, and people with fuller, happier lives are slow to understand this. To the Schlegels, as to the undergraduate, he was an interesting creature, of whom they wanted to see more. But they to him were denizens of Romance, who must keep to the corner he had assigned them, pictures that must not walk out of their frames.
His behaviour over Margaret’s visiting-card had been typical. His had scarcely been a tragic marriage. Where there is no money and no inclination to violence, tragedy cannot be generated. He could not leave his wife, and he did not want to hit her. Petulance and squalor were enough. Here “that card” had come in. Leonard, though furtive, was untidy, and left it lying about. Jacky found it, and then began: “What’s that card, eh?” “Yes, don’t you wish you knew what that card was?” “Len, who’s Miss Schlegel?” etc. Months passed, and the card, now as a joke, now as a grievance, was handed about, getting dirtier and dirtier. It followed them when they moved from Camelia Road to Tulse Hill. It was submitted to third parties. A few inches of pasteboard, it became the battlefield on which the souls of Leonard and his wife contended. Why did he not say: “A lady took my umbrella, another gave me this that I might call for my umbrella”? Because Jacky would have disbelieved him? Partly, but chiefly because he was sentimental. No affection gathered round the card, but it symbolized the life of culture, that Jacky should never spoil. At night he would say to himself: “Well, at all events, she doesn’t know about that card. Yah! done her there!”
Poor Jacky! she was not a bad sort, and had a great deal to bear. She drew her own conclusion—she was only capable of drawing one conclusion—and in the fulness of time she acted upon it. All the Friday Leonard had refused to speak to her, and had spent the evening observing the stars. On the Saturday he went up, as usual, to town, but he came not back Saturday night nor Sunday morning, nor Sunday afternoon. The inconvenience grew intolerable, and though she was now of a retiring habit, and shy of women, she went up to Wickham Place. Leonard returned in her absence. The card, the fatal card, was gone from the pages of Ruskin, and he guessed what had happened.
“Well?” he had exclaimed, greeting her with peals of laughter. “I know where you’ve been, but you don’t know where I’ve been.”
Jacky sighed, said: “Len, I do think you might explain,” and resumed domesticity.
Explanations were difficult at this stage, and Leonard was too silly—or, it is tempting to write, too sound—a chap to attempt them. His reticence was not entirely the shoddy article that a business life promotes, the reticence that pretends that nothing is something, and hides behind the Daily Telegraph. The adventurer, also, is reticent, and it is an adventure for a clerk to walk for a few hours in darkness. You may laugh at him, you who have slept nights out on the veldt, with your rifle beside you and all the atmosphere of adventure pat. And you also may laugh who think adventures silly. But do not be surprised if Leonard is shy, whenever he meets you, and if the Schlegels rather than Jacky hear about the dawn.
That the Schlegels had not thought him foolish became a permanent joy. He was at his best when he thought of them. It buoyed him as he journeyed home beneath fading heavens. Somehow the barriers of wealth had fallen, and there had been—he could not phrase it—a general assertion of the wonder of the world. “My conviction,” says the mystic, “gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it,” and they had agreed that there was something beyond life’s daily grey. He took off his top-hat and smoothed it thoughtfully. He had hitherto supposed the unknown to be books, literature, clever conversation, culture. One raised oneself by study, and got upsides with the world. But in that quick interchange a new light dawned. Was that “something” walking in the dark among the suburban hills?
He discovered that he was going bareheaded down Regent Street. London came back with a rush. Few were about at this hour, but all whom he passed looked at him with a hostility that was the more impressive because it was unconscious. He put his hat on. It was too big; his head disappeared like a pudding into a basin, the ears bending outwards at the touch of the curly brim. He wore it a little backwards, and its effect was greatly to elongate the face and to bring out the distance between the eyes and the moustache. Thus equipped, he escaped criticism. No one felt uneasy as he titupped along the pavements, the heart of a man ticking fast in his chest.