<h2><SPAN name="V" id="V">V</SPAN><br/> PETER WESTCOTT</h2>
<p>Westcott's astonishment when Edmund Robsart
offered to lend his chambers rent free for
two months was only equalled by his amazement when
he discovered himself accepting that offer. Had you
told him a week before that within seven days he would
be sleeping in Robsart's sumptuous bed closed in by the
rich sanctities of Robsart's sumptuous flat, he would
have looked at you with that cool contempt that was
one of Westcott's worst features; for Westcott in those
days was an arrogant man—arrogant through disgust
of himself and disgust of the world—two very poor
reasons for arrogance.</p>
<p>This was the way of his accepting Robsart's offer.
He had been demobilised at the beginning of March and
had realised, with a sudden surprise that seemed only to
confirm his arrogance, that he had no one to go and
see, no work to do, no place that needed him, no place
that he needed. He took a bedroom in a dirty little
street off the Strand. He knew that there were two
men whom he should look up, Maradick and Galleon.
He swore to himself that he would die before he saw
either of them. Then, in the Strand, he met Lester,
a man whom he had known in his old literary days
before the war. Twenty years ago Lester had been a<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</SPAN></span>
man of much promise, and his novel <i>To Paradise</i> had
been read by everyone who wanted a short road to culture.
Now the war had definitely dated him and he
seemed to belong to the <i>Yellow Book</i> and the <i>Bodley
Head</i> and all those days when names were so much more
important than performance, and a cover with a Beardsley
drawing on it hid a multitude of amateurs.</p>
<p>Westcott did not mind whether or no Lester were
dated; he was, for the matter of that, himself dated. It
was long indeed since anyone had mentioned <i>Reuben
Hallard</i>, or <i>The Vines</i>, or <i>The Stone House</i>. It seemed
many ages since he himself had thought of them. He
liked Lester, and being a man who, in spite of his loneliness
and arrogance, responded at once to kindliness,
he accepted Lester's invitation to dinner. He dug up
an old dinner jacket that was tight and unduly stretched
across his broad shoulders and went to dinner in the
Cromwell Road.</p>
<p>Days of failure and disappointment had not suited
Mrs. Lester, who had always lived for excitement and
good society, and found neither in the Cromwell Road.
There was only one other guest beside Westcott, and
that was Edmund Robsart, the most successful of all
modern novelists. For many years Robsart's name had
been a synonym for success. "It must be," thought
Westcott, looking at the man's red face and superb
chest and portly stomach, "at least thirty years since
you published <i>The Prime Minister's Daughter</i> and hit
the nail at the very first time. What a loathsome fellow
you are, what harm you've done to literature, and
what a gorgeous time you must have had!"</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>And the very first thing that Robsart said was:
"You don't mean to tell me that you're Westcott, the
author of <i>Reuben Hallard</i>!"</p>
<p>"Now you're a fool to be touched by that," Westcott
said to himself. But he was astonished, nevertheless—touched,
it seemed, not so much for himself as in a
kind of protective way for that poor little firstling who
had been both begotten and produced in a London boarding-house
and had held in his little hands so much
promise, so many hopes, so much pride and ambition.</p>
<p>Westcott was touched; he did not resent Robsart's
fatherly, patronising air as of one who held always in his
chubby, gouty fist the golden keys to Paradise. He
drank Lester's wine and laughed at Robsart's anecdotes
and was sympathetic to Mrs. Lester's complaints;
he, Peter Westcott, who throughout the war had been
held to be cold, conceited, overbearing, the most unpopular
officer in his regiment. At the end of the evening
Robsart asked him to come to lunch. "I live in
Duke Street, Hortons. Everyone knows Hortons."
He gave him his number. "Tuesday, 1.30. Glad to
see you."</p>
<p>Westcott cursed himself for a fool when he went back
to his Strand lodging. What did he want with men of
Robsart's kidney? Had he not been laughing and
mocking at Robsart for years? Had he not taken Robsart's
success as a sign of the contemptible character of
the British Public; when men like Galleon and Lester
had been barely able to live by their pens and Robsart
rolled in money—rolled in money earned by tawdry<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</SPAN></span>
fustian sentimentality like <i>The Kings of the Earth</i> and
<i>Love Laughs at Locksmiths</i>.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, he went and brushed his old blue suit
and rolled up to Duke Street, looking, as he always did,
like an able-bodied seaman on leave. Robsart's flat
was very much what he had expected it to be—quite
sumptuous and quite lifeless. There was a little dining-room
off what Robsart called the Library. This little
dining-room had nothing in it save a round, shining
gate-legged table with a glass top to it, a red Persian
rug that must have been priceless, a Rodin bust of an
evil-looking old woman who stuck her tongue out, and a
Gauguin that looked to Westcott like a red apple and
a banana, but was, in reality, a native woman by the
seashore. In the Library there were wonderful books,
the walls being completely covered by them.</p>
<p>"Most of them first or rare editions," said Robsart
carelessly. Behind glass near the window were the
books that he had himself written, all the different
editions, the translations, the cheap "Shillings" and
"Two Shillings," the strange Swedish and Norwegian
and Russian copies with their paper backs, the row
of "Tauchnitz," and then all the American editions
with their solemn, heavy bindings. Then there were
the manuscripts of the novels, all bound beautifully in
red morocco, and in the bottom shelf the books with all
the newspaper cuttings dating, as Westcott to his amazement
saw, from 1884. Thirty-five years, and all this
sumptuousness as a result! Nevertheless the books
round the room looked dead, dead, dead. "Never<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</SPAN></span>
touched," thought Peter, "except to show them to poor
humble failures like myself."</p>
<p>Half an hour's conversation was quite enough to strip
Peter of any illusions he may have had about Robsart's
natural simplicity of heart. He had invited Westcott
there because he wanted a little praise from "the
Younger Generation"—"needed" rather than "wanted"
was perhaps the right word. Westcott was hardly the
ideal victim, because he was over forty, and an undoubted
failure; nevertheless, at Lester's he had appeared
amiable and kindly—a little encouragement and
he would say something pleasant.</p>
<p>Then Robsart would have soothed that tiresome, biting,
bitter irritation that had beset him of late, born he
knew not where, a suggestion carried on the wind that
"he was behind the times," that his books "no longer
sold," that no young man or woman "thought of him
with anything but contempt." These things had not
been said directly to him; he had not even read them in
the papers. There were certain critical journals that
had, of course, since the beginning of his career given
him nothing but abuse if they noticed him at all. They
now treated him to silence. He did not expect them
to alter. But his sales <i>were</i> falling; even the critics
who had supported him through all weathers were complaining
a little now of monotony of subject, of repetition
of idea. "Damn it all, what <i>can</i> you do but repeat
after thirty books?" Sometimes he wondered whether
he would not stop and "rest on his laurels." But that
meant a diminution of income; he had always lived well
and spent every penny as it came along. Moreover,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</SPAN></span>
now was the worst moment to choose, with the income-tax
at what it was and food and clothes and everything
else at double its natural price!</p>
<p>As a matter of truth, he had been looking forward
during the last two years to "after the war." ... That
was the time when he was going to start again. Get
this war behind one and he would break out in an entirely
new place—"begin all over again"—show all
those young fellows that all their so-called modernity was
nothing but a new trick or two for covering up the same
old thing. He could do it as well as they. Write in
suspensive dots and dashes, mention all the parts of the
human body in full, count every tick of the clock, and
call your book "Disintegration," or "Dead Moons," or
"Green Queens."</p>
<p>Robsart liked himself in these moods, and during
luncheon he amiably wandered along in this direction,
plucking the flowers of his wit as he went and flinging
them into Westcott's lap.</p>
<p>Peter grew ever more and more silent. He hated
Robsart. That ghastly preoccupation with his own little
affairs, the self-patting and self-applause over the
little successes that he had won, above all, that blending
of all the horror and tragedy of that great nightmare
of a war to fit into the pattern of that mean, self-gratifying
little life—these things were horrible. But,
strangely, with the ever-growing disgust of Robsart
and his slightly disturbed self-complacency came an
evil longing in Peter's breast for some of the comfort
and luxury that Robsart's life represented. Ever since
that day, now so many years ago, when his wife had<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</SPAN></span>
run away with his best friend, he had known, it seemed,
no peace, no quiet, no tranquillity. It was not security
that he needed, but rather a pause in the battle of the
spiritual elements that seemed to be for ever beating
at his ears and driving him staggering from post to post.
Had it not been for the war he had often thought,
he must have succumbed before now. Final defeat, at
any rate, meant rest. He had not succumbed. These
years in Gallipoli and France had saved him. But he,
in those desolate, death-ridden places had again and
again said to himself, even as Robsart, safe in Hortons,
had said: "After the war.... After the war...."
After the war Peter would build up his life again. But
first, even a month's rest—somewhere that was not dirty
and cheap and ill-smelling. Somewhere with good
food and kind looks.... Then he smiled as he thought
of Maradick and Galleon, his two friends, who could
both give him those things. No, he wanted also freedom.</p>
<p>Thus, to his amazement, at the end of luncheon, when
he was feeling as though he could not bear the sound of
Robsart's rich, self-satisfied voice a moment longer, the
man made his proposal. He was going to Scotland for
two months. Would Westcott like to take the flat,
free of rent, of course? It was at his disposal. He
need not have meals there unless he wished.</p>
<p>Something in Westcott's spirit had attracted Robsart.
Westcott had not given him the praise he had
needed; but now he seemed to have forgotten that.
The man who sat opposite to him with the thin face,
the black, closely cropped hair, thin above his forehead,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</SPAN></span>
grey above the temples, with the broad shoulders,
the hard, thick-set figure, the grave eyes, the nervous,
restless fingers, the man who, in spite of his forty years,
seemed still in some strange way a boy—that man had
been through fire and tribulation such as Robsart would
never know. Robsart was not a bad man, nor an
unkindly; success had been the worst thing that could
have happened to his soul. He put his hand on Westcott's
shoulder: "You stay here and have a rest for a
bit. Do just as you like. Chuck my things about.
Smash the Rodin if it amuses you." Peter accepted.</p>
<p>When he moved, with his few possessions, into the
grand place, he found it less alarming than he had
expected. Hortons itself was anything but alarming.
In the first place, there was the nicest girl in the world,
Fanny, who was portress downstairs. She made one
happy at once. Then the valet, Albert, or Albert
Edward, as he seemed to prefer to be called, was the
kind of man understood in a moment by Peter. They
were friends in three minutes. Albert Edward had
his eye on Fanny, and was going to propose one of these
days. Wouldn't they make a jolly pair?</p>
<p>Once or twice the great Mr. Nix himself, the manager
of the flats, came in to see how Peter was faring.
He seemed to have an exalted idea of Peter because he
was "Robsart's friend." Robsart was a very great man
in Mr. Nix's eyes.</p>
<p>"But I'm not his friend," Peter said. "You must
have been," Mr. Nix said, "for him to let you have his
flat like that. I've never known him to do that before."</p>
<p>In three days Peter was happy; in another three<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</SPAN></span>
days he began to be strangled. There were too many
things in the flat—beautiful things, costly things. Little
golden trifles, precious china, pictures worth a fortune,
first editions scattered about as though they were
nothing. "Too full, too full, too full."</p>
<p>Peter couldn't sleep. He pushed on all the lights,
and pushed them all off again. He got up, and in his
old, shabby, patched pyjamas walked the length of the
flat up and down, up and down. The Brahmin gods
in the gold temple stared at him impassively. The
Rodin old woman leered.</p>
<p>"Another two days and I'm done with this place,"
he thought. Then Murdoch Temple came to see him.
Westcott had known Temple before the war; he had
not seen him for five years. Temple had not altered:
there was the same slight, delicate body, pale, discontented
face, jet-black hair, long, nervous and conceited
hands, shabby clothes too tight for the body and most
characteristic of all, a melancholy and supercilious curl
to his upper lip. Temple was supercilious by nature
and melancholy by profession. From the very beginning
it had seemed that he was destined to be a genius,
and although after fifteen years of anticipation the
fulfilment of that destiny was still postponed, no one
could doubt, least of all Temple himself, that the day
of recognition was approaching. At Oxford it had
seemed that there was nothing that he could not do;
in actual fact he had since then read much French and
some Russian (in translation, of course), edited two little
papers, strangled by an unsympathetic public almost
at birth, produced a novel, a poem, and a book of criticism.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</SPAN></span>
An unhappy chill had hung over all these
things. The war, in whose progress poor health had
forbidden him to take a very active part, had made of
him a pessimist and pacifist; but even here a certain
temperamental weakness had forbidden him to be too
ardent. He was peevish rather than indignant, petulant
rather than angry, unkind rather than cruel, malicious
rather than unjust, and, undoubtedly, a little
sycophantic.</p>
<p>He had a brain, but he had always used it for
the fostering of discontent. He did care, with more
warmth than one would have supposed possible, for literature,
but everything in it must be new, and strange,
and unsuccessful. Success was, to him, the most terrible
of all things, unless he himself were to attain it.</p>
<p>That, as things now went, seemed unlikely. During
the last two years he and his friends had been anticipating
all that they were going to do "after the war...."
There was to be a new literature, a new poetry, a new
novel, a new criticism; and all these were to be built
up by Temple and company. "Thank God, the war's
saved us from the old mess we were in. No more
Robsarts and Manisbys for us! Now we shall see!"</p>
<p>Peter had heard vague rumours of the things
these young men were going to do. He had not been
greatly interested. He was outside their generation,
and his own ambitions were long deadened by his own
self-contempt. Nevertheless, on this particular morning,
he was glad to see Temple. There was no question
but that he made as effective a contrast with Robsart
as one could find.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Temple was extremely cordial. At the same time, he
was frankly surprised to find Peter there.</p>
<p>"How did you track me?" asked Peter.</p>
<p>"Robsart told Maradick in Edinburgh, Meredith was
writing to me. How are you after all this time?"</p>
<p>"All right," said Peter, smiling. The conversation
then was literary, and Temple explained "how things
were." Things were very bad. He used the glories
of Robsart's rooms as an illustration of his purpose.
He waved his hands about. "Look at these things,"
he seemed to say. "At these temples of gold, this china
of great price, these pictures, and then look at me.
Here is the contrast between true and false art."</p>
<p>"We want to get rid," he explained to Peter, "of
all these false valuations. This wretched war has
shown us at least one thing—the difference between the
true and the false. The world is in pieces. It is for
us to build it up again."</p>
<p>"And how are you going to do it?" asked Peter.</p>
<p>Well, it seemed that Temple's prospects were especially
bright just then. It happened that Mr. Dibden,
the original inventor of "Dibden's Blue Pills," was
anxious to "dabble in art." He was ready to put quite
a little of his "blue pill" money behind a new critical
paper, and the editor of this paper was to be Temple.</p>
<p>"Of course," said Temple. "I'm not going to agree
to it unless he guarantees us at least five years' run. A
paper of the sort that I have in mind always takes
some time to make its impression. In five years the
world at least will be able to see what we are made of.
I've no fears."</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Peter, who was more ingenuous than he knew, was
caught by the rather wistful eagerness in Temple's voice.</p>
<p>"This fellow really does care," he thought.</p>
<p>"We want you to come in with us," said Temple.
"Of course, we shall have nothing to do with fellows
like D—— and W—— and M——; men who've simply
made successes by rotten work. No! But I flatter myself
that there will be no one of our generation of any
merit who won't join us. You must be one."</p>
<p>"I'm too old," said Peter, "for your young lot."</p>
<p>"Too old!" cried Temple. "Rot! Of course, it's a
long time since <i>The Vineo</i>, but all the better. You'll
be the fresher for the pause. Not like M—— and
W——, who turn out novels twice a year as though they
were sausages. Besides, you've been in the war.
You've seen at first hand what it is. None of these
ghastly high spirits about you! You'll have the right
pessimistic outlook."</p>
<p>"I don't know that I shall," said Peter, laughing.</p>
<p>"Oh, yes, you will," said Temple confidently. "I'm
delighted you'll join us. And I'll be able to pay well,
too. Old Dibden's ready to stump up any amount."</p>
<p>"That's a good thing," said Peter.</p>
<p>He remembered that Temple had not, with the best
wish in the world, been always able in the past to fulfil
all his promises. In short, Peter was touched and even
excited. It was so long since anyone had come to him
or wanted him. Then Temple had caught him at the
right moment. He was out of a job; Robsart's flat
was suffocating him; he himself was feeling something
of this new air that was blowing through the world.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</SPAN></span>
He wondered whether after all it might not be that
Temple and his friends would be given the power.
They had youth, energy, a freedom from tradition....</p>
<p>He promised Temple that he would come to tea next
day, and see some of his friends.</p>
<p>"The paper's to be called the <i>Blue Moon</i>," said Temple.
"To-morrow, then, at five."</p>
<p>Peter found himself at five next day in a small room
off Chancery Lane. Temple met him at the door,
greeted him with that rather eager and timid air that
was especially his, introduced him to a young man on
a green sofa, and left him.</p>
<p>Peter was rather amused at his own excitement. He
looked about him with eagerness. Here, at any rate,
was a fine contrast to Robsart. No gold gods and
precious Rodins in this place. The room was bare
to shabbiness. The only picture on the ugly wall-paper
was a copy of some post-impressionist picture
stuck on to the paper with a pin.</p>
<p>It was a warm spring day, and the room was very
close. Some half a dozen men and two girls were
present; very much bad tobacco was being smoked.
Somewhere near the untidy fire-place was a table with
tea on it. "Perhaps," thought Peter, "these <i>are</i> the
men who will make the new world.... At any rate,
no false prosperity here. These men mean what they
say." Looking about him, the first thing that he discovered
was a strange family likeness that there seemed
to be amongst the men. They all wore old, shabby, ill-fitting
clothes. No hair was brushed, no collars were
clean, all boots were dusty. "That's all right," thought<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</SPAN></span>
Peter. "There's no time to waste thinking about clothes
these days."</p>
<p>All the same he <i>did</i> like cleanliness, and what distressed
him was that all the young men looked unwell.
One of them, indeed, was fat. But it was an unhealthy
stoutness, pale, blotchy, pimpled. Complexions were
sallow, bodies undeveloped and uncared-for. It was
not that they looked ill-fed—simply that they seemed
to have been living in close atmospheres and taking no
exercise.... Listening then to the talk he discovered
that the tone of the voices was strangely the same.
It was as though one man were speaking, as though the
different bodies were vehicles for the same voice. The
high, querulous, faint, scornful voice ran on. It
seemed as though, did it cease, the room would cease
with it—the room, the sofa, the wall-paper, the tea-table
cease with it, and vanish. One of the pale young
men was on the sofa stroking a tiny, ragged moustache
with his rather dirty fingers. He raised sad, heavy eyes
to Peter's face, then, with a kind of spiritual shudder
as though he did not like what he had seen there,
dropped them.</p>
<p>"It's rather close in here, isn't it?" said Peter at
last.</p>
<p>"Maybe," said the young man....</p>
<p>One of the young women, directed apparently by
Temple, came over to Peter. She sat down on the
sofa and began eagerly to talk to him. She said how
glad she was that he was going to join them. Although
she spoke eagerly, her voice was tired, with a
kind of angry, defiant ring in it. She spoke so rapidly<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</SPAN></span>
that Peter had difficulty in following her. He asked
who the men in the room were.</p>
<p>"That's Somers," she said, pointing to the stout man,
"Hacket Somers. Of course, you know his work? I've
got his new poem here. Like to see it? We shall
have it in the first number of the <i>Blue Moon</i>."</p>
<p>She handed Peter a page of typed manuscript. He
read it eagerly. Here, then, was the new literature. It
was apparently a poem. It was headed "Wild West—Remittance
Man."</p>
<p>The first three verses were as follows:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"<i>Schlemihl no mother weep for</i><br/></span>
<span class="i0"><i>doomed for a certain time—</i><br/></span></div>
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0"><i>Rye whisky—a fungus</i><br/></span>
<span class="i0"><i>Works into each face—line—</i><br/></span>
<span class="i0"><i>The Bond-street exterior—</i><br/></span>
<span class="i0"><i>tears at his vitals—</i><br/></span>
<span class="i0"><i>gravely the whisker droops</i><br/></span>
<span class="i0"><i>his eyes are cold.</i><br/></span></div>
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0"><i>Immaculate meteor</i><br/></span>
<span class="i0"><i>Inside a thick ichos</i><br/></span>
<span class="i0"><i>outside a thick ether</i><br/></span>
<span class="i0"><i>quenched the bright music....</i><br/></span></div>
</div>
<p>Peter read these three verses; then a second time,
then a third. The young woman was talking fiercely
as he read. She turned to him:</p>
<p>"Aren't they splendid?" she said. "Hacket at his
best. I was a little doubtful of him, but now there's
no question...."</p>
<p>"Frankly," said Peter, "I don't understand them.
It's about a drunkard, isn't it? I see that, but...."</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>"Don't understand it!" cried the young woman.
"What don't you understand?"</p>
<p>"Well, for instance," said Peter, "'Immaculate meteor.'
Is that the world, or Bond Street, or the whisky?"
He felt her contempt.</p>
<p>She laughed.</p>
<p>"Well, of course, Hacket's poems aren't for everybody,"
she said.</p>
<p>She got up then, and left him. He knew the report
that she would make of him to Temple. He sat there
bewildered. He began to feel lonely and a little angry.
After all it was not his fault that he had not understood
the poem. Or was it the heat of the room? He wished
that someone would offer him some tea, but everyone
was talking, talking, talking. He sat back and listened.
The talk eddied about him, dazing him, retreating,
rolling back again. He listened. Every kind of topic
was there—men, women, the war, Germany, poetry,
homo-sexuality, divorce, adultery, Walt Whitman,
Sapho, names, strange names, American names, French
names, Russian names, condemning Him, condemning
Her, condemning It, the war, Man ... Woman....</p>
<p>Once and again he caught popular names. How
<i>they</i> were condemned! The scorn, the languid, insolent
scorn. Then pacifism.... He gathered that two
of the men in the room had been forced to dig potatoes
for the Government because they didn't believe in war.
Patriotism! The room quivered with scorn. Patriots!
It was as though you had said murderers or adulterers!
His anger grew. Robsart was better than this, far,
far better. At least Robsart tried to make something<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</SPAN></span>
out of life. He was not ashamed to be happy. He did
not condemn. He was doubtful about himself, too.
He would not have asked Peter to lunch had he not
been doubtful.... And the arrogance here. The room
was thick with it. The self-applause mounted higher
and higher. The fat man read one of his poems. Only
a few words reached Peter. "Buttock ... blood
... cobra ... loins ... mud ... shrill ...
bovine...."</p>
<p>Suddenly he felt as though in another moment he
would rush into their midst, striking them apart, crying
out against them, as condemnatory, as arrogant as
they. He got from his sofa and crept from the room.
No one noticed him. In the street the beautiful, cool,
evening air could not comfort him. He was wretched,
lonely, angry, above all, most bitterly disappointed.
It seemed to him as he walked along slowly up Fleet
Street that life was really hopeless and useless. On
the one side, Robsart; on the other, these arrogant
fools, and in the middle, himself, no better than they—worse,
indeed—for they at least stood for something,
and he for nothing, absolutely nothing. That absurd
poem had, at any rate, effort behind it, striving, ambition,
hope. He had cared all his life for intellectual
things, had longed to achieve some form of beauty,
however tiny, however insignificant.... He had
achieved nothing. Well, that knowledge would not
have beaten him down had he felt the true spirit of
greatness in these others. He realised now how deeply
he had hoped from that meeting. He had believed
in the new world of which they were all talking; he had<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</SPAN></span>
believed that its creation would be brought about by
the forces of art, of brotherhood, of kindliness, and
charity, and nobility. And then to go and listen to
a meeting like Temple's? But what right had he to
judge them, or Robsart, or anyone?</p>
<p>Only too ready to believe himself a failure, it seemed
now that the world too was a failure; that the worst
things that the pessimists had said during the war were
now justified. Above all he detested his own arrogance
in judging these other men.</p>
<p>He had come by now to Piccadilly Circus. He was
held by the crowd for a moment on the kerb outside
Swan & Edgar's. The Circus was wrapped in a pale,
honey-coloured evening glow. The stir of the movement
of the traffic was dimmed as though it came through a
half-open door. Peter felt calm touch his bitter unhappiness
as he stood there. He stayed as though someone
had a hand on his shoulder and was holding him there.
He was conscious for the second time that day of anticipation.
Now, having been cheated once, he tried to
drive it away, but it would not leave him, and he
waited almost as though he were expecting some procession
to pass. The shops were closing, and many people
were going home. As he stood there Big Ben struck
six o'clock, and was echoed from St. James's and St.
Martin's. People were coming in prepared for an
evening's amusement. The last shoppers were waiting
for the omnibuses to take them up Regent Street.</p>
<p>Opposite Peter there were the Criterion posters <i>Our
Mr. Hepplewhite</i>, and opposite Mr. Hepplewhite
Mlle. Delysia was swinging her name in mid-air to<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</SPAN></span>
entice the world into the Pavilion. Every kind of
shop crowded there round the Circus—barbers', and
watch-makers', and bag-makers', and hosiers', and jewellers',
and tobacconists', and restaurants, and tea-shops—there
they all were; and the omnibuses, like lumbering
mastodons or ichthyosauri, came tottering and tumbling
into the centre, finding their heavy, thick-headed way
out again as though they were blinded by this dazzling,
lighted world.</p>
<p>He was struck, as he watched, by the caution, the
hesitation, the apparent helplessness of all the world.
Londoners had always been represented as so self-confident,
self-assured, but if you watched to-night, it seemed
that everyone hesitated. Young men with their girls,
women with babies, men, boys; again and again Peter
saw in faces that same half-timid, half-friendly glance;
felt on every side of him a kindliness that was born of
a little terror, a little dread. There was some parallel
to the scene in his mind. He could not catch it, his
mind strove back. Suddenly, with the big form of a
policeman who stepped in front of him to control the
traffic, he knew of what it was that he was thinking.
Years ago, when he had first come up to London, he had
lived in a boarding-house, and there had been there
a large family of children with whom he had been very
friendly. The parents of the children had been poor,
but their single living-room had been a nursery of a
happy, discordant kind. Every sort of toy had found
its way in there, and Peter could see the half-dozen
children, now trembling, fighting, laughing, crying, the
mother watching them and guarding them.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>The Circus was a nursery. The blue evening sky
was closed down, a radiant roof. Everywhere were
the toys. Now it seemed that balls were danced in the
air; now that someone sang or rang bells; now that
some new game was suddenly proposed and greeted
with a shout of joy. The children filled the Circus;
the policemen were toy policemen, the omnibuses toy
omnibuses, the theatres toy theatres.</p>
<p>On every side of him Peter felt the kindliness, the
helplessness, the pathos of his vision. They were children;
he was a child; the world was only a nursery,
after all. The sense of his earlier indignation had left
him. It seemed now that anger and condemnation,
whether of Robsart, or Temple and his friends, or of
himself, were absurd. They were all children together,
children in their ignorance, their helplessness, children
in their love for one another, their generosity, and their
hope.</p>
<p>For the first time in his life that sense of disappointment
that had been for so long a stumbling-block to all
his effort left him. He felt as though, like Pilgrim,
he had suddenly dropped his pack. Children in the
nursery—the lot of them. No place in this world for
high indignation, for bitterness, for denunciation.</p>
<p>The injustice, the ill-humour, the passions of life
were like the quarrels in children's play; the wisest man
alive knew just as much as his nursery-walls could show
him.</p>
<p>He laughed and turned homewards.</p>
<p>The new world? Perhaps. The progress of the
world? Perhaps. Meanwhile, there were nursery-tea,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</SPAN></span>
a game of pirates, and a fairy-tale by the fire ... and
after it all, that sound, dreamless sleep that only children
know. Would one wake in the morning and find
that one was leaving the nursery for school? Who
could tell? No one returned with any story....</p>
<p>Meanwhile, there was enough to do to help in keeping
the nursery in order, in seeing that the weaker
babies were not trodden upon, in making sure that no
one cried himself to sleep.</p>
<p>Anger and condemnation would never be possible
again; no, nor would he expect the Millennium.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</SPAN></span></p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />