Love and Mr. Lewisham Read online

  LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

  By

  H. G. WELLS

  "Why on earth did you put my roses here?" he asked.]

  CONTENTS

  I. INTRODUCES MR. LEWISHAM II. "AS THE WIND BLOWS" III. THE WONDERFUL DISCOVERY IV. RAISED EYEBROWS V. HESITATIONS VI. THE SCANDALOUS RAMBLE VII. THE RECKONING VIII. THE CAREER PREVAILS IX. ALICE HEYDINGER X. IN THE GALLERY OF OLD IRON XI. MANIFESTATIONS XII. LEWISHAM IS UNACCOUNTABLE XIII. LEWISHAM INSISTS XIV. MR. LAGUNE'S POINT OF VIEW XV. LOVE IN THE STREETS XVI. MISS HEYDINGER'S PRIVATE THOUGHTS XVII. IN THE RAPHAEL GALLERY XVIII. THE FRIENDS OF PROGRESS MEET XIX. LEWISHAM'S SOLUTION XX. THE CAREER IS SUSPENDED XXI. HOME! XXII. EPITHALAMY XXIII. MR. CHAFFERY AT HOME XXIV. THE CAMPAIGN OPENS XXV. THE FIRST BATTLE XXVI. THE GLAMOUR FADES XXVII. CONCERNING A QUARRELXXVIII. THE COMING OF THE ROSES XXIX. THORNS AND ROSE PETALS XXX. A WITHDRAWAL XXXI. IN BATTERSEA PARK XXXII. THE CROWNING VICTORY

  CHAPTER I.

  INTRODUCES MR. LEWISHAM.

  The opening chapter does not concern itself with Love--indeed thatantagonist does not certainly appear until the third--and Mr. Lewishamis seen at his studies. It was ten years ago, and in those days he wasassistant master in the Whortley Proprietary School, Whortley, Sussex,and his wages were forty pounds a year, out of which he had to affordfifteen shillings a week during term time to lodge with Mrs. Munday,at the little shop in the West Street. He was called "Mr." todistinguish him from the bigger boys, whose duty it was to learn, andit was a matter of stringent regulation that he should be addressed as"Sir."

  He wore ready-made clothes, his black jacket of rigid line was dustedabout the front and sleeves with scholastic chalk, and his face wasdowny and his moustache incipient. He was a passable-looking youngsterof eighteen, fair-haired, indifferently barbered, and with a quiteunnecessary pair of glasses on his fairly prominent nose--he worethese to make himself look older, that discipline might bemaintained. At the particular moment when this story begins he was inhis bedroom. An attic it was, with lead-framed dormer windows, aslanting ceiling and a bulging wall, covered, as a number of tornplaces witnessed, with innumerable strata of florid old-fashionedpaper.

  To judge by the room Mr. Lewisham thought little of Love but much onGreatness. Over the head of the bed, for example, where good folkshang texts, these truths asserted themselves, written in a clear,bold, youthfully florid hand:--"Knowledge is Power," and "What man hasdone man can do,"--man in the second instance referring toMr. Lewisham. Never for a moment were these things to beforgotten. Mr. Lewisham could see them afresh every morning as hishead came through his shirt. And over the yellow-painted box uponwhich--for lack of shelves--Mr. Lewisham's library was arranged, was a"_Schema_." (Why he should not have headed it "Scheme," the editor ofthe _Church Times_, who calls his miscellaneous notes "_Varia_," isbetter able to say than I.) In this scheme, 1892 was indicated as theyear in which Mr. Lewisham proposed to take his B.A. degree at theLondon University with "hons. in all subjects," and 1895 as the dateof his "gold medal." Subsequently there were to be "pamphlets in theLiberal interest," and such like things duly dated. "Who would controlothers must first control himself," remarked the wall over thewash-hand stand, and behind the door against the Sunday trousers was aportrait of Carlyle.

  These were no mere threats against the universe; operations hadbegun. Jostling Shakespeare, Emerson's Essays, and the penny Life ofConfucius, there were battered and defaced school books, a number ofthe excellent manuals of the Universal Correspondence Association,exercise books, ink (red and black) in penny bottles, and anindia-rubber stamp with Mr. Lewisham's name. A trophy of bluish greenSouth Kensington certificates for geometrical drawing, astronomy,physiology, physiography, and inorganic chemistry adorned his furtherwall. And against the Carlyle portrait was a manuscript list of Frenchirregular verbs.

  Attached by a drawing-pin to the roof over the wash-hand stand,which--the room being an attic--sloped almost dangerously, dangled aTime-Table. Mr. Lewisham was to rise at five, and that this was novain boasting, a cheap American alarum clock by the books on the boxwitnessed. The lumps of mellow chocolate on the papered ledge by thebed-head indorsed that evidence. "French until eight," said thetime-table curtly. Breakfast was to be eaten in twenty minutes; thentwenty-five minutes of "literature" to be precise, learning extracts(preferably pompous) from the plays of William Shakespeare--and thento school and duty. The time-table further prescribed LatinComposition for the recess and the dinner hour ("literature," however,during the meal), and varied its injunctions for the rest of thetwenty-four hours according to the day of the week. Not a moment forSatan and that "mischief still" of his. Only three-score and ten hasthe confidence, as well as the time, to be idle.

  But just think of the admirable quality of such a scheme! Up and busyat five, with all the world about one horizontal, warm, dreamy-brainedor stupidly hullish, if roused, roused only to grunt and sigh and rollover again into oblivion. By eight three hours' clear start, threehours' knowledge ahead of everyone. It takes, I have been told by aneminent scholar, about a thousand hours of sincere work to learn alanguage completely--after three or four languages much less--whichgives you, even at the outset, one each a year before breakfast. Thegift of tongues--picked up like mushrooms! Then that "literature"--anastonishing conception! In the afternoon mathematics and thesciences. Could anything be simpler or more magnificent? In six yearsMr. Lewisham will have his five or six languages, a sound, all-roundeducation, a habit of tremendous industry, and be still butfour-and-twenty. He will already have honour in his university andampler means. One realises that those pamphlets in the Liberalinterests will be no obscure platitudes. Where Mr. Lewisham will be atthirty stirs the imagination. There will be modifications of theSchema, of course, as experience widens. But the spirit of it--thespirit of it is a devouring flame!

  He was sitting facing the diamond-framed window, writing, writingfast, on a second yellow box that was turned on end and empty, and thelid was open, and his knees were conveniently stuck into thecavity. The bed was strewn with books and copygraphed sheets ofinstructions from his remote correspondence tutors. Pursuant to thedangling time-table he was, you would have noticed, translating Latininto English.

  Imperceptibly the speed of his writing diminished. "_Urit me Glyceraenitor_" lay ahead and troubled him. "Urit me," he murmured, and hiseyes travelled from his book out of window to the vicar's roofopposite and its ivied chimneys. His brows were knit at first and thenrelaxed. "_Urit me_!" He had put his pen into his mouth and glancedabout for his dictionary. _Urare_?

  Suddenly his expression changed. Movement dictionary-ward ceased. Hewas listening to a light tapping sound--it was a footfall--outside.

  He stood up abruptly, and, stretching his neck, peered through hisunnecessary glasses and the diamond panes down into thestreet. Looking acutely downward he could see a hat daintily trimmedwith pinkish white blossom, the shoulder of a jacket, and just thetips of nose and chin. Certainly the stranger who sat under thegallery last Sunday next the Frobishers. Then, too, he had seen heronly obliquely....

  He watched her until she passed beyond the window frame. He strainedto see impossibly round the corner....

  Then he started, frowned, took his pen from his mouth. "This wanderingattention!" he said. "The slightest thing! Where was I? Tcha!" Hemade a noise with his teeth to express his irritation, sat down, andreplaced his knees in the upturned box. "Urit me," he said, biting theend of his pen and looking for his dictionary.

  It was a Wednesday half-holiday late in March, a spring day gloriousin amber light, dazzling white clouds and the intensest blue, castinga powder of wonderful green hither and thither among the trees androusing all the birds to tumultuous rejoi
cings, a rousing day, aclamatory insistent day, a veritable herald of summer. The stir ofthat anticipation was in the air, the warm earth was parting above theswelling seeds, and all the pine-woods were full of the minutecrepitation of opening bud scales. And not only was the stir of MotherNature's awakening in the earth and the air and the trees, but also inMr. Lewisham's youthful blood, bidding him rouse himself to live--livein a sense quite other than that the Schema indicated.

  He saw the dictionary peeping from under a paper, looked up "Urit me,"appreciated the shining "nitor" of Glycera's shoulders, and so fellidle again to rouse himself abruptly.

  "I _can't_ fix my attention," said Mr. Lewisham. He took off theneedless glasses, wiped them, and blinked his eyes. This confoundedHorace and his stimulating epithets! A walk?

  "I won't be beat," he said--incorrectly--replaced his glasses, broughthis elbows down on either side of his box with resonant violence, andclutched the hair over his ears with both hands....

  In five minutes' time he found himself watching the swallows curvingthrough the blue over the vicarage garden.

  "Did ever man have such a bother with himself as me?" he asked vaguelybut vehemently. "It's self-indulgence does it--sitting down's thebeginning of laziness."

  So he stood up to his work, and came into permanent view of thevillage street. "If she has gone round the corner by the post office,she will come in sight over the palings above the allotments,"suggested the unexplored and undisciplined region of Mr. Lewisham'smind....

  She did not come into sight. Apparently she had not gone round by thepost office after all. It made one wonder where she had gone. Did shego up through the town to the avenue on these occasions?... Thenabruptly a cloud drove across the sunlight, the glowing street wentcold and Mr. Lewisham's imagination submitted to control. So "_Matersaeva cupidinum_," "The untamable mother of desires,"--Horace (BookII. of the Odes) was the author appointed by the university forMr. Lewisham's matriculation--was, after all, translated to itsprophetic end.

  Precisely as the church clock struck five Mr. Lewisham, with apunctuality that was indeed almost too prompt for a really earneststudent, shut his Horace, took up his Shakespeare, and descended thenarrow, curved, uncarpeted staircase that led from his garret to theliving room in which he had his tea with his landlady, Mrs.Munday. That good lady was alone, and after a few civilitiesMr. Lewisham opened his Shakespeare and read from a mark onward--thatmark, by-the-bye, was in the middle of a scene--while he consumedmechanically a number of slices of bread and whort jam.

  Mrs. Munday watched him over her spectacles and thought how bad somuch reading must be for the eyes, until the tinkling of her shop-bellcalled her away to a customer. At twenty-five minutes to six he putthe book back in the window-sill, dashed a few crumbs from his jacket,assumed a mortar-board cap that was lying on the tea-caddy, and wentforth to his evening "preparation duty."

  The West Street was empty and shining golden with the sunset. Itsbeauty seized upon him, and he forgot to repeat the passage from HenryVIII. that should have occupied him down the street. Instead he waspresently thinking of that insubordinate glance from his window and oflittle chins and nose-tips. His eyes became remote in theirexpression....

  The school door was opened by an obsequious little boy with "lines" tobe examined.

  Mr. Lewisham felt a curious change of atmosphere on his entry. Thedoor slammed behind him. The hall with its insistent scholasticsuggestions, its yellow marbled paper, its long rows of hat-pegs, itsdisreputable array of umbrellas, a broken mortar-board and a tatteredand scattered _Principia_, seemed dim and dull in contrast with theluminous stir of the early March evening outside. An unusual sense ofthe greyness of a teacher's life, of the greyness indeed of the lifeof all studious souls came, and went in his mind. He took the "lines,"written painfully over three pages of exercise book, and obliteratedthem with a huge G.E.L., scrawled monstrously across each page. Heheard the familiar mingled noises of the playground drifting in to himthrough the open schoolroom door.