Love and Mr. Lewisham Page 26

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  THE GLAMOUR FADES.

  After all, the rosy love-making and marrying and Epithalamy are nomore than the dawn of things, and to follow comes all the spaciousinterval of white laborious light. Try as we may to stay thosedelightful moments, they fade and pass remorselessly; there is noreturning, no recovering, only--for the foolish--the vilest peep-showsand imitations in dens and darkened rooms. We go on--we grow. At leastwe age. Our young couple, emerging presently from an atmosphere ofdusk and morning stars, found the sky gathering greyly overhead andsaw one another for the first time clearly in the light of every-day.

  It might perhaps witness better to Lewisham's refinement if one couldtell only of a moderated and dignified cooling, of pathetic littleconcealments of disappointment and a decent maintenance of thesentimental atmosphere. And so at last daylight. But our young couplewere too crude for that. The first intimations of their lack ofidentity have already been described, but it would be tedious andpitiful to tell of all the little intensifications, shade by shade, ofthe conflict of their individualities. They fell out, dear lady! theycame to conflict of words. The stress of perpetual worry was uponthem, of dwindling funds and the anxious search for work that wouldnot come. And on Ethel lay long, vacant, lonely hours in dullsurroundings. Differences arose from the most indifferent things; onenight Lewisham lay awake in unfathomable amazement because she hadconvinced him she did not care a rap for the Welfare of Humanity, anddeemed his Socialism a fancy and an indiscretion. And one Sundayafternoon they started for a walk under the pleasantest auspices, andreturned flushed and angry, satire and retort flying free--on thescore of the social conventions in Ethel's novelettes. For someinexplicable reason Lewisham saw fit to hate her novelettes verybitterly. These encounters indeed were mere skirmishes for the mostpart, and the silences and embarrassments that followed ended sooneror later in a "making up," tacit or definite, though once or twicethis making up only re-opened the healing wound. And always eachskirmish left its scar, effaced from yet another line of their livesthe lingering tints of romantic colour.

  There came no work, no added income for either of them, saving twotrifles, for five long months. Once Lewisham won twelve shillings inthe prize competition of a penny weekly, and three times cameinfinitesimal portions of typewriting from a poet who had apparentlyseen the _Athenaeum_ advertisement. His name was Edwin Peak Baynes andhis handwriting was sprawling and unformed. He sent her several shortlyrics on scraps of paper with instructions that he desired "threecopies of each written beautifully in different styles" and "_not_fastened with metal fasteners but with silk thread of an appropriatecolour." Both of our young people were greatly exercised by theseinstructions. One fragment was called "Bird Song," one "CloudShadows," and one "Eryngium," but Lewisham thought they might bespoken of collectively as Bosh. By way of payment, this poet sent, incontravention of the postal regulations, half a sovereign stuck into acard, asking her to keep the balance against future occasions. In alittle while, greatly altered copies of these lyrics were returned bythe poet in person, with this enigmatical instruction written acrossthe cover of each: "This style I like, only if possible more so."

  Lewisham was out, but Ethel opened the door, so this indorsement wasunnecessary, "He's really only a boy," said Ethel, describing theinterview to Lewisham, who was curious. They both felt that theyouthfulness of Edwin Peak Baynes detracted something from the realityof this employment.

  From his marriage until the final examination in June, Lewisham's lifehad an odd amphibious quality. At home were Ethel and the perpetualaching pursuit of employment, the pelting irritations of Madam Gadow'spersistent overcharges, and so forth, and amid such things he feltextraordinarily grown up; but intercalated with these experiences werethose intervals at Kensington, scraps of his adolescence, as it were,lying amidst the new matter of his manhood, intervals during which hewas simply an insubordinate and disappointing student with anincreasing disposition to gossip. At South Kensington he dwelt withtheories and ideals as a student should; at the little rooms inChelsea--they grew very stuffy as the summer came on, and theaccumulation of the penny novelettes Ethel favoured made alitter--there was his particular private concrete situation, andideals gave place to the real.

  It was a strangely narrow world, he perceived dimly, in which hismanhood opened. The only visitors were the Chafferys. Chaffery wouldcome to share their supper, and won upon Lewisham in spite of hisroguery by his incessantly entertaining monologue and by his expressedrespect for and envy of Lewisham's scientific attainments. Moreover,as time went on Lewisham found himself more and more in sympathy withChaffery's bitterness against those who order the world. It was goodto hear him on bishops and that sort of people. He said what Lewishamwanted to say beautifully. Mrs. Chaffery was perpetuallyflitting--out of the house as Lewisham came home, a dim, black,nervous, untidy little figure. She came because Ethel, in spite of herexpressed belief that love was "all in all," found married life alittle dull and lonely while Lewisham was away. And she went hastilywhen he came, because of a certain irritability that the struggleagainst the world was developing. He told no one at Kensington abouthis marriage, at first because it was such a delicious secret, andthen for quite other reasons. So there was no overlapping. The twoworlds began and ended sharply at the wrought-iron gates. But the daycame when Lewisham passed those gates for the last time and hisadolescence ended altogether.

  In the final examination of the biological course, the examinationthat signalised the end of his income of a weekly guinea, he knew wellenough that he had done badly. The evening of the last day's practicalwork found him belated, hot-headed, beaten, with ruffled hair and redears. He sat to the last moment doggedly struggling to keep cool andto mount the ciliated funnel of an earthworm's nephridium. Butciliated funnels come not to those who have shirked the laboratorypractice. He rose, surrendered his paper to the morose elderly youngassistant demonstrator who had welcomed him so flatteringly eightmonths before, and walked down the laboratory to the door where therest of his fellow-students clustered.

  Smithers was talking loudly about the "twistiness" of theidentification, and the youngster with the big ears was listeningattentively.

  "Here's Lewisham! How did _you_ get on, Lewisham?" asked Smithers,not concealing his assurance.

  "Horribly," said Lewisham shortly, and pushed past.

  "Did you spot D?" clamoured Smithers.

  Lewisham pretended not to hear.

  Miss Heydinger stood with her hat in her hand and looked at Lewisham'shot eyes. He was for walking past her, but something in her facepenetrated even his disturbance. He stopped.

  "Did you get out the nephridium?" he said as graciously as he could.

  She shook her head. "Are you going downstairs?" she asked.

  "Rather," said Lewisham, with a vague intimation in his manner of theoffence Smithers gave him.

  He opened the glass door from the passage to the staircase. They wentdown one tier of that square spiral in silence.

  "Are you coming up again next year?" asked Miss Heydinger.

  "No," said Lewisham. "No, I shall not come here again. Ever."

  Pause. "What will you do?" she asked.

  "I don't know. I have to get a living somehow. It's been bothering meall the session."

  "I thought--" She stopped. "Will you go down to your uncle's again?"she said.

  "No. I shall stop in London. It's no good going out of things into thecountry. And besides--I've quarrelled rather with my uncle."

  "What do you think of doing?--teaching?"

  "I suppose it will be teaching, I'm not sure. Anything that turns up."

  "I see," she said.

  They went on down in silence for a time.

  "I suppose you will come up again?" he asked.

  "I may try the botanical again--if they can find room. And, I wasthinking--sometimes one hears of things. What is your address? So thatif I heard of anything."

  Lewisham stopped on the staircase and thought. "
Of course," hesaid. He made no effort to give her the address, and she demanded itagain at the foot of the stairs.

  "That confounded nephridium--!" he said. "It has put everything out ofmy head."

  They exchanged addresses on leaflets torn from Miss Heydinger's littlenote-book.

  She waited at the Book in the hall while he signed his name. At theiron gates of the Schools she said: "I am going through KensingtonGardens."

  He was now feeling irritated about the addresses, and he would not seethe implicit invitation. "I am going towards Chelsea."

  She hesitated a moment, looking at him--puzzled. "Good-bye, then,"she said.

  "Good-bye," he answered, lifting his hat.

  He crossed the Exhibition Road slowly with his packed glazed bag, nowseamed with cracks, in his hand. He went thoughtfully down to thecorner of the Cromwell Road and turned along that to the right so thathe could see the red pile of the Science Schools rising fair, andtall across the gardens of the Natural History Museum. He looked backtowards it regretfully.

  He was quite sure that he had failed in this last examination. Heknew that any career as a scientific man was now closed to him forever. And he remembered now how he had come along this very road tothat great building for the first time in his life, and all the hopesand resolves that had swelled within him as he had drawn near. Thatdream of incessant unswerving work! Where might he have reached ifonly he had had singleness of purpose to realise that purpose?...

  And in these gardens it was that he and Smithers and Parkson had saton a seat hard by the fossil tree, and discoursed of Socialismtogether before the great paper was read....

  "Yes," he said, speaking aloud to himself; "yes--_that's_all over too. Everything's over."

  Presently the corner of the Natural History Museum came between himand his receding Alma Mater. He sighed and turned his face towards thestuffy little rooms at Chelsea, and the still unconquered world.