The soft side

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Miss Gunton of Poughkebpsie 311

George Dane had waked up to a bright new day, the face of nature well washed by last night's downpour and shining as with high spirits, good resolutions, lively intentions — the great glare of recommencement, in short, fixed in his patch of sky. He had sat up late to finish work — arrears overwhelming; then at last had gone to bed with the pile but little reduced. He was now to return to it after the pause of the night; but he could only look at it, for the time, over the bristling hedge of letters planted by the early postman an hour before and already, on the customary table, by the chimney-piece, formally rounded and squared "by his systematic servant. It was something too merciless, the' domestic perfection of Brown. There were newspapers on another table, ranged with the same rigour of custom, newspapers too many — what could any creature want of so much news ? — and each with its hand on the neck of the other, so that the row of their bodiless heads was like a series of decapitations. Other journals, other periodicals of every sort, folded and in wrappers, made a huddled mound that had been growing for several days and of which he had been wearily, helplessly aware. There were new books, also in wrappers as well as disenveloped and dropped again — books from publishers, books from authors, books from friends, books from enemies, books from his own bookseller, who took, it sometimes struck him, inconceivable things for granted. He touched nothing, approached nothing, only turned a heavy eye over the work, as it were, of the night — the fact, in his high, wide- windowed B 1

II

He might have been a week in the place — the scene of his new consciousness — before he spoke at all. The occasion of it then was that one of the quiet figures he had been idly watching drew at last nearer, and showed him a face that was the highest expression — to his pleased but as yet slightly confused perception — of the general charm. What was the general charm ? He couldn't, for that matter, easily have phrased it ; it was such an abyss of negatives, such an absence of every- • thing. The oddity was that, after a minute, he was struck as by the reflection of his own very image in this first interlocutor seated with him, on the easy bench, under the high, clear portico and above the wide, far-reaching garden, where the things that most showed in the greenness were the surface of still . water and the white note of old statues. The absence of every-, thing was, in the aspect of the Brother who had thus informally joined him — a man of his own age, tired, distinguished, modest, kind — really, as he could soon see, but the absence of what he didn't want. He didn't want, for the time, anything but just to he there, to stay in the bath. He was in the bath yet, the broad, deep bath of stillness. They sat in it together now, with the water up to their chins. He had not had to talk, he had not had to think, he had scarce even had to feel. He had been sunk that way before, sunk — when and where? — in another flood ; only a flood of rushing waters, in which bumping and gasping were all. This was a current so slow and so tepid that one floated practically without motion and without chill. The break of silence was not immediate, though Dane seemed indeed to feel it begin before a sound passed. It could pass quite sufficiently without words that he and his mate were Brothers, and what that meant.

Dane wondered, but with no want of ease — for want of ease was impossible — if his friend found in him the same likeness, the proof of peace, the gage of what the place could do. The long afternoon crept to its end ; the shadows fell further and the sky glowed deeper ; but nothing changed — nothing could change — in the element itself. It was a conscious security. It was wonderful ! Dane had lived into it, but he was still immensely aware. He would have been sorry to lose that, for just this fact, as yet, the blessed fact of consciousness, seemed the greatest thing of all. Its only fault was that, being in itself such an occupation, so fine an unrest in the heart of gratitude, the life of the day all went to it. But what even then was the harm ? He had come only to come, to take what he found. This was the part where the great cloister, inclosed externally on three sides and probably the largest, lightest, fairest effect, to his charmed sense, that human hands could ever have expressed in dimensions of length and breadth, opened to the south its splendid fourth quarter, turned to the great view an outer gallery that combined with the rest of the portico to form a high, dry loggia, such as he a little pretended to himself he had, in Italy, in old days, seen in old cities, old convents, old villas. This recall of the disposition of some great abode of an Order, some mild Monte Cassino, some Grande Chartreuse more accessible, was his main term of comparison; but he knew he had really never anywhere beheld anything at once so calculated and so generous.

Three impressions in particular had been with him all the week, and he could only recognise in silence their happy effect on his nerves. How it was all managed he couldn't have told — he had been content moreover till now with his ignorance of cause and pretext ; but whenever he chose to listen with a certain intentness he made out, as from a distance, the sound of slow, sweet bells. How could they be so far and yet so audible ? How could they be so near and yet so faint ? How, above all, could they, in such an arrest of life, be, to time things, so frequent ? The very essence of the bliss of Dane's whole change had been precisely that there was nothing now to time. It was the same with the slow footsteps that always, within earshot, to the vague attention, marked the space and the leisui-e, seemed, in long, cool arcades, lightly to fall and perpetually to recede. This was the second impression, and it melted into the third, as, for that matter, every form of softness, in the great good place, was but a further turn, without jerk or gap, of the endless roll of serenity. The quiet footsteps were quiet figures; the quiet figures that, to the eye, kept the picture human and brought its perfection within reach. This perfection, he felt on the bench by his friend, was now more in reach than ever. His friend at last turned to him a look different from the looks of friends in London clubs.

' The thing was to find it out ! '

It was extraordinary how this remark fitted into his thought. ' Ah, wasn't it ? And when I think,' said Dane, ' of all the people who haven't and who never will ! ' He sighed over these unfortunates with a tenderness that, in its degree, was practically new to him, feeling, too, how well his companion would know the people he meant. He only meant some, but they were all who would want it ; though of these, no doubt — well, for reasons, for things that, in the world, he had observed — there would never be too many. Not all perhaps who wanted would really find ; but none at least would find who didn't really want. And then what the need would have to have been first ! What it at first had to be for himself ! He felt afresh, in the light of his companion's face, what it might still be even when deeply satisfied, as well as what communication was established by the mere mutual knowledge of it.

'Every man must arrive by himself and on his own feet — isn't that so ? We're brothers here for the time, as in a great monastery, and we immediately think of each other and recognise each other as such ; but we must have first got here as we can, and we meet after long journeys by complicated ways. Moreover we meet — don't we ? — with closed eyes.' ■ ' Ah, don't speak as if we were dead ! ' Dane laughed.

' I shan't mind death if it's like this,' his friend replied.

It was too obvious, as Dane gazed before him, that one wouldn't ; but after a moment he asked, with the first articulation, as yet, of his most elementary wonder: 'Where is it?'

' I shouldn't be surprised if it were much nearer than one ever suspected.'

' Nearer town, do you mean ? '

'Nearer everything — nearer every one.'

George Dane thought. ' Somewhere, for instance, down in Surrey ? '

His Brother met him on this with a shade of reluctance. 'Why should we call it names ? It must have a climate, you see.'

' Yes,' Dane happily mused ; ' without that ! ' All it so

securely did have overwhelmed him again, and he couldn't help breaking out : ' What is it ? '

' Oh, it's positively a part of our ease and our rest and our change, I think, that we don't at all know and that we may really call it, for that matter, anything in the world we like

the thing, for instance, we love it most for being.'

' I know what I call it,' said Dane after a moment. Then as his friend listened with interest: 'Just simply "The Great Good Place." '

' I see — what can you say more ? I've put it to myself perhaps a little differently.' They sat there as innocently as small boys confiding to each other the names of toy animals. ' The Great Want Met.'

' Ah, yes, that's it ! '

' Isn't it enough for us that it's a place carried on, for our benefit, so admirably that we strain our ears in vain for a creak of the machinery ? Isn't it enough for us that it's simply a thorough hit ? '

' Ah, a hit ! ' Dane benignantly murmured.

* It does for us what it pretends to do,' his companion went on ; ' the mystery isn't deeper than that. The thing is probably simple enough in fact, and on a thoroughly practical basis ; only it has had its origin in a splendid thought, in a real stroke of genius.'

'Yes,' Dane exclaimed, 'in a sense — on somebody or other's part — so exquisitely personal ! '

'Precisely — it rests, like all good things, on experience. The "great want" comes home — that's the great thing it does ! On the day it came home to the right mind this dear place was constituted. It always, moreover, in the long run, has been met — it always must be. How can it not require to be, more and more, as pressure of every sort grows ? '

Dane, with his hands folded in his lap, took in these words of wisdom. ' Pressure of every sort is growing ! ' he placidly observed.

'I see well enough what that fact has done to yon,' his Brother returned.

Dane smiled. 'I couldn't have borne it longer. I don't know what would have become of me.'

' I know what would have become of me.'

' Well, it's the same thing.'

' Yes,' said Dane's companion, ' it's doubtless the same thing.' On which they sat in silence a little, seeming pleasantly to follow, in the view of the green garden, the vague movements of the monster — madness, surrender, collapse — they had escaped. Their bench was like a box at the opera. ' And I may perfectly, you know,' the Brother pursued, 'have seen you before. I may even have known you well. We don't know.'

They looked at each other again serenely enough, and at last Dane said: 'No, we don't know.'

' That's what I meant by our coming with our eyes closed. Yes — there's something out. There's a gap — a link missing, the great hiatus ! ' the Brother laughed. ' It's as simple a story as the old, old rupture — the break that lucky Catholics have always been able to make, that they are still, with their innumerable religious houses, able to make, by going into " retreat." I don't speak of the pious exercises ; I speak only of the material simplification. I don't speak of the putting off of one's self; I speak only — if one has a self worth sixpence — of the getting it back. The place, the time, the way, were for those of the old persuasion, always there — are indeed practically there for them as much as ever. They can always get off — the blessed houses receive. So it was high time that we — we of the great Protestant peoples, still more, if possible, in the sensitive individual case, overscored and overwhelmed, still more congested with mere quantity and prostituted, through our " enterprise," to mere profanity — should learn how to get off, should find somewhere our retreat and remedy. There was such a huge chance for it ! '

Dane laid his hand on his companion's arm. 'It's charming, how, when we speak for ourselves, we speak for each other. That was exactly what I said ! ' He had fallen to recalling from over the gulf the last occasion.

The Brother, as if it would do them both good, only desired to draw him out. ' What you said ? '

'To him — that morning.' Dane caught a far bell again and heard a slow footstep. A quiet figure passed somewhere — neither of them turned to look. What was, little by little, more present to him was the perfect taste. It was supreme — it was everywhere. ' I just dropped my burden — and he received it.'

' And was it very great ? '

' Oh, such a load ! ' Dane laughed.

' Trouble, sorrow, doubt ? '

' Oh, no ; worse than that ! '

'Worse?'

' " Success " — the vulgarest kind ! ' And Dane laughed again.

'Ah, I know that, too! No one in future, as things are going, will be able to face success.'

' Without something of this sort — never. The better it is the worse — the greater the deadlier. But my one pain here,' Dane continued, ' is in thinking of my poor friend.'

' The person to whom you've already alluded ? '

' My substitute in the world. Such an unutterable benefactor. He turned up that morning when everything had somehow got on my nerves, when the whole great globe indeed, ■ nerves, or no nerves, seemed to have squeezed itself into my study. It wasn't a question of nerves, it was a mere question of the displacement of everything — of submersion by our eternal too much. I didn't know oii donner de la tUe — I couldn't have gone a step further.'

The intelligence with which the Brother listened kept them as children feeding from the same bowl. ' And then you got the tip ? '

' I got the tip ! ' Dane happily sighed.

' Well, we all get it. But I dare say differently.'

' Then how did you ? '

The Brother hesitated, smiling. ' You tell me first.'

III

'Well,' said George Dane, 'it was a young man I had never seen — a man, at any rate, much younger than myself — who had written to me and sent me some article, some book. I read the stuff, was much struck with it, told him so and thanked him — on which, of course, I heard from him again. He asked me things — his questions were interesting ; but to save time and writing I said to him : " Come to see me — we can talk a little ; but all I can give you is half an hour at breakfast." He turned up at the hour on a day when, more than ever in my life before, I seemed, as it happened, in the endless press and stress, to have lost possession of my soul and to be surrounded only with the affairs of other people and the irrelevant, destructive, brutalising sides of life. It made me literally ill — made me feel as I had never felt that if I should once really, for an hour, lose hold of the thing itself, the thing I was trying for, I should never recover it again. The wild waters would close over me, and I should drop ; straight to the bottom where the vanquished dead lie.'

'I follow you every step of your way,' said the friendly Brother. ' The wild waters, you mean, of our horrible time.' '

' Of our horrible time — precisely. Not, of course — as we '^ sometimes dream — of any other.'

' Yes, any other is only a dream. We really know none but our own.'

'ISTo, thank God — that's enough,' Dane said. 'Well, my young man turned up, and I hadn't been a minute in his presence before making out that practically it would be in him somehow or other to help me. He came to me with envy, envy extravagant — really passionate. I was, heaven save us, the great "success" for him; he himself was broken and beaten. How can I say what passed between us ? — it was so strange, so swift, so much a matter, from one to the other, of instant perception and agreement. He was so clever and haggard and hungry ! '

' Hungry ? ' the Brother asked.

'I don't mean for bread, though he had none too much, I think, even of that. I mean for — well, what I had and what I was a monument of to him as I stood there up to my neck in preposterous evidence. He, poor chap, had been for ten years serenading closed windows and had never yet caused a shutter to show that it stirred. My dim blind was the first to be raised an inch ; my reading of his book, my impression of it, my note and my invitation, formed literally the only response ever dropped into his dark street. He saw in my littered room, my shattered day, my bored face and spoiled temper — it's embarrassing, but I must tell you — the very blaze of my glory. And he saw in the blaze of my glory — deluded innocent ! — what he had yearned for in vain.'

' What he had yearned for was to he you,' said the Brother. Then he added : ' I see where you're coming out.'

'At my saying to him by the end of five minutes: "My dear fellow, I wish you'd just try it — wish you'd, for a while, just he me ! " You go straight to the mark, and that was exactly what occurred — extraordinary though it was that we should both have understood. I saw what he could give, and •he did too. He saw moreover what I could take ; in fact what he saw was wonderful.'

' He must be very remarkable ! ' the Brother laughed.

'There's no doubt of it whatever — far more remarkable than I. That's just the reason why what I put to him in joke — with a fantastic, desperate irony — became, on his hands, with his vision of his chance, the blessed guarantee of my sitting on this spot in your company. " Oh, if I could just shift it all — make it straight over for an hour to other shoulders! If there only were a pair!" — that's the way I put it to him. And then at something in bis face, " Would you, by a miracle, undertake it ? " I asked. I let him know all it meant — how it meant that he should at that very moment step in. It meant that he should finish my work and open my letters and keep my engagements and be subject, for better or worse, to my contacts and complications. It meant that he should live with my life, and think with my brain, and write with my hand, and speak with my voice. It meant, above all, that I should get off. He accepted with magnificence — rose to it like a hero. Only he said: "What will become of ■you ?"'

' There was the hitch ! ' the Brother admitted.

'Ah, but only for a minute. He came to my help again,' Dane pursued, ' when he saw I couldn't quite meet that, could at least only say that I wanted to think, wanted to cease, wanted to do the thing itself — the thing I was trying for, miserable me, and that thing only — and therefore wanted first of all really to see it again, planted out, crowded out, frozen out as it now so long had been. " I know what you want," he after a moment quietly remarked to me. "Ah, what I want doesn't exist ! " "I know what you want," he repeated. At that I began to believe him.'

' Had you any idea yourself ? ' the Brother asked.

'Oh, yes,' said Dane, 'and it was just ray idea that made me despair. There it was as sharp as possible in my imagination and my longing — there it was so utterly not in fact. We were sitting together on my sofa as we waited for breakfast. He presently laid his hand on my knee — showed me a face that the sudden great light in it had made, for me, indescribably beautiful. " It exists — it exists," he at last said. And so, I remember, we sat awhile and looked at each other, with the final elfect of my finding that I absolutely believed him. I remember we weren't at all solemn — we smiled with the joy of discoverers. He was as glad as I — he was tremendously glad. That came out in the whole manner of his reply to the appeal that broke from me : " Where is it, then, in God's name ? Tell me without delay where it is ! " '

The Brother had attended with a sympathy ! ' He gave you the addiess ? '

'He -was thinking it out — feeling for it, catching it. He has a wonderful head of his own and must be making of the whole thing, while we sit here gossiping, something much better than evec / did. The mere sight of his face, the sense of his hand on my knee, made me, after a little, feel that he not only knew what I wanted, but was getting nearer to it than I could have got in ten years. He suddenly sprang up and went over to my study-table — sat straight down there as if to write me my passport. Then it was — at the mere sight of his back, which was turned to me — that I felt the spell work. I simply sat and watched him with the queerest, deepest, sweetest sense in the world — the sense of an ache that had stopped. All life was lifted ; I myself at least was somehow off the ground. He was already where I had been.'

' And where were you ? ' the Brother amusedly inquired.

' Just on the sofa always, leaning back on the cushion and feeling a delicious ease. He was already me.'

' And who were you ? ' the Brother continued.

'Nobody. That was the fun.'

'That is the fun,' said the Brother, with a sigh like soft music.

Dane echoed the sigh, and, as nobody talking with nobody, they sat there together still and watched the sweet wide picture darken tato tepid night.