The conventionalists

Prologue

T SET down my bag in a kind of despair, straightened my aching back and began very cautiously to bend my cramped fingers this way and that; the pinched skin across the palm of my hand slowly readjusted itself. Yet all the while I was marvelling at the dawn of rosy nacre, the strange silence, the clean-smelling, cold, dark air and the solemnity of the empty streets.

I was doing an extremely foolish thing out of mere obstinacy. Two engagements, just not incompatible, involved my arriving, from the north, at Euston at four o'clock in the morning and my leaving Waterloo at eight o'clock; and in a fit of romantic self-will I had shaken my head at the sleepy cab-drivers and set out to walk with my kit-bag across from one station to the other. For about three-quarters of an hour I had enjoyed myself ; then profound irritation, weariness and self-mockery had gained possession of my animal nature, and the conflict was now proceeding. On the one side, such appreciative faculties as I possess pointed out to me I the curious romance of the quiet streets, the unique experience of looking upon London asleep; on the other, my carnal appetite painted visions of a cushioned hansom, a hotel bedroom and a couple of hours' drowsy rest. But my will was obstinate. No power known to me would have availed to make me falter.

I had reached a cross-road, somewhere to the south of King’s Cross, where the slope begins to rise, and for the third or fourth time set down my bag to rest. As my muscles slowly relaxed, and the quick pricking of the skin subsided to a glow, I began once more to appreciate my experience. It was really very remarkable. To right and left of me ran a long, straight street, noisy and hideous in the daytime no doubt, now as solemn as a ruined temple in the dawn. A water-cart had lately passed along this way, sweeping clean with floods of fresh water the fragments and the dust generated in the previous day, and a smell as of a country road was in my nostrils. Opposite me, and down the street in front, rose up the silhouette of chimney pots and stucco parapets, beneath which drowsed the whiteblinded windows; here and there a vivid orange oblong, crossed by a monstrous shadow, showed where some yawning human creature was making ready for his day’s work. The silence, too, was impressive ; and the gnat-like cry of some workman’s train half a mile away, the rich, sudden clatter of a milk-cart across the end of one of these labyrinthine avenues, the hollow bang of a house-door, the approaching and receding rap of footsteps on the hard pavement, echoing back clear and distinct before fading’ again into stillness, the thin crow of a dawn-cock across miles of roofs — all these things did no more than accentuate the silence.

Since leaving the Euston Road, I had not seen more than a dozen persons all told, and of these not less than four had been policemen. Five more had been working men, bag on shoulder, passing briskly along to some mysterious business, scenting the air for a hundred yards behind them with the pungent black tobacco and that strange British combination of stale alcohol and unwashed clothes. One had been a drowsy boy, protruding a stick-like arm to take in the milk at a green-painted, blistered door; one had been a girl with her hair in curl-papers, who appeared to have slept in her clothes; and the last, a railway porter driving a van. I had also had a few courteous words with a sleepy but polite collie-dog.

I had learned two or three lessons already and now repeated them to myself. The first was that those persons who report that London never sleeps are liars; the second, that the sense of smell is extraordinarily refined at four o’clock in the morning, and the third was that hideous London streets can be perfectly beautiful in an autumn dawn.

I do not think I have ever seen that sky equalled. Overhead still lay the heavy gray pall of thin cloud, visible through the smoke-clear air ; but to the southeast it flushed through old-rose down to a burning red and gold and with faint blue streaks of cloud variegating it like the colors of mother-of-pearl. It was as if some unimaginable glory was a-preparing in heaven. Yet I knew perfectly well that I should be disappointed later. The promise would not be fulfilled; the colours would die, not deepen, and a drab-colored day would once more reassert itself over this splendid dawn, as surely as disillusionment succeeds to youthful love.

I suppose that persons who walk abroad occasionally at this unheard-of hour are generally inclined at such times to a priggish sententiousness. I had already been swelling with pride and superiority for half an hour ; now I even went so far as to begin to reflect upon human life. Here was this great morning-secret into which I had been initiated — the secret that London sleeps and that yet the world continues! How childish, I told myself, that people should ever be bewildered with human life, or be tempted to think that man’s perceptions were adequate to absolute truth! Here was infinite air about me, alive with some silent smiling

Presence; undreamed of space on every side flowed down again into those stone and stucco channels from which for an hour or two festering humanity had been withdrawn, as surely as the clean seawater washes up the horrible drain-pipes that run into the sand from the insignificant little village on the cliff. How strange it was that these rabbitmen and women who ran up and down those streets and who retired to snore in stuffy bedrooms when dark had fallen, should so live in the midst of mystery and yet not understand it. While I — I — a lover of the country, saw at a glance. . . .

I perceived my own revolting sententiousness, and stooped once more to take up my bag. Even as I did so a step sounded sharply up from my left, and round the corner of the house, up the road which I was about to cross, came the figure of a young man. He looked at me for an instant as he passed, at my face under my clerical hat, my long overcoat, my bag and back again to my face. Then he was gone, and his steps rang along the pavement at my right.

But I was interested in what I had seen. He is my hero. Let me describe him carefully, once and for all.

First, he was plainly a gentleman, though in a remarkable costume. He was in a long, white frieze motoring overcoat ; his boots were of a proper chestnut color; he had his hands deep in his pockets; he wore a Trilby hat, and a '' ThiM Trinity woollen scarf was wrapped about his neck. He was slightly under six feet in height. What I had seen of his face was reassuring; he was no nocturnal reveler. His eyes were a clear, kind of gray-blue, looking with a slightly puzzled expression out of a strangely clear complexion ; his thin lips were fresh, and set in a determined line; and there had been in his face, as he had glanced at me, a kind of shy and courteous interest — neither the mask-like look of the carnal and conventional animal, nor the stupid intelligence of the fool. Later, I noticed one or two other things — that his jaw was very beautifully shaped and gave promise of extreme firmness ; its lower line was almost exactly at right angles to his throat; that his nose was really straight, with sensitive, fine nostrils, and that his chin had just the shadow of a cleft in th^ middle.

I took up my bag, went a step or two forward and hesitated, looking after his retreating figure. Then I determined to go after him, with a vague kind of curiosity as to what he was doing abroad at that hour.

Now, I had no sort of intention of speaking to him ; indeed, there was no hope of my catching him up, but I thought it would add a kind of interest to my pilgrimage, if I followed him so long as he went in the least in my direction. I could weave imaginations about him, too, which would serve to pass the time. But at the next street corner he was delivered into my hands.

There stood at the angle a coffee-stall, just off the pavement; and a navvy had just set down his cup on the counter and was turning away. My young man, scarcely forty yards in front of me, hesitated an instant; then he dived briskly under the canvas roof, and I heard his voice requesting coffee. I, too, then followed him, set down my bag and delivered the same order.

It was a curious little place. Two men looked over the high counter raised on a platform. Behind them were shelves filled with tin boxes and crockery. A couple of steaming pots stood between us with a regiment of thick-lipped cups, and three or four loaves of bread with a basin of butter stood beside them. A kerosene-jet flared noisily just outside the shelter.

The young man and I, standing a yard apart, as monks eat their jentaculum, ate in silence. The coffee was really delicious, hot and thick. I was still meditating whether I could introduce myself by offering a cigarette, when an old man stepped round the corner of the shelter and suggested carrying my bag for me. I told him, No, looking at his bent old body and pinched face; but that he might have some coffee at my charges.

While he ate and drank, my mind still labored on the question as to how I could speak to the young man. I really do not know why I wanted to; I suppose it must have been an unworthy curiosity as to his doings; but finally it came about in a moment. As I fumbled for the coppers I dropped two, and, after a pause of looking, the young man stooped and picked one up.

I thanked him and after finishing my payment, offered first the old man and then the young one my cigarette case. Each took a cigarette; and, as together we three went out, I turned to the young man suddenly.

Are you going my way ? ” 1 asked, indicating the street to the left.

He smiled rather pleasantly and bowed with a kind of youthful dignity, and together we set off.

I began by remarking on his scarfi

‘‘ You are wearing what I should call ‘ Third Trinity ' colors,” I said.

‘‘ Why, that’s what they are ! ” he said.

“ That’s interesting,” I went on. “ I’m Eton and Trinity myself.”

That started him more or less, and I learned presently, though he was obviously a shy boy, that he had just begun his third year; that he was going to the Bar (I knew what that meant) ; that up to to-day he had been staying with his uncle in town ; that he was going down to his home, Crowston, in Sussex, that evening. All this came out gradually; he was not more than politely communicative; and I had to help him out by telling him various facts about myself. He seemed interested to learn that I too was living in Cambridge; and presently he asked me if I were a don.

I told him, No; and then I unmasked my first gun.

‘‘ I am a Roman Catholic priest,” I said. “ I am at the Catholic Rectory there.”

There was just that pause that I have become accustomed to expect on making that announcement, and then he said something, shy and polite, about our meeting up at Cambridge perhaps.

I shall be delighted,” I said. “ I never hunt people out for fear they should think I am proselytizing. But I am generally at home in the evening, if you care to look me up.”

I suppose the sense of mutual loneliness, engendered by walking together through empty streets, encourages communicativeness ; and by the time that we reached the beginning of the City, he had told me a good deal more, broken occasionally by that kind of tremulous pause that I have noticed in conversations with other people who have learned that I am a priest.

Briefly, he was the second son of a country gentleman; ... he had one brother older than himself, and another younger; ... his parents were both alive. He rowed in the second boat of Third Trinity ” ; . . . he was reading for

the Law Tripos and hoped to get through. . . .

He thought he liked Cambridge . . . He was

accustomed to ride and shoot, but he wasn’t much good at either.

As we turned off by the Mansion House, the City was awake in earnest; the romance was gone, and the drab day had taken complete possession of all things. Yet I had not so far found out what I wanted. He said something about leaving me at the entrance of the bridge, and I fired my last shot.

Do tell me what on earth you are doing out at this hour?”

He smiled rather shyly, and flushed very faintly.

I am just taking a walk,” he said. ‘‘ I was out at three and shall get back to Queen’s Gate for breakfast.”

“ It is admirable. Do you often do it ? ”

“ Sometimes,” he said. '' I like it.”

At the beginning of the bridge he said good-bye.

II

‘‘ Don’t forget,” I said. “ I shan’t come and see you unless you come to see me first. My name is Benson; and I live at the Catholic Rectory.”

“ I shan’t forget,” he said.

All across the bridge I was revolving theories. A young man walks abroad from three to eight for one of two reasons. Either he is ill with sleeplessness, and this one was not, or he is suffering from acute romance; and in this case he is in love, of a sort, either with an idea, or with a girl, or with God.

That, then, was my first meeting with Algy Banister.

Chapter I (i)

TVyriSS MARY MAPLE was looking out of her ^ ^ bedroom window at Crowston shortly before half-past nine in the morning and wondering what she should talk about at breakfast. It was not an encouraging morning, for it had absolutely no distinctive character whatever. The sky was gray and dull; the grass was of a usual green; and the woods to right and left were hesitating as to whether it was still late summer or whether they should vote for early autumn, and dress accordingly; in fact, a few impulsive spirits had already decided that it was absurd to remain quite green any longer. She thought she would say this, as she fingered the curtains a moment; then she reflected that it was really too elaborate for breakfast; it might possibly serve at a genial tea. In any case she was not sure that the Banister circle would in the least understand what she was talking about.

She too stood rather in the position of the woods.

Hitherto she had been certainly summer, a pleasant, flushed-faced summer, with brown-gold hair; but she was beginning to hesitate — her age was twenty-nine. It seemed to her sometimes as if she was being hardly treated by the Authorities. Certainly she looked her part all right, in a brown tailormade dress, upright, steady-faced, sufficiently pretty and certainly dignified. She could act it, too, and loved it. She rode magnificently, shot on occasion just well enough to make men pleased with her, was competent at golf, could drive a motor and was quite good at parlor tricks and amateur theatricals; but the difficulty was that she did not really know her spoken part. She was subject to moods which she could not control. Occasionally she felt so desperately bored that she sat almost dead-silent ; occasionally she talked just too cleverly for her friends. She positively read poetry now and then and knew a few arguments of the other side. It was very hard to hit the mean.

Yet here she was planted by destiny in a succession of country houses from July to March and in town from March to July, and time was passing. She had acknowledged to herself quite frankly by now that she wanted to be married ; in fact, she had known this for at least five years ; and she knew also that nothing but a really comfortable kind of life would suit her. There must be no nonsense about younger sons. . . . Theo Banister would

have done very well. Her will, instructed by her understanding, had singled him out a year ago, and her affections had followed obediently though tranquilly; but it seemed there was no reciprocation. Theo was a perfectly harmless, proper kind of man. She had met him a dozen times in town ; it was undoubtedly through his means that she had been asked here a second year in succession ; and now this fool Algy had spoilt it all. It was impossible to preserve dignity with an uncouth schoolboy making eyes at her all day.

This was what she said to herself in her severer moods, on such occasions as before breakfast or immediately after lunch; but there were other times when she felt rather sorry for him. He was plainly an excellent boy ; he was shy, rather incompetent — obviously considered the fool of the family — and entirely devoted. Even her irritation with him showed her interest, though she did not perceive this. If he had but been the eldest son he might really have done very well. He was a fresh, courteous boy; he would always be presentable, though not always graceful. . . . And he was coming

back from town this evening.

An old retriever plodded stiffly across the gravel, took up a position on the grass immediately in front of the front door, sat down, closed his eyes reverently and began to emit solemn barks, listening, as it were, to the echo of each through eternity. It seemed very significant and ceremonial. Mary smiled at him, left off twitching the curtain and went to the door.

The retriever did very well as an opening for conversation five minutes later as she sat between Theo and Harold ; and she had learned presently, with an air of intelligent interest, his age, name and the principal incidents of his career, all from Harold’s eager lips. Algy had shot him once, it seemed, not seriously, in the hind quarters, thinking him to be a hare in the undergrowth.

‘‘ Jolly funny sort of hare,” said the boy vindictively ; and then, without indicating a change of subject, “ He’s coming down again to-day. Miss Maple. Don’t tell him I told you. He’s only been up about some law business.”

‘‘ The Brasteds are coming by the same train,” put in Theo, reaching across for the toast, ‘‘ and Jack Hamilton. You know them well, don’t you? ”

Mary assented.

“ She’s a Catholic, isn’t she ? ” asked Harold, with large eyes.

Again Mary assented.

She became one about five years ago,” she said.

As she went across to get some cold partridge.

the sense of despair came on her again. It was all so hopelessly the same. Here was this large and comfortable dining-room, Turkey carpeted and hung with portraits of solid Victorian and Georgian Banisters. There was a black marble mantelpiece; silver dishes on the sideboard loaded with excellently cooked food ; an immense hot-water urn blotting out her hostess’s face. All the people, too, were exactly like everybody else. Old Mr. Banister seemed what he was, a Justice of the Peace, an admirable sportsman, a competent head of a household and estates. At first sight he looked as if he were in a perpetual passion. Mrs. Banister seconded him perfectly, performed her functions well and had about three other ideas in the world. Theo was a good third, who would make a first some day ; and Harold was also what he looked, a boy of nineteen, fresh-faced, ardent and confidential. There was also another man and his wife of no importance, who were leaving that morning, and Sybil Markham, a sort of cousin of the house, a really charming girl of eighteen, looking exactly like a Gainsborough, with whom Harold was obviously in love. Then this evening there would be the Brasteds — a faint consolation — Jack Hamilton and Algy.

Yet Mary knew perfectly well that she could not be happy unless the wheels ran smoothly. Life was tolerable in the midst of pleasant opulence — or, at any rate, it would be intolerable elsewhere. She could not imagine without horror an existence in which food was not perfectly cooked, or where other people^s windows looked on to her own garden. She had had experience of it for the first fifteen years of her life, till her aunt had adopted her; she did not wish to have it again. Yet undoubtedly she would some day, when her aunt died, unless she succeeded in establishing a right of her own. Theo seemed her last chance — and Theo, in brightly colored heather-stockings, was helping himself to ham.

She went out after breakfast to see the sportsmen off, an hour later. The unimportant man and his wife had spun off on the motor ten minutes before, the beaters were assembling on the gravel at the corner, and Mr. Banister was conferring with the keeper.

Harold came out in his homespun and gaiters and stood beside her.

We’re going over there first — just through the roots,” he said, pointing out to the left. ‘‘ Are you coming out to lunch ? ”

I believe so,” said Mary sedately, knowing perfectly well why he had asked. At any rate, Sybil

and I are coming.”

Harold snicked open his gun punctiliously, and looked down the barrels with a critical eye.

“ I wish those other chaps would come in time,’’ he said, They’re ten minutes late already.”

Theo came out almost immediately afterwards, a similar figure, with a large flat cap set above his ruddy face, and made the same remark; and Mary stood by him, leaning against the Corinthian pillar of the porch, presenting really a charming picture there. Out here in the dull light she did not look her age; her heavy masses of brown hair shone pleasantly with underlights of gold; her face had a warm morning flush, and her eyes seemed bright and interested. Her brown-clad figure showed to great advantage against the round white column.

I wish I was a man sometimes,” she said suddenly. How nice, it must be to be dressed like that!”

This was well on Theo’s intellectual level ; and he made an obvious answer. It was like touching a spring.

At any rate. I’m coming out to lunch,” she said; “^and I shall borrow somebody’s gun for a shot or two afterwards.”

She still stood watching as the group moved away at last across the grass, with the two late comers still slightly apologetic. It was all so pleasantly picturesque; the long slope of grass crowned by pines against the sky a quarter of a mile away; the russet colored figures moving across; the band of beaters vanishing with their white flags far off to the left to take their places for the drive — all so picturesque and so suggestive. And it all so nearly belonged to her, and just did not.

Sybil came over just before they disappeared.

'' Oh ! I’m late,” she said. I didn’t know : ”

Then the two stood watching.

After the train left East Croydon for the comparative darkness of unsuburban country, Algy laid aside the Westminster,” crossed his right leg over his left, propped his cheek on his hand and his hand against the glass and settled himself down to luxurious meditation.

He was very much in love, and was delighted that he was alone in this first-class carriage ; for it seemed to him almost impossible that his secret should not escape from him in a kind of luminous emanation. This past week had been intolerable to him. His Love had come to stay for a fortnight in his own home; he had^^seen her for two days; then he had been obliged to go up to town to his uncle’s house about some business connected with his future entrance into Law; and now there remained six days, Sunday to Friday inclusive, in which he would see her and live in her company.

It had begun in the previous summer at a ball. He had seen her before that, but she had not risen upon him, so to speak, before that fateful night. He had positively danced with her, he had been conscious of various details which he had meditated upon ever since — the warm color of her complexion, the gold lights in her hair, the shape of her hand and the extraordinary thrill of her eyes. She had been delightful to him; she had even said that she enjoyed talking to somebody who understood what she meant. He had taken her to supper and to her carriage in the early dawn. He had gone home, not yet fully understanding what had happened to him; he had laid the gloves in which he had danced at the very back of his drawer, that they might not be worn again. He had fallen asleep to the phantom music of a band ; he had awakened the next morning, conscious instantly of her existence.

It was this form, then, that love took in Algy — a form of idealism that had very little to do with facts. He had passed through Eton singularly unscathed, and he still retained the capacity for clear adoration that often disappears with childhood. Nothing entered his head but this idealism. Mary was to him an almost wholly spiritual figure — an intangible light radiating through a beautiful lantern. (I regret having to expres^ it in this rather bombastic language, but I am unaware of any other. Perhaps it would be simpler at once to say that Algy’s chief characteristic was an extreme purity.)

Other new things had followed that beginning, exactly as they always do. The world was the same, yet he, in company with all other youthful lovers, had looked upon it now from a new angle, and it reflected marvelous shades and tints of light. Things that had appeared dull, which he had taken for granted, took upon themselves a new kind of reality. It was as when one places an uninteresting photograph in a diorama; details and principles become rounded and objective — they fall into fresh and vivid relations one with another. He began to understand now why it was right and proper that summer woods should be beautiful and sunsets should glow with entrancing color; why the dead stillness of a country night under a sky full of stars should have a voice; what it is that sets two dogs racing and biting on dewy grass. For the first time in his life he had begun to understand that the painting of pictures and the composing of music and the writing of poetry were not mere methods of passing the time or making money, but that there was an impulse beneath them that must materialize or die. Most significant of all, perhaps, and certainly rather unusual in such cases, was the fact that he had begun to say his prayers again and found in that practice a strange and bewildering joy. For, after all, the material world was not a series of colored objects, nor the moral a series of human actions, nor time a progression, nor space an extension; but all was one spirit expressing itself under these things, itself transcendent of them and it culminated, obviously, in a vast Parental Heart, from which all took its origin and in Whose embrace all lay poised.

It seemed to Algy very remarkable that he had not been aware of all this before — even though he did not so formulate his emotions. His life, up to that June night, appeared totally bloodless and uninteresting; yet she had been in the world all that time (and, in fact, exactly eight years previously too). But all had been but as a drop-scene to a child — sufficiently interesting and yet not adequate to his desires. The painted castle and the sunset and the bulrushes — well, they were pretty tolerable, and when the lights were turned up, even charming; but the hour had struck, and the canvas had rolled up, showing by that action its own insubstantiality, and fairyland lay revealed in three dimensions instead of two — far more real even than common life because so far beyond ideals — and in the very center of the stage a radiant Queen.

Here, then, sat poor Algy in a first-class carriage on the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway.

He first drew a number of mental pictures of the hall at home, where she would probably be sitting before the open fireplace as he came in five minutes before the dressing-bell rang. She might be in a tea-gown or she might not; but, at any rate, her hands and hair and face would be a fixed quantity. He would stand and warm his back, he thought, for a little while and talk to her, looking down on her upturned face. The dressing-bell would ring; but he would not go upstairs at once ; he would wait till twenty minutes to the hour. And so would she.