The Journal of a Disappointed Man Part 42

"Behindhand?" I asked timidly, for I felt that all the story was not in front of me.

"Why, yes. Don't you know?"

I knew nothing, but was prepared for anything.

"_The Star_, two days ago," he informed me, "had a paragraph about this--headed 'Tempus fugit' "--this last in a resentful tone as tho' the frivolous reporter were attempting to discredit our mystery.

There was a long pause. Neither of us spoke. Then he slowly said:

"I wonder why _The Times_ is so behindhand. This is two days late."

_May_ 5.

Hulloa, old friend: how are you? I mean my Diary. I haven't written to you for ever so long, and my silence as usual indicates happiness. I have been pa.s.sing thro' an unbroken succession of calm happy days, walking in the woods with my darling, or doing a little gentle gardening on coming home in the evening--and the War has been centuries away.

Later on towards bedtime, E---- reads Richard Jefferies, I play Patience and Mrs. ---- makes garments for Priscilla.

The only troubles have been a chimney which smokes and a neighbour's dog which barks at night. So to be sure, I have made port after storm at last--and none too soon. To-day my cheerfulness has been rising in a crescendo till to-night it broke in such a handsome crest of pure delight that I cannot think of going to bed without recording it.

_Pachmann_

After sitting on the wall around the fountain in the middle of Trafalgar Square, eating my sandwiches and feeding the Pigeons with the crumbs, I listened for a moment to the roar of the traffic around three sides of the Square as I stood in the centre quite alone, what time one fat old pigeon, all unconcerned, was treading another. It was an extraordinary experience: motor horns tooted incessantly and it seemed purposelessly, so that one had the fancy that all London was out for a joy-ride--it was a great British Victory perhaps, or Peace Day.

Then walked down Whitehall to Westminster Bridge in time to see the 2 o'clock boat start upstream for Kew. I loitered by the old fellow with the telescope who keeps his pitch by Boadicea: I saw a piper of the Scots Guards standing near gazing across the river but at nothing in particular--just idling as I was. I saw another man sitting on the stone steps and reading a dirty fragment of newspaper. I saw the genial, red-faced sea-faring man in charge of the landing stage strolling up and down his small domain,--chatting, jesting, spitting, and making fast a rope or so. Everything was _alive_ to the finger tips, vividly shining, pulsating.

Arrived at Queen's Hall in time for Pachmann's Recital at 3.15.... As usual he kept us waiting for 10 minutes. Then a short, fat, middle-aged man strolled casually on to the platform and everyone clapped violently--so it was Pachmann: a dirty greasy looking fellow with long hair of dirty grey colour, reaching down to his shoulders and an ugly face. He beamed on us and then shrugged his shoulders and went on shrugging them until his eye caught the music stool, which seemed to fill him with amazement. He stalked it carefully, held out one hand to it caressingly, and finding all was well, went two steps backwards, clasping his hands before him and always gazing at the little stool in mute admiration, his eyes sparkling with pleasure, like Mr. Pickwick's on the discovery of the archeological treasure. He approached once more, bent down and ever so gently moved it about 7/8ths of an inch nearer the piano. He then gave it a final pat with his right hand and sat down.

He played Nocturne No. 2, Prelude No. 20, a Mazurka and two Etudes of Chopin and Schubert's Impromptu No. 4.

At the close we all crowded around the platform and gave the queer, old-world gentleman an ovation, one man thrusting up his hand which Pachmann generously shook as desired.

As an encore he gave us a Valse--"Valse, Valse," he exclaimed ecstatically, jumping up and down in his seat in time to the music. It was a truly remarkable sight: on his right the clamorous crowd around the platform; on his left the seat holders of the Orchestra Stalls, while at the piano bobbed this grubby little fat man playing divine Chopin divinely well, at the same time rising and falling in his seat, turning a beaming countenance first to the right and then to the left, crying, "Valse, Valse." He is as entertaining as a tumbler at a variety hall.

As soon as he had finished, we clapped and rattled for more, Pachmann meanwhile standing surrounded by his idolaters in affected despair at ever being able to satisfy us. Presently he walked off and a scuffle was half visible behind the scenes between him and his agent who sent him in once more.

The applause was wonderful. As soon as he began again it ceased on the instant, and as soon as he left off it started again immediately--nothing boisterous or rapturous but a steady, determined thunder of applause that came regularly and evenly like the roar from some machine.

_May_ 20.

Spent a quiet day. Sat at my escritoire in the Studio this morning writing an Essay, with a large 4-fold window on my left, looking on to woods and fields, with Linnets, Greenfinches, Cuckoos calling. This afternoon while E---- rested awhile I sat on the veranda in the sun and read _Antony and Cleopatra_.... Yes, I'm in harbour at last. I'd be the last to deny it but I cannot believe it will last. It's too good to last and it's all too good to be even true. E---- is too good to be true, the home is too good to be true, and this quiet restful existence is too wonderful to last in the middle of a great war. It's just a little deceitful April sunshine, that's all....[1]

Had tea at the ----. A brilliant summer's evening. Afterwards, we wandered into the garden and shrubbery and sat about on the turf of the lawn, chatting and smoking. Mr. ---- played with a rogue of a white Tomcat called Chatham, and E---- talked about our neighbour, "Shamble legs," about garden topics, etc. Then I strolled into the drawing-room where Cynthia was playing Chopin on a grand piano. Is it not all perfectly lovely?

How delicious to be silent, lolling on the Chesterfield, gazing abstractedly thro' the lattice window and listening to the lulling charities of Nocturne No. 2, Op. 37! The melody in the latter part of this nocturne took me back at once to a cloudless day in an open boat in the Bay of Combemartin, with oars up and the water quietly and regularly lapping the gunwales as we rose and fell. A state of the most profound calm and happiness took possession of me.

_June_ 2.

From the local paper:

"A comrade in the Gloucesters writing to a friend at ---- mentions that Pte. J---- has been fatally shot in action. J---- was well known here for years as an especially smart young newsvendor."

_June_ 3.

What a bitter disappointment it is to realise that people the most intimately in love with one another are really separated by such a distance. A woman is calmly knitting socks or playing Patience while her husband or sweetheart lies dead in Flanders. However strong the tie that binds them together yet they are insufficiently _en rapport_ for her to sense even a catastrophe--and she must wait till the War Office forsooth sends her word. How humiliating that the War Office must do what Love cannot. Human love seems then such a superficial thing. Every person is a distinct egocentric being. Each for himself and the Devil take the hindmost. "Ah! but she didn't know." "Yes, but she _ought_ to have known." Mental telepathy and clairvoyance should be common at least to all lovers.

This morning in bed I heard a man with a milkcart say in the road to a villager at about 6.30 a.m., "... battle ... and we lost six cruisers."

This was the first I knew of the Battle of Jutland. At 8 a.m. I read in the _Daily News_ that the British Navy had been defeated, and thought it was the end of all things. The news took away our appet.i.tes. At the railway station, the _Morning Post_ was more cheerful, even rea.s.suring, and now at 6.30 p.m. the Battle has turned into a merely regrettable indecisive action. We breathe once more.

_June_ 4.

It has now become a victory.

_June_ 11.

Old systems of Cla.s.sification: Rafinesc's Theory of Fives, Swainson's Theory of Sevens, Edward Newman's book called _Sphinx Vespiformis_ tracing fives throughout the animal world, Sir Thomas Browne's Quincunx, chasing fives throughout the whole of nature--in the words of Coleridge, "quincunxes in Heaven above, quincunxes in the Earth below, quincunxes in the mind of man, in optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in everything!"

Old false trails:

The Philosopher's Stone (Balthazar Claes).[2]

A universal catholicon (Bishop Berkeley's tar-water). Mystical numbers (as per above).

My father was Sir Thomas Browne and my mother Marie Bashkirtseff. See what a curious hybrid I am!

I toss these pages in the faces of timid, furtive, respectable people and say: "There! that's me! You may like it or lump it, but it's true.

And I challenge you to follow suit, to flash the searchlight of your self-consciousness into every remotest corner of your life and invite everybody's inspection. Be candid, be honest, break down the part.i.tions of your cubicle, come out of your burrow, little worm." As we are all such worms we should at least be honest worms.

My grat.i.tude to E---- for plucking me out of the hideous miseries of my life in London is greater than I can express. If I were the cheap hero of a ladies' novel I should immolate my journals as a token, and you would have a pretty picture of a pale young man watching his days go up in smoke by the drawing-room fire. But I have more confidence in her sterling good sense, and if I cannot be loved for what I am, I do not wish to be loved for what I am not.

Since the fateful Nov. 27th, my life has become entirely posthumous. I live now in the grave and am busy furnishing it with posthumous joys. I accept my fate with great content, my one-time restless ambition lies asleep now, my one-time, furious self-a.s.sertiveness is anaesthetised by this great War; the War and the discovery about my health together have plucked out of me that canker of self-obsession. I sit at home here in this country cottage in perfect isolation--flattened out by a steam hammer (tho' it took Armageddon to do it!), yet as cheerful and busy as a Dormouse laying up store for the winter. For I am almost resigned to the issue in the knowledge that some day, someone will know, perhaps somebody will understand and--immortal powers!--even sympathise, "the quick heart quickening from the heart that's still."

_July_ 19.

_Omniscience_

An omniscient Caledonian asked me to-day:

"Where are the Celebes? Are they E. or N.E. of the Sandwich Group?"

I marked him down at once as my legitimate prey. Sitting back in my chair, I replied slowly in my most offensive manner: