The Lee Shore Part 35

"I see." Rodney wasn't specially struck by this; it was the chronic condition of many of his friends, who were largely of the cla.s.s who p.a.w.n their clothes on Monday and redeem them on Sat.u.r.day to wear for Sunday, and p.a.w.n them again, paying, if they can afford it, a penny extra to have the dresses hung up so that they don't crush.

"A sudden attack of honesty," Rodney commented. "Well, I'm glad, because I don't see what you want to c.u.mber yourself with all those cushions and rugs for. You're quite comfortable enough without them."

Peter said, "Thomas and I wanted nice things to look at. We were tired of horse-hair and 'Grace Sufficient'. Thomas is fastidious."

Rodney put a large finger on Thomas' head.

"Thomas isn't such a fool.... Hullo, there's another of you." Francesco woke and came out of his corner and laid his nose on Rodney's knee with his confiding grin.

"Yes, that's San Francesco. Rather nice, isn't he. He's coming with us too. I called him Francesco instead of Francis that he might feel at home in Italy."

"Oh, in Italy."

Peter hadn't meant to tell Rodney that, because he didn't think that Rodney would approve, and he wanted to avoid an argument. But he had let it out, of course; he could never keep anything in.

"That's where we're going to-morrow, to seek our fortunes. Won't it be rather good in Italy now? We don't know what we shall do when we get there, or where we shall go; but something nice, for sure."

"I'm glad," said Rodney. "It's a good country in the spring. Shall you walk the roads with Thomas slung over your back, or what?"

"I don't know. Partly, I daresay. But we want to find some little place between the hills and the sea, and stay there. Perhaps for always; I don't know. It's going to be extraordinarily nice, anyhow."

Rodney glanced at him, caught by the ring in his voice, a ring he hadn't heard for long. He didn't quite understand Peter. When last he saw him, he had been very far through, alarmingly near the bottom. Was this recovery natural grace, or had something happened? It seemed to Rodney rather admirable, and he looked appreciatively at Peter's cheerful face and happy eyes.

"Good," he said. "Good--splendid!"

And then Peter, meeting his pleased look and understanding it, winced back from it, and coloured, and bent over his brown paper and string. He valued Rodney's appreciation, a thing not easily won. He felt that in this moment he had won it, as he had never won it before. For he knew that Rodney liked pluck, and was thinking him plucky.

Against his will he muttered, half beneath his breath, "Oh, it isn't really what _you_ call good. It is good, you know: _I_ think it's good; but you won't. You'll call it abominable."

"Oh," said Rodney.

Peter went on, with a new violence, "I know all you'll say about it, so I'm not going to give you the opportunity of saying it till I'm gone. You needn't think I'm going to tell you now and let you tell me I'm wrong.

I'm not wrong; and if I am I don't care. Please don't stay any more; I'd rather you weren't here to-night. I don't want to tell you anything; only I had just got to say that, because you were thinking.... Oh, do go now."

Rodney sat quite still and looked at him, into him, through him, beyond him. Then he said, "You needn't tell me anything. I know. Lucy and you are going together."

Peter stood up, rather unsteadily.

"Well? That's not clever. Any fool could have guessed that."

"Yes. And any fool could guess what I'm going to say about it, too. You know it all already, of course...."

Rodney was groping for words, helplessly, blindly.

"Peter, I didn't know you had it in you to be a cad."

Peter was putting books into a portmanteau, and did not answer.

"You mean to do that ... to Denis...."

Peter put in socks and handkerchiefs.

"And to Lucy.... I don't understand you, Peter.... I simply don't understand. Are you mad--or drunk--or didn't I really ever know you in the least?"

Peter stuffed in Thomas' nightgowns, crumpling them hideously.

"Very well," said Rodney, very quietly. "It doesn't particularly matter which it is. In any case you are not going to do it. I shall prevent it."

"You can't," Peter flung at him, crushing a woolly rabbit in among Thomas' clothes.

Rodney sat still and looked at him, resting his chin on his hand; looked into him, through him, beyond him.

"I believe I can," he said simply.

Peter stopped filling the bag, and, still sitting on the floor by it, delivered himself at last.

"We care for each other. Isn't that to count, then? We always have cared for each other. Are we to do without each other for always? We want each other, we need each other. Denis doesn't need Lucy. He never did; not as I do. Are Lucy and I to do without each other, living only half a life, because of him? I tell you, I'm sick to death of doing without things.

The time has come when it won't do any more, and I'm going to take what I can. I think I would rob anyone quite cheerfully if he had what I wanted. A few days ago I did rob; I bought things I knew I couldn't pay for. I'm sending them back now simply because I don't want them any more, not because I'm sorry I took them. It was fair I should take them; it was my turn to have things, mine and Thomas's. And now I'm going to take this, and keep it, till it's taken away from me. I daresay it will be taken away soon; my things always are. Everything has broken and gone, one thing after another, all my life--all the things I've cared for. I'm tired of it. I was sick of it by the time I was ten years old, sick of always getting ill or smashed up; and that's gone on ever since, and people have always thought, I know, 'Oh, it's only him, he never minds anything, he doesn't count, he's just a crock, and his only use is to play the fool for us.' But I did mind; I did. And I only played the fool because it would have been drearier still not to, and because there was always something amusing left to laugh at, not because I didn't mind.

And then I cared for Denis as ... Oh, but you know how I cared for Denis.

He was the most bright and splendid thing I knew in all the splendid world ... and he chucked me, because everything went wrong that could go wrong between us without my fault ... and our friendship was spoilt.... And I cared for Hilary and Peggy; and they would go and do things to spoil all our lives, and the more I tried, like an a.s.s, to help, the more I seemed to mess things up, till the crash came, and we all went to bits together. And we had to give up the only work we liked--and I did love mine so--and slave at things we hated. And still we kept sinking and sinking, and crashing on worse and worse rocks, till we hadn't a sound piece left to float us. And then, when I thought at least we could go down together, they went away and left me behind. So I'd failed there too, hopelessly. I always have failed in everything I've tried. I tried to make Rhoda happy, but that failed too. She left me; and now she's dead, and Thomas hasn't any mother at all.... And Lucy ... whom I'd cared for since before I could remember ... and I'd always thought, without thinking about it, that some day of course we should be together... Lucy left me, and our caring became wrong, so that at last we didn't care to see one another at all. And then it was as if h.e.l.l had opened and let us in. The other things hadn't counted like that; health, money, beautiful things, interesting work, honour, friends, marriage, even Denis--they'd all collapsed and I did mind, horribly. But not like that. As long as I could see Lucy sometimes, I could go on--and I had Thomas too, though I don't know why he hasn't collapsed yet. But at last, quite suddenly, when the emptiness and the losing had been getting to seem worse and worse for a long time, they became so bad that they were impossible. I got angry; it was for Thomas more than for myself, I think; and I said it should end. I said I would take things; steal them, if I couldn't get them by fair means. And I went down to Astleys, to see them, to tell them it must end. And in the woods I met Lucy. And she'd been getting to know too that it must end, for her sake as well as for mine.... And so we're going to end it, and begin again. We're going to be happy, because life is too jolly to miss."

Peter ended defiantly, and flung his razor in among the socks.

Rodney had listened quietly, his eyes on Peter's profile. When he stayed silent, Peter supposed that he had at last convinced him of the unbreakable strength of his purpose for iniquity, and that he would give him up and go away. After a minute he turned and looked up at Rodney, and said, "Now do you see that it's no good?"

Rodney took out his pipe and knocked it out and put it away before he answered:

"I'm glad you've said all that, Peter. Not that I didn't know it all before; of course I did. When I said at first that I didn't understand you, I was lying. I did understand, perfectly well. But I'm glad you've said it, because it's well to know that you realise it so clearly yourself. It saves my explaining it to you. It gives us a common knowledge to start on. And now may _I_ talk for a little, please? No, not for a little; for some time."

"Go on," said Peter. "But it's no use, you know.... What do you mean by our common knowledge? The knowledge that I'm a failure?"

Rodney nodded. "Precisely that. You've stated the case so clearly yourself--in outline, for you've left out a great deal, of course--that really it doesn't leave much for me to say. Let's leave you alone for the moment. I want to talk about other people. There are other people in the world besides ourselves, of course, improbable as the fact occasionally seems. The fact, I mean, that it's a world not of individual units but of closely connected ma.s.ses of people, not one of whom stands alone. One can't detach oneself; one's got to be in with one camp or another. The world's full of different and opposing camps--worse luck.

There are the beauty-lovers and the beauty-scorners, and all the fluctuating ma.s.ses in between, like most of us, who love some aspects of it and scorn others. There are the well-meaning and the ill-meaning--and again the incoherent cross-benchers, who mean a little good and a little harm and for the most part mean nothing at all either way. Again, there are what people call the well-bred, the ill-bred, and of course the half-bred. An idiotic division that, because what do we know, any of us, of breeding, that we should call it good or bad? But there it is; a most well-marked division in everyone's eyes. And (and now I'm getting to the point) there are the rich and the poor--or call them, rather, the Haves and the Have-nots. I don't mean with regard to money particularly, though that comes in. But it's an all-round, thing. It's an undoubted fact, and one there's no getting round, that some people are born with the acquiring faculty, and others with the losing. Most of us, of course, are in the half-way house, and win and lose in fairly average proportions.

But some of us seem marked out either for the one or for the other. I know personally a good many in both camps. Many more of the Have-nots, though, because I prefer to cultivate their acquaintance. There's a great deal to be done for the Haves too; they need, I fancy, all the a.s.sistance they can get if they're not to become prosperity-rotten. The Have-Nots haven't that danger; but they've plenty of dangers of their own; and, well, I suppose it's a question of taste, and that I prefer them. Anyhow, I do know a great many. People, you understand, with nothing at all that seems to make life tolerable. Dest.i.tutes, incapables, outcasts, slaves to their own l.u.s.ts or to a grinding economic system or to some other cruelty of fate or men. Whatever the immediate cause of their ill-fortune may be, its underlying, fundamental cause is their own inherent faculty for failure and loss, their incompetence to take and hold the good things of life. You know the stale old hackneyed cry of the anti-socialists, how it would be no use equalising conditions because each man would soon return again to his original state. It's true in a deeper sense than they mean.

You might equalise economic conditions as much as you please, but you'd never equalise fundamental conditions; you'd never turn the poor into the rich, the Have-Nots into the Haves. You know I'm not a Socialist. I don't want to see a futile attempt to throw down barriers and merge all camps in one indeterminate army who don't know what they mean or where they're going. I'm not a Socialist, because I don't believe in a universal outward prosperity. I mean, I don't want it; I should have no use for it.

I'm holding no brief for the rich; I've nothing to say about them just now; and anyhow you and I have no concern with them." Rodney pulled himself back from the edge of a topic on which he was apt to become readily vehement. "But Socialism isn't the way out for them any more than it's the way out for the poor; it's got, I believe, to be by individual renunciation that their salvation will come; by their giving up, and stripping bare, and going down one by one and empty-handed into the common highways, to take their share of hardness like men. It will be extraordinarily difficult. Changing one's camp is. It's so difficult as to be all but impossible. Perhaps you've read the Bible story of the young man with great possessions, and how it was said, 'With men it is impossible...' Well, the tradition, true or false, goes that in the end he did it; gave up his possessions and became financially poor. But we don't know, even if that's true, what else he kept of his wealth; a good deal, I daresay, that wasn't money or material goods. One can't tell.

What we do know is that to cross that dividing line, to change one's camp, is a nearly impossible thing. Someone says, 'That division, the division of those who have and those who have not, runs so deep as almost to run to the bottom.' The great division, he calls it, between those who seize and those who lose. Well, the Haves aren't always seizers, I think; often--more often, perhaps--they have only to move tranquilly through life and let gifts drop into their hands. It's pleasant to see, if we are not in a mood to be jarred. It's often attractive. It was mainly that that attracted you long ago in Denis Urquhart. The need and the want in you, who got little and lost much, was somehow vicariously satisfied by the gifts he received from fortune; by his beauty and strength and good luck and power of winning and keeping. He was pleasant in your eyes, because of these gifts of his; and, indeed, they made of him a pleasant person, since he had nothing to be unpleasant about. So your emptiness found pleasure in his fullness, your poverty in his riches, your weakness in his strength, and you loved him. And I think if anything could (yet) have redeemed him, have saved him from his prosperity, it would have been your love. But instead of letting it drag him down into the scrum and the pity and the battle of life, he turned away from it and kept it at a distance, and shut himself more closely between his protecting walls of luxury and well-being. Then, again, Lucy gave him his chance; but he hasn't (so far) followed her love either. She'd have led him, if she could, out of the protecting, confining walls, into the open, where people are struggling and perishing for lack of a little pity; but he wouldn't. So far the time hasn't been ripe for his saving; his day is still to come. It's up to all of us who care for him--and can any of us help it?--to save him from himself. And chiefly it's your job and Lucy's.

You can do your part now only by clearing out of the way, and leaving Lucy to do hers. She will do it, I firmly believe, in the end, if you give her time. Lucy, I know, for I have seen it when I have been with her, has been troubled about her own removal from the arena, about her own being confined between walls so that she can't hear the people outside calling; but that is mere egotism. She can hear and see all right; she has all her senses, and she will never stop using them. It's her business to be concerned for Denis, who is blind and deaf. It's her business to use her own caring to make him care. She's got to drag him out, not to let herself be shut inside with him. It can be done, and Lucy, if anyone in the world, can do it--if she doesn't give up and shirk. Lucy, if anyone in the world, has the right touch, the right loosing power, to set Denis free. I think that you too have the touch and the power--but you mustn't use yours; the time for that is gone by. Yours is the much harder business of clearing out of the way. If you ever loved Denis, you will do that."

He paused and looked at Peter, who was still sitting on the floor, motionless, with bent head.

"May I go on?" said Rodney, and Peter answered nothing.

Rodney looked away again out of the window into a grey night sky that hid the Easter moon, and went on, gently. He was tired of talking; his discourse had been already nearly as long as an average woman; but he went on deliberately talking and talking, to give Peter time.

"So, you see, that is an excellent reason--to you it is, I believe, the incontrovertible reason--why you should once more give up and lose, and not take. But, deeper than that, to me more insurmountable than that, is the true reason, which is simply that that very thing--to lose, to do without--is your business in life, as you've said yourself. It's your profession. You are in the camp of the Have-Nots; you belong there. You can't desert. You can't step out and go over to the enemy. If you did, if you could (only you can't) it would be a betrayal. And, whatever you gained, you'd lose by it what you have at present--your fellowship with the other unfortunates. Isn't that a thing worth having? Isn't it something to be down on the ground with the poor and empty-handed, not above them, where you can't hear them crying and laughing? Would you, if you could, be one of the prosperous, who don't care? Would you, if you could, be one of those who have their joy in life ready-made and put into their hands, instead of one of the poor craftsmen who have to make their own? What's the gaiety of the saints? Not the pleasant cheerfulness of the Denis Urquharts and their kind, who have things, but the gaiety, in the teeth of circ.u.mstances, of St. Francis and his paupers, who have nothing and yet possess all things. That's your gaiety; the gaiety that plays the fool, as you put it, looking into the very eyes of agony and death; that loses and laughs and makes others laugh in the last ditch; the gaiety of those who drop all cargoes, fortune and good name and love, overboard lightly, and still spread sail to the winds and voyage, and when they're driven by the winds at last onto a lee sh.o.r.e, derelicts clinging to a broken wreck, find on the sh.o.r.e coloured sh.e.l.ls to play with and still are gay. That's your gaiety, as I've always known it and loved it. Are you going to chuck that gaiety away, and rise up full of the l.u.s.t to possess, and take and grasp and plunder? Are you going to desert the empty-handed legion, whose van you've marched in all your life, and join the prosperous?" Rodney broke off for a moment, as if he waited for an answer. He rose from his chair and began to walk about the room, speaking again, with a more alright vehemence. "Oh, you may think this is mere romance, fancy, sentiment, what you will. But it isn't. It's deadly, solid truth. You can't grasp. You can't try to change your camp.

You--and Lucy too, for she's in the same camp--wouldn't be happy, to put it at its simplest. You'd know all the time that you'd shirked, deserted, been false to your business. You'd be fishes out of water, with the knowledge that you'd taken for your own pleasure something that someone else ought to have had. It isn't in either of you to do it. You must leave such work to the Haves. Why, what happens the first time you try it on? You have to send back the goods you've tried to appropriate to where they came from. It would be the same always. You don't know _how_ to possess. Then in heaven's name leave possessing alone, and stick to the job you are good at--doing without. For you are good at that. You always have been, except just for just one short interlude, which will pa.s.s like an illness and leave you well again. Believe me, it will. I don't know when, or how soon; but I do know that sometime you will be happy again, with the things, the coloured sh.e.l.ls, so to speak, that you find still when all the winds and storms have done their worst and all your cargoes are broken wrecks at your feet. It will be then, in that last emptiness, that you'll come to terms with disaster, and play the fool again to amuse yourself and the other derelicts, because, when there's nothing else left, there's always laughter."

Rodney had walked to the window, and now stood looking out at the dim, luminous night, wherein, shrouded, the Easter moon dwelt in the heart of shadows. From many churches, many clocks chimed the hour. Rodney spoke once more, slowly, leaning out into the shadowy night.