The Record of Nicholas Freydon Part 31

'No,' he said, in his blunt way, 'I'd rather keep you as a friend.'

I dare say he was right; and, in any case, he had a fancy for living at a good distance from the centre of the town; whereas my own inclination was to avoid the town altogether, if that might be, and failing this to have one's sanctuary right in the centre of it. My chambers were within five minutes' walk of the _Advocate_ office, and not much more than half that distance from the Thames Embankment--a spot which interested me as much as its lively neighbour, the Strand, irritated and worried me. An uneasy, shoddy street I thought the Strand, full of insistent tawdriness and of broken-spirited folk whose wretchedness had something in it more despicable than pitiable. Save for its occasional gaping rustics (whom I thought sadly misguided to be there at all) I cordially hated the Strand. But the Embankment I regarded as one of the most romantic thoroughfares in London; and many a score of articles (which brought me money) do I owe to the inspiration of that broad, darkling, river-skirted road, and the queer human flotsam and jetsam one may meet with there.

Among the direct results of Cynthia Lane's influence, I must place my interest in politics. I had hardly realised that women had any concern with politics until I met Cynthia. She was in no sense a politician, but she followed the political news of the day with the same bright and illuminating intelligence which she brought to bear upon all the affairs of her life; and her att.i.tude toward them was informed by a fine patriotism, at once reasoning and ardent. Chance phrases from her lips had opened my eyes to the existence of a love for England, for our flag, and race, such as I had not dreamed of till that time.

We spoke once or twice of my Australian experiences. And here again Cynthia's patriotism suggested whole avenues of unsuspected thought and feeling to me. It was Cynthia who introduced to my mind the conception of the British Empire, and our race, as a single family, having many branching offshoots. I do not mean that Cynthia supplied facts or theories. .h.i.therto unknown to me. But I do mean that her woman's mind first made me feel these things, intimately and personally, as people feel the joys and sorrows of members of their own households.

As a result I looked now with changed eyes upon many things. Before, I had loathed and detested the slums of London, and the vicious, ugly squalor of the lives of many of their inhabitants; hated them with the bitterness of one who has been made to feel their poison in his own veins. There had been far more of loathing than of pity or sorrow in my att.i.tude toward the canker at London's heart. Gradually, now, because of the insight I had had into Cynthia's love of England, my view became more kindly. I looked upon the canker less with hatred, and more with the feeling one might have regarding some horrible and malignant disease in a son or a daughter, a brother or a sister. And, too, with more of a sense of responsibility and of shame.

So, from a lofty and quite ignorant scorn of things so essentially mundane, I grew to take an understanding interest in current politics, and more particularly in their wider aspects, as touching not England alone but all British lands and people. I obtained a press pa.s.s from Arncliffe, and attended an important debate in the House of Commons, subsequently recording my impressions, in the form of an article by an Outsider, from Australia. Journalistically, that article was a rather striking success; and I began to attend the House frequently, and to write more or less regular political impressions for the _Advocate_.

For several years my interest in these matters continued to be progressive. (Three volumes of a political or quasi-political and sociological character have appeared under my name.) I am grateful for that interest, because it gave me some additional hold upon life, at a time when such anchorage as I had had seemed to have been wrested from me.

There was a quite considerable period--five or six years, at least, I think--during which political work tended to broaden my mind, widen my sympathies, and enhance my esteem for a number of my contemporaries.

Beyond that point I am afraid no good came to me from the study of politics; from which fact it is probably safe to a.s.sume that any influence I exercised ceased to be beneficial. For a time it had, I think, been helpful in its small way. That was while faith remained in me.

I remember conceiving a warm respect for a number of men engaged in political work as writers, organisers, and speakers. I admired these men for the fervour with which they appeared to devote their lives to the service of political ends. I even derived from my conception of their enthusiasm, strong, almost emotional interest in certain political issues, tendencies, and developments. Later, as I learned to know the men and their work better, came rather painful disillusionment. We differed fundamentally, it seemed, these eloquent fellows and myself. One actually told me in so many words, and with a cynical smile at his other companion of the moment, as who should say: 'Really, this innocent needs awakening'; that I was playing the gull's part on the surface of things. 'We are not concerned with principles,'

he said, in effect. 'That may be all right for the groundlings--our audience. Our concern is parties, office--the historic game of ins and outs, in which we have our careers to make.'

Until I put the whole business for ever behind me, I never lost my interest in issues and principles; neither did I ever acquire one jot or t.i.ttle of the professional's interest in the political game, as such; or endeavour to utilise its complex machinery for the furtherance of my own career. But in the course of time the study, not so much of politics as of political life, came to fill me with a kind of sick weariness and disgust; a sort of dull nausea and shame, such as I imagine forms one of the penalties for the unfortunate sisterhood, of what is sardonically called the life of pleasure. Upon the whole, I am afraid there is a good deal in common between the political life and the life of the streets. Certainly, the camp followers in political warfare are a motley crew of mercenaries, and they take their tone from quite a number of their leaders.

It would be quite beside the mark to add that there are some fine men in British politics. There are, of course, in all professions, including (I dare say) that of burglary. There still are in the political arena gentlemen whose single aim, pursued with undeviating loftiness of purpose, is the service of their country. I will not pretend to think their number large, for I know it is not. (But I dare say it is larger than it will be a few years hence, when we have pursued a little farther the enlightened ideal of governance by the least fit for the least fit, by the most poorly equipped for the most poorly equipped, by the most ignorant and irresponsible for the most ignorant and irresponsible.) But the cla.s.s of well-meaning, decent, clean-lived politicians is a fairly large one. As these worthy if unremarkable men have not a t.i.the of the brains of the most prominent among the quite unscrupulous sort--the undoubted birds of prey--their good intentions are of small value to their generation or their country, and represent little or nothing in the shape of hindrance to the skilled pirates of political waters.

But my personal concern was not so much with the rank and file of actual politicians as with the great army of camp followers; the band of fine, whole-souled, well-dressed, fluent fellows, for whom 'something must be done, you know,' because of this or that interest, because of the alleged wishes of this great person or the other; and because, above all, of their own quite wonderful pertinacity, untiring pushfulness, and, of course, their valuable services and great abilities as talkers, writers, 'organisers,' and what not.

I have known men who, for years, had found it worth not less than 800 or 1000 a year to them to have been spoken of by Mr. ----, Lord ----, or Sir ----, as 'an exceedingly capable organiser, and--er--devoted to the Cause.' No one ever knew precisely what they had organised (apart from their own comfortable subsistence in West End clubs and houses) or were to organise; but there they were, fine fellows all, tastefully dressed, in the best of health and spirits, and indefatigably fluent in--in--er--the service of the Cause, you know!

There was a period in which I fancied these parasites were the monopoly of one political party. But I soon learned that this was far from being the case. All the four parties which the twentieth century saw established in parliament are equally surrounded by their camp followers, who each differ from each other only superficially, and, not unseldom, transfer their allegiance in pursuit of fatter game. The differences do impress one at first, but, as I say, they are mainly superficial. All are equally self-centred and true to type as parasites; though one brood is better dressed than another, and has a more formidable appet.i.te. What makes rich pickings for the follower of one camp would leave the follower of another camp lean and hungry indeed. But the necessary scale of expenditure being higher in one division than another, things equalise themselves pretty much. I believe it is much the same in the case of the other ancient profession I have mentioned.

I have seen quite a large number of promising young men, fresh from the Universities, and beginning life in London with high aspirations and genuine patriotism in their hearts, only to become gradually absorbed into the gigantic parasitical incubus of the body politic.

The process of absorption was none the less saddening and embittering to watch, because its subjects usually waxed fatter and more apparently jovial with each stage in their gradual exchange of ideals for cash, patriotism for nepotism, enthusiasm for cynicism, and disinterestedness for toadyism. Some had in them the makings of very good and useful citizens. Their wives, so far as I was able to see, almost invariably (whether deliberately or unknowingly) egged them on in the downward path to complete surrender. As a rule, complete surrender meant less striving and contriving, a better establishment, and a freer use of hansom cabs in place of omnibuses. (I am thinking for the moment of the days which knew not taxi-cabs.)

When they were writers, a frequent sign of the beginning of their end (from my standpoint; of their success, from other standpoints, including, no doubt, those of their wives) was that they began to write of persons rather than principles; to eulogise rather than to exhort, criticise, and suggest. So surely as they began their written panegyrics of individuals, I found them laying aside the last remnants of their private hero-worship. Very soon after this stage they generally changed their clubs, becoming members of the most expensive of these establishments; and from that point on, their progress towards finished cynicism, fatty degeneration of the intellect, and smiling abandonment of all scruples, all ideals, and all modesty, was rapid and certain.

The inquiring student of such processes would perhaps have found banquets, luncheons, and public dinners of a more or less political colour his most prolific fields. Upon such occasions I always found the genus very strongly represented. In one camp the dress clothes of the followers would be of a better cut and more gracefully worn than in the other camp; and those of the better-dressed camp had more of a.s.surance, more of brazen impudence, and more of hopelessly shallow cynicism, I think, than those of other divisions. In many cases, too, they had more of education; but, I fear, less of brains.

It was, I think, the contemplation of these gentlemen, even more perhaps than my saddening knowledge of their shifty, time-serving, shilly-shallying, or glaringly unscrupulous leaders and masters, that finally disgusted me with those branches of political work which were open to me. I have no wish to sit in judgment. Other and stronger men may find that they may keep the most evil sort of company without ever soiling their own hands. I know and very sincerely respect a few political journalists and workers of different parties, whose uprightness is beyond suspicion; whose fine enthusiasm remains untarnished, even to-day. I yield to none in my admiration for such men. But however much I admired, or even envied, it was not for me to emulate these gentlemen. I probably lacked the necessary strength of fibre.

Arncliffe was, as ever, very kindly when I showed him my feeling in the matter; and, so far as might be, he released me from all journalistic obligations of a political sort. But more, I was given a complimentary dinner. Speeches were made, and I was genuinely astonished by the length of the list of my avowed services to politics. It was affirmed that, under Providence, and Arncliffe, and one or two people with t.i.tles, I had been instrumental in starting movements, launching an organ of opinion, and bringing about all kinds of signs and portents. The occasion embarra.s.sed me greatly.

It was true enough that, for a season, I had thrown myself heart and soul into the furtherance of certain political aims; and, in all honesty, I had worked very hard. And--heavens! how I was sick of the fluent humbugs, and the complacent parasites! If only they could have been dumb, and, in their writings, forbidden by law the use of all such words as 'patriotism,' I could have borne much longer with them.

London is our British centre, and your true parasite makes ever for the kernel. I have seen them treated with the gravest and most modest deference by working bees from outlying hives--the Oversea Dominions and the Services--as men who were supposed to be fighting the good fight, there in the hub, the heart, and centre of our House. And, listening to their complacent oozings, under the t.i.tillations of innocent flattery, I have turned aside for very shame, in my impatience, feeling that in truth the heart and centre were devoid of virtue, and that true patriotism was a thing only to be found (where it was never named) in unknown officers of either service, and obscure civilians engaged in working out their own and the Empire's destinies in its remote outposts, and upon the high seas.

And, impatient as that thought may have been, how infinitely better founded and less extravagant it was than the presumptuous arrogance of these gentlemen, who, by their way of it, were 'Bearing the heat and burden of the day, here in the busy heart of things--the historic metropolis of our race!'

VI

Upon three occasions only, in five times that number of years, did I meet Cynthia--Cynthia Barthrop; and those meetings, I need hardly say, were accidental.

The promise of Cynthia's youth was to all outward seeming amply fulfilled. As a matron she would have been notable in any company, by reason of her sedate beauty, and the dignity of her presence. But her manner suggested to me that her life had certainly not brought content to Cynthia; and I gathered from her brother Ernest that the radiant brightness of nature which had characterised her youth had not survived her a.s.sumption of wifely and maternal cares. Others might regard this change as part of a natural and inevitable process. In my eyes also it was inevitable and natural, but not as the result of the pa.s.sage of time. For me it was the inevitable outcome of a marriage of convenience, which was not, for Cynthia, a natural mating. The key to the changed expression of her beautiful face, and, in particular, of her eloquent eyes, as I saw it, lay in the fact that she was unsatisfied; her life, so rich in bloom, had never reached fruition.

One letter I had written to Cynthia, within a few days of her marriage. And there had been no other communication between us. I trust that forgetfulness came more easily to her than to me.

My withdrawal from political work I connect with the death of Queen Victoria, the Coronation of King Edward, and the end of the South African War. From the same period--a time of the inception of radical, far-reaching change in England--I date also my final emergence from that phase of one's existence in which one is still thought of, by some people at all events, as a young man. The phase has a longer duration in our time, I think, than in previous generations, because we have done so much in the direction of abolishing middle age. Grey hairs were fairly plentiful with me well before the admitted end of this phase.

Those last years of the young man, the author and journalist of 'promise,' who was a 'coming man,' and, too, the maturer years which followed, ought, upon all material counts, to have been the happiest and most contented in my life; since, during this time, my position was an a.s.sured one, and I went scatheless as regards anxiety about ways and means--the burden which lines the foreheads of eight Londoners in ten, I think. Yes, by all the signs, these should have been my best and most contented years. As a fact, I do not think I touched content in a single hour of all that period.

What then was lacking in my life? It certainly lacked leisure. But the average modern man would say that this commonplace fact could hardly rob one of content. My income did not fall below from seven hundred to a thousand pounds in any year. In all this period, therefore, there was never a hint of the bitter, wolfish struggle for mere food and shelter which ruled my first years in London; neither was I ever obliged to live in squalid quarters. On the contrary, I lived comfortably, and had a good deal more of the sort of social intercourse which dining out furnishes than I desired. And, withal, though I knew much of keen effort, the stress of unremitting work, and, at times, considerable responsibility, I do not think I tasted content in one hour of all those long, crowded, respectable, and apparently prosperous years.

If one comes to that, could I honestly a.s.sert that in the years preceding these I had ever known content? I fear not. Elation, the sense of more or less successful striving, occasional triumphs--all these good things I had known. But content, peace, secure and restful satisfaction-- No, I could not truly say I had ever experienced these.

Perhaps they have been rare among all the educated peoples of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; particularly, it may be, among those who, like myself, have been more or less freely admitted prospectors in the home territories of various cla.s.ses of the community, without ever becoming a fully accredited and recognised member of any one among them.

I would like very much to comprehend fairly the reason of the barrenness, the failure to attain content or satisfaction, in all those years of my London life. And, for that reason, I linger over my review of them, I state the case as fully as I can. But do I explain it to myself? I fear not. Doubtless, some good people would tell me the secret lay in the apparent absence of definitely dogmatic religious influence in my life. Ah, well, there is that, of course.

But it does not give me the explanation. Others would tell me the explanation could be given in one word--egoism; that there has been always too much ego in my cosmos. Yes, there is doubtless a great deal in that. And yet, goodness knows, mine has not been a self-indulgent life.

As I see it, there was a period in which I urgently desired to secure a safe foothold in London's literary and journalistic life. Material needs being moderately satisfied I happened, pretty blindly, into my marriage. That effectually shut out any possibility of content while it lasted, and added very materially to the inroads made by the previous struggling period upon my health. Later, came my strongest literary ambitions: a striving for achievement and success, and I suppose for fame, as author. And then the brief, tremendous struggle to win Cynthia for my wife. So far, naturally enough, there had been no content.

After the collapse of my attempt to win a mate, it seems to me that I became definitely middle-aged; though any outside observer of my life would probably have dated the serious beginnings of my career--the 'young man of undoubted promise,' etc.--from that time, since it was from then on that my position became more important. I directed the energies of others, was a leading editor's right hand man, initiated and controlled new departures, and commanded far more attention for my writings than ever before.

But--and here, it seems to me, lies the crux of the matter--in all this period the present moment of living never appealed to me in the least. I derived no suggestion of satisfaction or enjoyment from it. I was for ever striving, restlessly, uneasily, and to weariness, for something to be attained later on. And for what did I strive? Well, I know that the old ambitions in the direction of world-wide recognition as a literary master did not survive my return to Fleet Street, the landmark for me of Cynthia's marriage. Equally certain am I that I cherished no plan or desire to acc.u.mulate money and become rich. I had no desire to become a politician, or to obtain such a post as Arncliffe's. The desires of my youth were dead; the energies of my youth were dulled; the health and physical standard of my early manhood was greatly and for ever lowered. The enthusiasms of my youth had given place not to cynicism but to weary sadness. It was perhaps unfortunate for myself that I had no cynicism.

Very well. In other words, a disinterested observer might say: You became middle-aged--the common lot--and dyspeptic: the usual penalty of sedentary life. But there is a difference. If middle age brings to most, as no doubt it does, some failure of health and a notable attenuation of aims, desires, ambitions, and zest, does it not also bring some satisfaction in the present? I think so; at all events, where, as in my case, it brings the outward and material essentials of a moderate success in life. Now in my case, though the definite aims, the plans for the future, the desired goals, had merely ceased to exist, the present was Dead Sea fruit--null and void, a thing of nought. Just where does my poor personal equation enter in, and how far, I wonder, is all this typical of twentieth-century human experience, for us, the heirs of all the ages, with our wonderful enlightenment and progress? I wonder!

This, at all events, I think, is as near as I can come to explanation.

Yet how very far short it falls of explaining, of furnishing me with the key which the making of this record was to provide!

However, the task shall not be shirked. At least, some matters have been made clearer. I will complete my record--if I can.

THE LAST STAGE

I

'What do you aim at in your life?' I said to Sidney Heron one night, when the first decade of the new century was drawing near its close.

Heron had dined with me, and we had continued our talk in my rooms. It was a Sat.u.r.day night, and therefore for me free of engagements.

'The end of it,' replied Heron, without a moment's hesitation.

'Ah! Nothing else? Nothing to come before the end?'

'Oh, well, to be precise, I suppose one does, in certain moods, cherish vague hopes of coming upon a--a way out, you know, some time before the end; time to compose one's mind decently before the prime adventure. Yes, one cherishes the notion vaguely; but I apprehend that realisation of it is only for such swells as you. I have sometimes known thrifty bursts, in which I have saved a little; but--a man doesn't buy estates out of my sort of work, you know. He's lucky if he can keep out-- Well, out of Fleet Street, say, saving your worship's presence.'