“He also says ‘They grope in the dark without light,’ which is a direct incentive to go on prospecting. Is your new discovery going to dispossess the oil fields?”
“It may set your dying coal-mines to more economic work,” said van Buren. “Have you ever heard of the hydrogenation of coal?”
“Never,” answered Professor Benbow. “To my knowledge it hasn’t once been mentioned by the whole body of critics.”
“Well, that’s what I’m going to do if I can persuade some of your fool coal-owners to see farther than their noses—and there’s nothing like flashing the promise of a few million dollars in the air to make a man look up. You know Hayward?”
“I have heard of him.”
“I’m seeing him next week. He knows that coal is carbon—or he ought to—and when you hydrogenate carbon it liquefies, and the liquid is a kind of artificial petroleum. Then you fractionate your petroleum and you get gasoline. It’s not altogether a new idea, but the way I propose to do it is new. I mean to hydrogenate the coal without mining it. I’ve worked out the costs of production, checked them and proved them, and my gasoline won’t cost—”
Van Buren looked round. The large-paper folio of Prior’s Poems on Several Occasions had descended an inch or two, and over the top of it Mr. Wesson’s curious eyes stared fixedly through his curious eyeglasses.
“You interested?” asked van Buren.
“I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Wesson. “I’m afraid my attention wandered for a moment. I was considering a passage here which seems a little obscure. Apparently the reference—”
“I thought you were considering my little lecture on oil.”
“On oil? No, I know nothing about oil.”
Van Buren growled and drank his whisky.
“Have another,” said the professor, and rang a bell.
Van Buren continued to grumble and the professor said consolingly, “When I was a young man I used to make tremendous literary discoveries. They were of two kinds. I either found that my theories were already common knowledge, or that for some reason which I had completely overlooked they were quite untenable. In the latter class there is one whose memory I cherish. It was that Bacon cribbed his Essays from a notebook of Shakespeare’s which he had picked up in a tavern.”
Mr. Wesson closed his book and stood up. With an ingenuous smile he said to van Buren, “I’ve just remembered that I do know something about oil. A barber once gave me the prescription for an oil shampoo—I was getting a little bald on the crown—and it did my hair a lot of good. But perhaps it wasn’t olive oil that you were talking about?”
“It wasn’t,” said van Buren gruffly.
“Then my little bit of information has been wasted,” said Mr. Wesson sadly. He left the room with his heavy book under his left arm and stooping a little to that side.
“Sheer impudence?” asked van Buren.
“I think so,” answered the professor. “Come and sit down,” he called to Saturday and Quentin, who stood for a moment at the open door. “Come and talk to us. We’re getting quarrelsome.”
“What shall we talk about?” asked Quentin. “The most momentous things have been happening to-day.”
“Keep off it,” said Saturday in a fierce aside.
“Of anything you please except modern art,” replied the professor.
“But that’s just what I want to tell you about,” said Quentin. “Have you heard of the scandal at the Milieu Galleries? There was a sculpture exhibition there last week and quite the best thing was a nude by that new fellow, Laparotumi. A nice fat girl sitting with one leg tucked under her looking stonily at a flower which Laparotumi had forgotten to finish. A very fat girl. Significant fat, you know, in rolls and unseemly bulges. Pneumatic cheeks and no forehead. A girl, in fact, with no personal appeal except to a masseur. And so naked. Well, on the opening day there were swarms of people clustered round it, all staring with utter horror at the label, which said, ‘Portrait of the Artist’s Mother.’ And now everybody calls Laparotumi Oedipus, and he has sent a challenge to Réné Calcule, who is known to have been jealous because his nude—he had one too, of course—wasn’t nearly as nude and not half so fat as Laparotumi’s. Laparotumi thinks that it was Réné who stuck on the ‘Mother’ label,” Quentin explained.
“That’s worth a drink, Mr. Cotton.” Van Buren rang the bell.
“It’s curious,” said the professor, “I never see a fat woman nowadays except in modern pictures and modern sculpture.”
“That’s how art balances life.”
“The last revue I saw,” said van Buren, “had a chorus that looked like alimony on a cold night.”
“Have you seen The Ghoul? There’s a fat woman in it who goes mad in a lonely house at midnight because she hears noises in the chimney.”
“Frightening?”
“Positively diuretic.”
“Do we really hate ourselves?” asked the professor. “Our most popular dramatists are those who frighten us most effectively. Our wealthiest novelists prove that we are Babbitts or perverts. Our most highly praised artists caricature us. Our almost-best living poet (no one can touch Bridges) is Housman. Our favourite doctors starve us. And we flatter the philosophers who condemn life to a geological prospect of unrelieved futility.”
“That’s a dismal catalogue, professor,” said van Buren.
“It isn’t so bad as it sounds,” said Keith. “‘The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair.’”
“It’s better than ever it was before,” added Quentin. “We face facts nowadays, however unpleasant they are. We accept lead as lead, death as real and inevitable, and don’t waste our time looking for the Philosopher’s Stone.”
“Voronoff has found it,” said the professor. “In a monkey.”
Saturday moved uncomfortably. The conversation, he thought, was one that might go on indefinitely. It didn’t seem the kind of conversation that started with an end in view and finished in an orderly manner when it reached that end. Van Buren looked as though he were going to tell a story. And stories were as prolific as rabbits. Saturday wanted to talk privately to the professor. He wanted the professor to be in a solemn and yet kindly mood when he talked to him. A wise, benevolent mood. And now van Buren was telling a story. A story about Mexico. But the point would be equally apparent in Manchester. And the professor, his face like a blacksmith’s forge, ruddy and good to look at, was laughing with indecorous joy. It wasn’t the atmosphere in which to discuss a virgin sought in marriage.
Another story. And the professor’s laughter like a westerly gale. Quentin talking about romance—how had he dragged it in?—as the product of adventurous realism in literature. Conrad. And the new German school.
“Think of Russia,” said Quentin. “There have been wilder adventures in Russia during the last twelve years than anything since Troy. Treat them realistically, say what people actually did and felt, manage your story so as to give form to the events and relate them with proper regard for a climax—use art, that is—and you’ll get something with all the glamour that the romantic reader wants, and yet preserve the truth that more exacting critics demand. I’ve burnt the first chapters of my new novel and I’m going to try something different.”
“You don’t look very interested,” Professor Benbow said to Saturday.
“There’s something I want to discuss with you; something important.”
“Your new poem?” asked the professor suspiciously.
“No, nothing like that.”
“This dinner to-morrow night?”
“Not that either. It’s a personal matter.”
“God save us. Let me finish my drink first.”
“Don’t hurry,” Quentin interjected. “Mr. van Buren and I are going to play bridge with Jean Forbes and her mother. I’ll see you later, Saturday.”
“Well?” said the professor when they were alone.
“I asked Joan to marry me to-day,” said Saturday.
“The devil you did! I saw a dewy look in your eye when you started out this afternoon. Well, I hope she refused you?”
“As a matter of fact she didn’t,” said Saturday coldly.
“Then the girl’s a fool. No, I didn’t mean that. Sit down, Keith, sit down. I’m getting old and you mustn’t pay too much attention to what old men say. I’ve got nothing against you as a man. To be frank about it, I think you’re a very good fellow. But as a poet I don’t rate you very high, and as a son-in-law I fancy you still less.”
“If you insist on having a major poet for a son-in-law, Joan’s chances of getting married aren’t worth much.”
“You don’t see my point. If a man of whom I think highly sets out to be a doctor, a soldier, or an architect, I expect him to become a good doctor or a good soldier or a good architect. Well, you set out to be a poet. You have written some good lines, even a good poem or two, but are you a good poet? Have you succeeded in your chosen line sufficiently to make me think favourably of you as a prospective son-in-law?”
“At present I am a publican rather than a poet, and whatever the value of my poetry may be, my pub-keeping has been fairly successful. Lady Mercy Cotton is pleased. I have a good salary—”
“Now wait a minute, Keith. I told you a moment ago that I was getting old. Let me tell you some other unpleasant things about myself. I am a snob, as most of us are. I am a hypocrite, as more of us are. And I am at times a liar—as we all are. I like to pose as a Philistine. I like to pooh-pooh my gods. But what I am saying now is neither hypocrisy nor lying. I have spent the greater part of my life trying to impress young men with the value, the interest, the almost incredible beauty of English literature. Sometimes I speak hard things about my profession. I sin my mercies, as the Scots say, and get a lot of enjoyment out of miscalling my trade. But the fact remains that I teach, or try to teach, the matter and methods of literature because I whole-heartedly believe in them and admire them. A professor on holiday may say a publican is a better creature than a poet, but holidays are the smaller part of the year. I like a good publican in theory or impersonally, but to be a successful publican—I admitted that I was a snob—is not in my opinion the best qualification for a candidature such as yours.”
Saturday stared angrily at the professor, and the professor, solid and red and serious stared back at him. There was a patch of crimson, the size of a shilling, on Saturday’s cheekbones. His chin stuck out and his eyes, behind their spectacles, were stormy.
He said shortly: “My profession is my own choice, and if Joan doesn’t object to it I don’t see why you should.”
“Joan can’t see your profession through you. You stand in its light. But I’m not Joan, and my liking for you—I admit that I like you; you rowed three excellent races, though luck was dead against you—my liking for you doesn’t dazzle me. You’re a publican and I’m a snob, and there’s the ineluctable antipathy. Now if you were a better poet than a publican—if the pub were only an amusing pendant to your poetry, a humorous recognition that even poets must live—my objections would vanish. But at present you’re a publican who writes verses in his spare time.”
“And Joan is her own mistress.”
“In theory. In fact she is my youngest child.”
“So you propose to use round-the-corner tyranny? You mean to exploit her natural affection for you as a barrier to her growing affection for me?”
“You can add selfishness to my other faults if you like.”
“By God, I do!”
“Come, come. You must admit that I have a very direct interest in this matter. As I have said, if your poetry—”
“You know nothing about my poetry. You pat me on the head and laugh at it. You haven’t seen—you haven’t asked to see—my new poem. You don’t know what it’s like. But I do. And I know that it’s good. It’s damned good!”
“If the opinion of competent critics and the judgment of ordinary readers prove to be the same as your own—”
“Vox populi vox dei!”
“A very fair statement when it comes to poetry. The poets most generally accredited great are most often the greatest in actual fact. You can find exceptions, of course. But if England says with no uncertain voice that your new poem is a great poem, I shall not contradict her. If a man can say something that stirs the mind of a country the odds are, I think, that he is a poet. So there is your chance. What, by the way, do your publishers say of the book?”
“They haven’t seen it yet.”
“Oh! So your opinion is entirely an individual one?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Keith, suppose we postpone this discussion for a few months till your book is published, and then we can resume it on the lines I have indicated. After all, you have known Joan for only two days. Your own views, as well as hers, may change.”
Saturday laughed shortly. “I know my own mind,” he said. “There aren’t many things in life you can be sure of, but this is one. I love her.”
“I too,” said the professor gently.
Saturday stared moodily at the table and said nothing.
“Shall we declare an armistice then, or a moratorium? I don’t wish to quarrel with my host.”
“And I don’t want to be condemned to an infinity of doubt.”
“Is a few months infinity?”
“And meanwhile?”
“Meanwhile I shall say nothing to Joan unless she asks me, and then I will repeat what I have already told you. I trust you not to do anything rash or stupid or dishonourable, such as persuading her to run away, which she might afterwards regret. Law and order are the greatest comforts of civilization.”
“It isn’t an altogether satisfactory arrangement.”
“There is nothing wrong with it from your point of view, if you have faith in your new poem. It is I who am making concessions, I who am gambling. And now let us have a drink together before joining the others.”
“I’m afraid I was rather rude to you at one point,” said Saturday slowly.
“A good fault in some circumstances; I say that to excuse myself. Whisky and soda, waiter. Large ones.”
CHAPTER X
It was one minute past eleven. Quentin hurried soft-footed over the lawn towards the dark rampart of trees. They loomed above him, inky boles and a black lattice of leaves and branches. A gibbous moon sat unsteadily on the topmost branch of all.
He was late. The rubber had dragged its slow length along until Quentin, in desperation, despatched it with the ruthless sacrifice of two good tricks. “Imbecile!” his partner hissed. “Quem deus vult perdere prius dementat,” Quentin replied with a hollow laugh, and left the room looking, he hoped, like the fore-shadow of a baccarat suicide. Eleven had struck. His expression changed to that of the adventurer. He raced along the corridor, down a broad flight of stairs, round the corner, through a creaking door, on to the bowling-green and over the dewy grass to the trees under which Nelly Bly was waiting.
She wasn’t there. Quentin stalked from tree to tree, peering round the trunk of one, looking forward to another. No one was there. He frowned—a wasted frown—and leaned against the nearest elm hands in pockets, prepared to wait. Punctuality, he felt, was the prerequisite of plotters. But women will keep their dressmakers waiting… in any case there was no plot about it… she was going to tell him about herself and her Cossack; and all her difficulties… and he was going to help her with wise words, comfort her with the assurance that she had a trusty friend… a friend who was something between an elder brother and a light-hearted cavalier… and incidentally a novelist who was about to explore a new field of romantic realism… his next novel (when he had decided what to write about) might be dedicated to N.B., A Victim of Russian Circumstance.
Quentin started. A hand as soft as moth-wings lay on his sleeve.
“You’re late,” he said.
“And you are dreaming. Is this how you keep watch? I walked right up to you before you saw me.”
“I thought you
were a moonbeam,” said Quentin pleasantly.
Nelly Bly wore a long white coat of the kind that tennis-players wear, and in the moonlight she looked even more alluring than in her apple-green costume of the daytime. Her hair was like amber exquisitely touched with bronze in that candid opalescence, and her eyes—
“Malachite in argentine,” said Quentin. “Beryls in a frosted mist. Green river-secrets. Do you think I am going mad?”
“No. You’re talking about my eyes, aren’t you?”
“But how did you know?”
“Do you think no one else has ever noticed them?”
“You torture me,” he said.
Moon-shadows dappled the world and Quentin forgot the explicit purpose of their tryst. Men have such a multitude of purposes and Nature, more resolute than an English sailor, more cynical than a French wit, has only one. And Nature, like an advertising expert, seeks to effect her solitary purpose by the mediation of beauty.
“No,” said Nelly, gently pushing him away. “We came here to talk. You promised to listen to me so that you could learn how to help me.”
“In any way I can.”
“It’s so complicated a story. Some of it you will never understand. To think that it should come here, to little Downish, a story that began in Irkutsk!”
“Irkutsk?” asked Quentin.
“Irkutsk,” replied Nelly gravely.
“There’s a seat behind this tree,” said Quentin.
The wooden seat with its back to the trees, on which visitors sometimes sat to watch other visitors play tennis, sparkled with dew. Quentin mopped it as well as he could with his handkerchief and they sat down with six inches of half-dried boards between them.
“In Irkutsk,” said Nelly slowly. “A foggy evening when the town was lost in a sea of impenetrable vapour. The lamps were drowned in it. Men moved through it like shadows. And the shouting of drosky-drivers, the jingle of harness, seemed strangely muffled. Boris was there on a mission for the Komintern.”
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