And then – quite suddenly – Humbert was stammering and mumbling again. He had been saying something about a formalist fallacy, and it had appeared to upset him. It was a moment before Cardwell caught up with this, although he ought to have remembered at once. ‘The Yale Formalist Fallacy’ was something that Herbert had printed somewhere some years before. He must be talking about that.
‘You gave it to those chaps good and hard,’ Cardwell said at a venture.
‘Of course I did.’ Humbert had no doubts on this point. ‘But nobody paid any attention to it. More and more, you see, it’s a matter of status. People won’t listen to a lecturer.’
‘It was a lecture?’ Cardwell was puzzled. ‘I thought—’
‘No, no! I’m saying that if you’ve donkeyed away for years without getting to the top of one of their silly academic trees you’re treated as a harmless drudge who’s not worth attending to.’
‘Oh, but surely not!’ There had been something disconcerting about Humbert’s thus suddenly plummeting from the most abstract (and elevating) level of literary discourse to this disconsolate personal note. Yet at once it came back to Cardwell as characteristic of his friend. Herbert was at times a distinctly chip-on-the-shoulder type, and when in that mood not easy to deal with. Cardwell doubted whether what he had just said was true. Although no academic himself, he dined from time to time at high tables, and he had gained the impression that on the whole it was professors who were regarded as harmless drudges, while the real advances in knowledge were achieved by bright young men. But then although Herbert wasn’t a professor he certainly wasn’t a bright young man either.
‘Well, that’s how I see it.’ Herbert was looking sullen – or at least bits and pieces of his face could be read that way. ‘All because I haven’t produced a great tombstone of a critical edition of Mark Akenside or Thomas Shadwell or somebody.’
‘Very well.’ Cardwell decided to speak robustly. ‘You’ll have to produce a book, Herbert. Not a thing like that, of course, but a real book. A regular blockbuster. You must have masses of material.’
‘That’s what Bernard says.’
‘Bernard?’ Cardwell was at sea.
‘Bernard Hinkstone – who ran into us there in the London Library. He’s always on at me about it too.’
‘Is he, indeed?’ It didn’t greatly please Sir Vivian Cardwell thus to be lumped together with that briefly-glimpsed unmannerly young man. ‘I hope he doesn’t bully you, Herbert. But from the point of view of professional advancement he’s probably quite right.’
‘I distrust books. There’s something too final about them.’ Delivering this odd verdict, Humbert drained his glass – which Cardwell hospitably filled again. ‘And it looks as if you feel the same way, Vivian. Where’s your big book? Put away in a drawer, it seems – and just occasionally taken a timid peep at.’ Humbert took another big gulp of Chianti. ‘You’re a bloody great pot, old boy, calling the kettle black.’
It was at this point that the dangerous notion of a rescue-operation came into Cardwell’s head. He didn’t at all see how it was to be achieved, but he felt strongly that he would like to achieve it. He was himself a temperate, although by no means a drearily abstemious, man and there was something about the speed with which Herbert had raised that glass which alerted him for the first time to a disturbing possibility. He didn’t actually see himself in a custodial role: a Theodore Watts-Dunton, say, devoted to keeping a Swinburne off the bottle. There was something ridiculous in that image, and Cardwell was a man very sensitive to ridicule. Moreover he had only the most slender ground for suspecting that drink was an important factor in the situation. What seemed certain was that Herbert was in a state of impaired confidence as to his own powers and prospects. Could means be taken, for a start, merely to boost his morale? In what way could a very old friend address himself to being a bracing influence?
‘But Herbert,’ Cardwell said, ‘I haven’t got a big book – put away in a drawer or anywhere else. Occasional pieces, yes. Beyond that, I simply have nothing that I could honestly call my own.’
‘Just what do you mean by that?’
‘Come, come, Herbert! No need to be modest.’ Cardwell was inwardly delighted at the adroitness, as he conceived it, of the manoeuvre he had hit upon. ‘Remember what our relationship was, back in that wonderful time. You gave me pretty well every idea I ever had. And what have I done since? Elaborate one or two of them, and doll them up a bit. II migliorfabbro, old chap – that’s you.’
As he produced this version of things (which, of course, he didn’t believe in a bit), Cardwell wished that at the start he hadn’t so stiffly played down the quality of his unpublished book. What he had then said didn’t quite square with this sudden assertion that he had produced something which somehow enshrined the fine essence of Herbert Humbert’s thought. But Humbert himself appeared unconscious of this point. He had flushed with pleasure and confusion, like a schoolboy who has unexpectedly been commended in extravagant terms for work which he had supposed would earn him a wigging. Or was it quite like that? Although Humbert at once exploded into a stammered ‘Vivian, what utter nonsense!’ was there a flicker of something else apparent, which his friend might have remarked had he not been congratulating himself on his successful employment of what somebody has called the psychotherapy of warm praise? It is possible that what Cardwell had produced as a novel and just possibly persuasive fiction already lurked in Humbert’s mind as the all-too-probable fact of the matter.
However this may have been, the meal ended pleasantly enough, and with a distinct implication that the revived relationship between the two men was to continue. The will to this was perhaps more Cardwell’s than Humbert’s. At last, and after all those years, Cardwell had set about ‘doing something’ for his friend. Or at least he had taken a first step that way, obeyed an impulse in the matter which it was now incumbent upon him to take means to further. A laudably charitable intention was at work in Sir Vivian Cardwell, but it was also true that an element of intellectual curiosity had its influence with him. He had moved much among men and affairs, and had developed in consequence an interest in the character and conduct of actual men and women in a way unknown to Humbert, who viewed nearly everything through the spectacles of books. Just how could one persuade, coax, edge, prod a chap like Herbert in one direction or another – always, of course, entirely to his own benefit? The question was a complex and challenging one, Herbert being the very gifted and exceptional individual he was.
As they left the restaurant, Cardwell secured his friend’s address. It may have been significant that he felt this to be a slightly tricky operation, even although it was clearly essential if they really were going to keep in contact with one another. There was a certain wariness about Herbert, which no doubt went along with the sense of being an unsuccessful man. Obvious and honest as was his admiration for his former intimate, he had what might almost be called an impulse to elude capture if he could. And so it came about that, if only ever so faintly, Sir Vivian Cardwell felt much as he did when, following his favourite recreations at Chantries, he was out with a gun or casting a still fly over a pool.
The present Lady Cardwell had never met Herbert Humbert. It turned out, indeed, that she had never even heard of him, and it was this circumstance that appeared particularly to strike her when her husband reported on the encounter in the London Library.
‘Has Mr Humbert ever been to Chantries?’ she asked.
‘Oh, yes. He stayed here – I think it was for about a week – when we were both still at Trinity. I don’t know that he greatly enjoyed himself. He must come of very simple people, I suppose. My mother liked him.’
‘Because he was extremely clever?’
‘It would have been partly that.’
‘You used to tell me quite a lot about your undergraduate days, Vivian. It’s odd that you never mentioned this close friend.’
‘Herbert wasn’t exactly that. But it is odd, all the same, and r
equires accounting for. Do you know? I think that by the time you and I met I may have developed some unconscious sense almost of guilt about the chap. About having rather dropped him, that is. Perhaps that’s why I never told you about him. I ought to have – if only because he was an enormously interesting man. He still is, in a way.’
‘Is it true, Vivian, that you got a great many of your ideas from this Mr Humbert?’ Lady Cardwell asked this in some amusement. Her husband had confided to her the means he had taken to cheer up his former associate.
‘Well, as I told you, darling, I wasn’t being quite honest there.’ It was with a certain discomfort that Cardwell reiterated this. ‘It was all give-and-take between us, really. Or that’s how I remember it.’
‘At least it wasn’t the other way round? Mr Humbert, that’s to say, didn’t get nearly all his ideas from you?’
‘No, no – nothing like that.’
‘If he had, I think it might have been he who dropped you. His spirit would have felt rebuked by you, as they say.’
‘What an odd idea, darling.’
‘It isn’t odd at all.’ Lady Cardwell, who was quite as intelligent as her mother-in-law had been (and had, indeed, been courted by Vivian Cardwell on that account) was seldom slow in speaking out like this. ‘If one knows in one’s heart that someone with whom one is expected to live on equal terms is in fact very much one’s intellectual superior, it’s quite likely that one day one will unobtrusively pack one’s bags. And you say there is something a little elusive about Mr Humbert still. So that’s it. The poor man knows he isn’t quite up to you.’
‘I wouldn’t care to think of it in that way at all.’ Cardwell made a momentary pause. ‘Or the other way round, for that matter.’
‘Are you going to see more of him?’
‘Yes, I think so. I’ve a notion of looking him up at the address he gave me when I’m next in town.’
‘Why not ask him down here? You say he has been to Chantries once. And I’d like to have a look at him – just as your mother must have done.’
‘Later, perhaps, darling. I’ll sound him out about it first. It’s a question of finding just the best way to help him.’
‘He needs help?’
‘Well—encouragement, say. But, yes—definitely a leg-up.’
‘Is he very poor, or something?’
‘I’d hardly suppose so. It’s true that a university lecturer is rather miserably paid. But Herbert’s an unmarried man, and I’d imagine him to be of pretty simple tastes. What needs seeing to is his doing himself justice by means of publishing more. That kind of thing.’
‘It sounds to me as if you’ll have to be rather tactful, Vivian dear. Mr Humbert isn’t a young man, and he may well be set in his ways. If you suddenly turn up out of a remote past with the evident intention of running him or treating him as a protégé—’
‘My dear, I’ve spent a large part of my life, as you know, ladling out tact to all sorts and conditions of men. It’s now next to second nature with me.’ And Sir Vivian Cardwell laughed – gaily, but perhaps with a shade of complacency as well. ‘Dear old Herbert Humbert has nothing to fear from me there.’
Nevertheless Cardwell didn’t remain quite certain that, in proposing to drop in on Humbert unheralded and in a casual way, he hadn’t begun on the wrong foot. The little street to the north of Dorset Square bore so run-down an appearance that to visit it felt like going slumming. But perhaps, he thought, Herbert worked at Bedford College, and it would no doubt be a convenient address for that. Still, he found himself rather hoping that his friend would be out (which seemed likely enough) so that he could effect some different approach. His wife had been right. An immediate invitation to Chantries might only have alarmed Herbert. But it would have been the gracious thing, all the same.
He came to a halt before a door badly in need of a lick of paint. On one side there was a row of small electric bell-pushes, like buttons on a grubby waistcoat. Most had names against them, either scribbled on slivers of pasteboard or punched out on a strip of metal tape. Humbert’s name did not appear. But two of the buttons were anonymous, and the uppermost was one of them. Deciding that it was somehow in character that Herbert should inhabit an attic, and that there was an equal likelihood of his not bothering to intimate his tenancy to the world, Cardwell pressed this at a venture. Nothing happened, so he tried the door. It proved to be unlocked, so he went in and climbed several flights of stairs. Milk-bottles, some full and some empty but not cleaned, stood outside doors, and beside one or two of them lay newspapers of the more popular order. He was stared at disapprovingly by a woman in carpet slippers carrying a mop and bucket; he was similarly stared at by a cat which had the appearance of being in ill-health. These evidences of unimproved life were dispiriting, but he pressed on. On the top landing somebody stood in an open doorway, as if expecting him, so that he concluded the bell to have effected some sort of summons, after all. But this wasn’t Herbert, and for a moment he supposed that he must have guessed wrong. Then he realised that here was the person, encountered in the London Library, whom Herbert had described as a former pupil. Cardwell, who had a well-trained memory for names, said, ‘Good morning, Mr Hinkstone’, in a proper tone of mild cordiality.
‘Oh, it’s you.’ Hinkstone produced this singularly incontrovertible statement, contrastingly, on a note of distinct disappointment, much as if he would have preferred the appearance of a man to read the gas-meter, or even of a policeman with a summons for speeding.
‘Is Herbert at home?’ It seemed best to Cardwell to treat the unexpected encounter as having established itself on a basis of pleasing informality, which was the reason of thus employing his friend’s Christian name.
‘Oh, yes – he’s at home. I suppose you’d better come in. Not that he’s expecting you, I imagine.’
‘Well, no. It’s a call on the spur of the moment, actually.’ Cardwell wondered why he should be prompted to a small untruth by this meagre and graceless person. ‘Do you share quarters with him, Mr Hinkstone?’
‘Of course not. I sometimes come in and do a bit of typing for him. He can’t work a typewriter. Part of his general clumsiness.’
This remark, although doubtless true, displeased Cardwell, and he felt that he ought by now to have been ushered into his friend’s presence. But he and Hinkstone were still standing in a gloomy little lobby, and the young man was looking at him rather as if he were an inconveniently dumped parcel which must somehow be got rid of.
‘It’s the hell of a climb up to this flat,’ the young man said. He gave Cardwell an appraising glance. ‘Particularly if one’s a bit out of condition, I’d imagine. But it seems to suit Herbert. Ος υπερτατα δωματα ναϊει.’
Although it was perhaps proper that one who laboured in a polytechnic should know his Hesiod, Cardwell was disconcerted by this unexpected command of an ancient tongue by so uncouth a young man. He was aware, at the same time, of having been given notice that he was dealing with a scholar, and he made a mental note that it would be prudent to treat Herbert’s young assistant (as Hinkstone now appeared to be) with respect.
‘But I don’t want to hold up your work,’ he said. ‘Perhaps—’
Whatever accommodating remark was to follow upon this remained unuttered – being interrupted, from beyond a closed door, by a cry of dismay, a clatter as of overturned furniture, and sundry dull bumpings to which it was not easy to assign a cause. But Hinkstone appeared to be in no doubt as to what had happened, and now raised both arms in air with a gesture more of irritation than alarm.
‘Oh, God!’ he exclaimed. ‘If Herbert hasn’t gone and fallen off that library ladder again.’
It was a big room, and although on one side the windows scarcely came knee-high in the sloping roof, on the other there was a lofty blank wall clothed to the ceiling with books. It was here that the misadventure had occurred and that Herbert still lay sprawled on the floor with a dozen volumes on top of him. The library ladder
seemed substantial enough; it was a solid mahogany affair, terminating in a stout pole with a knob for holding on to when you were on the top step. The trouble lay, it appeared to Cardwell, in the treacherous character of the terrain beneath it. The whole room lay ankle-deep in waste paper – or it might have been safer to say in manuscript material. Some of this looked freshly crumpled up but much was already yellowed with age. There were loose sheets, torn sheets, little bundles in process of freeing themselves from paper-clips, larger bundles tied up with tape or string. And since all this was deposited on top of slippery linoleum of an antique sort, any venture around the room could be undertaken only at considerable hazard. This was clearly the opinion of Bernard Hinkstone – who was picking up Humbert, dusting him down, and angrily chiding him, all at one and the same time.
‘You’re not safe!’ he shouted. ‘It’s not just that you can’t safely be let out alone. You can’t even be left alone in your own room. How often have I told you to give over scrambling up that damned thing? I’ll have to move in on you, Herbert. There’s nothing else for it.’ Hinkstone turned to Cardwell. ‘They talk about being accident-prone,’ he said, ‘and of just that Herbert’s the bloody mark and acme.’ He picked up an enormous tome from Humbert’s feet. ‘Stunning yourself with quartos and folios is all very well. But one day he’ll stroll out into the middle of the street and have a little chat with a bus.’
Sir Vivian Cardwell, although not a fussy man, liked to have everything neat and shipshape around him. The scene of disorder upon which he had intruded, therefore, distressed him a good deal.
While Humbert recovered breath and prepared to talk (for talk wonderfully he certainly would) his former companion took further stock of the situation. It didn’t greatly trouble him that Herbert so clearly lived a physically comfortless life; that from the crumpled paper in one corner of the room there rose an iron bedstead with equally crumpled bedding, that the one-bar electric fire was dulled by a corroded reflector, that Herbert’s notion of home cookery was evidenced by a single frying-pan perched on a primus stove. Herbert had always been like that, and there was nothing discreditable about it in a man devoted to unceasing intellectual toil. It was the coil into which the toil so hopelessly degenerated that was disheartening. All this litter perfectly epitomised Herbert’s mind – a mind of which the thoughts were like a scattered pack of cards. It was easy to say that here in Herbert Humbert was a sovereign intellect but a subject will. The truth wasn’t really quite like that. The intellect itself was imperfect, being incapable of ordonnance, of construction on any large scale. Another way of saying this would be to declare that poor Herbert was incapable of grasping his own fleeting conceptions and excluding other people’s while he expanded and developed what was radically his own. He was, in a way, too open, too suggestible in his intellectual life. Perhaps he was that in his personal life too. If Herbert had a personal life. Meditating thus, Cardwell was perhaps coming insensibly to regard his old associate as an intriguing puzzle; almost, it might be said, as laboratory material. Nothing could be more interesting than to find out what, under just what circumstances and compulsions, so extraordinary a creature as Herbert would do.
The Bridge at Arta Page 18