To summarize his career.
Soon after the tragedy, when he in his turn was recruiting, he met the woman who was to become his helpmate through life. He had met her once before, and had not liked her; she had seemed uncharitable and hard. Now he saw that her hardness sprang from a morality that he himself lacked. If he believed in love, Janet believed in truth. She tested all men and all things. She had no patience with the sentimentalist who shelters from the world’s rough and tumble. Engaged at that time to another man, she spoke more freely to Michael than she would otherwise have done, and told him that it is not enough to feel good and to feel that others are good; one’s business is to make others better, and she urged him to adopt a profession. The beauty of honest work dawned upon the youth as she spoke. Mentally and physically, he came to full manhood, and, after due preparation, he entered the Home Civil Service – the British Museum.
Here began a career that was rather notable, and wholly beneficial to humanity. With his ideals of conduct and culture, Michael was not content with the official routine. He desired to help others, and, since he was gifted with tact, they consented to the operation. Before long he became a conciliatory force in his department. He could mollify his superiors, encourage his inferiors, soothe foreign scholars, and show that there is something to be said for all sides. Janet, who watched his rise, taxed him again with instability. But now she was wrong. The young man was not a mere opportunist. He always had a sincere opinion of his own, or he could not have retained the respect of his colleagues. It was really the inherent sweetness of his nature at work, turned by a woman’s influence towards fruitful ends.
At the end of a ten years’ acquaintance the two married. In the interval Janet had suffered much pain, for the man to whom she had been engaged had proved unworthy of her. Her character was set when she came to Michael, and, as he knew, strongly contrasted with his own; and perhaps they had already interchanged all the good they could. But the marriage proved durable and sufficiently happy. He, in particular, made endless allowances, for toleration and sympathy were becoming the cardinal points of his nature. If his wife was unfair to the official mind, or if his brother-in-law, an atheist, denounced religion he would say to himself, ‘They cannot help it; they are made thus, and have the qualities of their defects. Let me rather think of my own, and strive for a wider outlook ceaselessly.’ He grew sweeter every day.
It was partly this desire for a wider outlook that turned him to literature. As he was crossing the forties it occurred to him to write a few essays, somewhat retrospective in tone, and thoughtful rather than profound in content. They had some success. Their good taste, their lucid style, the tempered Christianity of their ethics, whetted the half-educated public, and made it think and feel. They were not, and were not intended to be, great literature, but they opened the doors to it, and were indubitably a power for good. The first volume was followed by The Confessions of a Middle-aged Man. In it Michael paid melodious tribute to youth, but showed that ripeness is all. Experience, he taught, is the only humanizer; sympathy, balance and many-sidedness cannot come to a man until he is elderly. It is always pleasant to be told that the best is yet to be, and the sale of the book was large. Perhaps he would have become a popular author, but his wife’s influence restrained him from writing anything that he did not sincerely feel. She had borne him three children by now – Henry, Catherine, and Adam. On the whole they were a happy family. Henry never gave any trouble. Catherine took after her mother. Adam, who was wild and uncouth, caused his father some anxiety. He could not understand him, in spite of careful observation, and they never became real friends. Still, it was but a little cloud in a large horizon. At home, as in his work, Michael was more successful than most men.
Thus he slipped into the fifties. On the death of his father he inherited a house in the Surrey hills, and Janet, whose real interests were horticultural, settled down there. After all, she had not proved an intellectual woman. Her fierce manner had misled him and perhaps herself into believing it. She was efficient enough in London society, but it bored her, for she lacked her husband’s pliancy, and aged more rapidly than he did. Nor did the country suit her. She grew querulous, disputing with other ladies about the names of flowers. And, of course, the years were not without their effect on him, too. By now he was somewhat of a valetudinarian. He had given up all outdoor sports, and, though his health remained good, grew bald, and rather stout and timid. He was against late hours, violent exercise, night walks, swimming when hot, muddling about in open boats, and he often had to check himself from fidgeting the children. Henry, a charming sympathetic lad, would squeeze his hand and say, ‘All right, father.’ But Catherine and Adam sometimes frowned. He thought of the children more and more. Now that his wife was declining, they were the future, and he was determined to keep in touch with them, remembering how his own father had failed with him. He believed in gentleness, and often stood between them and their mother. When the boys grew up he let them choose their own friends. When Catherine, at the age of nineteen, asked if she might go away and earn some money as a lady gardener, he let her go. In this case he had his reward, for Catherine, having killed the flowers, returned. She was a restless, scowling young woman, a trial to her mother, who could not imagine what girls were coming to. Then she married and improved greatly; indeed, she proved his chief support in the coming years.
For, soon after her marriage, a great trouble fell on him. Janet became bedridden, and, after a protracted illness, passed into the unknown. Sir Michael – for he had been knighted – declared that he should not survive her. They were so accustomed to each other, so mutually necessary, that he fully expected to pass away after her. In this he was mistaken. She died when he was sixty, and he lived to be over seventy. His character had passed beyond the clutch of circumstance and he still retained his old interests and his unconquerable benignity.
A second trouble followed hard on the first. It transpired that Adam was devoted to his mother, and had only tolerated home life for her sake. After a brutal scene he left. He wrote from the Argentine that he was sorry, but wanted to start for himself. ‘I don’t see the point of it,’ quavered Sir Michael. ‘Have I ever stopped him or any of you from starting?’ Henry and Catherine agreed with him. Yet he felt that they understood their brother better than he did. ‘I have given him freedom all his life,’ he continued. ‘I have given him freedom, what more does he want?’ Henry, after hesitation, said, ‘There are some people who feel that freedom cannot be given. At least I have heard so. Perhaps Adam is like that. Unless he took freedom he might not feel free.’ Sir Michael disagreed. ‘I have now studied adolescence for many years,’ he replied, ‘and your conclusions, my dear boy, are ridiculous.’
The two rallied to their father gallantly; and, after all, he spent a dignified old age. Having retired from the British Museum, he produced a little aftermath of literature. The great public had forgotten him, but the courtliness of his ‘Musings of a Pensioner’ procured him some circulation among elderly and educated audiences. And he found a new spiritual consolation. Anima naturaliter Anglicana, he had never been hostile to the Established Church; and, when he criticized her wordliness and occasional inhumanity, had spoken as one who was outside her rather than against her. After his wife’s death and the flight of his son he lost any lingering taste for speculation. The experience of years disposed him to accept the experience of centuries, and to merge his feeble personal note in the great voice of tradition. Yes; a serene and dignified old age. Few grudged it to him. Of course, he had enemies, who professed to see through him, and said that Adam had seen through him too; but no impartial observer agreed. No ulterior motive had ever biassed Sir Michael. The purity of his record was not due to luck, but to purity within, and his conciliatory manner sprang from a conciliated soul. He could look back on failures and mistakes, and he had not carried out the ideals of his youth. Who has? But he had succeeded better than most men in modifying those ideals to fit the world of fa
cts, and if love had been modified into sympathy and sympathy into compromise, let one of his contemporaries cast the first stone.
One fact remained – the fact of death. Hitherto, Sir Michael had never died, and at times he was bestially afraid. But more often death appeared as a prolongation of his present career. He saw himself quietly and tactfully organizing some corner in infinity with his wife’s assistance; Janet would be greatly improved. He saw himself passing from a sphere in which he had been efficient into a sphere which combined the familiar with the eternal, and in which he would be equally efficient – passing into it with dignity and without pain. This life is a preparation for the next. Those who live longest are consequently the best prepared. Experience is the great teacher; blessed are the experienced, for they need not further modify their ideals.
The manner of his death was as follows. He, too, met with an accident. He was walking from his town house to Catherine’s by a short cut through a slum; some women were quarrelling about a fish, and as he passed they appealed to him. Always courteous, the old man stopped, said that he had not sufficient data to judge on, and advised them to lay the fish aside for twenty-four hours. This chanced to annoy them, and they grew more angry with him than with one another. They accused him of ‘doing them’, of ‘getting round them’, and one, who was the worse for drink, said, ‘See if he gets round that,’ and slapped him with the fish in the face. He fell. When he came to himself he was lying in bed with one of his headaches.
He could hear Catherine’s voice. She annoyed him. If he did not open his eyes, it was only because he did not choose.
‘He has been like this for nearly two years,’ said Henry’s voice.
It was, at the most, ten minutes since he had fallen in the slum. But he did not choose to argue.
‘Yes, he’s pretty well played out,’ said a third voice – actually the voice of Adam; how and when had Adam returned? ‘But, then, he’s been that for the last thirty years.’
‘Gently, old boy,’ said Henry.
‘Well, he has,’ said Adam. ‘I don’t believe in cant. He never did anything since Mother died, and damned little before. They’ve forgotten his books because they aren’t first-hand; they’re rearranging the cases he arranged in the British Museum. That’s the lot. What else has he done except tell people to dress warmly, but not too warm?’
‘Adam, you really mustn’t——’
‘It’s because nobody speaks up that men of the old man’s type get famous. It’s a sign of your sloppy civilization. You’re all afraid – afraid of originality, afraid of work, afraid of hurting one another’s feelings. You let anyone come to the top who doesn’t frighten you, and as soon as he dies you forget him and knight some other figurehead instead.’
An unknown voice said, ‘Shocking, Mr Adam, shocking. Such a dear old man, and quite celebrated, too.’
‘You’ll soon get used to me, nurse.’
The nurse laughed.
‘Adam, it is a relief to have you,’ said Catherine after a pause. ‘I want you and your boy to help me with mine.’ Her voice sounded dimmer; she had turned from her father without a word of farewell. ‘One must profit by the mistakes of others . . . after all, more heroism . . . I am determined to keep in touch with my boy——’
‘Larrup him,’ said Adam. ‘That’s the secret.’ He followed his sister out of the room.
Then Henry’s delightful laugh sounded for the last time. ‘You make us all feel twenty years younger,’ he said; ‘more like when——’
The door shut.
Sir Michael grew cold with rage. This was life, this was what the younger generation had been thinking. Adam he ignored, but at the recollection of Henry and Catherine he determined to die. If he chose, he could have risen from bed and driven the whole pack into the street. But he did not choose. He chose rather to leave this shoddy and ungrateful world. The immense and superhuman cynicism that is latent in all of us came at last to the top and transformed him. He saw the absurdity of love, and the vision so tickled him that he began to laugh. The nurse, who had called him a dear old man, bent over him, and at the same moment two boys came into the sick-room.
‘How’s grandpapa?’ asked one of them – Catherine’s boy.
‘Not so well,’ the nurse answered.
There was a silence. Then the other boy said, ‘Come along, let’s cut.’
‘But they told us not to.’
‘Why should we do what old people tell us? Dad’s pretty well played out, and so’s your mother.’
‘Shocking; be off with you both,’ said the nurse; and, with a little croon of admiration, Catherine’s boy followed his cousin out of the room. Their grandfather’s mirth increased. He rolled about in the bed; and, just as he was grasping the full irony of the situation, he died, and pursued it into the unknown.
III
Micky was still in bed. He was aware of so much through long melancholy dreams. But when he opened his mouth to laugh, it filled with dust. Choosing to open his eyes, he found that he had swollen enormously, and lay sunk in the sand of an illimitable plain. As he expected, he had no occasion greatly to modify his ideals; infinity had merely taken the place of his bedroom and of London. Nothing moved on its surface except a few sand-pillars, which would sometimes merge into each other as though confabulating, and then fall with a slight hiss. Save for these, there was no motion, no noise, nor could he feel any wind.
How long had he lain here? Perhaps for years, long before death perhaps, while his body seemed to be walking among men. Life is so short and trivial, that who knows whether we arrive for it entirely, whether more than a fraction of the soul is aroused to put on flesh? The bud and the blossom perish in a moment, the husk endures, and may not the soul be a husk? It seemed to Micky that he had lain in the dust forever, suffering and sneering, and that the essence of all things, the primal power that lies behind the stars, is senility. Age, toothless, dropsical age; ungenerous to age and to youth; born before all ages, and outlasting them; the universe as old age.
The place degraded while it tortured. It was vast, yet ignoble. It sloped downward into darkness and upward into cloud, but into what darkness, what clouds! No tragic splendour glorified them. When he looked at them he understood why he was so unhappy, for they were looking at him, sneering at him while he sneered. Their dirtiness was more ancient than the hues of day and night, their irony more profound; he was part of their jest, even as youth was part of his, and slowly he realized that he was, and had for some years been, in Hell.
All around him lay other figures, huge and fungous. It was as if the plain had festered. Some of them could sit up, others scarcely protruded from the sand, and he knew that they had made the same mistake in life as himself, though he did not know yet what the mistake had been; probably some little slip, easily avoided had one but been told.
Speech was permissible. Presently a voice said, ‘Is not ours a heavenly sky? Is it not beautiful?’
‘Most beautiful,’ answered Micky, and found each word a stab of pain. Then he knew that one of the sins here punished was appreciation; he was suffering for all the praise that he had given to the bad and mediocre upon earth; when he had praised out of idleness, or to please people, or to encourage people; for all the praise that had not been winged with passion. He repeated ‘Most beautiful,’ and the sky quivered, for he was entering into fuller torments now. One ray of happiness survived: his wife could not be in this place. She had not sinned with the people of the plain, and could not suffer their distortion. Her view of life had proved right after all; and, in his utter misery, this comforted him. Janet should again be his religion, and as eternity dragged forward and returned upon itself and dragged forward she would show him that old age, if rightly managed, can be beautiful; that experience, if rightly received, can lead the soul of men to bliss. Then he turned to his neighbour, who was continuing his hymn of praise.
‘I could lie here for ever,’ he was saying. ‘When I think of my restlessness during
life – that is to say, during what men miscall life, for it is death really – this is life – when I think of my restlessness on earth, I am overcome by so much goodness and mercy, I could lie here for ever.’
‘And will you?’ asked Micky.
‘Ah, that is the crowning blessing – I shall, and so will you.’
Here a pillar of sand passed between them. It was long before they could speak or see. Then Micky took up the song, chafed by the particles that were working into his soul.
‘I, too, regret my wasted hours,’ he said, ‘especially the hours of my youth. I regret all the time I spent in the sun. In later years I did repent, and that is why I am admitted here where there is no sun; yes, and no wind and none of the stars that drove me almost mad at night once. It would be appalling, would it not, to see Orion again, the central star of whose sword is not a star but a nebula, the golden seed of worlds to be. How I dreaded the autumn on earth when Orion rises, for he recalled adventure and my youth. It was appalling. How thankful I am to see him no more.’
‘Ah, but it was worse,’ cried the other, ‘to look high leftward from Orion and see the Twins. Castor and Pollux were brothers, one human, the other divine; and Castor died. But Pollux went down to Hell that he might be with him.’
‘Yes; that is so. Pollux went into Hell.’
‘Then the gods had pity on both, and raised them aloft to be stars whom sailors worship, and all who love and are young. Zeus was their father, Helen their sister, who brought the Greeks against Troy. I dreaded them more than Orion.’
The New Collected Short Stories Page 16