CHAPTER II

YOUNG WRIFORD

I

Come back with Mr. Wriford a little. Come back with him a little to scenes where often his mind, not wanders, but hunts--hunts desperately, as hunts for safety, running in panic to and fro, one trapped by the sea on whom the tide advances. There are nights--not occasional nights, but night after night, night after night--when Mr. Wriford cannot sleep and when, in madness against the sleep that will not come, he visions sleep as some actual presence that is in his room mocking him, and springs from his bed to grapple it and seize it and drag it to his pillow. There is a moment then--or longer, he does not know how long--of dreadful loss of identity, in which in the darkness Mr. Wriford flounders and smashes about his room, thinking he wrestles with sleep: and then he realises, and trembling gets back to bed, and cries aloud to know how in God's name to get out of this pass to which he has come, and how in pity's name he has come to it.

Come back with him a little. Look how his life as he hunts through it falls into periods. Look how these bring him from Young Wriford that he was--Young Wriford fresh, ardent, keen, happy, to whom across the years he stretches trembling hands--to this Mr. Wriford, one of the lucky ones, that he has become.

II

Here is Young Wriford of ten years before who has just taken the tremendous plunge into what he calls literature. Here he is, just battling ardently with its fearful hopes and hazards when there comes to him news of Bill and Freda, his brother and sister-in-law, killed by sudden accident in Canada where with their children and Alice, Freda's elder sister, they had made their home. Here he is at the Liverpool docks, meeting Alice and the three little boys to take them to her mother's house in Surbiton. He is the only surviving near relative of Bill's family, and here he is, for old Bill's sake, with every impulse concentrated on playing the game by old Bill's poor little kids and by Alice who, unhappy at home, has always lived with them and been their "deputy-mother," and is now, as she says, their own mother: here is Alice, with Harold aged nine, Dicky aged eight, and Freddie aged seven; Alice, who dreads coming to her home, who tells Young Wriford in the train:

"I'm not crying for Freda and Bill. I can't--I simply can't realise that even yet. It's not them, Philip. It's the future I'm thinking of. Phil, what's going to happen to my darlings? They've got nothing--nothing. Father's got four hundred a year--less; and I dread that. I tell you I dread meeting mother and father more than anything. Mother means to be kind--it's kind of her to take the children for Freda's sake; but you know what she is and what father is. And I've nothing--nothing!"

Young Wriford knows well enough what Mrs. Filmer is. Dragon Mrs. Filmer he has privately called her to old Bill when writing of duty calls paid to the stuffy little house at Surbiton, where the Dragon dragons it over her establishment and over Mr. Filmer, who has "retired" from business and who calls himself an "inventor." Young Wriford knows, and he has thought it all out, and he has had an amazing piece of success only a fortnight before, and he answers Alice bravely: "Look here, old girl, I've simply colossal news for you. You've not got to worry about all that a damn--sorry, Alice, but not a damn, really. You know I've chucked the office and gone in for literature? Well, what do you think? Whatever do you think? I'm dashed if I haven't got a place on the staff of Gamber's! Gamber's, mind you! You know--_Gamber's Magazine_ and _Gamber's Weekly_ and slats of other papers. They'd been accepting stuff of mine, and they wrote and asked me to call, and--well, I'm on the staff! I've got a roll-top desk of my own and no end of an important position and--what do you think?--three guineas a week! Well, this is how it stands; I've figured it all out. I can live like a prince on twenty-five bob a week, and you're going to have the other one pound eighteen. No, it's no good saying you won't. You've got to. Good Lord, it's for old Bill I'm doing it. Well, look at that now! Nothing! Why, you can tell Mrs. Filmer you've got practically a hundred a year! Ninety-eight pounds sixteen. That's not bad, is it? and twice as much before long. I tell you I'm going to make a fortune at this. I simply love the work, you know. No, don't call it generous, old girl, or any rot like that. It's not generous. I don't want the money. I mean, I don't care for anything except the work. There, now you feel better, don't you? It's fixed. I tell you it's fixed."

III

Here is Young Wriford with this fixed, and with it working, as he believes, splendidly. Here he is living in a bed-sitting-room at Battersea, and revelling day and night and always in the thrill of being what he calls a literary man, and in the pride and glory of being on the staff at Gamber's. He loves the work. He cares for nothing else but the work. That is why the shrewd men at Gamber's spotted him and brought him in and shoved him into Gamber's machine; and that is why he never breaks or crumples but springs and comes again when the hammers, the furnaces, and the grindstones of Gamber's machine work him and rattle him and mould him.

A Mr. Occshott controls Gamber's machine. Mr. Occshott in appearance and in tastes is much more like a cricket professional than Young Wriford's early ideas of an editor. Literary young men on Gamber's staff call Mr. Occshott a soulless ox and rave aloud against him, and being found worthless by him, are flung raving out of Gamber's machine, which he relentlessly drives. In Young Wriford, Mr. Occshott tells himself that he has found a real red-hot 'un, and for the ultimate benefit of Gamber's he puts the red-hot 'un through the machine at all its fiercest; sighs and groans at Young Wriford, and checks him here and checks him there, and badgers him and drives him all the time--slashes his manuscripts to pieces; comes down with contemptuous blue pencil and a cutting sneer whenever in them Young Wriford gets away from facts and tries a flight of fancy; hunts for missed errors through proofs that Young Wriford has read, and finds them and sends for Young Wriford, and asks if it is his eyesight or his education that is at fault, and if it is of the faintest use to hope that he can ever be trusted to pass a proof for himself; puts Young Wriford on to "making-up" pages of Gamber's illustrated periodicals for press, and pulls them all to pieces after they are done, and sends Young Wriford himself to face the infuriated printer and to suffer dismay and mortification in all his soul as he hears the printer say: "Well, that's the limit! Take my oath, that's the limit! 'Bout time, Mr. Wriford, you give my compliments to Mr. Occshott and tell him I wish to God Almighty he'd put any gentleman on to make up the pages except you. It's waste labour--it's sheer waste labour--doing anything you tell us. Take my oath it is."

Young Wriford assures himself that he hates Mr. Occshott, but steadily learns, steadily benefits; finds that he really likes Mr. Occshott and is liked by him; steadily, ardently sticks to it--earns his reward.

"Well, there it is," says Mr. Occshott one day, throwing aside the manuscript over which Young Wriford had taken infinite pains only to have it horribly mangled. "There it is. Have another shot at it, Wriford. And, by the way, you're not doing badly--not badly. You're awfully careless, you know, but I think you're picking it up. We're starting a new magazine, a kind of popular monthly review, and I'm going to put you in nominal charge of it--charge of the make-up and seeing to press and all that. And your salary--you've been here six months, haven't you? Three guineas, you're getting? Well, it'll be four now. Make a real effort with this new idea, Wriford. I'll tell you more about it to-morrow. A real effort--you really must, you know. Well, there it is."

IV

Here is Young Wriford not quite so youthful as a few months before. He has lost his keen interest in games and recreation. He thinks nothing but work, breathes nothing but work; most significant symptom of all, sometimes dreams work or lies awake at night a little because his mind is occupied with work. That in itself, though, is nothing: he likes it, he relishes every moment of it. What accounts more directly for the slight loss of youthfulness, what increasingly interferes with his relish of his work, is what comes up from the Filmer household at Surbiton in form of frequent letters from Alice; is what greets him there when he fulfils Alice's entreaties by giving up his every week-end to spending it as Dragon Mrs. Filmer's guest.

The letters begin to worry him, to get on his nerves, to give him for some reason that he cannot quite determine a harassing feeling of self-reproach. They are inordinately long; they consist from beginning to end of a recital of passages-at-arms between Alice and her parents; they seem to hint, when in replies to them he tries to reason away the troubles, that it is all very well for Young Wriford, who is out of it all and free and comfortable and happy, but that if he were here--!

"Well, but what more can I do than I am doing?" Young Wriford cries aloud to himself on receipt of such a letter; and thenceforward that question and alternate fits of impatience and of self-reproach over it, and letters expressive first of one frame of mind and then, in remorse, of the other--thenceforward these occupy more and more of his thoughts, and more and more mix with his work and disturb his peace of mind. Why is all this put upon him? Why can't he be left alone?

V

Here is Young Wriford in love. She is eighteen. Her name is Brida. She is working for the stage at a school of dramatic art quite close to Gamber's. He gets to know her through a friend at Gamber's whose sister is also at the school. Young Wriford and Brida happen to lunch every day--meeting without arrangement--at the same tea-shop off the Strand. She leaves her school at the same hour he leaves Gamber's in the evening, and they happen to meet every evening--without arrangement--and he walks home with her across St. James's Park to a Belgravia flat where she lives with her married sister. Young Wriford thinks of her face, day and night, as like a flower--radiant and fresh and fragrant as a flower at dawn; and of her spirit as a flower--gay as a posy, fragrant as apple-blossom, fresh as a rose, a rose!

And so one Friday evening as they cross the Park together, when suddenly she challenges his unusual silence with: "I say, you're jolly glum to-night," he replies with a plump: "I'm going to call you Brida."

"Oh, goodness!" says Brida and begins to walk very fast.

"Do you mind?"

She shakes her head.

"Don't let's hurry. Stop here a moment."

It is dusk. It is October. There is no one near them. He begins to speak. His eyes tell her what he can scarcely say: her eyes and that which tides in deepest colour across her face inform him what her answer is. He takes her in his arms. He tells her: "I love you, darling. Brida, I love you." She whispers: "Phil!"

He goes home exalted in his every pulse by what he has drunk from her lips: plumed, armed, caparisoned by that ethereal draught for any marvels, challenging the future to bring out its costliest, mightiest, bravest, best--he'd have it, he'd wrest it for his sweet, his darling! He goes home--and there is Alice waiting for him. Can't he, oh, can't he come down to Surbiton to-night, Friday, instead of waiting till to-morrow? She simply cannot bear it down there without him. It's all right when he is there. When she's alone with her mother, her mother goes on and on and on about the expenses, and about the children, and seems to throw the blame on Bill, and she answers back, and her father joins in, and there they are--at it! There's been a worse scene than ever to-day. She can't face meeting them at supper without Phil. "Phil, you'll come, won't you?"

Here is Young Wriford twisting his hands and twisting his brows, as often in later years he comes to twist them. He had planned to spend all to-morrow and Sunday with Brida--not go to Surbiton at all this week-end. Now he must go to-night. Why? Why on earth should this kind of thing be put on him? He tries to explain to Alice that he cannot come--either to-day or to-morrow. She cries. He lets her cry and lets her go--doing his best to make her think him not wilfully unkind. Here he is left alone in torment of self-reproach and of anger at the position he is placed in. Here he is with the self-reproach mastering him, and writing excuses to Brida, and hurrying to catch a train that will get him down to Surbiton in time for supper. Here is Dragon Mrs. Filmer greeting him with: "Well, this is unexpected! You couldn't of course have sent a line saying you were coming to-night instead of to-morrow! Oh, no, I mustn't expect that! My convenience goes for nothing in my own house nowadays. I call it rather hard on me." Here is Mr. Filmer, with his face exactly like a sheep, who replies at supper when Young Wriford lets out that he has been to a theatre-gallery during the week: "Well, I must say some people are very lucky to be able to afford such things. I'm afraid they don't come our way. We have a good many mouths to feed in this household, haven't we, Alice, h'm, ha?"

Here is Young Wriford in bed, pitying himself, reproaching himself, thinking of Brida, thinking of the Filmers, thinking of old Bill, thinking of Alice, thinking of his work ... pitying himself; hating himself for doing it; in a tangle; in a torment....

VI

Here is Young Wriford beginning to chafe at Gamber's. Here he is beginning to find himself--wanting to do better work than the heavy hand of Mr. Occshott will admit to the popular pages of Gamber periodicals; and beginning to lose himself--feeling the effect of many different strains; growing what Brida calls "nervy"; slowly changing from ardent Young Wriford to "nervy" Mr. Wriford.

The different strains all clash. There is no rest between them nor relief in any one of them. They all involve "scenes"--scenes with Brida, who has left the dramatic school and is on the London stage, who thinks that if Young Wriford really cared tuppence about her he would give up an occasional Sunday to her--but no, he spends them all at Surbiton and when he does come near her is "nervy" and seems to expect her to be sentimental and sorry for him; scenes with the Filmers and even with Alice because now when he comes down to them he doesn't, as they tell him, "seem to think of their dull lives" but wants to shut himself up and work at the novel or whatever it is that he is writing; scenes with Mr. Occshott when he brings Mr. Occshott the "better work" that he tries to do during the week-ends and at night and is told that he is wasting his time doing that sort of thing.

Is he wasting his time? Yes, he is wasting it at Gamber's, he tells himself. He can do better work. He wants to do better work. No scope for it at Gamber's, and one day he has it out with Mr. Occshott. Mr. Occshott hands back to him, kindly but rather vexedly, a series of short stories which is of the "better work" he feels he can do. Young Wriford sends the stories to a rival magazine of considerably higher standard than Gamber's, purposely putting upon them what seems to him an outrageous price. They are accepted.

That settles it. Young Wriford goes to Mr. Occshott. "I'm sorry, sir--awfully sorry. I've been very happy here. You've been awfully good to me. But I want to do bet--other work. I'm going to resign."

Mr. Occshott is extraordinarily kind. Young Wriford finds himself quite affected by all that Mr. Occshott says. Mr. Occshott is not going to let Gamber's lose Young Wriford at any price. "Is it money?" he asks at last.

"Yes, it's money--partly," Young Wriford tells him. "But I don't want you to think I'm trying to bounce a rise out of you."

"My dear chap, of course I don't think so," says Mr. Occshott. "You're getting five pounds a week. What's your idea?"

"I think I ought to be making four hundred a year," says Wriford.

"So do I," says Mr. Occshott and laughs. "All right. You are. Is that all right?"

Young Wriford is overwhelmed. He had never expected this. He hesitates. He almost agrees. But it is only, as he had said, "partly" a question of money. It is the better work that really he wants. It is the constant chafing against the Gamber limitations that really actuates him. He knows what it will be if he stays on. He is quite confident of himself if he resists this temptation and leaves. He says: "No. It's awfully good of you--awfully good. But it's not only the question of money"; and then he fires at Mr. Occshott a bombshell which blows Mr. Occshott to blazes.

"I'm writing a novel," says Young Wriford.

"Oh, my God!" says Mr. Occshott and covers his face with his hands.

There is no room in any well-regulated popular periodical office for a young man who is writing a novel. It is over. It is done. Good-bye to Gamber's!

VII

And immediately the catastrophe, the crash; the springing upon Young Wriford of that which finally and definitely is to catch him and hunt him and drive him from the Young Wriford that he is to the Mr. Wriford that he is to be; the scene that follows when he tells Alice and the Filmers what he has done.

He tells them enthusiastically. In this moment of his first release from Gamber's to pursue the better work that he has planned, he forgets the depression that always settles upon him in the Surbiton establishment, and speaks out of the ardour and zest of successes soon to be won that, apart from the joy of telling it all to some one, makes him more than ever grudge this weekend visit when work is impossible. He finishes and then for the first time notices the look upon the faces of his listeners. He finishes, and there is silence, and he stares from one to the other and has sudden foreboding at what he sees but no foreboding of that which comes to pass.

Alice is first to speak. "Oh, Phil," says Alice--trembling voice and trembling lips. "Oh, Phil! Left Gamber's!"

Then Mr. Filmer. "Well, really!" says Mr. Filmer. "Well, really--h'm, ha!"

Then Mrs. Filmer. "This I did not expect. This I refuse to believe. Left Gamber's! I cannot believe anything so hard on me as that. I cannot."

Young Wriford manages to say: "Well, why not?" and at once there is released upon him by Mr. and Mrs. Filmer the torrent that seems to him to last for hours and hours.

Why not! Is he aware that they were awaiting his arrival this very week-end to tell him what it had become useless to suppose he would ever see for himself? Why not! Does he realise that the expenses of feeding and clothing and above all of educating Bill's children are increasing beyond endurance month by month as they grow up? Why not! Has he ever taken the trouble to look at the boys' clothes, at their boots, and to realise how his brother's children have to be dressed in rags while he lives in luxury in London? Has he ever taken the trouble to do that? Perhaps his lordship who can afford to throw up a good position will condescend to do so now; and Mrs. Filmer takes breath from her raving and rushes to the door and bawls up the stairs: "Harold! Fred! Dicky! Come and show your clothes to your kind uncle! Come and hear what your kind uncle has done! Harold! Freddie--!"

Young Wriford, seated at the table, his head in his hands: "Oh, don't! Oh, for God's sake, don't!"

"Don't!" cries Mrs. Filmer. "No, don't let you be troubled by it! It's what our poor devoted Alice has to see day after day. It's what Mr. Filmer and I have to screw ourselves to death to try to prevent."

"And their schooling," says Mr. Filmer. "And their schooling, h'm, ha."

Schooling! This settles their schooling, Mrs. Filmer cries. They'll have to leave their day-schools now. He'll have the pleasure of seeing his brother's children attending the board-school. Three miserable guineas a week he's been contributing to the expenses, and was to be told to-day it was insufficient, and here he is with the news that he has left Gamber's! Here he is--

"Good God!" cries Young Wriford. "Good God, why didn't you tell me all this before?" and then, as at this the storm breaks upon him again, gets to his feet and cries distractedly: "Stop it! Stop it!" and then breaks down and says: "I'm sorry--I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. It's come all of a blow at me, all this. I never knew. I never dreamt it. It'll be all right. If you'll let me alone, I swear it'll be all right. The three guineas won't stop. I've arranged to do two weekly articles for Gamber's for three guineas on purpose to keep Alice going. I can get other work. There's other work I've heard of--only I wanted to do better--of course that doesn't matter now. Look here, if the worst comes to the worst, I'll go back to Gamber's. They'll take me back if I promise to give up the work I want to do. I'm sorry. I never realised. I never thought about all that. I'm sorry."

He is sorry. That, both now and for the years that are to come, is his chief thought--his daily, desperate anxiety: sorry to think how he has let his selfish ideas of better work, his thoughts of marrying Brida, blind him to his duty to devoted Alice and to old Bill's kids. Think of her life here! Think of those poor little beggars growing up and the education they ought to have, the careers old Bill would have wished them to enter! He is so sorry that only for one sharp moment does he cry out in utter dread at the proposal which now Mrs. Filmer, a little mollified, fixes upon him.

"In any case," says Mrs. Filmer, "whatever you manage to do or decide to do, you'd better come and live here. You can live far more cheaply here than letting a London landlady have part of your income."

Only for one sharp moment he protests. "I couldn't!" Young Wriford cries. "I couldn't work here. I simply couldn't."

"You can have a nice table put in your bedroom," says Mrs. Filmer. "If you're really sorry, if you really intend to do your duty by your brother's children--"

"All right," says Young Wriford. "It's very kind of you. All right."

VIII

He does not return to Gamber's. He is one of the lucky ones. The great daily newspaper, the _Intelligence_, has a particular fame for its column of leaderettes and latterly is forever throwing out those who write them in search of one who shall restore them to their old reputation (recently a little clouded). Young Wriford puts in for the post and gets it and holds it and soon couples with it much work on the literary side of the paper. There is a change in the proprietorship of the penny evening paper, the _Piccadilly Gazette_, bringing in one who turns the paper upside down to fill it with new features. Young Wriford puts in specimens of a column of facetious humour--"Hit or Miss"--and it is established forthwith, and every morning he is early at the _Piccadilly Gazette_ office to produce it.

Thus within a very few weeks of leaving Gamber's and of coming to live at Surbiton, he is earning more than twice as much as he had relinquished--proving himself most manifestly one of the lucky ones, and earning the money and the reputation at cost to himself of which only himself is aware.

He is from the house at seven each morning to reach the _Piccadilly Gazette_ by eight, hunting through the newspapers as the train takes him up for paragraphs wherewith to be funny in "Hit or Miss." There are days, and gradually they become more frequent, when nothing funny will come to his mind; when his mind is hopelessly tired; when his column is flogged out amid furious protests, and expostulations informing him that he is keeping the whole damned paper waiting; when he leaves the office badly shaken, cursing it, hating it, dreading that this day's work will earn him dismissal from it, and hurries back to the "nice table" in his bedroom at Surbiton, there desperately to attack the two weekly articles for Gamber's, the book-reviewing for the _Intelligence_ and the work upon his novel: that "better work," opportunity for which had caused him to leave Mr. Occshott and now is immeasurably harder to find.

He gets into the habit of trying to enter the house noiselessly and noiselessly to get to his room. He comes back to the house trying to forget his misgiving about his "Hit or Miss" column and to force his mind to concentrate on the work he now has to do: above all, trying to avoid meeting any one in the house, which means, if he succeeds, avoiding "a scene" caused by his overwrought nerves. He never does succeed. There is always a scene. It is either irritation with Alice or with one of the boys who delay him or interrupt him, and then regret and remorse at having shown his temper; or it is a scene of wilder nature with Dragon Mrs. Filmer or with Mr. Filmer. Whatever the scene, the result is the same--inability for an hour, for two hours, for all the morning, properly to concentrate upon his work.

It will be perhaps the matter of his room. The servant is making the bed, or it isn't made, and he knows he will be interrupted directly he starts.

Pounce comes Dragon Mrs. Filmer.

"Well, goodness knows I leave the house early enough," says Young Wriford.

"Goodness knows you do," says Mrs. Filmer. "Breakfast at half-past six!"

"I never get it."

"You're never down for it."

Young Wriford, face all twisted: "Oh, what's the good! We're not talking about that. It's about my room."

Mrs. Filmer, lips compressed: "Certainly it's about your room, and perhaps you'll tell me how the servants--"

Young Wriford: "All I'm saying is that I don't see why my room shouldn't be done first."

Mr. Filmer (attracted to the battle): "I'm sure if as much were done for me as is done for you in this establishment--h'm, ha."

Alice (come to the rescue): "You know, Philip, you said you thought you wouldn't get back till lunch this morning."

Young Wriford, staring at them all, feeling incoherent, furious ravings working within him, with a despairing gesture: "Oh, all right, all right, _all right_! I'm sorry. Don't go on about it. Just let me alone. I'm all behindhand. I'm--"

In this mood he begins his work. This is the mood that has to be fought down before any of the work can be successfully done. Often a day will reward him virtually nothing. He is always behindhand, always trying to catch up. At six he rushes from the house to get to the _Intelligence_ office. He is rarely back again to bed by one o'clock: from the house again at seven.

IX

Now the thing has Young Wriford and rushes him: now grips him and drives him, now marks him and drops him as he takes it. Now the years run. Now to the last drop the Young Wriford is squeezed out of him: Mr. Wriford now. Now men name him for one of the lucky ones. Now, as he lies awake at night, and as he trembles as he walks by day, he hates himself and pities himself and dreads himself.

Now the years run--flash by Mr. Wriford--bringing him much and losing him all; flash and are gone. Now he might leave the Filmer household and live again by himself. But there is no leaving it, once he is of it. Alice wants him, and he tells himself it is his duty to stay by her. His money is wanted, and there never leaves him the dread of suddenly losing his work and bringing them all to poverty. Now he gives up other work and is of the _Intelligence_ alone, handsomely paid, one of the lucky ones. It gives him no satisfaction. It would have thrilled Young Wriford, but Young Wriford is dead. Now there is no pinching in the Surbiton establishment, decided comfort rather. The boys are put to good schools and shaped for good careers. The establishment itself is moved to larger and pleasanter accommodation. Alice is grateful, the boys are happy, even the Filmers are grateful. That Young Wriford who sat in the train with Alice coming down from Liverpool eight years before and planned so enthusiastically and schemed so generously would have been happy, proud, delighted to have done it all. But that Young Wriford is dead. Mr. Wriford spends nothing on himself because he wants nothing--interests, tastes other than work, are coffined in Young Wriford's grave. Mr. Wriford just produces the money and begs--nervily as ever, nay, more nervily than before--to be let alone to work; he is always behindhand.

Now the novel is at last written and is published and flames into success. Imagine Young Wriford's amazed delight! But Young Wriford is dead. Mr. Wriford, one of the lucky ones, lucky in this as in all the rest, contracts handsomely for others and at once is in the rush of fulfilling a contract; that is all.

Now Alice is taken sick--mortally sick. Lingers a long while, wants Mr. Wriford badly to sit with her and wants him always, is only upset by her mother. Young Wriford would have nursed her and wept for her. Mr. Wriford nurses her very devotedly, as she says, but in long hours grudged from his work, as he knows. And has no tears. What, are even tears buried with Young Wriford? Mr. Wriford believes they are and hates himself anew and thousandfold that he has no sympathy, and often in remorse rushes home from the nightly fight with the _Intelligence_ to go to Alice's bedside and make amends--not for active neglects, for there have been none--but for the secret dryness of his heart while he is with her and his thoughts are with his work. These are stirrings of Young Wriford, but of what avail stirrings within the tomb?

Alice dies. Here is Mr. Wriford by her death caught anew and caught worse in the meshes that entangle him. Remorse oppresses him at every thought of neglect of her and unkindness to her through these years. It can only be assuaged by new devotion to her boys and to her parents, much changed and stricken by her loss. He might leave this household now. He feels it is his duty to remain in it. They want him.

The thing goes on--swifter, fiercer, dizzier, and more dizzily yet. No one notices it. He's young, that's all they notice, not yet thirty, very youthful in the face, one of the lucky ones: that's all they notice. It goes on. He hides it, has to hide it. Can't bear that any of its baser manifestations--nerves, nervousness, shrinking--should be noticed. This is the stage of shunning people--of avoiding people's eyes that look, not at him, but into him and laugh at him. It goes on. He surprises himself by the work he does--always believes that this which has brought him merit, that which has named him one of the lucky ones anew, never can be equalled again; yet somehow is equalled; yet ever, as looking back he believes, at cost of greater effort, with touch less sure. This is the stage of beginning to expect that one day there will be an end, an explosion, all the fabric of his life and his success cant on its rotten foundations and come crashing.

Now the years run. The _Intelligence_ people conceive _The Week Reviewed_: Mr. Wriford forms it, executes it, launches it, carries it to success, and the more energy he devotes to it the less has to resist the crumbling of his foundations. One of the lucky ones--one that has reached the stage of conscious effort to perform a task, drives himself through it, finishes it trembling, and only wants to get away from everybody to hide how he trembles, and only wants to get to bed where it is dark and quiet, and only lies there turning from tangle to tangle of his preoccupations, counting the hours that refuse him sleep, crying to himself as he has been heard to cry: "Oh, I say, I say, I say! This can't go on! This must end! This must end!"

Thus, thus with Mr. Wriford, and worse and worse, and worse and worse. Thus through the years and thus arrived where first we found him. Behold him now, ten years from when Young Wriford, just twenty, met Alice and the children at Liverpool and ardently and eagerly and fearlessly planned his tremendous plans. That boy is dead. Return to him, little over thirty, everywhere successful, one of the lucky ones, that is come out of the grave where Young Wriford lies. Worse and worse! There is nothing he touches but brings him success; there is no one he meets or who speaks of him but envies him; and successful, lucky, it is only by throwing himself desperately into his work that he can forget the intolerable misery that presses upon him, the desire to wave his arms and scream aloud: "You call me lucky! Oh, my God! Oh, can't anybody see I'm going out of my mind with all this? Oh, isn't there anybody who can understand me and help me? Oh, I say, I say, I say, this can't go on. This must stop. This must end."

X

You see, he can't get out of it. In these years his unceasing work, his harassing work, his fears of it breaking down and bringing all who are dependent upon him to misery, and all his distresses of mind between the one and the other--all this has killed outlets by which now he might escape from it and has chained him hand and foot and heart and mind in the midst of it. His nephews leave him one by one to go out into the world, successfully equipped and started by his efforts. He is always promising himself, as first Harold goes, and then Fred and then Dick, who has chosen for the Army and enters Sandhurst, that now he will be able to change his mode of life and seek the rest and peace he craves for. He never does. He never can.

He never can. There is always a point in his work on his paper or with his books first to be reached: and when it is reached, there is always another. Now, surely, with Dick soon going out to India, he might leave the Filmers. They are comfortably circumstanced on their own means; the house is his and costs them nothing. Surely now, he tells himself, he might break away and leave them: but he cries to himself that for this reason and for that he cannot--yet: and he cries to himself that if he could, he knows not how he could. Everything in life that might have attracted him is buried ten years' deep in Young Wriford's grave. Brida could rescue him, he believes, and he tries Brida on that afternoon which has been seen: ah, like all the rest, she laughs at him--one of the lucky ones!

He is chained to himself, to that poor, shrinking, hideous devil of a Mr. Wriford that he has been made: and this is the period of furious hatred of that self, of burying himself in his work to avoid it, of sitting and staring before him and imagining he sees it, of threatening it aloud with cries of: "Curse you! Curse you!" of scheming to lay violent hands upon it.