CHAPTER VII

FORTUNATUS

If Stuart had been a poor man, and forced to continue drudgery whatever his troubles of love, he would have wrested a certain comfort from the obligatory effort. But placed as he was, it would have been mere childishness to deceive himself with an assumption that he was not perfectly free to absent himself from Holborn for as long a period as he pleased. Derwent had taken a needed holiday in May, directly following the prick of Gobert’s balloon, and was now back again at his post. Baldwin ran up most days from Sonning, except when solemnities of regatta nailed him to the spot. Business was at its slackest; and Stuart could no more persuade himself that he was morally necessary, than that his attendance was compulsory.

In no mood for make-believe, beset by a bitter craving for what he had denied himself, by a still more bitter doubt as to whether his had not been a fool’s action, he set out for the Haven, where he could at least be sure of solitude while he fought the matter through.

The Haven is marked somewhere in the neighbourhood of Poole. Actually, it is in the neighbourhood of nowhere. A man walks into the Haven perhaps at set of sun, finding it always a little beyond the point where he is desirous the walk be ended, so that he walks into the Haven tired and with lagging step. On one side of him the sea shines a ghostly grey; not breaking in waves, nor tossing in a glitter of foam, nor making any sound whatever; but flowing, flowing, in slantwise ripples towards the land. And when he is accustomed to the sight of it on his one side, he is gradually aware of a stealthy lapping on his other side, beyond the sand-banks sown with coarse grass. There also is the sea, flowing in slantwise ripples towards the land, so that he loses all sense of east or west. For his further confusion, either horizon is bestrewn with hazy tongues of land, floating strips of island; and on either horizon, tumbling silent seas lick their way among the nebulous shores. The sun dips red and round, and the moon rises round and red; so that for an instant of bewilderment the sun might be the moon and the moon might be the sun; and both sun and moon hang loosely, midway between sky and ocean, having no link with either. The only thing permanent is an old hulk embedded in the stretches of flat white sand; and thither the traveller is impelled to climb; for the sand has an untrodden look; and there lies a strange fascination, when leaning against the slimy sides of the wreck, in gazing backwards at his solitary footprints marking the way he came.

On the extreme edge of the Haven, men have built an hotel, thinking thereby to give the spot a prosperous and populated appearance. And thrice a week a creaking motor-bus deposits there its load of sightseers, who drink a lot of tea on the blank terrace, and swarm over the waste of garden, and onto the primitive wooden jetty, whence boats are supposed to start for a tour of the islands lightly pencilled in the haze. But the boats are never visible; and presently the sightseers depart in their bus; and the Haven continues to take no interest either in the barren grey hotel nor yet in the babbling tea-drinkers.

In the surrounding oozes of dark green, are rooted shapeless forms, that might be whales, but are mostly bungalows. One of these was presented to Stuart by his brother-in-law Ralph Orson, on the occasion of the latter’s marriage. “Might come in useful when you are sailing in these parts,” quoth Orson, apologizing for the poorness of the gift.

There was very little of sailing in its more graceful phases round about the Haven. Occasionally the tide brought up slow-moving barges, piled high with wood or coal or bricks; these surmounted by the tiny dark figures of men hoisting a clumsy bulk of canvas against the sky, pushing frantically at giant pole or tiller, which by comparison reduced the human to ant-size. The white skimming sail would have been here a strange anomaly, and the supple curve of pleasure boat. With grimness tempered to mystery by their flying streamers of smoke, the black trading-vessels alone ruffled the even slant of the water, flowing, rippling, landwards to the Haven.

Here then, Stuart passed the days following his renunciation of Peter. He was disappointed that the detached exultation of spirit was absent, that should have rewarded the man with will strong enough to perpetrate a theory. Exultation?--so far was it removed, that at first he had to summon every atom of force he possessed, to prevent himself from dashing theory onto the rubbish-heap, and setting it alight, burnt-offering to the common human love of a man for a maid. Just at the moment when all his powers of reasoning and thought and logic were most desperately needed, they turned traitor; ran away; returned to mock him: “Prig! pedant! cad!” No end to the insulting epithets they volleyed at the stunned and cowering leprechaun; and then ran again, too fast for pursuit or argument.

“If that’s all you have to give me, then, curse you, I might have taken the warmer thing!” thus leprechaun, from the depths of want, to the hiding metaphysician.

Stuart waited, just holding in check the suffering which cried out for some alleviating action on his part ... (he might so soon be in town--at Euston--Thatch Lane--“Come out, Peter”--and in the crushed sweet smell of bracken on the Weald, laugh, and kiss her mouth, and kiss again; and laughing, damn the Hairpin Vision to beyond eternity, where it rightly belonged--all this, so soon) ... Stuart waited. He would at least give metaphysics a chance.

He strove to collect his ideas of yore; but they rattled about in his head like dried peas in a box, implements wherewith stageland strives to imitate a rainfall. Meanwhile, round the shadow-side of the embedded hulk, he stumbled one night upon a pair of lovers clinging silently together, symbol of unthinking passion, utterly happy in the belief that their momentary divinity was immortal. Ordinary lovers--Stuart turned sharply away, across the tract of dead white sand, cursing as he ran; cursing his destructive brain and his vision and his asceticism,--all that had been given him unasked, to set him apart from those shapes--_from that shape_ on the shadow-side of the hulk. Damn it! yes, damn it! One paid for too godlike a use of the shears. Damn it ... he threw himself face downwards on the sand.

The metaphysician stirred from lethargy, and spoke; reminding him that he had seen the sequel to the idyll in the shadow-shape of the hulk; reminding him of a certain dingy group round a perambulator: “They had hung on, and lost the vision.”

Stuart retorted: “They had also forgotten the vision, so what did it matter?”

“Would you wish to forget?”

“Yes,” desperately. Any sort of rest rather than for ever be self-tormented as now.

And then there was the thought of what Peter might be enduring. The orange-sucker had never before stayed to consider the orange. When Merle had dropped from the trio, though perfectly aware of what was impending during that last supper-party, Stuart had made no after-movement in any way to help her. The trio had inexorably to come to an end. The one left over must butt through her crisis without whining. Male or female, it was all the same. When a like hour visited him, he would require neither sympathy nor yet props; certainly not mercy.

All very well, these relentless standards, applied to Merle. But they refused to apply themselves with like success to Peter. Stuart did not know why. But he told himself that he had behaved like a cad to Peter, anyone would say so. For the next space of time, his strongest temptation was to take refuge in the outward appearance of his conduct--certainly caddish in the extreme--and behind this fence, skulk backwards to his desire: “And make the only amends a gentleman can, considering how he has treated the girl.”

But that wouldn’t do. He knew, and Peter knew, that what had prompted him to break with her was very far removed from mere caddishness; and he couldn’t now with any consistency start regulating his conduct with an eye to the world’s approval.

A prig, then? a fanatic?--Let him but vilify in some recognized term of opprobrium what he had done, and he must perforce find himself an excuse to retract. Would a prig have set a girl to care for him, and then desert her for the sake of a vision which in turn deserted him? Prigs do not stand upon their heads, but levelly and beautifully upon their feet. He was too bad and too mad to merit the epithet of prig. Fanatic, certainly. And what was fanatic, closely examined, but word-covering for anyone sufficiently clear in belief to prove his theory by deed instead of mouthing it abroad for others so to do? Theory would be a mere word, cold and empty of significance, if the discoverer thereof were not willing to apply it as touchstone to matters vitally concerning himself.

No escape then, by road of cad, prig, or fanatic. Had Peter been sufficiently unattainable in worldly status, he could have spent a lifetime striving to win her, without any self-reproach whatsoever to mar his ultimate victory. But Fortunatus might claim his princess when he willed.... So no princess for Fortunatus....

--“They wrought a deeper treason, Led seas who served my needs; They sold Diego Valdez To bondage of great deeds....”

What a fool, what a fool he had been to imagine he could elude his bondage by merely choosing an inglorious profession! This then was how they had at last contrived to outwit him: giving him, in addition to all worldly advantages, clarity of vision and power of brain; letting him build up from these a working ideal,--and then trapping him in a situation where he must in the very use of it forfeit all happiness. Because he saw ahead, because he gloried in the seeing,--oh, they had wrought their treason cunningly, “led seas who served my needs”; the two in the shadow-side of the hulk were kept in no such bondage. Stuart was a genius of life--he might not go back to Peter. He had lashed Peter to be a genius of life--she might not call to him. They could both see their vision of love dimmed by time--so they might not pursue it to the dimming. And meanwhile the two in the shadow-side of the hulk lay lip to lip, bodies crushed together, believing their little moment immortal. “They sold Diego Valdez....”

And here the stuntorian, up till now silent, gave a sudden leap, and flung out a hand to pull Stuart from the mire: “Just go back to her. Get above your own theory, and kick it out of the way. What a stunt--if you are big enough!”

“If you are big enough,” insinuated the stuntorian.

Metaphysician silenced him with a laconic “Cheat.”

No escape for Fortunatus. He knew, if for one moment he ceased battling, how contentment would lap him round, and smooth him, and oil him, and blur his vision of mist to a thickness of mutton-fat. He knew. And must practise knowledge on a flesh-and-blood love, not cherish it as a dry-as-dust theory. No escape for Stuart. The lovers, still locked into one shape, still murmuring brokenly to each other, passed in the dark so close that they brushed against him where he lay; where he lay and in biting scorn challenged God for once to take the initiative, not make him do it _all_ himself, always.

No rest for Fortunatus. Leprechaun was now active enough; squibbing and somersaulting to impress the metaphysician, who with brilliant argument upheld the ascetic, who alternately cursed and wrestled with the man. The man had but a poor chance; though he still continued to argue, as thus:

If he and Peter had indeed thrust forwards and on, in the mortal blindness unmercifully denied to them, could the gradual transformation of magic to disappointment, thence to habit, slacking into uninspired content,--all that he and she had visioned, sitting on a luggage-truck at Euston; could these things be indeed worse than his present turmoil of longing?

Yes! all three shouting now in chorus, leprechaun and metaphysician and ascetic. Yes! For this was sharp and keen--and quick. Even though each second weighed an eternity, he was yet conscious that, viewed from the distance of years, the time would seem a short black tunnel cutting through into the day. While to lose the pulsing sense of her walk, her voice, her touch; to drop instinctive knowledge of her pleasure or her sorrow; to cease from battling with her, for the joy of the after-rest; to exchange passionate uncertainty for placid possession; to happen no more on moments of chance magic, and not to miss them; for strain to depart, and youth, and memory of youth and strain, and then envy of youth, so that ashore on the putty they should not even begrudge fiercely the exhilaration of a run before the wind--

A thousand times rather lie as now, with body writhing into the dry white sand, and every nerve craving for love lost. A thousand times rather fling “Peter!” into the unresponsive silence, and blaspheme at her steady defiance in not calling him back; defiance he, not God, but he again had put into her. A thousand times rather be stabbed through and through by single recollections. Yes, a thousand times rather Hell than Heaven, since from Hell one still could rise, but from Heaven there was no more ascent to the heavens.

END OF PART II