CHAPTER V

WORSHIPPERS ALL

The end of September saw the Johnsons back again in their Turnham Green residence, named, somewhat misleadingly: “Town House.” Thus it was an easy matter for Mr. Johnson to say, wherever he might chance to spend his summer holidays: “Mother, this time next week we’ll be in our Town House!” airily creating out of his harmless little vanity, a whole host of shooting-boxes, country mansions, river bungalows, and Riviera villas. Mrs. Johnson would smile tolerantly; she encouraged originality, even in her husband.

Sebastian Levi took a room near by, where he wrote the final chapters of his book, and impatiently awaited the return of Stuart from Bournemouth, that the whole might receive his sanction and benediction. A fortnight afterwards, and he was summoned one evening to Carlton House Terrace; and in an apartment which was curiously ordinary for the shrine of so exalted a being, found Stuart sprawling in a low shabby arm-chair, and poking at the smouldering coals with his foot.

“Hullo, Levi, how’s--let me see, I’ve forgotten the name----”

“‘Shears,’” supplemented Sebastian excitedly; “I’ve got it with me.”

“No, you ardent flame-headed lover. Letty. How’s Letty?”

“Letty’s all right, except the days when she has to starve herself to make her father receive me. I say, Heron,” looking about him, “what a queer sort of room--for you.”

“What’s queer about it?”

“Well, mainly that it isn’t queer at all, I suppose; it might be anybody’s study.” And Sebastian thought with a smothered sigh, of the suite of apartments he had renounced in his father’s house in Hampstead. He had attained so exactly the effects his artistic eye desired, beautiful subdued effects of lighting and drapery. Editha and Ivy had been nothing like as successful in their more blatant furnishings.

“What do chairs and tables matter?” queried Stuart calmly.

“But don’t you want to impress your personality----?”

“On a firescreen? no, I’d choose something softer than that.” But though a gleam in Stuart’s eye betokened plainly what was the “something softer” he had chosen, Sebastian, turning over the leaves of his precious manuscript, and awaiting a desirable opening to introduce it into the conversation, noticed nothing.

“How’s the Menagerie? Have you left it to muddle on by itself?”

“No; Mr. Strachey returned from America last week, and I resigned management. I don’t think he was keen on bearing the burden, but they’ve only got the place for a month still.”

“Is Aureole very fond of him?” Sebastian wondered in a fever of impatience when Stuart was going to ask him about “Shears.”

Stuart smiled, as at some secret joke. “Just at present she’s the very model of a meek and devoted wife.” Then, at last, held out his hand towards the bundle on Sebastian’s knees. “Finished? Let’s have a look?”

“No--I say--if it won’t bother you----” But Stuart was already at the first page, on which was inscribed the dedication:

“To STUART HERON In thanks

For all that he took from me And all that he gave to me.”

He threw the young author an embarrassed look. “I don’t know, really, that I did take anything; you flung down,--that’s rather different.”

“I’m flinging down now--this book!” cried Sebastian, much happier than his companion when emotion was to the fore. “It’s yours, every line of it; your thoughts, your creed, your visions and ideals. It’s--well, I owed you something really big, and this was the best I could do. The very best.” His tone pleaded, but at the same time boasted his achievement.

Stuart began to read. Presently it dawned upon him that this was a very bad book. The style, at first, held recollections of Sebastian’s Oxford days; it echoed, somewhat pretentiously, the polished laboured phrasing of Walter Pater. Then, uncertainly, it began to jerk and flicker; to pass from one key into another; to offend by a great many flaunting passages of which the writer was obviously proudest. It soon became apparent that the hero, a flashy young man in the worst possible taste, was intended for a loving presentment of Stuart himself, drawn by a blind worshipper, and consequently now giving the writhing original a few of the most poignant moments he had ever thought to endure.

“My God!” he muttered once or twice.

Moreover, Sebastian had apparently just fallen short of the main idea--idea of the Shears and the Hairpin Vision; glimpsed it at moments and then lost it again, so that it carried no conviction, and was merely far-fetched and misty.

In short, when he had turned twenty pages, Stuart would have given much never to have owned a creed, nor yet a disciple; that he should live to see the one so perverted, and the other sitting opposite him with dumbly questioning gaze. “Well? ... well? ...” it seemed to say.

Stuart laid aside the scribbled-over sheets. “I can’t possibly go on reading while you sit there and hang out your tongue at me, Levi; I’m not strong-minded enough. You’d better leave the book behind for me to finish.”

And so, cravenly, he postponed the evil hour of criticism. And afterwards wrote a letter which was a diplomatic miracle; ending:

--“You will understand that the book and all it contains has affected me more profoundly than I can express in words--just yet. Perhaps when it is published, and I can get a better perspective, I shall be able to say more of what I feel....”

Not having seen the vicious contortions of Stuart’s features as he penned these sentences, Sebastian was for the nonce satisfied.--“When it is published”--how devoutly he longed for this consummation of his labours. To lay at Stuart’s feet a pile of scribbled paper was comparatively nothing; but to be the means of spreading the master’s word throughout the British Isles, in a bound volume of sturdy print, containing the master’s name at the beginning, for all to reverence and comment upon,--this, surely, was a worthy tribute, sufficient to win the “well done!” that the disciple so burningly coveted. Sebastian’s desire to publish was completely unselfish; he was proud of his book only inasmuch as it reflected Stuart; thirsted for fame merely that the rays might fall on Stuart’s head. The utmost he wished for himself was sufficient recognition of the Vision Splendid, that men might say, men and his father and the Johnsons: “I thought young Levi mad at the time, to have chucked such excellent worldly prospects; but now I marvel how right he was, how much clearer was his sight than ours, how quickly responsive was his soul to what has taken us three-hundred-and-sixteen pages of solid reading to recognize!”... He could not quite hear Mr. Johnson uttering these precise words, but a homely vernacular would be forgiven for the sake of lofty sentiment. At present Sebastian was only received at Town House on sufferance; and trifling matters, such as the parlour left empty for him and Letty during four hours or so, were not arranged as willingly as might have been the case had the young man still been in possession of his fifteen hundred a year. Letty herself, however, compensated him richly for her parents’ unkindness. She grew ever prettier, ever more yielding, ever more necessary for Sebastian’s peace of mind and body. Ned Levi’s humble birth and ancestry had implanted a strain in the boy which found curious pleasure in his fiancée’s slightly common turn of phrase, her occasional lack of refinement in taste and clothes, her childish unpretentious longings, her tiny little vulgarisms. These were never sufficiently strident to jar him; they merely gave him a sense of returning to rest after a long journey; cessation of a cry in him that no riches or dissipations or intellectual strivings could ever thus lull to silence. Moreover, Letty clung to him; and he knew she believed herself clinging to a rock; supposition soothing to his own inner doubts.

The one thing in her that puzzled him was her continual reference to a near future when, as a matter of course, they should be as wealthy as before his renunciation of wealth. It could not be that she depended for this on his book, which, he had explained to her many times, was not a money-making proposition. And once, when he had laughingly asked if she proposed robbing Aladdin’s Cave or the Bank of England, for the fulfilment of her plans, she laid both hands on his shoulders, and demanded wistfully:

“Aren’t you sure _yet_, Sebastian?”

“Sure of what, sweetheart?”

She sighed, and turned away her head. Perhaps he had decided for a year-long test; if so, she must just be patient.--The door opened to admit Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Baker, mother of that Violet who even now contemplated breaking off her engagement because Letty’s Sebastian had ‘a lovely mouth and jaw,’ and her own Ernie a receding chin. But Mrs. Baker bore no malice for this; her nature was soft as sponge, and formless as the garments which dripped and cascaded from indiscriminately outjutting portions of her figure; garments without end or beginning; rather dirty garments, of a period unknown to history.

“Disturbin’ your billing and cooing, are we?” she cried genially; “there, it’s a shame! But I only wanted to be introduced to your friend, Letty, my dear.” She beamed on Sebastian, noted at once that he was a Jew, and kindly resolved not to mention the fact that her late husband had been a parson. Then she changed her mind, and instead of tactfully skirting the subject of Sebastian’s misfortune--which, poor boy, was probably an accident and not his fault--she decided to refer to It exactly as if It didn’t matter, and thus put him entirely at his ease. So she started:

“And where are these young folk going to have the knot tied, Frances Johnson? At a registrar’s, I suppose,--as it can’t be done in Church. So nice ... dear things ...” wheezily.

Letty and her mother looked at one another. “Now that’s funny!” exclaimed Mrs. Johnson; “I never thought of that.”

“Thought of what?” asked Sebastian.

“Why, that you couldn’t be married in a church.”

“But a Synagogue is a sweet place,” put in Mrs. Baker; “though of course it wouldn’t do for Letty. But I’m sure the Hebrew ceremony is beautiful, even if one can’t understand a word of it, because they pronounce it upside down, don’t they? I remember going once to see a Jewish girl we knew get married; such a good-looking girl ... dear thing ... Laura Silberstein; did you know her, Mr.----?”

“Levi,” supplemented Sebastian gravely, wishing it had been something worse.

“And I remember too that the white flowers and the satin tent and that lovely singing made me feel--I told Mr. Baker afterwards--quite as religious and miserable as if I’d been to one of our own weddings. And he had no objection at all, and said I might certainly go again every time the younger sisters married; there were eight Silberstein girls, you see. And he told me to take Violet next time. Mr. Baker liked us always to be nice to Jews; he was very particular about that.”

Sebastian had a happy moment picturing Mr. Baker being particular about it. He was sorry Mr. Baker was dead.

“And did the other seven poor girls get married?” Letty enquired earnestly, very sorry for them because they could not all or any marry Sebastian.

“Only one; Pearl, the youngest; and she married a High Church gentleman, and got quickly baptised, and it was held at St. George’s, Hanover Square. And that time,” Mrs. Baker concluded triumphantly, “my husband would _not_ let me attend. He said Jews were delightful and clever people _in_ their faith, but disapproved of them marrying out of it.”

... Then she realized the horror of her mistake.

Letty slipped her fingers into Sebastian’s arm, and looked defiantly at the purpling Mrs. Baker. Mrs. Johnson said hurriedly:

“Of course they are quite wonderfully clever; such a head for business. That’s why we’re so sorry, Sebastian, that you gave up your partnership at the Stores.”

“What is Mr. Levi doing then?” queried Mrs. Baker faintly. And Letty trumpeted forth that Sebastian had written a book.

“Oh, but then he must have quite wonderful brains; now I like that; yes, I like people to have brains... dear things ...” and Mrs. Baker nodded and smiled several times to show her tolerance, while, in the same key, Mrs. Johnson carried on:

“Yes, I must say that personally I don’t object to even a woman with a man’s brain; we hear a lot about it spoiling her charm, but _I_ think a girl can be both feminine and intellectual, don’t you, Milly?”

Mrs. Baker said: “Yes, indeed, and sporting too. They say that hockey is bad for the figure, but I like a fine open-air girl ... dear healthy things. Though of course I admire the dainty type as well, _and_ the clever woman who wears glasses.”

And Mrs. Johnson wound up this display of the boundless broadness of mind existing among Turnham Green matrons, by a magnificent declaration that _she_ believed a girl could be brainy without wearing glasses! There is no knowing to what Rabelaisian extent the conversation might have widened, had not Luke burst in, with a gruff demand for tea; and dragging in his wake the fifteen-year-old flapper from the boarding-house next door:

--“Don’t look at me, Mrs. J. I’m sky blue with cold; this horrid kid kept me standing hours and hours listening to a stupid old man on a tub at a street-corner. I declare, I wish I’d gone biking with Tommy Cox; he asked me to come on his carrier.”

“Pity you didn’t, then,” growled Luke, eyes fixed on Sebastian.

Jinny tossed back the curly brown hair which lapped her shoulders; an enormous black bow stood out pertly from the nape of her neck. She wore a blue woolly tam-o’-shanter, a string of green glass beads round her bare throat, a striped flannel shirt, a green serge skirt, very short to show her high brown boots, and a brooch of her school badge and motto.

“I say, may I stop to tea?” she asked of Mrs. Johnson, ignoring Luke.

“Certainly, Jinny; it won’t be ready till five o’clock,--but some of us can wait in the dining-room.”

Mrs. Baker instantly apprehended Mrs. Johnson’s sympathetic intentions towards Letty and Sebastian, and with great alacrity went to the door.

“Come on, Jinny, dear; how’s your mother, this sudden cold snap? ... ah, bless them ... sweet things ... young things ...” this last in a diminishing purr of benediction.

“Oh, she’s all right, thanks. Not much sense in going in to tea till tea’s there, is it?--Oh, I see! All right!” Jinny grinned at Letty, and followed in the wake of the two ladies. “Come along, Luke.”

“In a minute.” Luke had planted himself on the parlour sofa, with the obvious intention not to budge.

“_Now_, you boss-eyed mule. They want to be alone together; they don’t want you.” Jinny conveyed to him their probable intentions when quit of the crowd, by an expressive pantomime of eating with _spoons_.

“Shut it! We’re not all such babies for jam.”

“I didn’t say a word about jam,” exasperated by his denseness. “And I’m jolly sure I shan’t come to tea with you again.”

Luke growled something inarticulate; and Jinny, head high in air, marched out and banged the door. Luke’s coolness hurt her sometimes. She wore his ring on the third finger of her left hand--a ring from an expensive cracker,--and he escorted her to school every morning, on the way to his own; not infrequently he carried her satchel; when both their machines were in repair, they biked; but this was not often. He was a year older than she; a hobbledehoy youth of sixteen; rather spotty about the face; and with a taste in ties, that, starting in a bout of violent enthusiasm, had suddenly stopped, before it emerged from the crude-colour stages to something really tasteful. He was surly in the company of ladies; and when his mother spoke to him, always mumbled his replies; though it was owing to her advanced views that on his sixteenth birthday he was given a latchkey: “Show the boy he’s free to come and go about the house as he likes, Matthew, and he’ll never break out as he would if he was too much kept in.” But as Mat Johnson could not be prevailed upon at the same time to raise his son’s pocket-money to more than sixpence a week, there seemed indeed very small chance for Luke to break out. Once or twice he had hung about at the end of his street till the house was locked up at half-past ten, for the pride of letting himself in at five-and-twenty to eleven; but that was all. Dating from his sister’s engagement, however, a subtle change had passed over him; he was seen to read, instead of the cricket or football papers he had been wont to patronize, a two-sheet Socialist rag, named, with misleading mildness: “Mine and Yours,”--and containing mostly threatening references to “Yours.” Also, though he rarely spoke to Sebastian, he evinced a dogged preference for that young gentleman’s company; and very often, as now, would sit in gloomy silence in the same room as the twain; and refuse to move till Letty actually ordered him forth. She hated doing this, as it looked as if she “wanted Sebastian alone,” which in its turn rather looked as if she “wanted Sebastian to kiss her.” Which she did. But it was inconsiderate of Luke to force her to the tacit admission.

“Can you make out why he’s so odd with Sebastian, mother?”

“Letty, dear,” solemnly, “have I ever tried to force my children’s confidence? Everything they tell me is of their own free will,”--and indeed, it was extremely little.

The tea-bell freed the couple in the parlour from the infliction of Luke’s scrutiny. Jinny ignored her chum throughout tea, by way of punishment for his defection. And when the last rock-cake had been consumed, declared she had to be going: “I’ve got piles of arith., and a four-page comp. for Monday, and Ma won’t let me work Sundays because of the old tabby-cats in the house and what they’ll say. Good-bye, Mrs. J. I’ve had a scrumptious tea.”

Luke followed her into the hall.

“You’d better run along back to the parlour,” she informed him crushingly.

“Why?”

“You seem to find the Levi man better company than me.”

“Jinny, I like you better than any other girl”; he fumbled for her hand. Since months he had tried to substitute ‘love’ for ‘like,’ but somehow Jinny made it so hard for a fellow; she was always laughing or snubbing him.

“Thanks; I’m honoured.”

Luke kicked the umbrella-stand. “One must be polite--the Guvnor’s such a beast to him--and he’s going to be my brother-in-law.... I don’t care a hang about him, really.”

“Who would you like best for Letty’s sister-in-law?” Jinny demanded, casually swinging her bulging satchel of books.

“Who would _I_ like for _Letty’s_ sister-in-law?”

Jinny waited a bit. “Well--slowcoach?”

“I don’t see what on earth you mean,” he said, pondering the matter. And he hadn’t found her hand yet.

“Bright boy!” she taunted him, and leaping the three steps, tore up the three of the next house, and vanished through the open front door.

An hour afterwards, Luke said: “Oh!” It had dawned upon him.

That evening, before retiring to bed, he banged at Letty’s door, and, not waiting for permission, slouched into her room. Quickly she covered up some mysterious occupation at the writing-table.

“Hullo, what’s up?”

“Nothing.” Luke stood by the mantelpiece, and closely examined likenesses of Violet Baker, Michael Mordkin, and Sebastian. Letty, really alarmed by his uncanny behaviour, came up behind him, and slipped an arm around his shoulders. “What is it, old boy?”

“Nothing.”

“Luke, have you been betting?”

“Not such a fool.”

She waited, head snuggled against his arm. Presently he said, with great difficulty: “That fellow of yours, Letty----”

“Sebastian?”

“Haven’t got more than one, have you?”

“Of course not,” indignantly she straightened herself. And he blurted out:

“Look here--did he really--I mean, why was he such an ass about his money?”

Letty re-seated herself at the writing-table, and propping her short round little chin on her hands, smiled pensively down at the blotting-paper, and made no reply.

“Do you know what made him do it?” Luke persisted.

“How should I?”

But he seemed unable to leave the subject, now he had embarked upon it. “You don’t seem to mind much.”

“I don’t mind one bit.”

“Pater’s mad about it. He’s always thinking of money.” Luke, having to provide neither for the household nor yet for himself, was duly contemptuous. “But I’ve never _met_ a fellow who chucked away a fortune--till now,” he muttered, sitting astride of the writing-table. His sister peered mischievously up into his face:

“You like Sebastian, don’t you, Luke?”

“Oh, I dunno about liking him,” hastily; “I think he’s a bit off his chump, that’s all.” But as the rustics gaped and marvelled at the lunacy of Don Quixote, so hobbledehoy regarded with bewildered admiration his future brother-in-law.

“--But as long as you’re not crying your eyes red over it all----”

“What would you have done, if I had been, Luke?” Letty enjoyed teasing her wretched young brother.

“Oh ... spoken to him, I suppose,” edging towards the door. “’Night, Letty.”

“Luke, supposing he was--oh, just playing a game; and one day came and said: ‘I’m as rich as I was before!’”

“Wouldn’t build on that if I were you. Chaps don’t play those silly sort of games. Good night.”

And: “I know why, right enough,” reflected Luke, in the passage; “but I wasn’t going to tell her. By gum, though! fancy a fellow actually doing it....”

In Luke’s pocket, a column of “Mine and Yours,” marked in red pencil, discoursed eloquently on the Utopian conditions to be attained by mankind, when those unfairly in possession of unearned increment, should voluntarily fling their wealth into a common pool, that it might be divided into equal shares for all. The discourse wound up, with unconscious humour, by the remark:--“But alas! only we who are willing to share our sixpences have as yet seen the light; those with pounds weighing down their pockets, turn their faces stubbornly away. And we labour on....”

Luke re-read all this, carefully; hallucination pointing with her forefinger along the printed lines.--“By gum!” he muttered again. And his eyes were those of a disciple who has at length sighted the master....