The Record of Nicholas Freydon Part 24

For so convinced and angry a cynic and pessimist, his behaviour had been remarkable. When I returned to f.a.n.n.y she was admiring her pretty, new, dove-coloured frock in the fly-blown mirror of our sitting-room.

Poor child, her experience of new frocks had not been extensive.

'He's a real gentleman, is Mr. Heron,' she said with a little welcoming smile to me. I liked the smile; but, almost for the first time I think, on that day at all events, her words jarred on me a little. But what jarred more perhaps was the fact that these words, so apparently innocent and harmless, sent a vagrant thought through my mind that filled me with harsh self-contempt. The thought will doubtless appear even more paltry than it was if put into words, but it was something to the effect that-- Of course, Heron was a gentleman! Why else would he be a friend of mine?

Perhaps the thought was hardly so absurd as my solemn self-contempt over it! ...

IX

I have sometimes thought that, in its early days at all events, and before the more serious trouble arose, our married life might have been a little brighter if we had quarrelled occasionally. It would perhaps have shown a more agreeable disposition in me. But we did not quarrel. I felt, and probably showed, displeasure and dissatisfaction; and f.a.n.n.y-- But how shall I presume to tell what f.a.n.n.y felt? She showed occasional tears, and what I grew to think rather frequent sulks and peevishness.

Our first difficulties began within a day or two of our marriage.

Chief among them I would place what I regarded as my wife's altogether unaccountable and quite unreasonable determination to keep up relations with her mother. I thought I was unfairly treated here, and I made no allowance for filial feelings, or the influence of f.a.n.n.y's life-long tutelage. I only saw that she had very gladly allowed me to rescue her from the tyranny of a spiteful, gin-drinking, old woman; and that, within forty-eight hours, she was for visiting her mother as a regular thing, and even proposed that I should join her in this.

That was one of the early difficulties; and another, more distressing in its way, was my discovery of the fact that it was apparently impossible for me to think consecutively, or to write when I had thought, in a room which was my wife's living place. It was strange that I should never have given a thought before marriage to a practical point so intimately touching my peace of mind and means of livelihood.

At present it did not seem to me that I could possibly afford to rent another room. I certainly was not prepared to banish f.a.n.n.y to our tiny bedroom, separated from the other room by folding doors. She had no notion as yet that her presence or doings const.i.tuted any sort of interruption in my work. The change from carrying on the whole work of a lodging-house to living in lodgings with practically no domestic work to do was one which, in my foolish ignorance, I had thought would prove immensely beneficial to overworked f.a.n.n.y. As a fact I think it bored her terribly after the first week. She sometimes liked to read, but never, I think, for more than half an hour at a stretch. She never wrote a letter, and did not care for thinking.

I have found very few people in any cla.s.s of life who like to sit and think; very few, even among educated people, who showed any sympathy or comprehension in the matter of my own lifelong desire for leisure in which to think. To do this or that, yes; but just to think! That seems to be a lamentable and most boring kind of futility, as most folk see it. It has for many years figured as the most desirable thing in life to me.

Looking back upon my married life, I believe I may say with truth that for two years I did not relax in my sincere efforts to make it a success. It would be more exact perhaps to say that for one year I tried hard to make it a success, and for another year I tried hard to make it tolerable. Yes, I did my best through that period, though my efforts were quite unsuccessful. I realise that this does not justify or excuse the fact that, to all intents and purposes, I then gave up trying. In that, of course, I was to blame; very much to blame. Well, I did not go unpunished.

It would not be easy for a literary man who had never tried it to understand what it means to live practically in one room (with a sleeping cubicle opening out of it) with a woman. I suppose a woman would never forgive or see much excuse for the man who makes a failure of married life. I wonder how it would strike a literary woman if she tried life in these circ.u.mstances with an unliterary man who, whilst clinging to leisure and having no inclination to forfeit an hour of it in a day, yet was bored extremely from lack of occupation and resource.

The horrid intimacy of urban life for all poor and needy people must be very wearing. Its lack of privacy is most distressing. But this becomes enormously aggravated, of course, where the bread-winner must do his work within the walls of the cramped home. And that aggravation of difficulties is multiplied tenfold if the bread-winner's work must not only be done inside the home, but must also be the product of sustained and concentrated thought; if it be work of that sort which lends itself readily to interruption, in which a moment's break may mean an hour's delay, and an hour's delay may mean for the worker a fit of hot disgust in which his unfinished task finds its way into fireplace or waste-paper basket.

The year which I gave to trying to make a success of our married life appears to me in the retrospect as a monotonous series of abortive honeymoons, separated by interludes of terribly hard and unfruitful labour for me (more exhausting than any long sustained working effort I ever made), throughout which, out of respect for my praiseworthy resolutions as a would-be good husband, my exacerbated temper was cloaked in a sort of waxy fixative, even as some men discipline their moustaches. I see myself in these periods as a man acutely tired, miserably conscious of the barren nature of his exhausting daily toil, and wearing a horrible set smile of connubial amiability; the sort of smile which, in time, produces a kind of facial cramp.

My wife, poor little soul, was not, I think, burdened by any self-imposed task touching the set of her lips. And it may be this was so much the worse for her. In the absence of any recognised duty she knew of no distraction save her visits to her mother, regarding which she felt a certain furtiveness to be necessary, by reason of my ill-judged show of impatience in this matter, and my refusal to open my own arms to the woman who, for years, had made f.a.n.n.y's life a burden to her.

'Confound it!' I thought. 'My part was to release her from this harridan's clutches, not to go round and mix tears and gin with the woman.'

But I was wrong. I should have gone much farther, or not near so far.

(How often that has been my fault!) Either I should have prevented those visits, or sterilised them by taking part in them.

By the time that a spell of the set smile and the barren labours had brought me near to breaking point, f.a.n.n.y would be frequently tearful and desperately peevish from her boredom, and from poor health; for I fancy she was in little better case than I as regards the penalties of a faulty and inadequate dietary, combined with long confinement within doors. These conditions would produce in me a day or two (and a sleepless night or two) of black, dyspeptic melancholy, and quite hopeless depression. Then, as like as not, I would try a long tramp, probably in Epping Forest, and after that--another abortive honeymoon.

In other words, full of wise resolutions and determined hopefulness, I would apply the fixative to my domestic circle smile and amiability, and make an entirely fresh start, with a little jaunt of some kind as a send off.

I fancy f.a.n.n.y's faith in these foredoomed attempts remained permanently unsullied. I know she used to resolve to discontinue the long gossipy afternoons with her mother in Howard Street--in some mysterious way the mother had lain aside all her old pretensions as a tyrannical autocrat, and they met now, I gathered, as friendly gossips--and to become an ideal wife for a literary man. She would even tell our landlady not to clean or tidy our rooms any more, since she, f.a.n.n.y, intended to do this in future. And she would do it--for a week or so; just as I would keep up my sickening grin, and the attempt to make myself believe that I really liked doing my work in public libraries, reading-rooms, waiting-rooms, and other such inspiring places. Not even on the first day of a new honeymoon could I force myself to fancy I liked the attempt to work in our joint sitting-room.

That affected me like a neuralgia.

The point, and perhaps the only point I can make in extenuation of my admitted failure to conduct my married life to a successful issue, I have made already; for one year I did, according to my poor lights, strive consistently and hard for success. Throughout another year I did strive as hardly, and almost equally consistently to make our joint life tolerable for us both. More than that I cannot claim, and, in the light of all that happened, I feel that this much is rather pitifully little.

X

It may very well be that during the first years after my marriage some of the chickens I had hatched out in the preceding years of slum life and incessant scribbling came home to roost. In the case of my reckless sins against hygiene and my digestion, I know they did. But also, I fancy, as touching work, and its monetary reward; for my earnings increased somewhat, while my work suffered deterioration, both in quality and quant.i.ty.

If it had not chanced to reach me in the black fit which preceded one of my make-believe new honeymoons, I should doubtless have been a good deal more elated than I was by the letter I received from Mr. Sylva.n.u.s Creed, the well-known connoisseur and arbiter of literary taste, who presided over the fortunes of the publis.h.i.+ng house that bore his name.

This letter--written with distinction and a quill pen upon beautifully embossed deckle-edged paper, which seemed to me to have a subtle perfume about it--requested the pleasure of my company at luncheon with the great Sylva.n.u.s; the place his favourite club--the Court, in Piccadilly.

He received me with beautiful urbanity, if a thought languidly. It was clearly a point of honour with him to refer to nothing so prosaic as any kind of work until he had plied me with the best which his luxurious club had to offer; and I gladly record that our luncheon was by far the most ambitious meal I had ever made, or even dreamed of, up to that day. And then, over the delicate Havannahs and fragrant coffee and liqueurs--the enterprise of youth was still mine in these matters, and in those days I accepted any such delicacies as the G.o.ds sent my way with never a thought of question, or of consequence--I was informed, with truly regal complaisance, that a certain bundle of ma.n.u.script short stories of mine (which by this time had been the round of quite a number of publishers' readers without making any perceptible progress towards germination and print) had been chosen for the honour of inclusion in the new _Fin de siecle_ Library of Fiction, which, as all the world knows--or knew, at all events, during that season--represented the last word, both in literary excellence and artistic publis.h.i.+ng.

I was perhaps less overpowered than I might, and no doubt ought to have been, by reason of the fact that I had at least been shrewd enough to know in advance that it was hardly for my bright eyes the famous publisher was entertaining me. However, I a.s.sumed a decent amount of ecstasy, and was genuinely glad of the prospect of seeing my first book handsomely published. After a proper interval I ventured upon a delicate inquiry as to terms; whereupon the deprecatory wave of Sylva.n.u.s Creed's white and jewelled hand made me feel (or pretend to feel) a low fellow for my pains. I gathered that on our return to the sumptuously appointed studio from which my host directed the destinies of his publis.h.i.+ng house, one of his secretaries of state would submit to me a specimen of the regulation agreement for the publication of first books.

That airy mention of 'first books' caused a chill presentiment to pierce the ambrosial fumes by which I was surrounded. The transaction was to bring me no particular profit, I thought. Well, the luncheon had been superfine. The format of Sylva.n.u.s Creed's books was indubitably pleasing to hand and eye. And, true enough, it was a 'first book.' Money, after all--and particularly after such a luncheon ...

But I will say that in subsequently signing the daintily embossed agreement (subtly perfumed, I thought, like the letter paper) I was blissfully ignorant of the fact that it also gave Mr. Sylva.n.u.s Creed my second book, whatever that might prove to be, upon the same exiguous terms. The fault was wholly mine, of course. There was the agreement (in the most elegant sort of copper-plate script) quite open for my perusal. I fancy, perhaps, the Court Club's liqueurs were even more agreeably potent than its wines. I know it seemed absurdly curmudgeonly that I should think of wading through the doc.u.ment, and while Sylva.n.u.s's own fair hand held a pen waiting for me, too. And, indeed, I do not in the least grudge that signature now.

And thus, with every circ.u.mstance of artistic fitness and ease, I was committed to authors.h.i.+p. The second floor back in Camden Town looked a shade dingy after my publisher's sanctum; but I carried a couple of gift copies of the _Fin de siecle_ books in my hand, and my own effusions were to form the fifth volume of the series. With such news I clearly was justified in bidding Sidney Heron take his dinner with us that night. f.a.n.n.y rather cooled about the great event, when its monetary insignificance was made partially clear to her. But she enjoyed the little dinner with Heron; and, as a matter of fact, we were doing rather well in the monetary way just then, though hardly well enough to enable me to rent a third room for use as study.

I found that sovereigns had somehow shrunken and lost much of their magic in f.a.n.n.y's hands with the pa.s.sage of time. At the time of our marriage, I had been agreeably surprised to learn that f.a.n.n.y was a cleverer economist than I, with all my grim learning in South Tottenham. The few pounds I was able to give her on the eve of our marriage had been made to work miracles I thought. But lately it had seemed a little different. f.a.n.n.y had, of course, changed in many small ways; and one result, as I gathered, was that our sovereigns had become less powerful. Their purchasing power was notably reduced, it seemed. Fortunately, I was earning more. But it was clear the increase in my earnings would not as yet permit of any increase in our expenditure upon rent. Sometimes in the Cimmerian intervals immediately preceding one of our fresh starts, my reflections upon such a point were very bitter. There was no sort of doubt that the quality of my work was suffering seriously from lack of a private workshop....

On the day my second book was published--the first, while favourably reviewed, had not precisely taken the world by storm; its successor was my first novel--I had said that I should not get back to our rooms before about seven o'clock, in time for the evening meal. A dizzy headache, combined with a series of interruptions in the public reading-room where I had been at work, brought me to Camden Town between four and five, determined to take a couple of hours' rest, to sleep if possible on our bed. It happened that I met our landlady on the steps of the house, and asked her casually if my wife had returned yet. f.a.n.n.y had said in the morning that she had promised to go and see her mother that day. The landlady looked at me a little oddly, I thought. Her reply was normal, and, characteristically enough, more wordy than informing:

'Oh, I couldn't sye, Mr. Fr'ydon; I reely couldn't sye. I know Mrs.

Fr'ydon went art early this mornin', because she 'appened to speak to me in pa.s.sin', an' she said she was goin' to see 'er mother, "Oh, are yer?" I says. "An' I 'ope you'll find 'er well," I says.'

I pa.s.sed on indoors and upstairs, thinking dizzily about c.o.c.kney dialect--I had the worst kind of dyspeptic headache--and feeling rather glad my wife was away. 'An hour's sleep will set me right,' I muttered to myself as I entered our tiny bedroom.

But f.a.n.n.y was lying on the bed, fully dressed, even to her hat, and with muddy boots. She was maundering over to herself the silly words of some inane song of the day. She was horribly flushed, and-- But let me make an end of it. My wife was grossly and quite unmistakably drunk, and the stuffy little room reeked of gin.

As it happened I never had been drunk. It was not one of my weaknesses. But if it had been, I dare say I should have been no whit the less horrified and alarmed and disgusted by this lamentable spectacle of my wife--stupid, maundering, helpless, and looking like ... But I need not labour the point.

In a flash I recalled a host of tiny incidents. It was extraordinary how recollection of the series rattled through my aching brain like bullets from a machine gun.

'This has been going on for some time,' I thought. And then, 'I suppose this is hereditary.' And then, 'This comes of the visits to Howard Street.' And then, curiously, recollection of those wedding night words of Heron's which had so touched me: 'Heaven bless you! You are both good souls, and--after all, some are happy!'

'Perhaps some are,' I thought bitterly. 'I wonder how much chance there is for us!'

In just the same way that I think the beginning of our married life might have been more agreeable, less strained, if we had had occasional quarrels, so I dare say at this critical juncture, when I discovered that my wife had taken to drinking gin, my right cue would have been that of open anger, or, at all events, of very serious remonstrance. It is easy to be wise after the event. I did not seem to be capable just then of talk or remonstrance. All I did actually say was commonplace and unhelpful enough. I said as I remember very well:

'Good G.o.d, f.a.n.n.y! I never thought to see you in this state.' And then--the futility of it--I added, 'You'd better take your hat and boots off.'

With that I walked into the sitting-room, closing the dividing door after me, and subsided, utterly despondent, into the chair beside the empty grate. A man could hardly have been more wretched; but after a minute or two I could not help noticing, as something singular, the fact that my sick, dizzy headache had disappeared. The pain had been horridly severe, or I should hardly have noticed its cessation. But now, with my spirits at their lowest and blackest, my head was clear again; not by a gradual recovery, but in one minute.

XI

f.a.n.n.y had spoken no word to me, and I wondered greatly at that. She had only smiled and laughed in a foolish way. And a few minutes later I knew by her breathing--even through the closed doors, so much was unmistakable--that she slept.

I may have sat there for an hour, nursing the bitterest kind of reflections. Then I decided to go out, and found I had left my hat in the bedroom. Very cautiously I opened one leaf of the folding doors, tip-toed into the small room, and took my hat from the chair on which it lay. My gaze fell for one instant across the rec.u.mbent figure of my wife, and was withdrawn sharply. I went out with anger and revulsion in my heart, and walked rather quickly for an hour, conscious of no relief from bitterness, no softening of my feelings.

Then I happened to pa.s.s a familiar restaurant, and told myself I would have some dinner. 'She must go her own way,' I muttered savagely.

I entered the place, found a seat, and consulted the bill of fare. A greasily smiling Italian came to take my order.