The Journal of a Disappointed Man Part 13

"I don't think you know what you're talking about"--this stiffly.

"Perhaps not," I answered. "I leave it to you."

"Oh! but it rests with you," she said.

Am I in love? G.o.d knows--but I don't suppose G.o.d cares.

_November_ 15.

On M----'s advice went to see a stomach specialist--Dr. Hawkins. As I got there a little too early walked up the street--Portland Place--on the opposite side (from shyness) past an interminable and nauseating series of night bells and bra.s.s plates, then down again on the right side till I got to No. 66 which made me flutter--for ten doors ahead I mused is the house I must call at. It made me s.h.i.+ver a little.

The specialist took copious notes of my evidence and after examining me retired to consult with M----. What a parade of ceremony! On coming back, the jury returned a verdict of "Not proven." I was told I ought to go out and live on the prairies--and in two years I should be a _giant_!

But where are the prairies? What 'bus? If I get worse, I must take several months' leave. I think it will come to this.

_November_ 16.

Arthur came down for the week end. He likes the Lady of Shalott. She is "not handsome, but arresting, striking" and "capable of tragedy." That I believe she has achieved already.... If she were a bit more gloomy and a bit more beautiful, she'd be irresistible.

_November_ 22.

He: "Have a cigarette? I enjoy lighting your cigarettes."

She: "I don't know how to smoke properly."

He: "You smoke only as _you_ could."

She: "How's that?"

H.: "Gracefully, of course."

S.: "Do you think I like pretty things being said to me?"

H.: "Why not, if they are true. Flattery is when you tell an ugly woman she is beautiful. Have you so poor an opinion of yourself to think all I say of you is flattery?"

S.: "Yes. I am only four bare walls,--with nothing inside."

H.: "What a deliciously empty feeling that must be. ... But I don't think you're so simple as all that. You bewilder me sometimes."

S.: "Why?"

H.: "I feel like Sindbad the Sailor."

S.: "Why?"

H.: "Because I'm not George Meredith." The t.i.tle of "husband" frightens me.

_December_ 9.

It's a fearful strain to go on endeavouring to live up to time with a carefully laid-out time-table of future achievements. I am hurrying on with my study of Italian in order to read the Life of Spallanzani in order to include him in my book--to be finished by the end of next year; I am also subsidising Jenkinson's embryological lectures at University College with the more detailed account of practical and experimental work in his text-book; I have also started a lengthy research upon the Trichoptera--all with a horrible sense of time fleeing swiftly and opportunities for work too few ever to be squandered, and, in the background, behind all this feverish activity, the black shadow that I might die suddenly with nothing done--next year, next month, next week, to-morrow, now!

Then sometimes, as to-night, I have misgivings. Shall I do these things so well now as I might once have done them? Has not my ill-health seriously affected my mental powers? Surely the boy of 1908-10 was almost a genius or--seen at this distance--a very remarkable youth in the fanatical zeal with which he sought to pursue, and succeeded in gaining, his own end of a zoological education for himself.

It is a terrible suspicion to cross the mind of an ambitious youth that perhaps, after all, he is a very commonplace mortal--that his life, whether comedy or tragedy, or both, or neither, is any way insignificant, of no account.

It is still more devastating for him to have to consider whether the laurel wreath was not once within his grasp, and whether he must not ascribe his own incalculable loss to his stomach simply.

_December_ 15.

A very bad heart attack. As I write it intermits every three or four beats. Who knows if I shall live thro' to-night?

_December_ 16.

Here I am once more. A pa.s.sable night. After breakfast the intermittency recommenced--it is better now, with a dropped beat only about once per half-hour, so that I am almost happy after yesterday, which was h.e.l.l.

The world is too good to give up without remonstrance at the beck of a weak heart.

Before I went to sleep last night, my watch stopped--I at once observed the cessation of its tick and wondered if it were an omen. I was genuinely surprised to find myself still ticking when I awoke this morning. A moment ago a hea.r.s.e pa.s.sed down the street.... Yes, but I'm d.a.m.ned if I haven't a right to be morbid after yesterday. To be ill like this in a boarding-house! I'd marry to-morrow if I had the chance.

_December_ 22.

_Sollas's "Ancient Hunters"_

Read Sollas's book _Ancient Hunters_--very thrilling--mind full of the Aurignacians, Mousterians, Magdalenians! I have been peering down such tremendous vistas of time and change that my own troubles have been eclipsed into ridiculous insignificance. It has been really a Pillar of Strength to me--a splendid tonic. Palaeontology has its comfortable words too. I have revelled in my littleness and irresponsibility. It has relieved me of the hara.s.sing desire to live, I feel content to live dangerously, indifferent to my fate; I have discovered I am a fly, that we are all flies, that nothing matters. It's a great load off my life, for I don't mind being such a micro-organism--to me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe--such a great universe, so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I _have_ lived; _I have been I_, if for ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible--and eternal, so that come what may to my "Soul,"

my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part--I shall still have some sort of a finger in the Pie.

When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me--but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you.

_December_ 27.

"It is a pleasure to note the success attending the career of Mr. W.N.P.

Barbellion now engaged in scientific work on the staff of the Natural History Museum ..." etc., etc.

This is a cutting from the local paper--one of many that from time to time I once delightedly pasted in the pages of the Journal. Not so now.

... At 23, I am a different being. Surrounded by all the stimulating environment of scientific research, I am cold and disdainful. I keep up the old appearances but underneath it is quite different. I am a _hypocrite_. I have to wear the mask and cothornoi, finding the part daily more difficult to bear. I am living on my immense initial momentum--while the machinery gradually slows up. My career! Gadzooks.

1913

_January_ 3.

From the drawing-room window I see pa.s.s almost daily an old gentleman with white hair, a firm step, broad shoulders, healthy pink skin, a sunny smile--always singing to himself as he goes--a happy, rosy-cheeked old fellow, with a rosy-cheeked mind.... I should like to throw mud at him. By Jove, how I hate him. He makes me wince with my own pain. It is heartless, indecently so, for an _old_ man to be so blithe. Life has, I suppose, never lain in wait for him. The Great Anarchist has spared him a bomb.

_January_ 19.

My Aunt, aged 75, who has apparently concluded from my constant absences from Church that my spiritual life is in a parlous way, to-day read me her portion from a large book with a broad purple-ta.s.seled bookmark. I looked up from "_I Promessi Sposi_" and said "Very nice." It was about someone whose soul was not saved and who Would not answer the door when it was knocked. It is jolly to be regarded as a wicked, libidinous youth by an aged maiden Aunt.

_January_ 22.