The Longest Journey (39 page)

“Would he come?”

“No. I shouldn’t say so,” replied Leighton, with a furtive glance. He knew that Rickie was a milksop. “First night, you know, sir, among old friends.”

“Yes, I know,” said Rickie. “But he might like a turn down the village. It looks stuffy inside there, and poor fun probably to watch others drinking.”

Leighton shut the door.

“What was that he called after you?”

“Oh, nothing. A man when he’s drunk—he says the worst he’s ever heard. At least, so they say.”

“A man when he’s drunk?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But Stephen isn’t drinking?”

“No, no.”

“He couldn’t be. If he broke a promise—I don’t pretend he’s a saint. I don’t want him one. But it isn’t in him to break a promise.”

“Yes, sir; I understand.”

“In the train he promised me not to drink—nothing theatrical: just a promise for these few days.”

“No, sir.”

“ ‘No, sir,’ ” stamped Rickie.” ‘Yes! no! yes!’ Can’t you speak out? Is he drunk or isn’t he?”

Leighton, justly exasperated, cried, “He can’t stand, and I’ve told you so again and again.”

“Stephen!” shouted Rickie, darting up the steps. Heat and the smell of beer awaited him, and he spoke more furiously than he had intended. “Is there any one here who’s sober?” he cried. The landlord looked over the bar angrily, and asked him what he meant. He pointed to the
deep settles. “Inside there he’s drunk. Tell him he’s broken his word, and I will not go with him to the Rings.”

“Very well. You won’t go with him to the Rings,” said the landlord, stepping forward and slamming the door in his face.

In the room he was only angry, but out in the cool air he remembered that Stephen was a law to himself. He had chosen to break his word, and would break it again. Nothing else bound him. To yield to temptation is not fatal for most of us. But it was the end of everything for a hero.

“He’s suddenly ruined!” he cried, not yet remembering himself. For a little he stood by the elm-tree, clutching the ridges of its bark. Even so would he wrestle tomorrow, and Stephen, imperturbable, reply, “My body is my own.” Or worse still, he might wrestle with a pliant Stephen who promised him glibly again. While he prayed for a miracle to convert his brother, it struck him that he must pray for himself. For he, too, was ruined.

“Why, what’s the matter?” asked Leighton. “Stephen’s only being with friends. Mr. Elliot, sir, don’t break down. Nothing’s happened bad. No one’s died yet, or even hurt themselves.” Ever kind, he took hold of Rickie’s arm, and, pitying such a nervous fellow, set out with him for home. The shoulders of Orion rose behind them over the topmost boughs of the elm. From the bridge the whole constellation was visible, and Rickie said, “May God receive me and pardon me for trusting the earth.”

“But, Mr. Elliot, what have you done that’s wrong?”

“Gone bankrupt, Leighton, for the second time. Pretended again that people were real. May God have mercy on me!”

Leighton dropped his arm. Though he did not understand, a chill of disgust passed over him, and he said, “I will go back to The Antelope. I will help them put Stephen to bed.”

“Do. I will wait for you here.” Then he leant against the parapet and prayed passionately, for he knew that the conventions would claim him soon. God was beyond them, but ah, how far beyond, and to be reached after what degradation! At the end of this childish detour his wife awaited him, not less surely because she was only his wife in name. He was too weak. Books and friends were not enough. Little by little she would claim him and corrupt him and make him what he had been; and the woman he loved would die out, in drunkenness, in debauchery, and her strength would be dissipated by a man, her beauty defiled in a man. She would not continue. That mystic rose and the face it illumined meant nothing. The stream—he was above it now—meant nothing, though it burst from the pure turf and ran for ever to the sea. The bather, the shoulders of Orion—they all meant nothing, and were going nowhere. The whole affair was a ridiculous dream.

Leighton returned, saying, “Haven’t you seen Stephen? They say he followed us: he can still walk: I told you he wasn’t so bad.”

“I don’t think he passed me. Ought one to look?” He wandered a little along the Roman road. Again nothing mattered. At the level-crossing he leant on the gate to watch a slow goods train pass. In the glare of the engine he saw that his brother had come this way, perhaps through some sodden memory of the Rings, and now lay drunk over the rails. Wearily he did a man’s duty. There was time to raise him up and push him into safety. It is also a man’s duty to save his own life, and therefore he tried. The train went over his knees. He died up in Cadover, whispering, “You have been right,” to Mrs. Failing.

She wrote of him to Mrs. Lewin afterwards as “one who has failed in all he undertook; one of the thousands whose dust returns to the dust, accomplishing nothing
in the interval. Agnes and I buried him to the sound of our cracked bell, and pretended that he had once been alive. The other, who was always honest, kept away.”

From the window they looked over a sober valley, whose sides were not too sloping to be ploughed, and whose trend was followed by a grass-grown track. It was late on Sunday afternoon, and the valley was deserted except for one labourer, who was coasting slowly downward on a rusty bicycle. The air was very quiet. A jay screamed up in the woods behind, but the ring-doves, who roost early, were already silent. Since the window opened westward, the room was flooded with light, and Stephen, finding it hot, was working in his shirtsleeves.

“You guarantee they’ll sell?” he asked, with a pen between his teeth. He was tidying up a pile of manuscripts.

“I guarantee that the world will be the gainer,” said Mr. Pembroke, now a clergyman, who sat beside him at the table with an expression of refined disapproval on his face.

“I’d got the idea that the long story had its points, but that the shorter things didn’t—what’s the word?”

“ ‘Convince’ is probably the word you want. But that type of criticism is quite a thing of the past. Have you seen the illustrated American edition?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Might I send you a copy? I think you ought to possess one.”

“Thank you.” His eye wandered. The bicycle had disappeared into some trees, and thither, through a cloudless sky, the sun was also descending.

“Is all quite plain?” said Mr. Pembroke. “Submit these
ten stories to the magazines, and make your own terms with the editors. Then—I have your word for it—you will join forces with me; and the four stories in my possession, together with yours, should make up a volume, which we might well call ‘Pan Pipes.’ ”

“Are you sure ‘Pan Pipes’ haven’t been used up already?”

Mr. Pembroke clenched his teeth. He had been bearing with this sort of thing for nearly an hour. “If that is the case, we can select another. A title is easy to come by. But that is the idea it must suggest. The stories, as I have twice explained to you, all centre round a Nature theme. Pan, being the god of—–”

“I know that,” said Stephen impatiently.

“—Being the god of—–”

“All right. Let’s get furrard. I’ve learnt that.”

It was years since the schoolmaster had been interrupted, and he could not stand it. “Very well,” he said. “I bow to your superior knowledge of the classics. Let us proceed.”

“Oh yes the introduction. There must be one. It was the introduction with all those wrong details that sold the other book.”

“You overwhelm me. I never penned the memoir with that intention.”

“If you won’t do one, Mrs. Keynes must!”

“My sister leads a busy life. I could not ask her. I will do it myself since you insist.”

“And the binding?”

“The binding,” said Mr. Pembroke coldly, “must really be left to the discretion of the publisher. We cannot be concerned with such details. Our task is purely literary.” His attention wandered. He began to fidget, and finally bent down and looked under the table. “What have we here?” he asked.

Stephen looked also, and for a moment they smiled at
each other over the prostrate figure of a child, who was cuddling Mr. Pembroke’s boots. “She’s after the blacking,” he explained. “If we left her there, she’d lick them brown.”

“Indeed. Is that so very safe?”

“It never did me any harm. Come up! Your tongue’s dirty.”

“Can I—–” She was understood to ask whether she could clean her tongue on a lollie.

“No, no!” said Mr. Pembroke. “Lollipops don’t clean little girls’ tongues.”

“Yes, they do,” he retorted. “But she won’t get one.” He lifted her on his knee, and rasped her tongue with his handkerchief.

“Dear little thing,” said the visitor perfunctorily. The child began to squall, and kicked her father in the stomach. Stephen regarded her quietly. “You tried to hurt me,” he said. “Hurting doesn’t count. Trying to hurt counts. Go and clean your tongue yourself. Get off my knee.” Tears of another sort came into her eyes, but she obeyed him. “How’s the great Bertie?” he asked.

“Thank you. My nephew is perfectly well. How came you to hear of his existence?”

“Through the Silts, of course. It isn’t five miles to Cadover.”

Mr. Pembroke raised his eyes mournfully. “I cannot conceive how the poor Silts go on in that great house. Whatever she intended, it could not have been that. The house, the farm, the money,—everything down to the personal articles that belong to Mr. Failing, and should have reverted to his family—–!”

“It’s legal. Interstate succession.”

“I do not dispute it. But it is a lesson to one to make a will. Mrs. Keynes and myself were electrified.”

“They’ll do there. They offered me the agency, but—–” He looked down the cultivated slopes. His manners
were growing rough, for he saw few gentlemen now, and he was either incoherent or else alarmingly direct. “However, if Lawrie Silt’s a Cockney like his father, and if my next is a boy and like me—–” A shy beautiful look came into his eyes, and passed unnoticed. “They’ll do,” he repeated. “They turned out Wilbraham and built new cottages, and bridged the railway, and made other necessary alterations.” There was a moment’s silence.

Mr. Pembroke took out his watch. “I wonder if I might have the trap? I mustn’t miss my train, must I? It is good of you to have granted me an interview. It is all quite plain?”

“Yes.”

“A case of half and half—division of profits.”

“Half and half?” said the young farmer slowly. “What do you take me for? Half and half, when I provide ten of the stories and you only four?”

“I—I—–” stammered Mr. Pembroke.

“I consider you did me over the long story, and I’m damned if you do me over the short ones!”

“Hush! if you please, hush!—if only for your little girl’s sake.” He lifted a clerical palm.

“You did me,” his voice drove, “and all the Thirty-Nine Articles won’t stop me saying so. That long story was meant to be mine. I got it written. You’ve done me out of every penny it fetched. It’s dedicated to me—flat out—and you even crossed out the dedication and tidied me out of the introduction. Listen to me, Pembroke. You’ve done people all your life—I think without knowing it, but that won’t comfort us. A wretched devil at your school once wrote to me, and he’d been done. Sham food, sham religion, sham straight talks—and when he broke down, you said it was the world in miniature.” He snatched at him roughly. “But I’ll show you the world.” He twisted him round like a baby, and through the open door they saw only the quiet valley, but in it a rivulet that
would in time bring its waters to the sea. “Look even at that—and up behind where the Plain begins and you get on the solid chalk—think of us riding some night when you’re ordering your hot bottle—that’s the world, and there’s no miniature world. There’s one world, Pembroke, and you can’t tidy men out of it. They answer you back—do you hear?—they answer back if you do them. If you tell a man this way that four sheep equal ten, he answers back you’re a liar.”

Mr. Pembroke was speechless, and—such is human nature—he chiefly resented the allusion to the hot bottle; an unmanly luxury in which he never indulged; contenting himself with nightsocks. “Enough—there is no witness present—as you have doubtless observed.” But there was. For a little voice cried, “Oh, mummy, they’re fighting—such fun—–” and feet went pattering up the stairs. “Enough. You talk of ‘doing,’ but what about the money out of which you ‘did’ my sister? What about this picture”—he pointed to a faded photograph of Stockholm—“which you caused to be filched from the walls of my house? What about—enough! Let us conclude this disheartening scene. You object to my terms. Name yours. I shall accept them. It is futile to reason with one who is the worse for drink.”

Stephen was quiet at once. “Steady on!” he said gently. “Steady on that direction. Take one-third for your four stories and the introduction, and I will keep two-thirds for myself.” Then he went to harness the horse, while Mr. Pembroke, watching his broad back, desired to bury a knife in it. The desire passed, partly because it was unclerical, partly because he had no knife, and partly because he soon blurred over what had happened. To him all criticism was “rudeness”: he never heeded it, for he never needed it: he was never wrong. All his life he had ordered little human beings about, and now he was equally magisterial to big ones: Stephen was a fifth-form
lout whom, owing to some flaw in the regulations, he could not send up to the headmaster to be caned.