Limbo

had come to live at Blaybury he had seen a great deal of young George. "We shall be a most festive party," said Mr. Petherton. "Roger will be coming to us just at the same time as Guy." "I'd quite forgotten Uncle Roger," said Marjorie. "Of course, his holidays begin then, don't they?" The Reverend Roger was Alfred Petherton's brother and a master at one of our most glorious public schools. Marjorie hardly agreed with her father in thinking that his presence would add anything to the "festiveness" of the party. It was a pity he should be coming at this particular moment. However, we all have our little cross to bear. Mr. Petherton was feeling playful. "We must bring down," he said, "the choicest Falernian, bottled when Gladstone was consul, for the occasion. We must prepare wreaths and unguents and hire a flute player and a couple of dancing girls . . ." He spent the rest of the meal in quoting Horace, Catullus, the Greek Anthology, Petronius, and Sidonius Apollinarius. Marjorie's knowledge of the dead languages was decidedly limited. Her thoughts were elsewhere, and it was only dimly and as it were through a mist that she heard her father murmuring--whether merely to himself or with the hope of eliciting an answer from somebody, she hardly knew--"Let me see: how does that epigram go?--that one about the different kinds of fish and the garlands of roses, by Meleager, or is it Poseidippus? . . ." II GUY and Jacobsen were walking in the Dutch garden, an incongruous couple. On Guy military servitude had left no outwardly visible mark; out of uniform, he still looked like a tall, untidy undergraduate; he stooped and drooped as much as ever; his hair was still bushy and, to judge by the dim expression of his face, he had not yet learnt to think imperially. His khaki always looked like a disguise, like the most absurd fancy dress. Jacobsen trotted beside him, short, fattish, very sleek, and correct. They talked in a desultory way about things indifferent. Guy, anxious for a little intellectual exercise after so many months of discipline, had been trying to inveigle his companion into a philosophical discussion. Jacobsen consistently eluded his efforts; he was too lazy to talk seriously; there was no profit that he could see to be got out of this young man's opinions, and he had not the faintest desire to make a disciple. He preferred, therefore, to discuss the war and the weather. It irritated him that people should want to trespass on the domain of thought--people who had no right to live anywhere but on the vegetative plane of mere existence. He wished they would simply be content to _be_ or _do_, not try, so hopelessly, to think, when only one in a million can think with the least profit to himself or anyone else. Out of the corner of his eye he looked at the dark, sensitive face of his companion; he ought to have gone into business at eighteen, was Jacobsen's verdict. It was bad for him to think; he wasn't strong enough. A great sound of barking broke upon the calm of the garden. Looking up, the two strollers saw George White running across the green turf of the croquet lawn with a huge fawn-coloured dog bounding along at his side. "Morning," he shouted. He was hatless and out of breath. "I was taking Bella for a run, and thought I'd look in and see how you all were." "What a lovely dog!" Jacobsen exclaimed. "An old English mastiff our--one aboriginal dog. She has a pedigree going straight back to Edward the Confessor." Jacobsen began a lively conversation with George on the virtues and shortcomings of dogs. Bella smelt his calves and then lifted up her gentle black eyes to look at him. She seemed satisfied. He looked at them for a little; they were too much absorbed in their doggy conversation to pay attention to him. He made a gesture as though he had suddenly remembered something, gave a little grunt, and with a very preoccupied expression on his face turned to go towards the house. His elaborate piece of by-play escaped the notice of the intended spectators; Guy saw that it had, and felt more miserable and angry and jealous than ever. They would think he had slunk off because he wasn't wanted--which was quite true--instead of believing that he had something very important to do, which was what he had intended they should believe. A cloud of self-doubt settled upon him. Was his mind, after all, worthless, and the little things he had written--rubbish, not potential genius as he had hoped? Jacobsen was right in preferring George's company. George was perfect, physically, a splendid creature; what could he himself claim? "I'm second-rate," he thought--"second-rate, physically, morally, mentally. Jacobsen is quite right." The best he could hope to be was a pedestrian literary man with quiet tastes. NO, no, no! He clenched his hands and, as though to register his resolve before the universe, he said, aloud: "I will do it; I will be first-rate, I will." He was covered with confusion on seeing a gardener pop up, surprised from behind a bank of rose-bushes. Talking to himself--the man must have thought him mad! He hurried on across the lawn, entered the house, and ran upstairs to his room. There was not a second to lose; he must begin at once. He would write something--something that would last, solid, hard, shining. . . . "Damn them all! I will do it, I can . . ." There were writing materials and a table in his room. He selected a pen--with a Relief nib he would be able to go on for hours without getting tired--and a large square sheet of writing-paper. "HATCH HOUSE, BLAYBURY, WILTS. Station: Cogham, 3 miles; Nobes Monacorum, 4½ miles." Stupid of people to have their stationery printed in red, when black or blue is so much nicer! He inked over the letters. He held up the paper to the light; there was a watermark, "Pimlico Bond." What an admirable name for the hero of a novel! Pimlico Bond. . . . "There's be-eef in the la-arder And du-ucks in the pond; Crying dilly dilly, dilly dilly . . ." He bit the end of his pen. "What I want to get," he said to himself, "is something very hard, very external. Intense emotion, but one will somehow have got outside it." He made a movement of hands, arms, and shoulders, tightening his muscles in an effort to express to himself physically that hardness and tightness and firmness of style after which he was struggling! He began to draw on his virgin paper. A woman, naked, one arm lifted over her head, so that it pulled up her breast by that wonderful curving muscle that comes down from the shoulder. The inner surface of the thighs, remember, is slightly concave. The feet, seen from the front, are always a difficulty. It would never do to leave that about. What would the servants think? He turned the nipples into eyes, drew heavy lines for nose, mouth, and chin, slopped on the ink thick; it made a passable face now--though an acute observer might have detected the original nudity. He tore it up into very small pieces. A crescendo booming filled the house. It was the gong. He looked at his watch. Lunch-time, and he had done nothing. O God! . . . III IT was dinner-time on the last evening of Guy's leave. The uncovered mahogany table was like a pool of brown unruffled water within whose depths flowers and the glinting shapes of glass and silver hung dimly reflected. Mr. Petherton sat at the head of the board, flanked by his brother Roger and Jacobsen. Youth, in the persons of Marjorie, Guy, and George White, had collected at the other end. They had reached the stage of dessert. "This is excellent port," said Roger, sleek and glossy like a well-fed black cob under his silken clerical waistcoat. He was a strong, thick-set man of about fifty, with a red neck as thick as his head. His hair was cropped with military closeness; he liked to set a good example to the boys, some of whom showed distressing "æsthetic" tendencies and wore their hair long. "I'm glad you like it. I mayn't touch it myself, of course. Have another glass." Alfred Petherton's face wore an expression of dyspeptic melancholy. He was wishing he hadn't taken quite so much of that duck. "Thank you, I will." Roger took the decanter with a smile of satisfaction. "The tired schoolmaster is worthy of his second glass. White, you look rather pale; I think you must have another." Roger had a hearty, jocular manner, calculated to prove to his pupils that he was not one of the slimy sort of parsons, not a Creeping Jesus. There was an absorbing conversation going on at the youthful end of the table. Secretly irritated at having been thus interrupted in the middle of it, White turned round and smiled vaguely at Roger. "Oh, thank you, sir," he said, and pushed his glass forward to be filled. The "sir" slipped out unawares; it was, after all, such a little while since he had been a schoolboy under Roger's dominion. "One is lucky," Roger went on seriously, "to get any port wine at all now. I'm thankful to say I bought ten dozen from my old college some years ago to lay down; otherwise I don't know what I should do. My wine merchant tells me he couldn't let me have a single bottle. Indeed, he offered to buy some off me, if I'd sell. But I wasn't having any. A bottle in the cellar is worth ten shillings in the pocket these days. I always say that port has become a necessity now one gets so little meat. Lambourne! you are another of our brave defenders; you deserve a second glass." "No, thanks," said Guy, hardly looking up. "I've had enough." He went on talking to Marjorie--about the different views of life held by the French and the Russians. Roger helped himself to cherries. "One has to select them carefully," he remarked for the benefit of the unwillingly listening George. "There is nothing that gives you such stomach-aches as unripe cherries." "I expect you're glad, Mr. Petherton, that holidays have begun at last?" said Jacobsen. "Glad? I should think so. One is utterly dead beat at the end of the summer term. Isn't one, White?" White had taken the opportunity to turn back again and listen to Guy's conversation; recalled, like a dog who has started off on a forbidden scent, he obediently assented that one did get tired at the end of the summer term. "I suppose," said Jacobsen, "you still teach the same old things--Cæsar, Latin verses, Greek grammar, and the rest? We Americans can hardly believe that all that still goes on." "Thank goodness," said Roger, "we still hammer a little solid stuff into them. But there's been a great deal of fuss lately about new curriculums and so forth. They do a lot of science now and things of that kind, but I don't believe the children learn anything at all. It's pure waste of time." "So is all education, I dare say," said Jacobsen lightly. "Not if you teach them discipline. That's what's wanted--discipline. Most of these little boys need plenty of beating, and they don't get enough now. Besides, if you can't hammer knowledge in at their heads, you can at least beat a little in at their tails." "You're very ferocious, Roger," said Mr. Petherton, smiling. He was feeling better; the duck was settling down. "No, it's the vital thing. The best thing the war has brought us is discipline. The country had got slack and wanted tightening up." Roger's face glowed with zeal. From the other end of the table Guy's voice could