26 Poor Mr. Ansel was actually sitting in the garden of Dunwood House. It was Sunday morning. The air was full of roasting beef. The sound of a manly hymn, taken very fast, floated over the road from the school chapel. He frowned, for he was reading a book, the essays of Anthony Eustace failing. He was here on account of this book, at least, so he told himself. It had just been published, and the Jacksons were sure that Mr. Elliot would have a copy. For a book one may go anywhere. It would not have been logical to enter Dunwood House for the purpose of seeing Ricky when Ricky had not come to supper yesterday to see him. He was at Sauston to assure himself of his friend's grave. With quiet eyes he had intended to view the sods with unfaltering fingers to inscribe the epitaph. Love remained, but in high matters he was practical. He knew that it would be useless to reveal it. Morning! said a voice behind him. He saw no reason to reply to this superfluous statement, and went on with his reading. Morning! said the voice again. As for the essays, the thought was somewhat old-fashioned, and he picked many holes in it, nor was he anything but bored by the prospect of the brotherhood of men. However, Mr. Failing stuck to his guns such as they were and fired from them several good remarks. Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity. Coarseness revealing something, vulgarity concealing something. And he's avowed preference for coarseness. Vulgarity to him had been the primal curse, the shoddy reticence that prevents men opening his heart to men, the power that makes against equality. From it sprang all the things that he hated, class, chiboleths, ladies, litties, the game-laws, the conservative party, all the things that accent the divergences rather than the similarities in human nature. Whereas coarseness, but at this point Herbert Pembroke had scrawled with a blue pencil. Childish, one reads no further. Morning! repeated the voice. And so read further, for here was the book of a man who had tried, however, unsuccessfully to practice what he preached. Mrs. Failing, in her introduction, described with delicate irony his difficulties as a landlord, but she did not record the love in which his name was held. Nor could her irony touch him when he cried, attain the practical through the unpractical. There is no other road. Ansel was inclined to think that the unpractical is its own reward, but he respected those who attempted to journey beyond it. We must all of us go over the mountains. There is certainly no other road. This morning, said the voice, it was not a nice morning, so Ansel felt bound to speak. He answered, No, why? A clot of earth immediately struck him on the back. He turned round indignantly, for he hated physical rudeness. A square man of ruddy aspect was pacing the gravel path his hands deep in his pockets. He was very angry. Then he saw that the clot of earth nourished a blue labalia and that a wound of corresponding size appeared on the pie-shaped bed. He was not so angry. I expect they will mind it, he reflected. Last night at the Jacksons Agnes had displayed a brisk pity that made him wish to ring her neck. Maud had not exaggerated. Mr. Pembroke had patronized through a sorrowful voice and large round eyes. Till he met these people he had never been told that his career was a failure. Apparently it was. They would never have been civil to him if it had been a success, if they or theirs had anything to fear from him. In many ways Ansel was a conceited man, but he was never proud of being right. He had foreseen Ricky's catastrophe from the first, but derived from this no consolation. In many ways he was pedantic, but his pedantry laid close to the vineyards of life, far closer than that fetish experience of the innumerable tea-cups. He had a great many facts to learn and before he died he learned a suitable quantity. But he never forgot that the holiness of the heart's imagination can alone classify these facts, can alone decide which is an exception, which an example.  That was his comment on Dunwood House. How unbusinesslike! They live together without love, they work without conviction, they seek money without requiring it, they die and nothing will have happened, either for themselves or for others. It is a comment that the academic mind will often make when first confronted with the world. But he was becoming illogical. The clot of earth had disturbed him. Brushing the dirt off his back he returned to the book. What a curious affair was the essay on gaps. Solitude, star-crowned, pacing the fields of England has a dialogue with seclusion. He, poor little man, lives in the choicest scenery among rocks, forests, emerald lawns, azure lakes. To keep people out he has built round his domain a high wall, on which is graven his motto, Proculeste profane. But he cannot enjoy himself. His only pleasure is in mocking the absent profane. They are in his mind night and day. Their blemishes and stupidities form the subject of his great poem, In the Heart of Nature. Then Solitude tells him that so it always will be until he makes a gap in the wall and permits his seclusion to be the sport of circumstance. He obeys. The profane invade him, but for short intervals they wander elsewhere, and during those intervals the heart of nature is revealed to him. This dialogue had really been suggested to Mr. Failing by a talk with his brother-in-law. It also touched Ansel. He looked at the man who had thrown the clod, and was now pacing with obvious youth and impudence upon the lawn. Shall I improve my soul at his expense? he thought. I suppose I had better. In friendly tones he remarked, Were you waiting for Mr. Pembroke? No, said the young man. Why? Ansel, after a moment's admiration, flung the essays at him. They hit him in the back. The next moment he lay on his own back in the Lobelia pie. But it hurts, he gasped, in the tones of a puzzled civilization. What you do hurts, for the young man was nicking him over the shins with the rim of the book cover. Little broody, ow! Then say Pax. Something revolted in Ansel. Why should he say Pax? Freeing his hand, he caught the little brood under the chin, and was again knocked into the Lobelia's pie below in the mouth. Say Pax. He repeated, pressing the philosopher's skull into the mould, and he added, with an anxiety that was somehow not offensive. I do advise you. You'd really better. Ansel swallowed a little blood. He tried to move, and he could not. He looked carefully into the young man's eyes and into the palm of his right hand, which at present swung and clenched, and he said, Pax. Shake hands, said the other, helping him up. There was nothing Ansel loathed so much as the hardy Britisher, but he shook hands and they stared at each other awkwardly.  Ansel was trying to remember why that quarrelled, and the young man was wondering why he had not guarded his chin properly. In the distance a hymn swung off. Fight the good fight, fight with all thy might. They would be across from the chapel soon. Your book, sir. Thank you, sir, yes. Why, cry the young man, why it's what we want, at least the binding's exactly the same. It's called Essays, said Ansel. Then that's it, Mrs. Failing, you see. She wouldn't call it that, because three double U's you see in a row. She said, our vulgar, and sound like Tolstoy if you've heard of him. Ansel confessed to an acquaintance and then said, Do you think what we want, vulgar? He was not at all interested, but he desired to escape from the atmosphere of putolistic courtesy more painful to him than blows himself. It is the same book, said the other, same title, same binding. He waited like a brick in his muddy hands. Open it to see if the inside corresponds, said Ansel, swallowing a laugh and a little more blood with it. With a liberal allowance of thumb marks he turned the pages over and read, the rural silence that is not at poet's luxury, but a practical need for all men. Yes, it is the same book. Smiling pleasantly over the discovery, he handed it back to the owner. And is it true? I beg your pardon. Is it true that rural silence is a practical need? Don't ask me. Have you ever tried it? What? rural silence. A field with no noise in it, I suppose you mean, I don't understand. Ansel smiled, but a slight fire in the man's eye checked him. After all, this was a person who could knock one down. Moreover, there was no reason why he should be teased. He had it in him to retort. No, why?  He was irritable in Ansel's eyes a frequent sign of grace. Sitting down on the upturned seat he remarked, I like the book in many ways. I don't think what we want would have been a vulgar title. But I don't intend to spoil myself on the chance of mending the world, which is what the creed amounts to, nor am I keen on rural silences. Curse, he said thoughtfully, sucking at an empty pipe. Tobacco, please. Ricky's is invariably filthy. Who says I know Ricky? Well, you know his aunt. It's a possible link. Be gentle with Ricky. Don't knock him down if he doesn't think it's a nice morning. The other was silent. Do you know him well? Kind of. He was not inclined to talk. The wish to smoke was very violent in him, and Ansel noticed how he gazed at the wreaths that ascended from bowl and stem, and how in the stem was in his mouth he bit it. He gave the idea of an animal with just enough soul to contemplate its own bliss. United with refinement such a type was common in Greece. It is not common today, and Ansel was surprised to find it in a friend of Ricky's. Ricky, if he could even kind of know such a creature must be stirring in his grave. Do you know his wife, too? Oh, yes, in a way I know Agnes, but thank you for this tobacco. Last night I nearly died. I have no money. Take the whole pouch, too. After a moment's hesitation he did. Fight the good had scarcely ended, so quickly had their intimacy grown. I suppose you're a friend of Ricky's. Ansel was tempted to reply. I don't know him at all, but it seemed no moment for the severer truth, so he said, I knew him well at Cambridge, but I have seen very little of him since. Is it true that his baby was lame? I believe so. His teeth closed on his pipe. Chapel was over. The organist was prancing through the voluntary, and the first ripple of boys had already reached Dunwood House. In a few minutes the masters would be here, too, and Ansel, who was becoming interested, hurried the conversation forward. Have you come far? From Wiltshire. Do you know Wiltshire? And for the first time there came into his face the shadow of a sentiment, the passing tribute to some mystery. It's a good country. I live in one of the finest valleys out of Salisbury Plain. I mean, I lived. Have you been dismissed from cat-over without a penny in your pocket? He was alarmed at this. Such knowledge seemed simply diabolical. Ansel explained that if his boots were chalky, if his clothes had obviously been slept in, if he knew Mrs. Failing, if he knew Wiltshire, and if he could buy no tobacco, then the deduction was possible. You do just attend. He murmured. The house was filling with boys, and Ansel saw to his regret the head of Agnes over the Thuye hedge that separated the small front garden from the side lawn where he was sitting. After a few minutes it was followed by the heads of Ricky and Mr. Pembroke. All the heads returned the other way, but they would find his card in the hall, and if the man had left any message they would find that, too. What are you? he demanded. Who are you, your name? I don't care about that, but it interests me to class people, and up to now I have failed with you. I... he stopped. Ansel reflected that there are worse answers. I really don't know what I am. I used to think I was something special, but strikes me now I feel much like other chaps. Used to look down on the laborers. Used to take for granted I was a gentleman, but really I don't know where I did belong. One belongs to the place one sleeps in, and to the people one eats with. As often as not I sleep out of doors and eat by myself, so that doesn't get you any further. A silence akin to poetry invaded Ansel. Was it only a pose to like this man, or was he really wonderful? He was not romantic, for romance is a figure with outstretched hands, yearning for the unattainable. Certain figures of the Greeks to whom we continually return suggested him a little. One expected nothing of him, no purity of phrase, nor swift edged thought. Yet the conviction grew that he had been back somewhere, back to some table of the gods, spread in a field where there is no noise, and that he belonged forever to the guests with whom he had eaten. Meanwhile he was simple and frank, and what he could tell he would tell to anyone. He had not the suburban reticence. Ansel asked him. Why did Mrs. Failing turn you out of cat-over? I should like to hear that too. Because she was tired of me, because again I couldn't keep quiet over the farm hands. I ask you, is it right? He became incoherent. Ansel caught, and they grow old, they don't play games, it ends they can't play. An illustration emerged. Take a kitten, if you fool about with her she goes on playing well into a cat. But Mrs. Failing minded no mice being caught. Mice? said the young man blankly. What I was going to say is that someone was jealous of my being at cat-over. I'll mention no names, but I fancy it was Mrs. Silt. I'm sorry for her if it was. Anyhow, she set Mrs. Failing against me. It came on the top of other things, and out I went. What did Mrs. Silt, whose name I don't mention, say? He looked guilty. I don't know. Easy enough to find something to say. The point is that she said something. You know, Mr. I don't know your name. Mine's Wonham, but I am more grateful than I can put it over this tobacco. I mean, you ought to know there is another side to this quarrel. It's wrong, but it's there. Ansel told him not to be uneasy. He had already guessed that there might be another side. But he could not make out why Mr. Wonham should have come straight from the aunt to the nephew. They were now sitting on the upturned seat. What we want, a good deal shattered, lay between them. On account of above-mentioned reasons, there was a row. I don't know, you can guess a style of thing. She wanted to treat me to the colonies and had up the parson to talk soft-sodder and make out that a boundless continent was a place for a lad like me. I said I can't run up to the rings without getting tired, nor gallop a horse out of this view without tiring it, so what is the point of a boundless continent? Then I saw that she was frightened of me and bluffed a bit more, and in the end I was nipped. She caught me, just like her, when I had nothing on but flannels and was coming into the house, having licked the catarch team. She stood up in the doorway between those stone pilasters and said, No, never again, and behind her was Willbram, whom I tried to turn out in the gardener and poor old Layton, who hates being hurt. She said there's a hundred pounds for you at the London Bank and as much more in December.  I didn't care really, I only said it on the off chance of hurting her. Sure enough she caught on to the door handle being lame and said, I can't, I promised, I don't really want to. And Willbram did stare. Then she's very queer. She burst out laughing and went for the packet after all, and we heard her laugh through the windows she got it. She rolled it at me down the steps and she says, A leaf out of the eternal comedy for you, Stefan, or something of that sort. I opened it as I walked down the drive, she laughing always and catching on to the handle of the front door. Of course it wasn't comic at all. But down in the village there were both cricket teams, already a little tight and the mad plumber shouting rites of men. They knew I was turned out. We did have a row and kept it up too. They dare not touch Willbram's windows, but there isn't much class left up at cat-over. When you start it's worth going on, but in the end I had to cut. They subscribed a bob here and a bob there, and these are Fleet Thomsons Sundays. I sent a line to Layton not to forward my own things, I don't fancy them, they aren't really mine. He did not mention his great symbolic act performed, it is to be feared, when he was rather drunk and the friendly policeman was looking the other way. He had cast all his flannels into the little mill pond and then waded himself through the dark cold water to the new clothes on the other side. Someone had flung his pipe on his packet after him. The packet had fallen short. For this reason it was wet when he handed it to Ansel and ink that had been dry for 23 years had begun to run again. I wondered if you're right about the hundred pounds, said Ansel gravely. It is pleasant to be proud, but it is unpleasant to die in the night through not having any tobacco. But I'm not proud. Look how I've taken your pouch. The hundred pounds was— well, can't you see yourself? It was quite different. It was, so to speak, inconvenient for me to take the hundred pounds. Or look again how I took a shilling from a boy who earns nine bob a week. Proves pretty conclusively I'm not proud. Ansel saw it was useless to argue. He perceived, beneath a slatternly use of words, the men, buttoned up in them, just as his body was buttoned up in a shoddy suit, and he wondered more than ever that such a man should know the elliots. He looked at the face which was frank, proud, and beautiful, if truth is beauty. Of mercy or tact such a face knew little. It might be coarse, but it had in it nothing vulgar or wantonly cruel. May I read these papers? He said. Of course. Oh yes, didn't I say? I'm Ricky's half-brother. Come here to tell him the news. He doesn't know. There it is, put shortly for you. I was saying, though, that I bolted in the dark, slept in the rifle-butts above Salisbury, the sheds where they keep the cardboard men, you know, never locked up as they ought to be. I turned the whole place upside down to teach them. Here is your packet again. Sadanso, thank you. How interesting. He rose from the seat and turned towards Dunwood House. He looked at the bow-windows, the cheap picturesque gables, the terracotta dragons clawing a dirty sky. He listened to the clink of plates and to the voice of Mr. Pembroke, taking one of his innumerable roll-calls. He looked at the bed of lobilias. How interesting. What else was there to say?  To him those names on the moistened paper were mere antiquities. He was neither proud of them nor ashamed. A man must have parents, or he cannot enter the delightful world. A man, if he has a brother, may reasonably visit him, for they may have interests in common. He continued his narrative, how in the night he had heard the clocks, how at daybreak, instead of entering the city, he had struck eastward to save money, while Ansel still looked at the house and found that all his imagination and knowledge could lead him no farther than this. How interesting. And what do you think of that for holy horror? For a what? said Ansel, his thoughts far away. This man I am telling you about who gave me a lift towards Andover, who said I was a blot on God's earth. One o'clock struck, it was strange that neither of them had had any summons from the house. He said I ought to be ashamed of myself. He said I'll not be the means of bringing shame to an honest gentleman and lady.  I said I knew what I was about. Rikki and Agnes are properly educated, which leads people to look at things straight and not go screaming about blots. A man like me was just a little reading at odd hours. I've got so far and Rikki has been through Cambridge. And Mrs. Elliot? Oh, she won't mind, and I told the man so, but he kept on saying, I'll not be the means of bringing shame to an honest gentleman and lady, until I got out of his rotten cart. His eye watched the man, a nonconformist driving away over God's earth. I caught the train by running. I got to Waterloo. Here the parlor maid fluttered towards them. Would Mr. Juan him come in? Mrs. Elliot would be glad to see him now. Mrs. Elliot? cried Ansel. Not Mr. Elliot. It's all the same, said Stefan, and moved towards the house. You see, I only left my name. They don't know why I've come. Perhaps Mr. Elliot seized me, meanwhile. The parlor maid looked blank. Mr. Elliot had not said so. He had been with Mrs. Elliot and Mr. Pembroke in the study. Now the gentleman had gone upstairs. All right, I can wait. After all, Ricky was treating him as he had treated Ricky, as one in the grave, to whom it is futile to make any loving motion. Gone upstairs to brush his hair for dinner. The irony of the situation appealed to him strongly. It reminded him of the Greek drama, where the actors know so little and the spectators so much. But by the by, he called after Stefan. I think I ought to tell you, don't... What is it? Don't... Then he was silent. He had been tempted to explain everything, to tell the fellow how things stood, that he must avoid this if he wanted to attain that, that he must break the news to Ricky gently, that he must have at least one battle royal with Agnes. But it was contrary to his own spirit to coach people. He held the human soul to be a very delicate thing, which can receive eternal damage from a little patronage. Stefan must go into the house simply as himself. For thus alone would he remain there. I ought to knock my pipe out, was that it?  He hesitated, torn between propriety and desire, then he followed the parlour made into the house, smoking. As he entered the dinner-bell rang, and there was a sound of rushing feet, which died away into shuffling and silence. Through the window of the boy's dining hall came the colourless voice of Ricky. Benedictus benedicat Ansel prepared himself to witness the second act of the drama, forgetting that all this world, and not part of it, is a stage. END OF CHAPTER XXVI The parlour made took Mr. Wohnham to the study. He had been in the drawing-room before, but had got bored, and so had strolled out into the garden. Now he was in better spirits, as a man ought to be who has knocked down a man. As he passed through the hall, he sparred at the teak monkey, and hung his cap on the bust of Hermes, and he greeted Mrs. Elliott with a pleasant clap of laughter. Oh! I've come with the most tremendous news! He cried. She bowed, but did not shake hands, which rather surprised him. But he never troubled over details. He seldom watched people, and never thought that they were watching him. Nor could he guess how much it meant to her that he should enter her presence smoking. Had she not said once that cat over— Oh! Please smoke! I love the smell of a pipe. Would you sit down, exactly there, please? She placed him at a large table, opposite an ink pot, and a pad of blotting paper. Will you tell me your tremendous news to me? My brother and my husband are giving the boys their dinner. Ah! said Stefan, who had neither time nor money for breakfast in London. I told him not to wait for me. So he came to the point at once. He trusted this handsome woman, his strength, and his youth called to hers, expecting no prudish response. It's very odd. It is that I'm Ricky's brother. I've just found out. I've come to tell you all. Yes. He felt in his pocket for the papers. Half-brother I ought to have said. Yes. I'm illegitimate, legally speaking. That is, I've been turned out of cat over. I haven't a penny. I... There is no occasion to inflict the details. Her face, which had been an even brown, began to flush slowly in the centre of her cheeks. The colour spread till all that he saw of her was suffused, and she turned away. He thought he had shocked her, and so did she. Neither knew that the body can be insincere and express not the emotions we feel, but those that we should like to feel. In reality she was quite calm, and her dislike of him had nothing emotional in it as yet. You see, he began. He was determined to tell the fidgety story, for the sooner it was over, the sooner they would have something to eat. Delicacy he lacked, and his sympathies were limited. But such as they were, they rang true. He put no decorous phantom between him and his desires. I do see. I have seen for two years. She sat down at the head of the table, where there was another ink pot. Into this she dipped a pen. I have seen everything, Mr. Wonham, who you are, how you have behaved at cat over, how you must have treated Mrs. Failing yesterday, and now. Her voice became very grave. I see why you have come here, penniless. Before you speak, we know what you will say. His mouth fell open, and he laughed so merrily that it might have given her a warning, but she was thinking how to follow up her first success. And I thought I was bringing tremendous news. He cried. I only twisted it out of Mrs. Failing last night, and Ricky knows too. We have known for two years. But come by the by, if you've known for two years. How is it you didn't?  You aren't ashamed, he asked, half rising from his chair. You aren't like the men towards Andover. Please, please sit down, said Agnes, in the even tones she used when speaking to the servants. Let us not discuss side issues. I am a horribly direct person, Mr. Wilnhem. I go always straight to the point. She opened a checkbook. I am afraid I shall shock you for how much. He was not attending. There is the paper we suggest you shall sign. She pushed towards him a pseudo-legal document just composed by Herbert. In consideration of the sum of, I agreed to perpetual silence to restrain from libelous, never to molest the said Friedrich Elliot by intruding. His brain was not quick. He read the document over twice, and he could still say, But what's that check for? It is my husband's. He signed for you as soon as we heard you were here. We guessed you had come to be silenced. Here is his signature, but he has left the filling in for me. For how much? I will cross it, shall I? You will just have started a banking account if I understand Mrs. Failing rightly. It is not quite accurate to say you are penniless. I heard from her just before you returned from your cricket. She allows you two hundred a year, I think. But this additional sum shall I date the check Saturday or for tomorrow. At last he found words. Knocking his pipe out on the table, he said slowly, Here's a very bad mistake. It is quite possible, retorted Agnes. She was glad she had taken the offensive instead of waiting till he began his blackmailing, as had been the advice of Ricky. Aunt Emily had said that very spring one's only hope with Stephanie's start bullying first. Here he was, quite bewildered, smearing the pipe ashes with his thumb. He asked to read the document again. A stamp and all, he remarked. They had anticipated that his claim would exceed two pounds. I see. All right, it takes a fool a minute. Never mind, I've made a bad mistake. You refuse, she exclaimed, for he was standing at the door. Then to your worst, we defy you. That's all right, Mrs. Elliott, he said roughly. I don't want a scene with you, nor yet with your husband. We'll say no more about it. It's all right. I mean no harm. But your signature, then, you must sign. You— He pushed past her and said as he reached for his cap. There, that's all right. It's my mistake. I'm sorry. He spoke like a farmer who has failed to sell a sheep. His manner was utterly prosaic, and up to the last she thought he had not understood her. But it's money we offer you. She informed him and then darted back to the study, believing for one terrible moment that he had picked up the blank check. When she returned to the hall, he had gone. He was walking down the road rather quickly. At the corner he cleared his throat, spat into the gutter, and disappeared. There's an odd finish, she thought. She was puzzled and determined to recast the interview a little when she related it to Ricky. She had not succeeded, for the paper was still unsigned. But she had so cowed Stefan that he would probably rest content with these two hundred a year and never come troubling them again. Clever management. For one knew him to be rapacious. She had heard tales of him lending to the poor and exacting repayment to the uttermost farthing. He had also stolen at school. Moderately triumphant she heard into the side garden. She had just remembered Ansel. She, not Ricky, had received his card. Oh, Mr. Ansel. She exclaimed, awaking him from some daydream. Haven't either Ricky or Herbert been out to you? Now do come into dinner to show you aren't offended. You will find all of us assembled in the boy's dining hall. To her annoyance he accepted. That is, if the Jacksons are not expecting you. The Jacksons did not matter if he might brush his clothes and bathe his lip he would like to come. Oh, what has happened to you? And oh, my pretty Lobelias! He replied, I am momentary contact with reality, and she, who did not look for sense in his remarks, hurried away to the dining hall to announce him. The dining hall was not unlike the preparation room. There was the same parquet floor and dado of shiny pitch pine. On its walls also were imperial portraits, and over the harmonium to which they sang the evening hymns was spread the Union Jack. Sunday dinner the most pompous meal of the week was in progress. Her brother sat at the head of the high table, her husband at the head of the second. To each she gave a reassuring nod and went to her own seat, which was among the junior boys. The beef was being carried out, she stopped it. Mr. Ansel is coming, she called. Herbert, there is more room by you, sit up straight boys. The boys sat up straight, and a respectful hush spread over the room. Here he is, called rickety cheerfully, taking his cue from his wife. Oh, this is splendid! Ansel came in.  The boys tittered suitably. The atmosphere seemed normal. Even Herbert, though longing to hear what had happened to the blackmailer, gave adequate greeting to their guest. Come in, Mr. Ansel, come here, take us as you find us. I understood, said Stewart, that I should find you all. Mrs. Elliott told me I should. On that understanding I came. It was at once evident that something had gone wrong. Ansel looked around the room carefully, then clearing his throat and ruffling his hair he began. I cannot see the man with whom I have talked intimately for an hour in your garden. The worst of it was they were also far from him and from each other, each at the end of a table full of inquisitive boys. The two masters looked at Agnes for information, for her reassuring nod had not told them much. She looked hopelessly back. I cannot see this man, repeated Ansel, who remained by the harmonium in the midst of astonished waitresses. Is he to be given no lunch? Herbert broke the silence by fresh greetings. Rican knew that the contest was lost and that his friend had sided with the enemy. It was the kind of thing he would do. One must face the catastrophe quietly and with dignity. Perhaps Ansel would have turned on his heel and left behind him only fake suspicions if Mrs. Elliott had not tried to talk him down. Man! she cried. What man? Oh, I know! Terrible bore! Did he get a hold of you? Thus committing their first blunder and causing Ansel to say to Ricky, Have you seen your brother? I have not. Have you been told he was here? Ricky's answer was inaudible.  Let us continue this conversation later. Continue it. My dear man, how can we until you know what I'm talking about? You must thank me mad, but I tell you solemnly that you have a brother of whom you've never heard and that he was in this house ten minutes ago. He paused impressively. Your wife has happened to see him first.  There was a murmur of alarm. One of the prefects rose and Ansel sat his back to the wall, quite ready for a battle. For two years he had waited for his opportunity. He would hit out Mrs. Elliott like any plow boy now that it had come. Ricky said, There is a slight misunderstanding. I, like my wife, have known what there is to know for two years. A dignified rebuff, but their second blunder. Exactly, said Agnes. Now I think Mr. Ansel had better go. Go! exploded Ansel. I have everything to say yet. I beg your pardon, Mrs. Elliott. I am concerned with you no longer. This man, he turned to the avenue of faces. This man who teaches you has a brother. He has known of him two years and been ashamed.  Ricky, it's you, not Mrs. Silt, who must have sent tales of him to your aunt.  It's you who have ordered him to be ruined today. Now Herbert arose. Out of my sight, sir, but have it from me first that Ricky and his aunt have both behaved most generously. No, no, Agnes, I'll not be interrupted. Garbled versions must not get about. If the one Ham man is not satisfied now, he must be insatiable. He cannot leave you blackmail on us forever. Sir, I give you two minutes, then you will be expelled by force. Two minutes? Sang Ansel, I can say a great deal in that. He put one foot on a chair and held his arms over the quivering room. He seemed transfigured into a Hebrew prophet passionate for satire and the truth. Oh, keep quiet for two minutes, he cried, and I'll tell you something you'll be glad to hear.  Don't be afraid. I bring good news. You'll never see him nor anyone like him again. I must speak very plainly for you are all three fools. I don't want you to say afterwards. Poor Mr. Ansel tried to be clever. Generally I don't mind, but I should mind today. Please listen. Stefan is a bully. He drinks. He knocks one down, but he would sooner die than take money from people he did not love. Perhaps he will die, for he has nothing but a few pens that the poor gave him, and some tobacco which to my eternal glory he accepted from me. Please listen again. Why did he come here? Because he thought you would love him, and was ready to love you.  He would sooner die now than say you were his brother. Please listen again. Now, Stuart, don't go on like that. Cedric, bitterly. It's easy enough to preach when you're an outsider. You would be more charitable if such a thing had happened to yourself. Easy enough to be unconventional when you haven't suffered and know nothing of the facts. You love anything out of the way, anything queer that doesn't often happen, and so you get excited over this. It's useless, my dear man. You have hurt me, but you will never upset me. As soon as you stop this ridiculous scene, we will finish our dinner. Spread the scandal. Add to it. I'm too old to mind such nonsense. I cannot help my father's disgrace on the one hand, nor on the other, while I have anything to do with his black guard of his son. So the secret was given to the world. Agnes might color at his speech. Herbert might calculate the effect of it on the entries for Dunwood House, but he cared for none of these things. Thank God. He was withered up at last. Please listen again, resumed Ansel. Please correct two slight mistakes, firstly. Stefan is one of the greatest people I have ever met. Secondly, he is not your father's son.  It was Ricky, not Ansel, who was carried from the hall, and it was Herbert who pronounced the blessing, benedicto benedicatur. A profound stillness succeeded the storm, and the boys, slipping away from their meal, told the news to the rest of the school, or put it in the letters they were writing home. End of Chapter 27, read by Gehende of Bautrack.com Chapter 28 Of The Longest Journey This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Longest Journey by E. M. Forster, Chapter 28 The soul has her own currency. She mints her spiritual coinage, and stamps it with the image of some beloved face. With it she pays her debts. With it she reckons, saying, This man has worth. This man is worthless. And in time she forgets its origin. It seems to her to be a thing unalterable, divine. But the soul can also have her bankruptcies. Perhaps she will be the richer in the end. In her agony she learns to reckon clearly. Fair as the coin may have been, it was not accurate, and though she knew it not, there were treasures that it could not buy. The face, however beloved, was mortal, and as liable as the soul herself to err. We do but shift responsibility by making a standard of the dead. Fair is indeed another coinage that bears on it not man's image, but God's. It is incorruptible, and the soul may trust it safely. It will serve her beyond the stars. But it cannot give us friends, or the embrace of a lover, or the touch of children, for with our fellow mortals it has no concern. It cannot even give the joys we call trivial, fine weather, the pleasures of meat and drink, bathing and the hot sand afterwards, running, dreamless sleep. Have we learnt the true discipline of a bankruptcy if we turn to such a coinage as this? Will it really profit us so much if we save our souls and lose the whole world? For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Longest Journey by E. M. Forster Chapter 29 Robert There is no occasion to mention his surname. He was a young farmer of some education who tried to coax the aged soil of Wiltshire scientifically, came to cat over on business and fell in love with Mrs. Elliot. She was there on her bridal visit, and he, an obscure nobody, was received by Mrs. Failing into the house and treated as her social equal. He was good looking in a bucolic way, and people sometimes mistook him for a gentleman until they saw his hands. He discovered this, and one of the slow gentle jokes he played on society was to talk upon some cultured subject with his hands behind his back and then suddenly reveal them. Do you go in for boating, the lady would ask, and then he explained that those particular wheels were made by the handles of the plow, upon which she became extremely interested but found an early opportunity of talking to someone else. He played this joke on Mrs. Elliot the first evening, not knowing that she observed him as he entered the room. He walked heavily, lifting his feet as if the carpet was furrowed, and he had no evening clothes. Everyone tried to put him at his ease, but she rather suspected that he was there already and envied him. They were introduced, and spoke of Byron, who was still fashionable. Out came his hands, the only rough hands in the drawing room, the only hands that had ever worked. She was filled with some strange approval, and liked him. After dinner they met again, to speak not of Byron but of manure. The other people were so clever and so amusing that it relieved her to listen to men who told her three times not to buy artificial manure already made, but if she would use it to make it herself at the last moment. Because the ammonia evaporated. Here were two packets of powder. Did they smell? No. Mixed them together and pour some coffee, an appalling smell at once burst forth, and everyone began to cough and cry. This was good for the earth when she felt sour, for he knew when the earth was ill. He knew too when she was hungry he spoke of her tantrums, the strange unscientific element in her that would baffle the scientists to the end of time. Study away Mrs. Elliot, he told her. Read all the books you can get hold of, but when it comes to the point, stroll out with a pipe in your mouth into a bit of guessing. As he talked, the earth became a living being, or rather a being with a living skin and manure no longer dirty stuff, but a symbol of regeneration and of the birth of life from life. So it goes on forever, she cried excitedly. He replied, not forever. In time the fire at the center will cool and nothing can go on then. He advanced into love with open eyes, slowly, heavily, just as he had advanced across the drawing-room carpet. But this time the bride did not observe his tread.  When he was close to her, so close, that it was difficult not to take her in his arms, he spoke to Mr. Failing and was at once turned out of cat-over. I'm sorry, said Mr. Failing, as he walked down the drive with his hand on his guest's shoulder. I had no notion you were that sort. Anyone who behaves like that has to stop at the form. Anyone. Anyone. He sighed heavily, not for any personal grievance, but because he saw how unruly, how barbaric is a soul of man. After all, this man was more civilized than most. Are you angry with me, sir? He called him sir, not because he was richer or cleverer or smarter, not because he had helped to educate him and had lent him money, but for a reason more profound, for the reason that there are gradations in heaven. I did think you, that a man like you wouldn't risk making people unhappy. My sister-in-law, I don't stop this to stop you loving her. Something else must do that. My sister-in-law, as far as I know, doesn't care for you one little bit. If you had said anything, if she had guessed that a chanced person was in this fearful state, you would simply have opened hell. A woman of her sort would have lost all. I knew that. Mr. Failing removed his hand. He was displeased. But something here, said Robert incoherently, this here he struck himself heavily on the heart. This here doing something so unusual makes it not matter what she loses. I... After silence he asked, Have I quite followed you, sir, in that business of the brotherhood of men? How do you mean? I thought love was to bring it about. Love of another man's wife? Sensual love? You have understood nothing, nothing. Then he was ashamed and cried. I understand nothing myself. For he remembered that sensual and spiritual are not easy words to use, that there are, perhaps, not two Aphrodites, but one Aphrodite with a Janus face. I only understand that you must try to forget her. I will not try. Promise me just this, then, not to do anything crooked. I'm straight, no boasting, but I couldn't do a crooked thing. No, not if I tried. And so appallingly straight was he in after years, that Mr. Failing wished that he had phrased the promise differently. Robert simply waited. He told himself that it was hopeless, but something deeper than himself declared that there was hope. He gave up drink, and kept himself in all ways clean, for he wanted to be worthy of her when the time came. Women seemed fond of him, and caused him to reflect with pleasure. They do run after me. There must be something in me. Good, I'd be done for if there wasn't. For six years he turned up the earth of Wildshire, and read books for the sake of his mind, and talked to gentlemen for the sake of their patois. And each year he wrote to cat over to take off his hat to Mrs. Elliot, and perhaps to speak to her about the crops. Mr. Failing was generally present, and it struck on either man that those dull little visits were so many words out of which a lonely woman might build sentences. Then Robert went to London on business. He chanced to see Mr. Elliot with a strange lady. The time had come. He became diplomatic, and called at Mr. Elliot's rooms to find things out. For if Mrs. Elliot was happier than he could ever make her, he could withdraw, and love her in renunciation. But if he could make her happier, he would love her in fulfilment. Mr. Elliot admitted him as a friend of his brother-in-laws, and felt very broad-minded as he did so. Robert, however, was a success. The youngish men there found him interesting, and liked to shock him with tales of naughty London and naughty Paris. They spoke of experience and sensations and seeing life, and when a smile plowed over his face concluded that his prudery was vanquished, he saw that they were much less vicious than they supposed. One boy had obviously read his sensations in a book. But he could pardon vice. What he could not pardon was triviality, and he hoped that no decent woman could pardon it, either. There grew up in him a cold, steady anger against these silly people who thought it advanced to be shocking, and who described as something particularly choice and educational, things that he had understood and fought against for years. He inquired after Mrs. Elliot and a boy tittered. It seemed that she did not know, that she lived in a remote suburb, taking care of a skinny baby. I shall call some time or other, said Robert. Do, said Mr. Elliot, smiling, and next time he saw his wife, he congratulated her on her rustic admirer. She had suffered terribly. She had asked for bread and had been given, not even a stone. People talk of hungering for the ideal, but there is another hunger quite as divine for facts. She had asked for facts and had been giving views, emotional standpoints, attitudes towards life. To a woman who believed that facts are beautiful, that the living world is beautiful beyond the laws of beauty, that manure is neither gross nor ludicrous, that a fire not eternal glows at the heart of the earth, it was intolerable to be put off with what the Elliot's called philosophy, and if she refused to be told that she had no sense of humor. Tarrying into the Elliot family, it had sounded so splendid, for she was a penniless child with nothing to offer, and the Elliot's held their heads high. For what reason? What had they ever done except say sarcastic things and limp and to be refined? Mr. Failing suffered too, but she suffered more in as much as Friedrich was more impossible than Emily. He did not like her, he practically lived apart, and was not even faithful or polite. These were grave faults, but they were human ones. She could even imagine them in a man she loved. What she could never love was a dilettante. Robert brought her an armful of sweet peas. He laid it on the table, put his hands behind his back, and kept them there till the end of the visit. She knew quite well why he had come, and though she also knew that he would fail, she loved him too much to snub him or to stare in virtuous indignation. Why have you come, she asked gravely, and why have you brought me so many flowers? My garden is full of them, he answered. Sweet peas need picking down, and, generally speaking, flowers are plentiful in July. She broke his present into bunches, so much for the drawing room, so much for the nursery, so much for the kitchen, and her husband's room. He would be down for the night. The most beautiful she would keep for herself. Presently he said, Your husband is no good. I've watched him for a week. I am thirty, and not what you call hasty, as I used to be, or thinking that nothing matters like the French. No, I'm a plain Britisher. Yet, I—I've begun wrong, and, Mrs. Elliott, I should have said that I've thought chiefly of you for six years, and that, though I talk here so respectfully, if I won't unhook to my hands. There was a pause, then she said with great sweetness, Thank you. I'm glad you love me. And rang the bell. What have you done that for? he cried. Because you must now leave the house, and never enter it again. I don't go alone, and he began to get furious. Her voice was still sweet, but strained, laying it too, as she said, You either go now with my thanks and blessing, or else you go with the police. I am Mrs. Elliott. We'd need not discuss, Mr. Elliott. I am Mrs. Elliott, and if you make one step towards me, I give you in charge. But the maid answered the bell, not of the drawing-room, but of the front door. They were joined by Mr. Elliott, who held out his hand with much urbanity. It was not taken. He looked quickly at his wife and said, Am I Detro? There was a long silence. At last she said, Friedrich, turn this man out. My love, why? Robert said that he loved her. Then I am Detro. Said Mr. Elliott, smoothing out his gloves. He would give these sudden barbarians a lesson. My handsome is waiting at the door. Pray, make use of it. Don't, she cried almost affectionately. Dear Friedrich, it isn't a play. Just tell this man to go or send for the police. On the contrary, it is French comedy of the best type. Don't you agree, sir, that the police would be an inartistic error? He was perfectly calm and collected, whereas they were in a pitiable state. Turn him out at once. She cried. He has insulted your wife. Save me, save me. She clung to her husband and wept. He was going. I had managed him. He would never have known. Mr. Elliott repulsed her. If you don't feel inclined to start at once, he said with easy civility, let us have a little tea, my dear sir. Do forgive me for not shooting you. N'avance charge to Soleil. Please don't look so nervous. Please do unclasp your hands. He was alone. That's all right, he exclaimed, and strolled to the door. The handsome was disappearing around the corner. That's all right, he repeated, in more quavering tones as he returned to the drawing room and saw that it was littered with sweet peas. Their color got on his nerves. Magenta crimson, magenta crimson. He tried to pick them up and they escaped. He tried them underfoot and they multiplied and danced in the triumph of summer like a thousand butterflies. The train had left when he got to the station. He followed on to London and there he lost all traces. At midnight he began to realize that his wife could never belong to him again. Mr. Failing had a letter from Stockholm. It was never known what impulse sent them there. I'm sorry about it all, but it was the only way. The letter censored the law of England which obliges us to behave like this or else we should never get married. I shall come back to face things. She will not come back till she is my wife. He must bring an action soon or else we shall try one against him. It seems all very unconventional, but it is not really. It is only a difficult start.  We want to be just ordinary people and make the farm pay and not be noticed all our lives. And they were capable of living as they wanted. The class difference which so intrigued Mr. Failing meant very little to them. It wasn't there, but so were other things. They both cared for work and living in the open and for not speaking unless they had got something to say. Their love of beauty, like their love for each other, was not dependent on detail. It grew not from the nerves but from the soul. I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars. And the pismire is equally perfect and a grain of sand and the egg of the wren. And the tree toad is a shedovre for the highest and the running blackberry would adorn the parlours of heaven. They had never read these lines and would have thought them nonsense if they had. They did not dissect. Indeed, they could not. But she, at all events, divined that more than perfect health and perfect weather more than personal love had gone to the making of those seventeen days. Ordinary people cried Mrs. Failing on hearing the letter. At that time she was young and daring. Why, they are divine. They are forces of nature. They are as ordinary as volcanoes. We all knew my brother was disgusting and wanted him to be blown to pieces, but we never thought it would happen. Do look at the thing bravely and say, as I do, that they are guiltless in the sight of God. I think they are, replied her husband, but they are not guiltless in the sight of man. You conventional, she exclaimed in disgust. What they have done means misery not only for themselves but for others. For your brother though you will not think of him. For the little boy did you think of him, and perhaps for another child who will have the whole world against him, if it knows. They have sinned against society, and you do not diminish the misery by proving that society is better foolish. It is the saddest truth, I have yet perceived, that the beloved republic, here she took up a book, of which Swineburn speaks, she put the book down, will not be brought about by love alone. It will approach with no flourish of trumpets and have no declaration of independence. Self-sacrifice and, or still, self-mutilation are the things that sometimes help it most, and that is why we should start for Stockholm this evening. He waited for her indignation to subside, and then continued, I don't know whether it can be hushed up. I don't yet know whether it ought to be hushed up. But we ought to provide the opportunity. There is no scandal yet. If we go, it is just possible, there never will be any. We must talk over the whole thing and, and lie, interrupted Mrs. Failing, who hated travel, and see how to avoid the greatest unhappiness. There was to be no scandal. By the time they arrived, Robert had been drowned. Mrs. Elliott described how they had gone swimming, and how, since he always lived inland, the great waves had tired him. They had raced for the open sea. What are your plans? He asked. I bring you a message from Friedrich. I heard him call. She continued, but I thought he was laughing. When I turned it was too late. He put his hands behind his back and sank, for he would only have drowned me with him. I should have done the same. Mrs. Failing was thrilled and kissed her. But Mr. Failing knew that life does not continue heroic for long, and he gave her the message from her husband. Would she come back to him? To his intense astonishment, at first, his regret, she replied, I will think about it. If I loved him the very least bit I should say no.  But it is simply a question of beating time till I die. Nothing that is coming matters. I may as well sit in his drawing room and dust his furniture, since he has suggested it. And Mr. Elliott, though he made certain stipulations, was positively glad to see her.  She had not. She had been with his sister in Sweden. In a half-miraculous way the matter was hushed up. Even the silt's only scented something strange. When Stefan was born it was broad. When he came to England it was as the child of a friend of Mr. Failings. Mrs. Elliott returned unsuspected to her husband. But though things can be hushed up, there is no such thing as beating time. And as the years passed she realized her terrible mistake. When her lover sank, eluding her last embrace, she thought as Agnes was to think after her, that her soul had sunk with him and that never again should she be capable of earthly love. Nothing mattered.  Then Stefan was born and altered her life. She could still love people passionately. She still drew strength from the heroic past. Yet to keep to her bond she must see this son only as a stranger. She was protected by the conventions and must pay them their fee. And a curious thing happened. Her second child drew her towards her first. She began to love Ricky also and to be more than useful to him. And as her love revived, so did her capacity for suffering. Life, more important, grew more bitter. She minded her husband more, not less. And when at last he died, and she saw a glorious autumn, beautiful with the voices of boys who should call her mother. The end came for her as well, before she could remember the grave in the alien north and the dust that would never return to the deer fields that had given it. End of chapter 29, read by Cain Day of Bartrack.com. Chapter 30 of The Longest Journey This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Longest Journey by E. M. Forster Chapter 30 Stefan, the son of these people, had one instinct that troubled him. At night, especially out of doors, it seemed rather strange that he was alive. The dry grass pricked his cheek. The fields were invisible and mute. And here was he, throwing stones at the darkness or smoking a pipe. The stones vanished, the pipe would burn out. But he would be here in the morning, when the sun rose, and he would bathe and run in the mist. He was proud of his good circulation, and in the morning it seemed quite natural. But at night, why should there be this difference between him and the acres of land that cooled all round him until the sun returned? What lucky chance had heated him up and sent him warm and lovable into a passive world. He had other instincts, but these gave him no trouble. He simply gratified each as it occurred, provided he could do so without grave injury to his fellows. But the instinct to wander at the night was not to be thus appeased. At first he had lived under the care of Mr. Failing, the only person to whom his mother spoke freely, the only person who had treated her neither as a criminal nor as a pioneer. In their rare but intimate conversations she had asked him to educate her son. I will teach him Latin, he answered. The rest such a boy must remember. Latin at all events was a failure, who could attend to Virgil when the sound of the thresher arose, and you knew that the stack was decreasing and that rats rushed more plentifully each moment to their doom. But he was fond of Mr. Failing and cried when he died. Mrs. Elliot, a pleasant woman, died soon after. There was something fatal in the order of these deaths. Mr. Failing had made no provision for the boy and his will. His wife had promised to see to this. Then came Mr. Elliot's death, and before the new home was created the sudden death of Mrs. Elliot. She also left Stefan no money. She had none to leave. Chance threw him into the power of Mrs. Failing. Let things go on as they are, she thought.  After my death, well the papers will be found after my death and they can meet then. I like the idea of their mutual ignorance. It is amusing. He was then twelve. With a few brief intervals of school he lived in Wiltshire until he was driven out. Life had two distinct sides, the drawing room and the other. In the drawing room people talked a good deal, laughing as they talked, being clever they did not care for animals. One man had never seen a hedgehog. In the other life people talked and laughed separately, or even did neither. On the whole, in spite of the wet and gamekeepers, this life was preferable. He knew where he was. He glanced at the boy or later at the man and behaved accordingly. There was no law. The policeman was negligible. Nothing bound him but his own word, and he gave that sparingly. It is impossible to be romantic when you have your heart's desire, and such a boy disappointed Mrs. Failing greatly. His parents had met for one brief embrace, had found one little interval between the power of the rulers of this world and the power of death. He was the child of poetry and of rebellion and poetry should run in his veins. But he lived to near things he loved to seem poetical. Parted from them he might yet satisfy her and stretch out his hands with a pagan's yearning. As it was, he only rode her horses and trespassed and bathed and worked for no obvious reason upon her fields. Affection should not believe in and made no attempt to mold him, and he, for his part, was very content to harden untouched into a man. His parents had given him excellent gifts, health, sturdy limbs, and a face not ugly, gifts that his habits confirmed. They had also given him a cloudless spirit, the spirit of the seventeen days in which he was created. But they had not given him the spirit of their six years of waiting, and love for one person was never to be the greatest thing he knew. Philosophy had postponed the quarrel between them. In curious about his personal origin, he had a certain interest in our eternal problems. The interest never became a passion, it sprang out of his physical growth, and was soon merged in it again. Or, as he put it himself, I must get fixed up before starting. He was soon fixed up as a materialist, then he tore up the six-penny reprints and never mused Mrs. Failing so much again. About the time he fixed himself up, he took to drink. He knew of no reason against it. The instinct was in him, and it hurt nobody. Here, as elsewhere, his motions were decided, and he passed it once from roaring jollity to silence. For those who live on the fuddled borderland, who crawl home by the railings and maunder repentance in the morning, he had a biting contempt. A man must take his tumble and his headache. He was, in fact, as little disgusting as is conceivable, and hitherto he had not strained his constitution or his will, nor did he get drunk as often as Agnes suggested. The real quarrel gathered elsewhere. Presentable people have run wild in their youth, but the hour comes when they turn from their borish company to hire things. This hour never came for Stefan. Somewhat a bully by nature, he kept where his powers would tell, and continued to quarrel and play with the men he had known as boys. He prolonged to their youth unduly. They won't settle down, said Mr. Wilbram, to his wife. They're wanting things. It's the germ of a trade's union. I shall get rid of a few of the worst. Then Stefan rushed up to Mrs. Failing and worried her. It wasn't fair. So and so as a good sort he did his work, keen about it. No. Why should he be? Why should he be keen about somebody else's land, but keen enough and very keen on football? She laughed and said a word about so and so to Mr. Wilbram. Mr. Wilbram blazed up. How could the farm go on without discipline? How could there be discipline if Mr. Stefan interfered? Mr. Stefan liked power. He spoke to the men like one of themselves and pretended it was all equality, but it took care to come out top, natural, of course, that being a gentleman he should, but not natural for a gentleman to loiter all day with poor people and learn their work and put wrong notions into their heads and carry their newfangled grievances to Mrs. Failing, which partly accounted for the deficit on the past year. She rebuked Stefan. Then he lost his temper, was rude to her, and insulted Mr. Wilbram. The worst days of Mr. Failing's rule seemed to be returning, and Stefan had a practical experience and also a taste for the battle that her husband had never possessed. He drew up a list of grievances some absurd, others fundamental. No newspapers in the reading room. You could put a plate under the thompson's door, no level cricket pitch, no allotments, and no time to work in them. Mrs. Wilbram's knife boy underpaid. Aren't you a little unwise? She asked, coldly. I am more bored than you think over the farm. She was wanting to correct the proofs of the book and rewrite the prefectory memoir. In her irritation she wrote to Agnes. Agnes replied sympathetically, and Mrs. Failing, clever as she was, fell into the power of the younger woman. They discussed him at first as a wretchful boy, then he got drunk and somehow it seemed more criminal. All that she needed now was a personal grievance which Agnes casually supplied. Though vindictive she was determined to treat him well and thought with satisfaction of our distant colonies. But he burst into an odd passion. He would sooner starve than leave England. Why, she asked, are you in love? He picked up a lump of the chalk they were by the arbor and made no answer. The vicar murmured, it is not like going abroad, creature Britain, blood is thicker than water. A lump of chalk broke her drawing-room window on the Saturday. Thus Stefan left Wiltshire, half blackguard, half martyr, to not brand him as a socialist. He had no quarrel with society nor any particular belief in people because they are poor. He only held the creed of here am I and there are you, and therefore class distinctions were trivial things to him, and life no decor scheme, but a personal combat or a personal truce. For the same reason ancestry also is trivial, and a man not the dearer because the same woman was mother to them both. Yet it seemed worthwhile to go to Sauston with the news. Perhaps nothing would come of it, perhaps friendly intercourse and a home while he looked around. When they wronged him, he walked quietly away. He never thought of allotting the blame, nor or appealing to Ansel who still sat brooding in the side garden. He only knew that educated people could be horrible and that a clean liver must never enter Dunwood House again. The air seemed stuffy. He spat in the gutter. Was it yesterday he had lain in the rifle butts over Salisbury? Slightly aggrieved, he wondered why he was not back there now. I ought to have written first, he reflected. Here is my money gone. I cannot move. The Alliots have, as it were, practically robbed me. That was the only grudge he retained against them. Their suspicions and insults were to him as the curses of a tramp whom he passed by the wayside. They were dirty people, not his sort. He summed up the complicated tragedy as a taken. While Ricky was being carried upstairs, and while Ansel had he known it was dashing about the streets for him, he lay under a railway arch trying to settle his plans. He must pay back the friends who had given him shillings and clothes. He thought of Flea, whose Sundays he was spoiling, poor Flea who ought to be in them now shining before his girl. I daresay he'll be ashamed and not go to see her and then she'll take the other man. He was also very hungry. That warm Mrs. Elliott would be through her lunch by now. Trying his braces round him and tearing up those old wet documents, he stepped forth to make money. A villainous young brute he looked. His clothes were dirty and he had lost the spring of the morning. Touching the walls, frowning, talking to himself at times, he slouched disconsolately northwards no wonder that some tawdry girls screamed at him or that matrons averted their eyes as they hurried to afternoon church. He wandered from one suburb to another till he was among people more villainous than himself, who bought his tobacco from him and sold him food. Again the neighborhood went up and families instead of sitting on their doorsteps would sit behind thick muslin curtains. Again it would go down into a more avowed despair. Far into the night he wandered until he came to a solemn river majestic as a stream in hell. Therein were gathered the waters of central England, those that flow off hind head, off the shilterns, off Wiltshire north of the plain. Therein they were made intolerable ere they reached the sea. But the waters he had known escaped. Their course lay southward into the avon by forests and beautiful fields, even swift, even pure, until they mirrored the tower of Christchurch and greeted the ramparts of the Isle of Wight. Of these he thought for a moment as he crossed the Black River and entered the heart of the modern world. Here he found employment, he was not hampered by gentile traditions, and as it was near Hoarder Day, managed to get taken on at a furniture warehouse. He moved people from the suburbs to London, from London to the suburbs, from one suburb to another. His companions were hurried and querulous. In particular he loathed the foreman, a pious humbug who allowed no swearing, but indulged in something far more degraded, the cockney repartee. The London intellect so purred and shallow, like a stream that never reaches the ocean, disgusted him almost as much as the London physique, which, for all its dexterity, is not permanent and seldom continues into the third generation. His father, had he known it, had felt the same, for between Mr. Elliot and the foreman, the gulf of social, not spiritual, both spent their lives in trying to be clever, and Tony Failing had once put the thing into words, there's no such thing as a Londoner, he's only a countryman on the road to sterility. At the end of ten days he had saved scarcely anything. Once he passed the bank where a hundred pounds lay ready for him, but it was still inconvenient for him to take them. Then duty sent him to a suburb not very far from Sauston. In the evening a man who was driving a trap asked him to hold it, and by mistake tipped him a sovereign. Stefan called after him, but the man had a woman with him and wanted to show off, and though he had meant to tip a shilling and could not afford that, he shouted back that his sovereign was as good as any one's, and that if Stefan did not think so he could do various things and go to various places. On the action of this man much depends. Stefan changed the sovereign to a postal order and sent it off to the people at Cadford. It did not pay them back, but it paid them something, and he felt that his soul was free. A few shillings remained in his pocket. They would have paid his fare towards Wiltshire, a good county, but what should he do there? Who would employ him? Today the journey did not seem worthwhile. Tomorrow perhaps, he thought, and determined to spend the money on pleasure of another kind. Two pens went for a ride on an electric tram. From the top he saw the sun descend a disk with a dark red edge. The same sun was descending over Salisbury intolerably bright. Out of the golden haze a spire would be piercing, like a purple needle, then mists arose from the Avon and the other streams. Lamps flickered, but in the outer purity the villages were already slumbering. Salisbury is only a gothic upstart beside these. For generations they have come down to her to buy or to worship, and have found in her the reasonable crisis of their lives. But generations before she was built they were clinging to the soil and renewing it with sheep and dogs and men who found the crisis of their lives upon Stonehenge. The blood of these men ran in Steffen, the vigor they had won for him was as yet untarnished. Out on those downs they had united with rough women to make the thing he spoke of as himself. The last of them has rescued a woman of a different kind from streets and houses such as these. As the sun descended he got off the tram with a smile of expectation, a public house lay opposite, and a boy in a dirty uniform was already lighting its enormous lamp. His lips parted and he went in. Two hours later when Ricky and Herbert were going the rounds a brick came crashing at the study window. Herbert appeared into the garden and a hooligan slipped by him into the house, wrecked the hall, lurched up the stairs, fell against the banisters, balanced for a moment on his spine and slid over. Herbert called for the police. Ricky, who was upon the landing, caught the man by the knees and saved his life. What is it? cried Agnes emerging. It's Steffen come back, was the answer. Hello Steffen. Hello Steffen. For the son of his mother had come back to forgive him as she would have done to live with him as she had planned. He's drunk this time, said Agnes virally. She too had altered. The scandal was aging her and Ansel came to the house daily. Hello Steffen. But Steffen was now insensible. Steffen you live here. Good gracious me, interposed Herbert. My advice is that we all go to bed. The less said the better, while our nerves are in this state. Very well, Ricky. Of course, one of them sleeps the night if you wish. They carried the drunken mass into the spare room. A mass of scandal it seemed to one of them, a symbol of redemption to the other. Neither acknowledged it a man who would answer them back after a few hours' rest. Ansel thought he would never forgive me, said Ricky, for once he's wrong. Come to bed now, I think. And as Ricky laid his hand on the sleeper's hair, he added, you won't do anything foolish, will you?   Pardon me, dear boy, it is my turn to speak out. You thought it was your father and minded.  Surely you ought to mind more. I have been too far back, said Ricky gently. Ansel took me on a journey that was even new to him. We got behind right and wrong to a place where only one thing matters, that the beloved should rise from the dead. But you won't do anything rash. Why should I? Remember, poor Agnes, he stammered, I, I am the first to acknowledge that we might have pursued a different policy, but we are committed to it now. It makes no difference who son he is. I mean he is the same person. You and I and my sister stand or fall together. It was our agreement from the first. I hope. No more of these distressing scenes with her. There's a dear fellow. I assure you they make my heart bleed. Things will quiet down now. To bed now, I insist upon that much. Very well, said Ricky, and when they were in the passage, locked the door from the outside. We want no more muddles, he explained. Mr. Penbroke was left examining the hall. The bust of Hermes was broken. So was the pot of the palm. He could not go to bed without once more sounding Ricky. You'll do nothing rash, he called. The notion of him living here was, of course, a passing impulse. We three have adopted a common policy. Now you go away, called a voice that was almost flippant. I never did belong to that great sect whose doctrine is that each one should select. At least, I'm not going to belong to it any longer.  A good night's rest is what you need, threatened Herbert, and retired not to find one for himself. But Ricky slept. The guilt of months and the remorse of the last ten days had alike departed. He had thought that his life was poisoned, and lo, it was purified. He had cursed his mother, and Ansel had replied, You may be right, but you stand too near to settle. Step backwards. Pretend that it happened to me. Do you want me to curse my mother? Now step forward and see whether anything has changed. Something had changed. He had journeyed as on rare occasions a man must, till he stood behind right and wrong. On the banks of the gray torrent of life, love is the only flower. A little way up the stream, and a little way down, had Ricky glanced, and he knew that she whom he loved had risen from the dead, and might rise again. Come away. Let them die out. Let them die out. Surely that dream was a vision. Tonight also he hurried to the window to remember with a smile that Orion is not among the stars of June. Let me die out. She will continue, he murmured, and in making plans for Stefan's happiness he fell asleep. Next morning after breakfast he announced that his brother must live at Dunwood House. They were awed by the very moderation of his tone. There's nothing else to be done. Cadover's hopeless and a boy of those tendencies can't go drifting. There is also the question of a profession for him and his allowance. We have to thank Mr. Ansel for this, was all that Agnes could say, and I foresee disaster was the contribution of Herbert.  It has been one of our absurdities. Don't look so sad, Herbert. I'm sorry for you people, but he's sure to let us down easy. For his experience of drunkards and of Stefan was small. He supposed that he had come without malice to renew the offer of ten days ago. It is the end of Dunwood House. Ricky nodded and hoped not. Agnes, who was not looking well, began to cry. Oh, it is too bad, she complained, when I've saved you from him all these years. But he could not pity her, nor even sympathize with her wounded delicacy. The time for such nonsense was over. He would take his share of the blame. It was cant to assume it all. Perhaps he was over hard. He did not realize how large his share was, nor how his very virtues were to blame for her deterioration. If I had a girl I'd keep her in line is not the remark of a fool nor of a cad. Ricky had not kept his wife in line. He had shown her all the workings of his soul, mistaking this for love, and in consequence she was the worst woman after two years of marriage. And he, on this morning of freedom, was harder upon her than he need have been. The spare-room bell rang. Herbert had a painful struggle between curiosity and duty. For the bell for chapel was ringing also, and he must go through the drizzle to school. He promised to come up in the interval. Ricky, who had wrapped his head that Sunday on the edge of the table, was still forbidden to work. Before him a quiet morning lay.  The bell continued to ring. See about his breakfast. He called to Agnes, who replied, very well. The handle of the spare-room door was moving slowly. I'm coming, he cried. The handle was still. He unlocked and entered his heart full of charity. But with then stood a man who probably owned the world. Ricky scarcely knew him. Last night he had seemed so colorless, so negligible. In a few hours he had recaptured motion and passion and the imprint of the sunlight and the wind. He stood, not consciously heroic, with arms that dangled from broad, stooping shoulders and feet that played with a hassack on the carpet. But his hair was beautiful against the gray sky, and his eyes, recalling the sky unclouded, shot past the intruder as if to some worthier vision. So intent was their gaze that Ricky himself glanced backwards, only to see the neat passage and the banisters at the top of the stairs. Then the lips beat together twice, and outburst a torrent of amazing words. Add it all up and let me know how much. I'd sooner have died. He never took me that way before. I must have broken Pound's worth. If you'll not tell the police, I promise you shan't lose, Mr. Elliot, I swear. But it may be months before I send it. Everything is to be new. You've not to be a penny out of pocket, do you see? To let me go this once again. What's the trouble? asked Ricky as if they had been friends for years. My dear man, we've other things to talk about. Gracious me, what a fuss. If you'd smashed the whole house, I wouldn't mind so long as you came back. I'd sooner have died, gulped Stefan. You did nearly. It was I who caught you. Never mind yesterday's rag. What can you manage for breakfast? The face grew more angry and more puzzled. Yesterday wasn't a rag, he said, without focusing his eyes. I was drunk, but naturally meant it. Meant what? To smash you. Bad liquor did what Mrs. Elliot couldn't. I've put myself in the wrong. You've got me. It was a poor beginning. As I've got you, said Ricky, controlling himself, I want to have a talk with you. There has been a ghastly mistake. But Stefan, with a country man's persistency, continued on his own line. He meant to be civil. But Ricky went cold around the mouth, for he had not even been angry with them. Until he was drunk there had been dirty people, not his sort. Then the trivial injury recurred, and he had reeled to smash them as he passed. And I will pay for everything, was his refrain, with which the sighing of raindrops mingled.  You'll pay for my coffin if you talk like that any longer. Will you, one, forgive my frightful behaviour? Two, live with me, for his only hope was in a cheerful precision. Stefan grew more agitated. He thought it was some trick. I was saying I made an unspeakable mistake. Ansel put me right, but it was too late to find you. Don't think I got off easily. Ansel doesn't spare one. And you've got to forgive me, to share my life, to share my money. I've brought you this photograph. I wanted to be the first thing you accept from me. You have the greater right. I know all the story now. You know who it is. Oh yes, but I don't want to drag all that in. It is only her wish if we live together. She was planning it when she died. I can't follow because, to share your life, did you know I called your last Sunday week? Yes, but then I only knew half. I thought you were my father's son. Stefan's anger and bewilderment were increasing. He stuttered. What? What's the odds if you did? I hated my father, said Ricky. I loved my mother. And never had the phrases seemed so destitute of meaning. Last Sunday week, interrupted Stefan, his voice suddenly rising, I came to call on you, notice this or that, son, not to fall on your neck, nor to live here.  Sorry, sorry, I simply came as I was, and I haven't altered since. Yes, yet our mother, for me she has risen from the dead since then. I know I was wrong. And where do I come in? He kicked the hassack. I haven't risen from the dead. I haven't altered since last Sunday week. I'm— He stuttered again. He could not quite explain what he was. The man towards end over. After all, he was having principles, but you've— His voice broke. I mined it. I'm. I don't alter. Black guard one week. Live here the next. I keep to one or the other. You've heard something most badly in me that I didn't know was there. Don't let us talk, said Ricky. It gets worse and worse every minute. Simply say you forgive me, shake hands, and have done with it. That I won't. That I couldn't. In fact, I don't know what you mean. Then Ricky began a new appeal, not to pity, for now he was in no mood to whimper. For all its pathos, there was something heroic in this meeting. I warn you to stop here with me, Stefan. No one else in the world will look after you. As far as I know, you have never been really unhappy yet or suffered as you should do from your faults.  Never mind why I'm willing to cure you. I am willing, and I warn you to give me the chance. Forgive me or not as you choose. I care for other things more. Stefan looked at him at last, faintly proving. The offer was ridiculous, but it did treat him as a man. Let me tell you of a fault of mine and how I was punished for it. Continued Ricky. Two years ago I behaved badly to you, up at the rings. No, even a few days before that. We went for a ride, and I thought too much of other matters, and did not try to understand you. Then came the rings, and in the evening when you called up to me most kindly I never answered, but the ride was the beginning. Ever since then I have taken the world at second hand. I have bothered less and less to look it in the face, until not only you, but everyone else, has turned unreal. Never and seldom, he kept away, and somehow saved himself, but everyone else. Do you remember in one of Tony Felix's books, Cast bitter bread upon the waters, and after many days it really does come back to you? This had been true of my life. It will be equally true of a drunkards, and I warn you to stop with me. I can't stop after that check, said Stefan more gently, but I do remember the ride. I was a bit bored myself. Agnes, who had not been seeing to the breakfast, chose this moment to call from the passage. Of course he can't stop, she exclaimed, for better or worse it's settled, with none of us altered since last Sunday week. There you're right, Mrs. Elliot. He shouted starting out of the temperate past. We haven't altered. With a rare flash of insight he turned on Ricky. I see your game. You don't care about me drinking or to shake my hand. It's someone else you want to cure, as it were, that old photograph. You talk to me, but all the time you look at the photograph. He snatched it up. I've my own ideas of good manners, and to look friends between the eyes is one of them, and this he tore the photograph across, and this he tore it again, and this. He flung the pieces at the man who had sunk into a chair. For my part I'm off. Then Ricky was heroic no longer.  The man was right. He did not love him, even as he had never hated him. In either passion he had degraded him to be a symbol for the vanished past. The man was right and would have been lovable. He longed to be back riding over those windy fields to be back in those mystic circles beneath pure sky. Then they could have watched and helped and taught each other until the word was a reality, and the past not a torn photograph, but dimeter, the goddess rejoicing in the spring. Ah, if he had seized those high opportunities. For they led to the highest of all the symbolic moment which if a man accepts he has accepted life. The voice of Agnes which had lured him then. For my sake she had whispered, peeled over him now in triumph. Abruptly broke into sobs that had the effect of rain. He started up.  She tried to apologize and brought on a fresh burst of tears. Something had upset her. They heard her locking the door of her room. From that moment their intercourse was changed. Why does she keep crying today? mused Ricky as if he spoke to some mutual friend. I can make a guess, said Stefan and his heavy face flushed. Did you insult her? He asked feebly. But who's Gerald? Ricky raised his hand to his mouth. She looked at me as if she knew me and then gasps Gerald and started crying. Gerald is the name of someone she once knew. So I thought. There was a long silence in which they could hear a piteous gulping cough. Where is he now? asked Stefan. Dead. And then you. Ricky nodded. Bad, this sort of thing. I didn't know of this particular thing. She acted as if she had forgotten him. Perhaps she had and you woke him up.  She's overstrained. She has probably been plotting ever since you burst in last night. Against me? Yes. Stefan stood a resolute. I suppose you and she pulled together. He said at last. Get away from us, man. I'm mind losing you. Yet it's as well you don't stop. Oh, that's out of the question. Said Stefan, brushing his cap. If you've guessed anything, I'd be obliged if you didn't mention it. I've no right to ask, but I'd be obliged. He nodded and walked slowly along the landing and down the stairs. Ricky accompanied him and even opened the front door. It was as if Agnes had absorbed the passion out of both of them. The suburb was now wrapped in a cloud, not of its own making. Psy after Psy passed along its streets to break against tripping walls. The school, the houses were hidden, and all civilizations seemed in abeyance. Only the simplest sounds, the simplest desires emerged. They agreed that this weather was strange after such a sunset. That's a collie, said Stefan, listening. I wish you'd have some breakfast before starting. No food, thanks. But you know, he paused. It's all been a muddle, and I've no objection to your coming along with me. The cloud descended lower. Come with me as a man, said Stefan, already out in the mist. Not as a brother who cares what people did years back. We're alive together and the rest is can't. Here am I, Ricky, and there are you, a fair wreck. They've no use for you here, never had any, if the truth was known, and they've only made you beastly. This how, so to speak, has the rot. It's common sense that you should come. Stefan, wait a minute. What do you mean? Waits what we won't do, said Stefan at the gate. I must ask. He did wait for a minute, and sobs were heard, faint, hopeless, vindictive. Then he trudged away, and Ricky soon lost his color and his form. But a voice persisted, saying, Come, I do mean it. Come, I will take care of you. I can manage you. The words were kind, yet it was not for their sake that Ricky plunged into the impalpable cloud. In the voice he had found a sureer guarantee. Habits and sex may change with the new generation. Features may alter with the play of a private passion, but a voice is apart from these. It lies nearer to the racial essence, and perhaps to the divine. It can, at all events, overleap one grave. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Longest Journey by E. M. Forster Chapter 32 Mr. Pembroke did not receive a clear account of what had happened when he returned for the interval. His sister, he told her frankly, was concealing something from him. She could make no reply. Had she gone mad, she wandered. Hitherto she had pretended to love her husband. Why choose such a moment for the truth? But I understand Ricky's position, he told her. It is an unbalanced position, yet I understand it. I noted its approach while he was ill. He imagines himself his brother's keeper. Therefore we must make concessions. We must negotiate. The negotiations were still progressing in November, the month during which this story draws to its close. I understand his position, he then told her. It is both weak and defiant. He is still with those and cells. Read this letter which thanks me for his little stories. We sent them last month, you remember, such of them as we could find. It seems that he fills up his time by writing. He has already written a book. She only gave him half her attention, for a beautiful wreath had just arrived from the florists. She was taking it up to the cemetery. Today her child had been dead a year. On the other hand he has altered his will. Fortunately he cannot alter much, but I fear that what is not settled on you will go. Should I read what I wrote on this point and also my minutes of the interview with old Mr. Ansel and the copy of My Correspondence with Stefan Wonham. But her fly was announced. While he put the wreath in for her she ran for a moment upstairs. A few tears had come to her eyes. A scandalous divorce would have been more bearable than this withdrawal. People asked. Why did her husband leave her? And the answer came, Oh, nothing particular. He only couldn't stand her. She lied and taught him to lie. She kept him from the work that suited him, from his friends, from his brother. In a word she tried to run him, which a man won't pardon. A few tears, not many. To her life never showed itself as a classic drama, in which by trying to advance our fortunes we shatter them. She had turned Stefan out of Wiltshire and he fell like a thunderbolt on Sauston and on herself. In trying to gain Mrs. Faling's money she had probably lost money which would have been her own. But Irene is a subtle teacher, and she was not the woman to learn from such lessons as these. Her suffering was more direct. Three men had wronged her, therefore she hated them, and if she could would do them harm.  She told Herbert when she came downstairs. We had much better buy it our time. Tell me just about Stefan Wonham, though. He drew her into the study again. Wonham is or was in Scotland learning to farm with the connections of the Anzels. I believe the money is to go towards setting him up. Apparently he is a hard worker. He also drinks. She nodded and smiled. More than he did. My informant, Mr. Tillard, oh I ought not to have mentioned his name. He is one of the better sort of Rickie's Cambridge friends and has been dreadfully grieved at the collapse, but he does not want to be mixed up in it. This autumn he was up in the lowlands, close by and very kindly made a few unobtrusive inquiries for me. The man is becoming an habitual drunkard. She smiled again. Stefan had evoked her secret and she hated him more for that than for anything else that he had done. The poise of his shoulders that morning, it was no more, had recalled Gerald. If only she had not been so tired. He had reminded her of the greatest thing she had known and to her cloudy mind this seemed degradation. She had turned to him as to her lover with a look which a man of his type understood. She had asked for his pity for one terrible moment she had desired to be held in his arms. Even Herbert was surprised when she said, I'm glad he drinks. I hope he'll kill himself. A man like that ought never to have been born. Perhaps the sins of the parents are visited on the children, said Herbert, taking her to the carriage. Yet it is not for us to decide. I feel sure he will be punished. What right has he? She broke off. What right had he to our common humanity? It was a hard lesson for anyone to learn. For Agnes it was impossible. Stefan was illicit, abnormal, worse than a man diseased. Yet she had turned to him. He had drawn out the truth. My dear, don't cry, said her brother drawing up the windows. I have great hopes of Mr. Tillard, the silts have written, which is failing we'll do what she can. As she drove to the cemetery her bitterness turned against Ansel, who had kept her husband alive in the days after Stefan's expulsion. If he had not been there Ricky would have renounced his mother and his brother and all the outer world troubling no one. The mystic inherent in him would have prevailed. So Ansel himself had told her. And Ansel too had sheltered the fugitives and given them money and saved them from the ludicrous checks that so often stop young men. But when she reached the cemetery and stood beside the tiny grave all her bitterness, all her hatred returned against Ricky. But he'll come back in the end, she thought. A wife has only to wait. What are his friends beside me? They too will marry. I have only to wait. His book, like all that he has done, will fail. His brother is drinking himself away. Poor aimless Ricky. I have only to keep civil. He will come back in the end. She had moved and found herself close to the grave of Gerald. The flowers she had planted after his death were dead and she had not liked to renew them. There lay the athlete and his dust was as the little child whom she had brought into the world with such hope, with such pain.


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