embankment, away from home rather than towards it.
The world had him at its mercy. He made no pattern out
of the sights he saw. He felt himself now, as he had often
fancied other people, adrift on the stream, and far removed
from control of it, a man with no grasp upon circumstances
any longer. Old battered men loafing at the
doors of public-houses now seemed to be his fellows, and
he felt, as he supposed them to feel, a mingling of envy
and hatred towards those who passed quickly and certainly
to a goal of their own. They, too, saw things very
thin and shadowy, and were wafted about by the lightest
breath of wind. For the substantial world, with its prospect
of avenues leading on and on to the invisible distance,
had slipped from him, since Katharine was engaged.
Now all his life was visible, and the straight, meager
path had its ending soon enough. Katharine was engaged,
and she had deceived him, too. He felt for corners
of his being untouched by his disaster; but there was no
limit to the flood of damage; not one of his possessions
was safe now. Katharine had deceived him; she had mixed
herself with every thought of his, and reft of her they
seemed false thoughts which he would blush to think
again. His life seemed immeasurably impoverished.
He sat himself down, in spite of the chilly fog which
obscured the farther bank and left its lights suspended
upon a blank surface, upon one of the riverside seats,
and let the tide of disillusionment sweep through him.
For the time being all bright points in his life were blotted
out; all prominences leveled. At first he made himself
believe that Katharine had treated him badly, and drew
comfort from the thought that, left alone, she would recollect
this, and think of him and tender him, in silence,
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at any rate, an apology. But this grain of comfort failed
him after a second or two, for, upon reflection, he had to
admit that Katharine owed him nothing. Katharine had
promised nothing, taken nothing; to her his dreams had
meant nothing. This, indeed, was the lowest pitch of his
despair. If the best of one’s feelings means nothing to
the person most concerned in those feelings, what reality
is left us? The old romance which had warmed his
days for him, the thoughts of Katharine which had painted
every hour, were now made to appear foolish and enfeebled.
He rose, and looked into the river, whose swift
race of dun-colored waters seemed the very spirit of futility
and oblivion.
“In what can one trust, then?” he thought, as he leant
there. So feeble and insubstantial did he feel himself that
he repeated the word aloud.
“In what can one trust? Not in men and women. Not in
one’s dreams about them. There’s nothing—nothing, nothing
left at all.”
Now Denham had reason to know that he could bring to
birth and keep alive a fine anger when he chose. Rodney
provided a good target for that emotion. And yet at the
moment, Rodney and Katharine herself seemed disembodied
ghosts. He could scarcely remember the look of
them. His mind plunged lower and lower. Their marriage
seemed of no importance to him. All things had turned
to ghosts; the whole mass of the world was insubstantial
vapor, surrounding the solitary spark in his mind, whose
burning point he could remember, for it burnt no more.
He had once cherished a belief, and Katharine had embodied
this belief, and she did so no longer. He did not
blame her; he blamed nothing, nobody; he saw the truth.
He saw the dun-colored race of waters and the blank shore.
But life is vigorous; the body lives, and the body, no
doubt, dictated the reflection, which now urged him to
movement, that one may cast away the forms of human
beings, and yet retain the passion which seemed inseparable
from their existence in the flesh. Now this passion
burnt on his horizon, as the winter sun makes a greenish
pane in the west through thinning clouds. His eyes were
set on something infinitely far and remote; by that light
he felt he could walk, and would, in future, have to find
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his way. But that was all there was left to him of a populous
and teeming world.
CHAPTER XIII
The lunch hour in the office was only partly spent by
Denham in the consumption of food. Whether fine or wet,
he passed most of it pacing the gravel paths in Lincoln’s
Inn Fields. The children got to know his figure, and the
sparrows expected their daily scattering of bread-crumbs.
No doubt, since he often gave a copper and almost always
a handful of bread, he was not as blind to his surroundings
as he thought himself.
He thought that these winter days were spent in long
hours before white papers radiant in electric light; and in
short passages through fog-dimmed streets. When he came
back to his work after lunch he carried in his head a
picture of the Strand, scattered with omnibuses, and of
the purple shapes of leaves pressed flat upon the gravel,
as if his eyes had always been bent upon the ground. His
brain worked incessantly, but his thought was attended
with so little joy that he did not willingly recall it; but
drove ahead, now in this direction, now in that; and came
home laden with dark books borrowed from a library.
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Mary Datchet, coming from the Strand at lunch-time,
saw him one day taking his turn, closely buttoned in an
overcoat, and so lost in thought that he might have been
sitting in his own room.
She was overcome by something very like awe by the
sight of him; then she felt much inclined to laugh, although
her pulse beat faster. She passed him, and he
never saw her. She came back and touched him on the
shoulder.
“Gracious, Mary!” he exclaimed. “How you startled me!”
“Yes. You looked as if you were walking in your sleep,”
she said. “Are you arranging some terrible love affair?
Have you got to reconcile a desperate couple?”
“I wasn’t thinking about my work,” Ralph replied, rather
hastily. “And, besides, that sort of thing’s not in my line,”
he added, rather grimly.
The morning was fine, and they had still some minutes
of leisure to spend. They had not met for two or three
weeks, and Mary had much to say to Ralph; but she was
not certain how far he wished for her company. However,
after a turn or two, in which a few facts were communi
cated, he suggested sitting down, and she took the seat
beside him. The sparrows came fluttering about them, and
Ralph produced from his pocket the half of a roll saved
from his luncheon. He threw a few crumbs among them.
“I’ve never seen sparrows so tame,” Mary observed, by
way of saying something.
“No,” said Ralph. “The sparrows in Hyde Park aren’t as
tame as this. If we keep perfectly still, I’ll get one to
settle on my arm.”
Mary felt that she could have forgone this display of
animal good temper, but seeing that Ralph, for some curious
reason, took a pride in the sparrows, she bet him
sixpence that he would not succeed.
“Done!” he said; and his eye, which had been gloomy,
showed a spark of light. His conversation was now addressed
entirely to a bald cock-sparrow, who seemed bolder
than the rest; and Mary took the opportunity of looking
at him. She was not satisfied; his face was worn, and his
expression stern. A child came bowling its hoop through
the concourse of birds, and Ralph threw his last crumbs
of bread into the bushes with a snort of impatience.
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“That’s what always happens—just as I’ve almost got
him,” he said. “Here’s your sixpence, Mary. But you’ve
only got it thanks to that brute of a boy. They oughtn’t
to be allowed to bowl hoops here—”
“Oughtn’t to be allowed to bowl hoops! My dear Ralph,
what nonsense!”
“You always say that,” he complained; “and it isn’t nonsense.
What’s the point of having a garden if one can’t
watch birds in it? The street does all right for hoops. And
if children can’t be trusted in the streets, their mothers
should keep them at home.”
Mary made no answer to this remark, but frowned.
She leant back on the seat and looked about her at the
great houses breaking the soft gray-blue sky with their
chimneys.
“Ah, well,” she said, “London’s a fine place to live in. I
believe I could sit and watch people all day long. I like
my fellow-creatures… .”
Ralph sighed impatiently.
“Yes, I think so, when you come to know them,” she
added, as if his disagreement had been spoken.
“That’s just when I don’t like them,” he replied. “Still, I
don’t see why you shouldn’t cherish that illusion, if it
pleases you.” He spoke without much vehemence of agreement
or disagreement. He seemed chilled.
“Wake up, Ralph! You’re half asleep!” Mary cried, turning
and pinching his sleeve. “What have you been doing
with yourself? Moping? Working? Despising the world, as
usual?”
As he merely shook his head, and filled his pipe, she
went on:
“It’s a bit of a pose, isn’t it?”
“Not more than most things,” he said.
“Well,” Mary remarked, “I’ve a great deal to say to you,
but I must go on—we have a committee.” She rose, but
hesitated, looking down upon him rather gravely. “You
don’t look happy, Ralph,” she said. “Is it anything, or is
it nothing?”
He did not immediately answer her, but rose, too, and
walked with her towards the gate. As usual, he did not
speak to her without considering whether what he was
about to say was the sort of thing that he could say to her.
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“I’ve been bothered,” he said at length. “Partly by work,
and partly by family troubles. Charles has been behaving
like a fool. He wants to go out to Canada as a farmer—”
“Well, there’s something to be said for that,” said Mary;
and they passed the gate, and walked slowly round the
Fields again, discussing difficulties which, as a matter of
fact, were more or less chronic in the Denham family, and
only now brought forward to appease Mary’s sympathy,
which, however, soothed Ralph more than he was aware
of. She made him at least dwell upon problems which
were real in the sense that they were capable of solution;
and the true cause of his melancholy, which was not susceptible
to such treatment, sank rather more deeply into
the shades of his mind.
Mary was attentive; she was helpful. Ralph could not
help feeling grateful to her, the more so, perhaps, because
he had not told her the truth about his state; and
when they reached the gate again he wished to make
some affectionate objection to her leaving him. But his
affection took the rather uncouth form of expostulating
with her about her work.
“What d’you want to sit on a committee for?” he asked.
“It’s waste of your time, Mary.”
“I agree with you that a country walk would benefit the
world more,” she said. “Look here,” she added suddenly,
“why don’t you come to us at Christmas? It’s almost the
best time of year.”
“Come to you at Disham?” Ralph repeated.
“Yes. We won’t interfere with you. But you can tell me
later,” she said, rather hastily, and then started off in the
direction of Russell Square. She had invited him on the
impulse of the moment, as a vision of the country came
before her; and now she was annoyed with herself for
having done so, and then she was annoyed at being annoyed.
“If I can’t face a walk in a field alone with Ralph,” she
reasoned, “I’d better buy a cat and live in a lodging at
Ealing, like Sally Seal —and he won’t come. Or did he
mean that he would come?”
She shook her head. She really did not know what he
had meant. She never felt quite certain; but now she was
more than usually baffled. Was he concealing something
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from her? His manner had been odd; his deep absorption
had impressed her; there was something in him that she
had not fathomed, and the mystery of his nature laid
more of a spell upon her than she liked. Moreover, she
could not prevent herself from doing now what she had
often blamed others of her sex for doing—from endowing
her friend with a kind of heavenly fire, and passing
her life before it for his sanction.
Under this process, the committee rather dwindled in
importance; the Suffrage shrank; she vowed she would
work harder at the Italian language; she thought she would
take up the study of birds. But this program for a perfect
life threatened to become so absurd that she very soon
caught herself out in the evil habit, and was rehearsing
her speech to the committee by the time the chestnut-
colored bricks of Russell Square came in sight. Indeed,
she never noticed them. She ran upstairs as usual, and
was completely awakened to reality by the sight of Mrs.
Seal, on the landing outside the office, inducing a very
large dog to drink water out of a tumbler.
“Miss Markham has already arrived,” Mrs. Seal remarked,
with due solemnity, “and this is her dog.”
“A very fine dog, too,” said Mary, patting him on the
head.
“Yes. A magnificent fellow, Mrs. Seal agreed. “A kind of
St. Bernard, she tells me—so like Kit to have a St. Bernard.
And you guard your mistress well, don’t you, Sailor?
You see that wicked men don’t break into her larder when
she’s out at HER work—helping poor souls who have lost
their way… . But we’re late—we must begin!” and scattering
the rest of the water indiscriminately over the floor,
she hurried Mary into the committee-room.
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CHAPTER XIV
Mr. Clacton was in his glory. The machinery which he had
perfected and controlled was now about to turn out its
bi-monthly product, a committee meeting; and his pride
in the perfect structure of these assemblies was great.
He loved the jargon of committee-rooms; he loved the
