The grey world

ONE Volume .
r TWO Volumes
or THREB „
FOUR
SIX
"VBLVE ,.

The Grey World

' I know . . . of no other Gospel than the
liberty both of body and mind to exercise the
Divine Arts of Imagination : Imagination, the real
and eternal World of which this Vegetable Uni-
verse is but a faint shadow, and in which we shall
live in our Eternal or Imaginative Bodies when
these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more.' —
WILLIAM BLAKE.

1 Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize
whatever prey the heart long for, and have no
fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and
the earth is only a little dust under our feet. ' —
W. B. YEATS.

THE GREY WORLD

BY

EVELYN UNDERHILL

This Edition enjoys copyright in
all countries signatory to the Berne
Treaty, and is not to be imported
into the United States of A merica

TO

ALICE HERBERT

A SMALL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF A GREAT DEBT

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. OVER THE BORDER I

II. THE EXILE - 7

III. THE RETURN TO THE ROAD - 1 8

IV. A LITTLE WAYFARER IS BEWILDERED - ' 32
V. A DOWN-HILL STRETCH - 45

VI. STAFF AND SCRIP - 54

VII. MARSHLAND AND WICKET - 64

VIII. THE FIRST SIGNPOST - 80

IX. A FELLOW-TRAVELLER - - 95

X. ROAD-MAKING - - III

XI. A BREEZY UPLAND - 121

XII. MAPS ARE CONSULTED - - 133

XIII. MR. WILLIE HOPKINSON TRIES A SHORT CUT - 146

XIV. BUT THE ROAD BECOMES MUDDY - - 159
XV. A WAYSIDE SHRINE - - 175

XVI. DIFFICULT PATHS - 1 88

XVII. A SHARP CORNER - 199

XVIII. INCIPIT VITA NOVA - 2IO

vii

viii CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

XIX. THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS - -222

XX. THE RIVER - ' 239

XXI. WILLIE TRIES TO LEND A HAND - 249

XXII. CROSS-ROADS - - 266

XXIII. THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION- - 278

XXIV. THE PATH RUNS TO THE WOODS - 293
XXV. COMMENTARIES- - 309

CHAPTER I

OVER THE BORDER

' Death . . . snatches us
As a cross nurse might do a wayward child
From all our toys and baubles.3

Old Play.

A CHILDREN'S hospital is not a bad place to die in :
failing forest or hilltop, perhaps, one may not easily
find a better. It is clean and airy, and there are
few opportunities for the hysterical confusion of
leave-taking which gives a touch of horror and
bewilderment to the greater dignities of a private
decease. The Author of the Human Comedy, one
fancies, did not pay much attention to our exits
and our entrances. They seldom strike the imagi-
nation ; yet, from the spectator's point of view, they
are not the least strange or important details of
the play.

On October the i5th in the year 1878, a small
boy lay in the Princess Ward of S. Nicholas'
Infirmary, dying of typhoid fever. He was a
crumpled-up bit of slum-reared humanity, a sharp
mind set in a starved frame ; and being but mildly

I

2 THE GREY WORLD

interested in his own sensations, he found the
proceeding infinitely tiresome. The bare white-
ness of the place, its uncomfortable cleanliness,
and a certain martinet method of kindness, were
not pleasing to a taste that had been formed amidst
the homely squalor of Netting Dale. Being too
weak to make noises for himself, he would have
liked someone else to take on this agreeable duty ;
but that never happened, and the silence and good
behaviour were harder to bear than all the pains
of his illness.

Happily, however, there were occasional oases
to be found even in this desert of hygienic
decorum. They were called visiting days, and
they happened twice a week. At these times
his mother came to see him, bringing with her
local perfumes and phrases which roused his
dormant nostalgia to the pitch of acute desire.
Her homely figure, formed of misplaced curves,
and the drooping assurance of her hat, cheered
his spirits as they entered the ward, and, to the
manifest disapproval of the nurses, gravitated
to the side of his cot. Sometimes a sticky brother
or sister was with her, and spoke to him in the
beloved dialect of home, infinitely refreshing to the
ear after the frosty official English of the hospital.
' Jimmy Rogers 'as bin 'ad up agin,' his mother
would say, or, ' Yer pa came 'ome tight larst night,
and I 'it 'im. Low brute !'

The child nodded approvingly, as well as his weak-

OVER THE BORDER 3

ness would let him, and longed for a quick return
to those glorious spheres of action. In the hospital
no one was ever had up, or came home tight, and
this extreme respectability depressed him. Some
temperaments can never be reconciled to a passive
world, however virtuous its repose.

But after some weeks of luxurious boredom, and
when he was supposed to have commenced a normal
and satisfactory convalescence, his mother yielded
to a maternal impulse, and involuntarily set going
the scene-shifting machinery of death. The special
lever which she selected took the form of a currant
bun, secretly administered in response to his
clamouring insistence on hunger. The results were
to be foreseen — relapse, wrath of doctors and nurses,
the gradual sinking, and finally death, of the victim.
These are a fairly constant feature of hospital
experience. But in this case, for some obscure
reason, these things composed not merely the finale
of the comedy, but rather the curtain-raiser of a
drama of more than fashionable length. What
the apple eaten in the garden was to Eve, that
currant bun was to the small boy who gulped it
hastily down under the friendly cover of the sheet.
To feel it between his teeth was a wholly satisfying
delight ; but it shut him out from the paradise of
ignorance, and that, for so short an ecstasy, was
a rather heavy price.

It was on the next day that he died. Coming
from a class in which funerals were the chief and

i — 2

4 THE GREY WORLD

perhaps the only innocent festivities, the idea of
death was familiar to him, and not disturbing.
It was an ornamental and not always unfortunate
incident which happened to the neighbours now
and then.

But his own extinction, his sudden departure
from surroundings so real, solid, and inimical to
all mystery, was a very different matter. He
found it utterly incredible, even whilst it was
taking place. He was not more than ten years
old, and his natural wits had already been dimmed
by the beginnings of a Board School education.
His scepticism was foolish and unreasoning, but
he shared it with many reputable persons of mature
age and apparent intelligence. That was a truthful
if unpopular prophet who said, that the deaths of
many populations do nothing to prepare us for our
own.

He was distinctly conscious of the early stages
of his gradual withdrawal from life. He felt pleased
when the professional annoyance of the nurses
became tempered with pity at the sight of his
growing weakness. Then came an hour of wild
struggles to retain consciousness of all that went
on round him, when he felt that this alone could
save him from the black and shapeless gulf which
had suddenly and silently become the primary
fact of existence. A sense of hopeless battle and
slow fatality sapped his courage. He was fighting
hard, but he knew that he should not win. He

OVER THE BORDER 5

could have wept, but he had no strength to waste
on tears. All was very misty round him ; only
he had fixed his eyes on the bright brass knob
which finished one corner of his cot, and he clung
to the knowledge of its existence with a desperate
cunning, as if that were the last bond that held
him to life.

Small street-boys of ten are not very easily
frightened as a rule, but so far as he was conscious
of anything, he felt now a cold terror of the grey
unknown state on the verge of which he choked
and trembled ; and whilst the rest of the ward
grew dim and wavering, he lay staring with deter-
mination at the brass knob until its swollen and
shining form was burnt on to his brain. It grew
very difficult to breathe after a time, but he did
not mind that much. People were round him,
touching him and doing things, but he hardly
noticed them. The sense of touch had gone to
sleep already ; but in the midst of a creeping
somnolence his eyes were still awake, and his ears.

* He's going now, poor little chap,' said the house-
surgeon, and his voice sounded faint and distant.

' No better than murder, I call it,' answered the
nurse who had been most indignant over the
catastrophe ; and another toneless echo replied :
' It was hopeless from the first, of course.'

The brass knob was getting very hazy ; it seemed
to float uncertainly in the air. If only it would
not go away ! He knew that as long as he saw that

6 THE GREY WORLD

knob he was alive ; it and he were alive together
in a world that was all their own. For one short
instant he had an awful imchildlike vision of his
loneliness, lying there and struggling with his fancies
amongst people who could not help, or enter in,
or understand. He wanted to ask one of them
to catch his knob for him before it was lost, but
words had gone from him long ago. Then he saw
that it was very close to him, after all, and shining
brightly.

It seemed to smile at him, and though a thousand
bells were ringing in his ears, he made an effort and
smiled too.

He stretched out his hand and grasped it. ...

CHAPTER II

THE EXILE

' The soul, when it departs from the body, needeth not to go
far ; for where the body dies, there is heaven and hell.' —
JACOB BEHME|(.

A LITTLE ghost adrift in a strange world, from which
all colour had been withdrawn. He had never
heard of the Greek Hades, or it is probable that he
would have thought himself there. So new and
uncanny was the aspect of things that it was some
time before he realized how very little had happened
to him after all. He was still in the hospital ward
amongst the old surroundings, but he perceived
them now with the vagueness of assent that we
accord to suggestions, not with the assured grasp
that one reserves for indubitable facts. He had
slipped into a new plane of existence, and saw
the world in a new perspective — a thin, grey,
unsubstantial world, like a badly-focussed photo-
graph. Yet it was not a legendary land of shadows,
but the solid ordinary earth, on which he had passed
ten years of aggressively material life.

7

8 THE GREY WORLD

The soul of a small boy, I think, is always un-
comfortable unless it is unconscious, for the human
spirit takes a long time to get accustomed to its
own queerness. Consciousness seemed now to be
thrust upon this one as greatness upon Malvolio ;
and, taking rapid stock of the situation, he found
himself deeply dissatisfied with the prospect. A
learned spinster suddenly deposited in the midst
of a Cockney beanfeast could not feel more
thoroughly out of place than he in this new dimen-
sion. He was one of those brisk, sharp-witted
children of the streets, whose every interest is an
appetite, and whose world of joy and sorrow is
bounded at either end by the Crystal Palace and
the police courts. Now, without understanding
the how or why of the matter, he was summarily
divorced from the lean and active body which had
interpreted all his pleasures, and found himself
converted into a pure spirit to whom the material
universe was no more actual than the air and
other invisible gases are to living men. He knew
that it was there, but it could no longer count for
much in the scheme of things. It did not dominate
the landscape.

As he got more used to the dimness and greyness,
he saw his body lying in the cot where it had died,
and the nurses standing round it. He knew that
it was going to be taken away to the mortuary, as
had happened to other children who had died
whilst he was there. He felt horribly miserable

THE EXILE 9

then, lost and chilly ; and he tried to get back to it,
but some strange repulsive force threw him back
every time that he drew near. Then he tried to
cry out, but a queer hoarse muttering was the only
sound that he made, and none of the grey people
in the photograph-world took the slightest notice
of it. But it brought another unpleasant point
into prominence. When he heard this sound of
his own cry, he suddenly realized how very quiet
everything else was. In the ward there had always
been a certain clink and chatter, the hurry of
nurses and the play of convalescent children : now,
nothing. The earthly ear had gone the way of
the earthly eye ; and the pleasant noises, as well
as the colour of life, had left him.

The prospect was very dreary, but he was not
disheartened yet. His spirit, after all, was only
the essence of his boyhood ; he had taken nothing
into death but those qualities which he had managed
to elaborate during his little life. So it was that his
natural endowment of irreverence and curiosity
remained unimpaired ; and these spurred him to
exploration, and encouraged him with cheerful
thoughts. He had heard many ghost stories, some
exceedingly horrid, and none without a certain
fearful joy : and now he perceived, with a sudden
shock of excitement, that he too had become a
ghost. Visions of haunted alleys, of carefully
planned practical jokes which should make the
ward untenable by nervous nurses, came to him ;

io THE GREY WORLD

and he felt greatly comforted as he sketched for
himself a career as full of illicit delight as any
embryo Hooligan could wish.

But he had no idea how to set about it, and
moreover his thoughts were all very confused and
weak ; so that he hovered vaguely to and fro, unable
to settle upon anything. Almost unconsciously he
drifted out of the hospital, and got entangled in
and amongst a whole network of houses, endless
walls dividing up neat rooms ; all much the same,
like mazes built out of mist. Nothing stopped his
progress, for all the things that he was accustomed
to call hard had lost their hardness and resistance,
and he passed through them as easily as a bird
might pass through clouds upon the hills. Often
there were people in the rooms, and by fixing his
attention very hard he found out that they were
talking or eating or working, all in the same heavy
silence. Yet, though he was amongst them, touch-
ing them, passing through them even, there was a
sense of great remoteness about it all. He seemed
to be looking at dim pictures of unfamiliar things .

As for haunting, if he was not doing it now,
what was he doing ? Yet no one noticed his
presence ; though he blundered through shut
doors they did not creak for him, and dogs lying
on the hearth-rugs refused to whine because he
was there.

The solitude of the new-made ghost, especially
the ghost of the child, or indeed of any other being

THE EXILE ii

that has depended wholly on the body for its joys,
is perhaps the most terrible form of loneliness that
exists. It is the real Hell, and more dreadful than
any maker of religions has dared to dream of. It
resembles the sick helplessness of a traveller who
finds himself, tired and alone, in the streets of a
foreign city. An existence is going on around him,
but he has no share in it, cannot even understand
it. He wanders about, and it does not at all
matter where he wanders. Nothing that he sees
or feels is related to him or to his desires ; nothing
needs him. So this dead child felt as he drifted
through these comfortable little homes, past fires
that did not warm him, through people who did
not see him ; yet to whom he longed to talk, just
to escape from his terrifying loneliness. He had
left off trying to cry out to them, because the sound
of his own cry, echoing in the silence which he
knew was not really a silence, frightened him more
than anything else.

In some of the rooms were shadowy grey children,
playing with impalpable toys ; and he tried once
or twice to grab their dolls and knock their soldiers
down, before he remembered that it was useless.
And it was with a horrible ghostly hunger, which
hurt more than real hunger had ever done, that he
fled from one nursery where they were having bread
and jam for tea.

It was not until this desultory wandering had
lasted for some time that a knowledge came to him

12 THE GREY WORLD

of other presences in the soundless fog which formed
his universe. At first he had been too dazed to do
more than hang desperately on to the last fringes
of life. He was no philosopher, and his discovery
of the unsubstantial nature of material things had
thoroughly bewildered him. He had the unde-
veloped but eminently cock-sure spirit of the
Cockney child, and it revolted him that such
signposts of reality as walls, roofs, furniture,
should become a colourless sponge through which
he could pass without hitting himself, and against
which his most determined push accomplished
nothing. He could not get used to anything so
flagrantly impossible, and settled down at last on
the explanation that the whole thing must be an
uneasy dream, dimly connected with the currant
bun. He left off trying to keep count of his sur-
roundings, and relaxed the strain of attention
which had kept him aware of the last faint re-
mainders of his old world. It went from him like
a cloud ; and as it went, a new sense came in its
place.

He knew, suddenly and quite distinctly, that he
was not alone. The horrible silence was gone,
and he heard — vaguely at first, and then with over-
powering insistence — a crying and twittering, rest-
less and very sad. In later days, the sound of sea-
birds crying amongst solitary rocks on the edge
where the land joins the sea always reminded
him of that crying on the edge between life and

THE EXILE 13

death : the borderlands of things have much in
common.

Then he realized that he was in a crowd of other
beings like himself. They passed by him in great
companies, pushing, moving in an endless stream ;
he heard the rustling sound of their movement as
a sort of undercurrent to their queer, unhappy
cries. They were in and through the intangible
country of life, but they did not seem to notice
it at all. He thought at first that they would
notice him, and that his loneliness was over ; but
as he drifted a little, first with one stream and then
with another, or lingered in the vortex rings made
by circling processions, and was jostled by imma-
terial crowds, the isolation of a spirit wandering
amongst the living faded into insignificance beside
the frightful solitude of a spirit alone amongst the
dead. He came to the not unnatural conclusion
that these were the souls of grown-up people,
probably toffs, who would not associate with
common kids ; yet many kids, he reflected, died in
hospitals and elsewhere, and their souls must be
somewhere about. It was probable that they would
be companionable, or at any rate would not show
the same lordly indifference to his presence ; and he
set out with renewed cheerfulness to hunt for them.

Then it was that he discovered that this moving
mass of spirits was hunting too ; wearily searching
for company, interests, something that had been
made necessary to them in life, now summarily

14 THE GREY WORLD

taken away. They went on, hopelessly, endlessly :
the noise that he heard was the complaint which
they made to the enveloping greyness because
of the hardness of their quest. So he joined one
of the streams, though he knew nothing of the
direction in which it was going, for there was no
more upness or downness for him, no boundary,
and no horizon point to make for : and they travelled
between other lines of searchers, each crying in
his loneliness, and no one apparently caring what
his neighbour cried for — all held together, like a
Democratic Association, by their common rest-
lessness.

But when they had gone like this for a little while,
a sort of agreeable warmth, that nice gregarious
feeling which even a strange crowd can impart,
came over him, and renewed his failing self-respect.
He was proud, in a vague way, of being one of the
dead, just as he might have been proud of being a
Londoner without getting any special benefit from
his citizenship. He began, too, to feel something
of the reasons that moved these spirits to sweep
backwards and forwards for ever over the world.
A mysterious telepathy seemed to be established,
and he read deeper and deeper into the unhappy
minds that were travelling beside him.

The first discovery that he made was that his soul
was curiously in harmony with the general point of
view. He had despised himself because he was only a
child, but these people, too, were spiritually childish.

THE EXILE 15

They were regretting Earth and its pleasures as
keenly as he was ; not, perhaps, its bread and jam,
but other things which were now equally wanting
in substance. All their interests were there appar-
ently— in money, friends, games, ambitions, dis-
coveries ; all the things that go to make up the
fulness of life. Now this life that they had so
reluctantly left was seen to be only a grey, uncertain
shadow, all its beauty gone, all its realities decep-
tive ; but still they could not kill their desire for it.
They had nothing else ; it was all in all to them, and
their desires chained them down to it, and kept
them in it though they could not be of it, and
drove them in herds on the hopeless quest of a
solution through all the scenes they had cared for
once and now could scarcely recognise.

The child, with a mysterious but incontrovertible
knowledge, knew that he too was bound to that
dreary trail and that aimless search, because he was
incapable of realizing any other environment ; and
the prospect had that horror of dulness which was
associated in his mind with the stories that old
paupers used to tell on Sunday afternoons about
the workhouse. He, then, was a spiritual pauper,
shut out from the pretty heaven which the nurses
had often described to him, and unable to enjoy
the strange changed earth that he was tied to.

He looked back now with longing to the hospital
ward that he had found so monotonous and chilly.
Its little incidents were full of the delicious homely

16 THE GREY WORLD

savour of life ; and the slow noise of London used to
come softly through its windows, and remind him
of the great world where existence had been quick
and busy, prone to those sudden variations of luck
which leave no room for boredom. Now London
was dead and silent, and he alive in the empty
twilight.

Then, with the desire for her, came back the
knowledge that he was still in her streets ; and he
turned all his strength resolutely earthwards, and
saw that he was in the great broad road which ran
westward to Uxbridge, and passed close to his
home. A silent, ghostlike traffic filled it : carriages
and omnibuses, big waggons, and the tradesmen's
carts that he had loved to run behind. He saw
them through the veil of rushing spirits, trotting
past him in two placid streams. It seemed
horribly unjust to be deprived of all this inexpen-
sive amusement and get absolutely nothing in
exchange.

And at that moment a man on a high bicycle
flew past him down the ghostly hill. He was
leaning back in a lordly manner ; he had put his
feet up. With that agreeable vision all his old
instincts returned to him violently : it had never
been his custom to let bicycles go by without a
greeting, and he started in pursuit, and tried,
thoughtlessly, to put his fingers in his mouth to
give tone to his favourite whistle of contempt.
The resulting failure was the last drop in his cup

THE EXILE 17

of misery ; the faint crying of the souls about him
drove him mad with loathing ; and he flung out
the whole force of his poor little spirit in a prayer
to some Force which he dreaded but knew not,
for a return, at any price, to the excitements and
uncertainties of life.

CHAPTER III

' C'e'tait un petit etre si tranquille, si timide et si silencieux. . . .
C'e'tait un pauvre petit etre myste"rieux, comme tout le monde.' —
MAETERLINCK.

THE stucco of a western suburb received him back
into life ; and he next looked out on the world from
the barred windows of a fourth-floor nursery, set in
a wide brown street of reputable gloom.

It must be allowed that he had improved his posi-
tion. The atmosphere of this new home was English
and domestic : conventional therefore. Its tidy boun-
daries were rigid, but set in a smiling curve. It was
permeated by a cheerful fuss. Its mistress was a
Martha who did not allow herself to be troubled by
the fact that her sister Mary — an indifferent wife
and a wretched manager — had drifted into another
set. The family existence rippled through a life of
happy half-tones, carefully shaded from the agitat-
ing sunlight of truth. It drew up its blinds suffi-
ciently high for convenience, but always let a foot
or so of lace-edged propriety show against the upper

18

THE RETURN TO THE ROAD 19

panes. In these days of horrid publicity and bold
smartness, one must make it obvious that one pos-
sesses blinds.

The force of one strenuous wish had thrown the
child back amongst "the living ; but the niche thus
hastily found for him was not, perhaps, well chosen.
He and his new family suited one another but in-
differently. They were of a class which is always
trivially active : he came to them overshadowed
by an inconceivable past, queer and dreamy — a
fact which his mother attributed to an imperfect
digestion. Health loomed large in the assets of
the Hopkinson family, and it was Mrs. Hopkinson
who kept the books and carefully assessed the
individual dividend. Very probably he was not
healthy : very certainly his marked divergence
from the family type cried for some explanation.
His legs were not fat enough, nor his hair thick
enough, to please the parental eye; and genius or
disease seemed the only plausible hypotheses.

He soon took up his normal position in the house-
hold— that of a fearful joy to his mother, who
thought that he would be a poet if she could rear
him ; a constant if unacknowledged irritant to his
father ; and an insolvable but amusing enigma in
the otherwise transparent outlook of his sister
Pauline. It was a pity, perhaps, that the sexes
had so arranged themselves. Mr. Hopkinson could
have cherished an invalid daughter ; he only de-
spised a sickly son : and Pauline, who would have

2 — 2

20 THE GREY WORLD

been admirable as a boy, swamped her brother's
weak efforts towards self-assertion in her own
excess of vitality.

She was a normally wholesome child of the middle
class, a girl of whom any healthy-minded parent
might be proud. Born a Materialist, her High School
education had concerned itself chiefly with the crea-
tion of those angles which it was afterwards to
smooth away. Her opinions were positive ; com-
promise she never understood. A rather unelastic
intelligence did not permit her more than one point
of view, and the one which she selected placed her
brother Willie in a light which was vivid enough,
but scarcely sympathetic or explanatory.

As he emerged from babyhood into a puzzled
self -consciousness, in which present realities were
always tempered by the memory of a confused but
unforgettable past, Pauline, three years his senior,
took upon herself the character of a well-meaning
bogey. She was at once alarming, overpowering,
and affectionate. It is difficult for a healthy animal
and an immortal, if undeveloped, spirit to inhabit
the same nursery in peace ; and Master Hopkinson
did not find his sister's disposition accommodating.
Her attitude was so uncertain. He acquired, and
never entirely lost, the habit of looking up at her
quickly whenever he made a remark, because he
was never sure how she would take it.

Constancy of environment is a necessity of happy
childhood. It is only when we are old enough to

THE RETURN TO THE ROAD 21

perceive their absurdity that the inconsistencies of
our elders cease to be distressing ; and Pauline's
indignant denial of imagination caused her brother
many shocks, and some hours of troubled meditation.

He was a trustful little boy, naturally candid.
Silence frightened him, and he was eagerly willing
to converse with the whole world if he might. It
was some time before he found out that his robust
sister was not exactly the person to whom he might
best confide his dreams and bewilderments ; or the
queer thoughts that came to him when he lay awake
at night, and wondered where he was, and if he were
alive, and if he were really a little boy as everybody
seemed to think, or only some sort of tiny insect.

He sometimes had the feeling that he did not
belong to the home-life at all ; that he was outside
of it, looking on at it, and that all the things which
seemed to be happening were not happening really.
This sensation he never succeeded in explaining to
anyone, which was perhaps fortunate : but it con-
tinued to oppress him. He had as yet no idea that
the domain of his pains and pleasures was different
from that of the average child ; for there was no
one to whom he could apply for information, or talk
out his puzzled little soul with out misunderstandings.

Pauline's sensible outlook reflected the family
conscience only too well. She was implacable
towards fancies, and did not encourage revela-
tions. Her brisk, ' What nonsense, Willie ! Don't
be such a silly little boy,' was always to be felt,

22

like a Greek chorus, the spectator's comment on his
comedy of life.

Not till he was about eleven years old. and, as
Mrs. Hopkinson was fond of saying, ' Just a little
anaemic, like so many London boys,' did the full
weight of Pauline's temperament begin to make
itself felt. Willie had brought back with him into
life a keen and uncomfortable realization of the
Grey World of the dead on which he had once been
cast, and of its restless populations. As he grew
older, and evolved his own plan of the world out of
the uncertain country full of strange shapes and
noises where a baby dwells, he was apt to have
sudden returns to the knowledge of that dimension :
vivid and uncontrollable visions in which he saw
his solid surroundings fade into a sort of shadowy
jelly, and heard the dreadful cry of the souls on
their endless quest. Perhaps a little bit of his soul
may have lagged behind there when he made his
hurried re-entry into life.

Yet, in spite of these transcendental perceptions,
which he hated but could not escape, he had all the
practical matter-of-factness of the average urban
child. His experiences had never seemed to him
to be in any way odd, and it certainly never struck
him that they were not shared by the rest of the
family. He was so used to it all, it was so much a
part of normal experience, that no doubt or ques-
tion ever entered his head. Of course, no one ever
talked to him about the Grey World, or acted in a

THE RETURN TO THE ROAD 23

way which suggested the slightest doubt about the
reality of the tables and chairs or the actuality of
food. He had never once heard anyone mention
the strange way these things had of becoming sud-
denly unsubstantial and remote. This, however,
he put down to that difficult science of politeness,
which, according to Mrs. Hopkinson, forbade many
subjects of conversation to sensible children.

He had already noticed that most of the curious
and interesting things which happened every day
were never spoken of at all, or apparently noticed.
The bit of sky which he saw out of the nursery
window, for instance, would fill itself with the
loveliest cloud palaces, and knock them all down
and replace them with little ships or snow moun-
tains or flocks of sheep — all very remarkable to
Master Hopkinson, and quite on the same plane of
mystery as his constant neighbours the ghosts ; for
the joys as well as the terrors of the visionary were
his. But no one took the least interest in such
things, or said anything about them. When a very
wonderful cloud came by, sometimes he showed it
to Pauline ; but she only said ' Silly little boy !'
and went back to the concoction of crinkled paper
lamp-shades and tidies — her favourite occupation.

So the cloud - world and the ghost - world were
classed together in his view of the universe as sub-
jects which were not spoken of by well-mannered
persons, and were too unimportant to be noticed by
those grown-up people whose lives, to eleven years

24 THE GREY WORLD

old, seem compounded of the incomprehensible and
the romantic. And it was really quite accidentally
that he at last broke through this self-imposed
barrier of etiquette, and delivered up his secret to
the unsuitable custody of Pauline.

He had always a private terror of his involuntary
returns to the invisible side of existence ; it was
lonely, it was upsetting, it took the zest out of
daily amusements. He would so much have liked
to forget all about it. But as he was generally
alone when its presence overcame him, and his
English blood had given him a certain shame of
his fright, he had managed to pass through these
moments of panic unperceived ; and any unusual
paleness or silence afterwards was laid to the account
of too much chocolate or too little exercise.

But one evening after tea, as he sat with Pauline
by the nursery fire before the lights had been
switched on, both very amiable and lazy, the thing
happened suddenly and without warning. His
helpless little soul slipped its leash, the walls of
sense trembled and melted, and he was back again
in the horrible country of silence and mist. The
old desolate feeling returned to him ; he was alone
in the crowd of hurrying spirits, and saw the pale
grey image of the nursery fire, and the vague spectre
of Pauline sitting beside it, many worlds away. He
longed to hear her speak, even if it were only to
snap at him ; but he was in another dimension, and
could not reach her. He thought, as he always did

THE RETURN TO THE ROAD 25

on these occasions, that he was dead, and all hope
of respite over ; and at that and the shock of so
quick an ending, his courage fled from him in a wild
yell of fright. It seems probable that the accent of
that scream was not entirely earthly, for its terror
infected even the stolidly unemotional Pauline, and
she clutched her brother's leg, which happened to
be close to her, and shrieked : ' Whatever is the
matter, Willie ?' in shrill and distinctly nervous
tones.

The genuine appeal of her voice penetrated to the
dim place where he wandered, and called him back
to solid life again, a little breathless, and very grate-
ful for such prompt deliverance.

' How I hate that noise !' he said with emphasis.

Miss Hopkinson, still rather shaken, opened large
eyes of amazement upon her brother and continued
her firm grasp of his leg.

' What noise ?' she demanded sharply.

She was fourteen years old, and disliked being
startled : her voice had a ring of semiparental
authority.

But Willie was quite sure of his ground, and
answered without hesitation.

' Why, the noise the ghosts make, stupid !' he said.

' The ghosts ?'

Master Hopkinson was so surprised by his sister's
denseness that he ventured for the first time in his
life to address her in a tone of condescension.

' You know,' he said. ' All the dreadful dead

26 THE GREY WORLD

people what you hear when everything gets soft
and misty.'

She stared.

' Like when we were dead before we got alive
again,' he concluded lucidly.

Pauline's manner now expressed cold disapproba-
tion, and also a certain ill-temper — the natural re-
action from her short attack of credulity.

' Willie,' she said severely, ' you are making
things up ; and you know quite well that mother
doesn't allow it.'

Allegations of this kind are trying even to the
least worldly temper, and Master Hopkinson's
reply was delivered in a distinctly unamiable tone.

' Of course I'm not making it up,' he said. ' Why,
I'm always seeing them. They're quite real, you
know they are : just as real as we are. What for
should I make up anything so nasty ? They're
here now, all about us — crowds of grey people that
never stop still.'

This was outrageous, and the wrathful sincerity
with which it was said roused Pauline's intolerant
common-sense to fighting pitch.

' Be quiet this minute, Willie !' she cried. ' And
don't tell such wicked stories, or I shall go to mother
at once.'

But between his sister's extraordinary obtuseness
and the undeniable truth of his own perceptions,
Willie was now hopelessly confused and almost
hysterical. He felt her attitude to be insulting ;

THE RETURN TO THE ROAD 27

and her final threat, deeply mortifying to the pride
of eleven years old, destroyed his last remnant of
self-control. He began to stamp and whimper in a
very disagreeable but -reassuring way.

' I shall ! I shall ! I shall !' he said. ' Go and
speak to mother, nasty tell-tale scratch-cat ! She'll
know it's true. It's you that tell stories ; and I
shall tell mother you were frightened 'cause I yelled!'

Five minutes later Master and Miss Hopkinson
effected a hurried entrance into the drawing-room,
where their mother sat silky and erect pouring out
tea for several other matrons. It was her At Home
day, and the air was heavy with the perfume of
warm sealskin and white-rose scent.

Mrs. Hopkinson's most valued friend, the rich but
homely Mrs. Steinmann, was sitting near the door.
This lady had been badly translated from the
German in early life, and all traces of Teutonic
idiom had not yet been eradicated. For her, life
held but one thing — the domestic interior. This
she really understood, and into its least tempting
recesses she penetrated with garrulous joy. She
was one of those worthy but socially embarrassing
women who are apt to change the conversation
abruptly when the gentlemen come into the room.

Mrs. Steinmann, then, saw the children at once,
and welcomed so congenial a reason for removing
her attention from Mrs. Alcock and Mrs. Frere —
superior persons who professed to know nothing of
the duties of a tweeny-maid, and insisted on speak-

28 THE GREY WORLD

ing of politics. Mrs. Steinmann was aware that
their remarks were merely an epitome of the opinions
of Mr. Alcock and Mr. Frere, both of whom obtained
their dogma direct from the Daily Telegraph.

' Why, here are the dear little ones !' she said.
' How big Pauline is getting ! And Willie too ;
quite a man ! Come and kiss me, my dears.'

But the usually placid Pauline was shaken from
her well-trained calm, and a strong sense of duty
impelled her, with Willie held firmly in her wake,
direct to her mother's chair.

' Pauline ! What a dirty pinafore !' said Mrs.
Hopkinson, all her senses tuned to the level of her
best tea-set.

Pauline barely noticed this accusation, which was
sufficiently well founded.

' Mother,' she replied in an awful voice, ' Willie's
been telling horrible stories. He says the nursery
is full of ghosts, and he saw them, but he was sitting
on the hearth-rug all the time ; and he gave the
awfullest scream !'

There was a slight sensation in the drawing-room.
Little Mrs. Alcock, who detested children but
thought it polite to show her appreciation of them
by giggling whenever they spoke, began to laugh :
and somehow her empty laughter, coming so soon
after his peep into the sorrowful place, outraged
Master Hopkinson even more than his sister's
scepticism had done. His puzzled little mind was
in revolt, and he turned on her quite fiercely.

THE RETURN TO THE ROAD 29

' You won't laugh when you're dead !' he observed
with chilling sincerity ; and Mrs. Alcock ceased to
be amused.

' What a very peculiar little boy 1* she said, and
relapsed into uneasy silence.

The other ladies eyed him, some with nervousness,
others with obvious disapprobation. Eccentricity
is only tolerable when it is ridiculous, and they
found the situation more uncomfortable than absurd.
There was an uncanny feeling in the air. Several
began to button their cloaks and get out their card-
cases. But before they could say good-bye, the
child, who was recovering himself, followed up his
first advantage and arrested the general attention.

' Isn't it silly, mother ?' he said. ' Pauline wants
to make out that there isn't a Grey World, or ghosts
in it, or anything. Why, I suppose you get into it
often, don't you, just like I do ? And anyhow,
when we were dead we were there for ever so long.
At least, I was, and I hated it, because of there
being nothing to do. And now Pauline says I tell
stories.'

The spectacle of a small boy in overalls standing
in the middle of the drawing-room floor and referring
casually to the time when he inhabited the unseen
world is not often seen in suburban circles ; and
Mrs. Hopkinson, who hated anything unusual to
happen on her At Home days, felt awkward and
annoyed.

* Willie dear,' she said rather flurriedly, ' you've

30 THE GREY WORLD

been reading some horrid ghost stories, haven't you,
and got frightened ?'

And she nodded to the explosive Pauline per-
emptory injunctions to hold her tongue.

' Oh no, mother,' answered Willie. ' The ghost
stories are all wrong, you know, not a bit like the
real thing ; and I wasn't at all frightened. Only I
got in amongst them all of a sudden, and it is so
horrible ; and I gave a yell, and then Pauline
wouldn't believe I'd been there.'

' Pauline,' said Mrs. Hopkinson suddenly, ' what
did Willie have for his tea ?'

' Well, he did have one bit of cake,' replied
Pauline.

The other ladies looked at each other significantly,
and nodded. To those practical maternal minds the
explanation was simple enough.

' You may say what you like,' observed Mrs.
Steinmann, ' but with some children cake is never
assimilated. I've often seen the same thing with
my grandchildren. And a nervous boy like that!
But put him to bed with a dose of calomel, and he'll
be all right in the morning.'

* Yes,' said Mrs. Hopkinson, relieved by this con-
genial suggestion. ' You're not very well, Willie
dear ; that's what it is. Go upstairs with Pauline,
and don't think any more about it. It's all imagina-
tion, you know.'

What did an Early Christian feel like when his
sceptical relations treated him with contemptuous

THE RETURN TO THE ROAD 31

kindness, and ascribed his spiritual perceptions to
dyspepsia ? One hopes that he found the lions a
less painful form of martyrdom. Master Willie
Hopkinson, torn by disgust, astonishment, and per-
plexity, knew that he preferred anything and every-
thing to Pauline, the agent of his humiliation. But
whilst he was still speechless in his misery, she
hurried him out of the room.

CHAPTER IV

A LITTLE WAYFARER IS BEWILDERED

' Dreams were to him the true realities : externals he accepted
as other people accepted dreams.' — GEORGE MOORE.

THE adventure of the At Home day was painful to
Willie's pride, but it taught him several valuable
things. It developed a wariness and precocious dis-
cretion which he had not possessed before ; and it
made him specially careful in his choice of conversa-
tion with the family.

It was a long time before he lost the shadow
which was cast by his painful efforts to review the
situation and understand the intricacies of his ex-
perience ; but whilst this still puzzled him, he saw
that any reticence must be good which saved him
from misunderstanding and humiliation, and he
laid his small plans for the future very deliberately.

Most children of the normal type have their
moments of mysticism, when their spirit first stirs
and they wonder what they really are, puzzling over
memory and consciousness and other things which
elude their rudimentary language, but which they

32

A LITTLE WAYFARER IS BEWILDERED 33

take it for granted that their elders know all about.
Master Hopkinson, always acutely conscious of
two worlds equally near to him, pondered perhaps
less on these things, because to him they were so
obvious, objectionable, and distinct. In later and
more articulate years he was accustomed to say,
that he came to his infancy trailing clouds which
had no elements of glory. The phrase was accurate,
and he did not find its literary associations dis-
agreeable.

The Grey World was the warp on which the
bright threads of his sensuous existence were
spread — a strange and tiresome plan, perhaps ; but
to him profoundly natural, because it was the only
one that he had ever known. But this sudden dis-
covery that the rest of the family did not share his
knowledge, live the same dual life, or frequent the
same dim country, startled and distressed him.
He had taken it for granted that he was as all other
little boys ; now it seemed clear that he had made
a huge mistake. Instead of sharing with the others
an experience as ordinary and inevitable as a cold
in the head or a dose of powder, he was quite alone
in his visits to the crowded country, and even in his
memories of the time when he was one of its inhabi-
tants. He had seen quite plainly that the Hopkin-
son family and its friends knew nothing of these
things. Even his mother, that monument of infalli-
bility, had seemed deeply astonished by what he
himself regarded as his extremely ordinary remarks,

3

34 THE GREY WORLD

It was very bewildering, for he could really see no
reason why he should be different from everybody
else. He felt something of the helpless disgust of
the seasoned traveller who comes home to find his
truthful narrative received with sardonic smiles ; or
of the long-suffering chemist who tries to demon-
strate radium before the hostile grins of a canny but
uneducated audience.

At the same time, the human element in him was
rather ashamed, and frightened by its temerity, and
struggled to assure him that grown-up people must
know everything ; and the conviction grew that it
was best to endure the slur on his veracity in silence,
and only be careful in his own interests to steer clear
of these complications in the future. After all, if
for some inconceivable reason the rest of his ac-
quaintances inhabited one world only, did not know
where they had come from, and never dreamed of
troubling about it, it was not to be expected that
on the testimony of one small boy they should
believe in truths which were to them both imper-
ceptible and offensive.

And the Grey World was so monstrous, so impos-
sible unless one had been there, that often when he
was boat-sailing in Kensington Gardens, or when
the jam-roly at dinner was particularly solid and
good, Willie found it very hard to believe in it him-
self. That all the bright colours he loved : the nice
flat blue poppies with yellowy-brown leaves which
sprawled over the drawing-room paper, the scarlet

A LITTLE WAYFARER IS BEWILDERED 35

of the local omnibus, and all the loveliness of sun-
shine and gaslight : should be shams which hid the
horrible place of unending nothingness that lay in
and through the streets and houses, and filled the
air he breathed with melancholy ghosts — this would
have been quite ridiculous if it had not happened
to be true. So he excused Mrs. Hopkinson and her
callers for their ignorance ; and, half in a fit of out-
raged dignity, and half because he dreaded the
naturalistic standpoint of Pauline, he decided to
avoid all references to his own thoughts and experi-
ences until he was quite sure that the rest of the
world was likely to believe in them.

As the double life that he led rather detached
Master Hopkinson from a vivid interest in ordinary
boy-pleasures, and made him visionary and given to
quiet delights ; and as Mr. and Mrs. Hopkinson
strenuously upheld the policy of only talking to
the children about things that children should and
could understand, this resulted in his becoming an
unpleasantly silent little boy. For the grip of the
Unseen on his soul enlarged as he grew older, and
with it his terror of betraying himself.

So he lived for the next year or two a cautious,
artificial life, and all remembrance of the At Home
day episode gradually faded from the family mind.
They said that he was a queer child, and hoped he
was going to be clever ; and as Pauline outgrew the
nursery, he was left a good deal to himself.

He was certainly odd in his ways ; given to long

3—2

36 THE GREY WORLD

hours of brooding and sudden flashes of conviction.
Dream was seldom absent from his eyes, but fortu-
nately Mrs. Hopkinson did not recognise it under that
name. He loved to read the old romances and tales
of King Arthur's knights, for a peculiar inarticulate
joy that they gave him : but when he tried to find
out the source of his fascination, he could not.
Specially the story of the Holy Graal attracted him.
Though his reason told him that it and the others
were as untrue, as shadowy, as the rest of life, his
soul found in them some secret element which
nourished it and gave it peace.

He got the habit of looking into every book that
he could find, for he had somehow acquired the idea
that books were real, though people, he knew, were
not. One day, he found a thin volume of verse,
left probably by some chance visitor — Mr. Hopkin-
son discouraged, without difficulty, the reading of
poetry by his household ; he thought it dangerous
stuff. This book Willie opened, and read,
amongst much unintelligible loveliness, the follow-
ing quatrain :

' We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go

Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show ; '

' Then there is someone else who knows !' he
thought ; and went away companioned and less
lonely for that knowledge. He had a constant
longing to fathom the depths of the gulf which

A LITTLE WAYFARER IS BEWILDERED 37

divided him from other people, though he dared
not venture further confidences to discover if he
really stood alone. d

Sometimes he wondered if there were not other
children in. the same unhappy position ; but he
dreaded being laughed at, and the small boys at his
day-school did not strike him as promising subjects
for inquiry.

The solid trust in appearances which the ' grown-
ups ' showed, and specially his father's attitude
towards life, bothered him more and more. To
live in the midst of superior and authoritative
persons who persistently grasp the shadow and assert
that it is the substance, is aggravating to an apostle
but appalling to a nervous child. Mr. Hopkinson
was thought by his neighbours to be an alarmingly
clever man : modern science was his god, and
Huxley the high-priest of his temple, but he had a
way with heretics which savoured more of theology
than of reason.

Whilst Willie was still very young, he began to
' interest him,' as he said, by popular lecturettes at
meal times or on Sunday afternoons, about things
that the child loved to dream over, and whose
beauties gave him an inexplicable delight. Perhaps
it was the ugliness of his calling — Mr. Hopkinson
was a wholesale tailor ; Hopkinson, Vowles and Co.,
of Bermondsey — which developed his peculiar gift
of seeing only the mechanical and ordinary in the
universe, and reducing to formal hideousness the

38 THE GREY WORLD

loveliest manifestations of life. But when he dis-
sected daisies, and showed his son pictures of his
own inside, and ' proved ' that the magical clouds
which Willie worshipped were nothing but steam
and dust, and then said informingly, ' Force and
Matter again ! Force and Matter ! That's the
whole bag of tricks, Willie my boy !' Master Hop-
kinson found the mingled results of his father's
ignorance and authority very bewildering.

He was disturbed, lonely and unhappy, and some-
times it even happened that he wished himself back
in his old existence in Notting Dale, where life
was always amusing and adventurous, and no one
worried about turning pretty dreams into what he
secretly looked upon as ugly lies.

But he kept these criticisms to himself with the
rest, and listened with a blank face which his father
put down to stupidity, whilst that enthusiast
gloated over atoms and molecules and the physical
basis of Life ; and even, when his wife was out of
hearing, took sideway trips into the theory of
evolution. Mr. Hopkinson was fond of comparing
the Universe to his own factory and himself to the
Ruler thereof ; and it struck him as eminently
reasonable that the Almighty should secure effi-
ciency by sacking the incompetent hands. He
waited for Willie's remarks — the sharp remarks
beloved of the educational parent — but they did
not come ; for Master Hopkinson dared not speak
of the truth as he knew it, and this same knowledge

A LITTLE WAYFARER IS BEWILDERED 39

shut him out from any comprehension of his father's
point of view.

Pauline, on the contrary, took these things in
very readily. They taught science at the High
School once a week, and sometimes she argued with
Mr. Hopkinson about it, which pleased him. Her
questions and contentions were just sufficiently
intelligent to give a fallacious air of brilliance to his
own replies. She had grown into a tall, thick-
ankled girl, all muscle and loud opinions ; but her
brother still kept pale and puny, because, said his
mother, his brain was growing too fast.

' Whatever it is that keeps him back,' replied her
husband, stroking the admirably-grown moustache
which did not seem likely to survive his generation,
' it isn't his brain, because he hasn't got one. Not
one boy in a thousand has had his opportunities of
getting a thorough working knowledge of the scien-
tific standpoint. But the lad's a regular milksop,
unhealthy in mind and body, and takes no intelli-
gent interest whatever. Goodness knows what will
become of him when he gets into the City.'

It was at this propitious period that Master Hop-
kinson chose, for the second time, to lift the veil
which hung over the realities of his life. As her
children outgrew the nursery, and left more leisure
at her disposal, Mrs. Hopkinson had begun to
temper her household ministrations with a wider
charity ; and she was specially interested in a
society for taking boys from the Franciscan liberty

40 THE GREY WORLD

of the slums and immuring them in an institution
where their morals were edited to a positively
insulting extent. Willie remembered well how the
young inhabitants of Netting Dale had looked upon
those societies, and he did not feel very interested
in the sum total of subscriptions which she some-
times announced to Mr. Hopkinson over the break-
fast-table. His own collecting-card lay with the
' Boy's Own Microscope ' and ' Hints on Bird-
stuffing,' in a dark corner of the schoolroom cup-
board.

A day dawned, however, when Mrs. Hopkinson's
energies could no longer be confined to begging or
secretarial work. She had always had a passion
for commerce ; and she now perceived that it was
her duty, and incidentally the privilege of her com-
mittee, to undertake a bazaar. The remnant sales
were about to begin ; she had the flair of the born
bargain-hunter. She would buy scraps and odd-
ments offered at alarming sacrifices, confection
them into sachets, baby's pinafores, and garments
for the poor, and sell them to other philanthropic
economists at a profit of 50 per cent. The more
she thought of this idea, the more she liked it.
The house was soon filled with the sound of sewing-
machines and the smell of AspinalPs enamel ; and
Fraud, decked with the aureole of Good Intentions,
became its tutelary saint.

A working-party met twice a week, and discussed a
dubious morality amidst much snipping and stitching.

A LITTLE WAYFARER IS BEWILDERED 41

' Yes, dear ; put that lace on it. It will do quite
well. It was only three-three, but no one will
notice it isn't real torchon.'

' No, I wouldn't line it with silk ; the lining won't
show.'

' Oh, is that doll's leg broken, Mrs. Steinmann ?
What a bother ! You must give it a longer skirt to
hide the join.'

These and other sidelights on ethics came to
Master Hopkinson as he helped his sister to hand
tea, or dived under the dining-room table to search
for missing thimbles and pins. They were very
ugly in their earthiness, those afternoons, and were
somehow connected vaguely in his memory with a
plaid flannel blouse — an unfortunate arrangement in
brown and heliotrope — that his mother used to
wear. Just as in art some harmony of colour or
line may often suggest a link with music or with
poetry, so one form of hideousness often correlates
curiously with another, and stands as its eternal
emblem in our consciousness.

The bazaar and all its belongings, therefore, fussed
Master Hopkinson, disturbed his dreamy existence
and tried his nerves. Mrs. Hopkinson thought that
children should be made to interest themselves in
the poor, and he was never allowed to forget that
the preparations for enslaving the free-born sons of
Notting Dale were going on. Having now arrived
at a stage in which he remembered the days that he
had spent amongst them as the only entirely happy

42 THE GREY WORLD

ones he had ever known, he looked on as a rather
morose cherub might have done whilst a party of
elderly angels planned out Purgatory. This atti-
tude could scarcely escape the committee, and their
exalted philanthropy judged it to be wholly evil.
Their little boys were chipping wood, and their little
girls working laborious doyleys for the charity ; but
Willie had not yet come forward with any contribu-
tion.

Amongst mothers, sidelong censure of other
people's children is always dangerous, but seldom
resistible ; and probably his deliberate languors
were very irritating. At last the strain broke.

' Aren't you very glad, Willie dear,' said Mrs.
Steinmann to him suddenly, ' to think of those poor
little boys being taken out of the streets and put
into a comfortable home ?'

Passive disapprobation does not sit well on small
boys, and the committee had not been alone in
its growing exasperation. Master Hopkinson was
pleased to have an opening for his opinion.

' No : I'm sorry for them,' he answered promptly.

A matronly chorus cried, ' My dear Willie !' and
looked at each other, but not at Mrs. Hopkinson,
who affected not to have heard her son's remark.

Willie felt that he was placed on the defensive, and
a wild longing to shock someone seized him. Long-
nourished rancours against local ideas overflowed,
and abruptly demolished all his careful vows of
discretion. In fact, he lost his temper — and his head.

A LITTLE WAYFARER IS BEWILDERED 43

* When I was a poor little boy/ he said, ' I liked
it. It was jolly. I didn't have to be clean then.
And there was lots more to do than there is here
and fewer lessons, and. I never heard ghosts. And
you talk a lot about their drunken fathers, and all
that ; but drunken fathers aren't so bad. I
thought mine rather amusing. I used to help get
him upstairs at night. Sometimes he was awfully
funny '

Here Mrs. Steinmann's shiny dark eyes, trained
to plumb the souls of her scullery-maids, began to
have their effect on him. He stopped suddenly.
It is never pleasant to realize that one has confided
in the wrong person. Willie now perceived that he
had confided in a crowd of wrong persons. Some-
one said, ' How remarkable !' and someone else,
' He really must have quite a vivid imagination !'
His mother dropped three pins from her mouth,
but found no words to fill the vacancy ; and Master
Hopkinson, with hot face and short breath, walked
out of the room as quickly as he considered proper.

This was Willie's last serious indiscretion ; and so
useless and astonishing had been his fall that he
never clearly understood how it came about. His
wild words had left no sharp impression behind
them ; but they revived unfortunate memories and
prejudices amongst the Hopkinson set, and confirmed
the belief that he was a ' difficult child.' Some felt
bound to call him clever, but all preferred to think
that he was untruthful.

44

This he expected, and with indifference ; but he
was surprised in his ignorance when his mother sud-
denly deserted her post of family ameliorator and
concealer of crime, and took the history of his out-
burst to Mr. Hopkinson's ears. He learnt later that
Good Works rank, like etiquette and imperialism,
amongst the most solemn games of mankind, and
are not lightly to be smiled at. A mild irony at the
expense of her pet charity will turn the most loving
woman against her children, but the first time that
it happens the shock is rather severe.

So Willie stood before his father feeling sick and
shaky, whilst he italicized the most unpleasant as-
pects of the incident, and asked his son sarcastically
what he meant by it. Master Hopkinson's soul,
which was so familiar with the real terrors, hated
his body for this ridiculous fright. He had no words,
but his father had plenty — the acid reaction of his
unappreciated lectures poisoned his discourse, and
burnt where it fell. Willie bit his tongue hard for
fear he should be tempted to speak the truth ; the
longing to be understood dies so slowly.

But he had learnt once for all the first rule of
wisdom — never to emerge from the veil which your
neighbour is accustomed to mistake for yourself.

CHAPTER V

A DOWN-HILL STRETCH
' Education begins the gentleman.' — LOCKE.

MR. HOPKINSON, even when he was not actively
annoyed by his son, felt him to be a blot upon his
theory of family life ; and now, disguising an act
of self-indulgence in the decent mantle of parental
duty, he seized the opportunity of sending Willie
away to school. They were strangers to each other,
these two ; and worse than strangers, because
mutually repellent. But Master Hopkinson was
an only son, and his father could not conscientiously
get rid of the British necessity of having him
' licked into shape.'

The boy was sent to a Norfolk village, where
bracing air, large meals, and an athletic house-
master left little chance for meditation. Uncon-
genial surroundings are not always unfortunate.
He was at an age when the body, if it is ever to be an
efficient vehicle of mind, is bound to assert itself
at the expense of the soul : and in his case lone-
liness, long hours spent in vague dreamy attempts

45

46 THE GREY WORLD

to unravel the meaning of things — above all, the
heavy bewilderments of a spirit that lived alone with
occult realities which sapped it of all joy — had worn
the body rather thin. Nature was ready for her
revenge. School, to which he went as to a peni-
tentiary, became his sanatorium ; the place where
he lost his life to find it — lost that isolated existence
which had crushed him into savourless endurance,
and found the sprightly illusions natural to his
race and age. The change was sudden, drastic ;
and the shock enhanced its value. At Hazefield
both cricket and Latin prose were serious things ;
but the soul was only mentioned on Sundays, and
then in a purely official manner. The result was
to be foreseen. At the end of six months Willie
had hardened his muscles, enlarged his vocabulary,
and begun to take an interest in the question of
wearing his cap at the correct angle.

The slow and steady action of environment had
worn away all his own convictions, and the ready-
made beliefs which flourished around him slipped
unnoticed into their place. He was still conscious
of the shadow-side of the world, and liable to sudden
moments of withdrawal when he heard its horrid
noises, and lost hold of the comfortable playthings
of earth. But these moments seemed to him now
to be dreams and interludes ; the time had gone
by when he could accept them, with a faith which
often verged on agony, as a part of normal experi-
ence. He did not any longer grasp them with the

A DOWN-HILL STRETCH 47

painful fervours of the past ; there was always a
mist between. Also the trend of public opinion
made him rather ashamed of his visions. School-
boys despise what they do not understand ; and
shame (with the young) is a great inducement to
forgetfulness.

There followed a time when his attitude to these
things was that of an Evangelical clergyman who
has inadvertently read the ' Origin of Species,' and
would like to forget it. He knew that the orthodox
position of his schoolfellows was untenable for him ;
he knew that their whole idea of life was false ;
that the truth — the amazing, and as they would say
the unnatural truth — of existence lay in his hand.
But he refused to think about it : it was unpleasant,
and did not fit in.

He preferred his lying senses to his inconvenient
perceptions, and became sedulous in the cricket
field and wholesomely casual in class. On the day
when Master Hopkinson learnt the ' Psalm of Life '
as an imposition, and repeated with smiling sin-
cerity and unconcern ,-

1 Life is real ! Life is earnest 1
And the grave is not its goal ; '

he was very nearly a normal boy. Education was
doing its work. To take everything for granted, to
grasp fringes and avoid fundamentals, to think only
of the obvious, and to refuse to consider the unim-
portant incident called Death — these arts, in which
our youngsters are so carefully instructed, Willie

48 THE GREY WORLD

at last acquired, though perhaps less easily than
his fellows.

At home during the holidays, his large appetite
and slangy speech pleased his parents, astonished
their acquaintances, and made Pauline jealous.
He ' rotted ' her and her friends in the most correct
manner, was ostentatiously noisy, deliberately
tyrannical, and generally displayed all the tire-
someness of the healthy male. Everyone remarked
on the improvement ; and even Mr. Hopkinson
became comparatively genial, and began to hope
that his son might be good for something after all.

' I always knew it was his health that made him
so queer,' said Mrs. Hopkinson. ' Poorness of the
blood — that's what I put it down to ; and the
bracing air of Norfolk was just what was wanted
to set him right.'

Mrs. vSteinmann, to whom these remarks were
offered, agreed, though in rather an ungracious
manner.

' Willie wanted a bit of school-life to knock the
nonsense out of him,' she said. ' Tristram was
just the same — moody and rather unwholesome ;
so different from Geraint, who was always a thorough
boy.'

Mrs. Steinmann's grandsons, surnamed Levi, did
not incainate the Arthurian legend to the extent
that their cultured mother had hoped.

' I often thought, you know, Mrs. Hopkinson,'
she added, ' that you left Willie to go his own way

A DOWN-HILL STRETCH 49

too much ; but of course one doesn't like to interfere.
And really, considering his curious disposition, I'm
thankful that the consequences have been no worse.'

The good fortune of her neighbours was a per-
petual source of marvel to Mrs. Steinmann ; she
was always expecting Providence to punish them
for the lack of that oleaginous sagacity which over-
flowed in her own character, and which she mistook
for commonsense. Disappointment had embittered
her comfortable bosom, and too often lent an
acrid tone to her congratulations. She had found
her daughter, the mother of Tristram and Geraint,
less of a treasure than her principles had led her
to expect.

This lady, whom Mrs. Hopkinson regarded with
the contemptuous awe which good house-wives
reserve for the intellectual of their sex, inherited
from her parent a shining black fringe, a sallow
complexion, but few domestic virtues. She came
to maturity during the Browning period, and
though carefully trained in all the ritual of
Teutonic womanhood * could never be persuaded
to reverence the family linen chest, or remember
which was the right day to have the drawing-room
turned out. Her marriage, which took place at
the earliest possible moment, was more important
to her as a rupture from home than as a union with
Mr. Levi ; an elderly widower, whose sandy hair
might, she hoped, counteract her own unfortunately
Oriental appearance. In this she was mistaken ;

4

50 THE GREY WORLD

and it was her painful fate to see her sons, in spite
of romantic names and picturesque dresses, become
more uncompromisingly Hebraic day by day.
Their long necks, restless black eyes, and ferret-like
expressions, offended an aesthetic sense which was
nourished on Raphael and Sir Joshua Reynolds.
She was best pleased when they were least in evi-
dence, and invariably affected a refined ignorance
of the less lovely details of their toilets.

It was Mrs. Steinmann — at once expert and
amateur of the nursery — who, having accidentally
discovered that her grandsons did not wear flannel
next the skin, expressed her horror and disgust with
homely directness, and took all that concerned
them into her own hands. Henceforth she saw that
they had their hair cut regularly, and took them
to the dentist every six months. She was happier,
and they were healthier, for the change ; and they
gave her, what she had lacked before, a criterion
by which to disparage other people's children.

The little Levis, therefore, were looked upon in
Mrs. Hopkinson's set as Mrs. Steinmann's peculiar
property. She held them, so to speak, on a repairing
lease : worshipped their unlovely bodies, quoted
their uninteresting remarks, and was only successful
in concealing her idolatrous state from the unsus-
pecting objects of her adoration. Geraint Levi,
described by candid acquaintances as a born bounder,
was detested by Mrs. Hopkinson for a habit he
had of making love to Pauline, two years his senior.

A DOWN-HILL STRETCH 51

Tristram's manners were less characteristic ; his
air of good breeding was a frequent source of un-
happiness to his grandmother, who mistook it for
ill-health.

But no Englishwoman can be expected to tolerate
the comparison of her children with those of another
race ; and only a respect for Mrs. Steinmann's
diamonds and knowledge of cookery bridled Mrs.
Hopkinson's tongue when she heard her Willie
bracketed with Tristram as lucky examples of the
benefits of school.

' Willie was such an imaginative child,' she said.
( Always fancying things, and using his brain. He
reminds me of my father, who would have written
something, I'm sure, if he'd had the time, but he
was always so much occupied in the — er — with
commerce. Mr. Hopkinson thinks that what Willie
really requires is balance, and we are going to put
him on the modern side next term. A sound
scientific training, that is Mr. Hopkinson's idea ;
and modern languages, which will be so useful in
the business.'

Master Hopkinson went to the modern side,;
and it did its work well. All his old poetic fancies
and love of the beautiful were eradicated, and a
taste for things strange and ingenious took their
place. At this period all that tickled his curiosity
and gave interest to the concrete appealed to him
strongly : he took in magazines which had a ' corner
for curiosities,' and became keen on acrostics,

4—2

52 THE GREY WORLD

The wonderful skies, cold tones, and quiet planes
of the Norfolk landscape had nothing to say to him ;
for the message of the clouds was bound up with
horrid memories of the visions of infancy, and he
carried to excess the usual revolt of the adolescent
from the tastes and ideals of his childhood. He
grew up to be a thin, freckled youth, mediocre in
talent, manners, and physical powers : moderately
liked by the boys, but too indifferent to make any
great friends. He did moderately well, too, in class,
but scored no successes. His masters, who saw
promise in the remote expression of his eyes, were
disappointed by his work, which was correct but
heartless. It was inevitably so. In spite of deli-
berate efforts to fall into line, he did not entirely
* mix in.'

At seventeen, it seemed that Willie had no decided
bent in any direction, and Mr. Hopkinson formed
the idea of removing this promising material to
his office as soon as possible. He wished that the
City might seal him with her symbolic beast before
contact with a wider world had the chance of
causing some inconvenient bias. There is no room
for the embryo scholar or musician in the wholesale
tailoring trade.

To the ideal spectator, that unemotional angel
who criticises the wanderings of man, this may
well have seemed the oddest, most unexpected of
the stages through which Master Hopkinson passed.
Here was he, an immortal spirit, and knowing

A DOWN-HTLL STRETCH 53

himself so to be — aware of that place whence he
had come, and not without a shuddering fore-
knowledge of his future fate — steadily refusing
his attention to all true aspects of life. He had
become more animal than the animals whom he
lived amongst, shared the least durable of their
pleasures, was passionately credulous of the reality
of their gods. He liked silly jokes and comic
songs, because of the sense of comradeship that
hung about them ; when he was shouting a chorus
with a dozen others he felt for the moment that he
was one of themselves. He was redeeming his
years of loneliness ; and with them did his best
to get rid of all that distinguished him from the
other foolish, boisterous, bumptious, or otherwise
wholesome young fellows who pass from school to
commerce with little diminution of spirits or as-
sumption of responsibility.

Many pass through this evolution, though few,
perhaps, commence where he did. An accident
checked the process as it reached its final position ;
he reverted to his old state of helpless perception ;
and the Power, fiend or angel, who had him in
charge caught him once more in the fine meshes of
its net.

CHAPTER VI

STAFF AND SCRIP

' These things I do,
These other things I see,
Shape not for me
Aught that I dare name true.

Rather they seem to be
Hard riddles that, with sloth and pain,
I must again

Undo.'

LAURENCE HOUSMAN.

WHEN he was eighteen years old Master Hopkinson
caught scarlet fever ; and the outward disease was
the harbinger of a spiritual crisis. His childhood,
though sickly, had contrived to withstand bodily
stress, and it was years since he had known an
illness. The psychological side of ill-health, at all
events, was new to him ; and as he sickened it aston-
ished him to perceive how he withdrew into himself,
and watched with timid curiosity the proportions
of his environment gradually change. He wondered
dreamily what .was the matter, and swung between
interest and dismay till at last the meaning of the
thing was obvious, and he was declared to be ill.

54

STAFF AND SCRIP 55

He was the only victim, and had the school
sanatorium to himself. This seemed to promise
dulness, for he loved company now as much as
he had once disliked it ; and the pink-washed
walls, bare boards, and row of iron beds, looking
in their stripped and pillowless state like the skele-
tons of some nightmare quadruped, were not exactly
cheering. Yet curiously enough they did not give
him the desolate shock that he looked for ; they
were friendly, as the worst furniture can be if it
likes. He lay and looked at them, and wondered
of what they reminded him. Above all, the faint
scent of carbolic acid stirred a vague memory
which he could not catch. He was interested,
puzzled. As yet, you see, he was not very ill, but
was quite equal to a certain amount of hazy medi-
tation. It was a change, and he enjoyed it.

But the surprises of circumstance were not over.
Staring about him, he recognised one after another
of the ideas and sensations that came slowly to the
surface of his spirit, as one may greet old acquaint-
ances whose names and business — all, in fact, but
their unforgettable faces — have gone to oblivion.
He found that he knew in advance all the ritual
of sickness ; the change of all human relations,
even the forbidding automatonism which a nurse
brings with her, did not astonish him. It was
evident that he had been there befdre ; and he
roamed feverishly back through his past, hunting
for the clue. But it eluded him.

56 THE GREY WORLD

Only in the middle of the third night, as he lay
alone, hot, uncomfortable, and very forlorn, filled
with the self -pitying miseries of the sick, did he find
what he had been looking for. It was a discovery
which amazed, but failed to please him. He dis-
turbed from a sleep which had lasted for several
years the distasteful and unwelcome memory of his
old existences, reminding him with a shock that
he was not as other boys. He had hidden them
deep in that corner of his mind which we all keep
for humiliating incidents, old religions, and ideals
too spotless to be lived with : a corner we seldom
traverse, and then with light footsteps, for fear of
disturbing those inconvenient sleepers.

What he found, then, in this Bluebeard chamber
of his consciousness was knowledge, accurate and
indelible, of the days when he lay in S. Nicholas In-
firmary— another child, sick of another fever ; yet a
real child, and one in spirit with the lanky schoolboy
which his Ego now claimed as its home. He lived
there againj and so vividly that he found it difficult
to disentangle memory from reality, and to assure
himself that he was not still in that narrow cot,
that he was not any longer that child of the slums,
that all his subsequent experience was not a dream of
that illness.

Time is sequence of ideas, but when we run
back upon the trail and recommence an old series,
is not the interval annihilated ? It all puzzled
him horribly, as his mind turned from one place

STAFF AND SCRIP 57

to the other, and groped for the landmarks and
boundaries denied him by a Destiny which he now
felt to be both imminent and awful.

But the Past which he had despised and neglected
was waiting with a crueller revenge. When the
fever reached an acute stage, and he was seriously
ill, another and more disagreeable side of the subject
was presented to Willie's mind. It occurred to
him that, for the second time within his memory,
he was very near indeed to the point of death.

For the last five or six years he had lived the
god-like life of the average man, whose imagination
assures him that he is immortal, although his reason
tells him that he is not. Now Death became a
fact, and a very disquieting fact. Its nearness
annihilated the pretty draperies with which educa-
tion conceals the ugly bogeys of mankind, and he
saw it with primeval clearness, horrible and distinct.

It meant more to him, too, than it might do to
others. He could not believe in the poetic fictions
with which orthodox persons are accustomed to veil
the open door. It meant a return, perhaps a perma-
nent one, to the shadowy terrors of his childhood ; an
existence of crowded isolation, of hurried idleness,
which might stretch into eternity or terminate with
another experimental re-entry into life. Either
alternative was unpleasant. Master Hopkinson was
of a contented disposition, his artistic and adven-
turous tastes had not as yet begun to give trouble,
and he felt that the prospects of his present life

58 THE GREY WORLD

were tolerable. He preferred that the years should
be punctuated with commas rather than full-stops.

He looked in vision on to a bright and varied world,
a world full of energy and surprises and Boy's Own
Paper pageantry. It is true that so far he had not
seen much of this aspect of life, but provided that
he could remain alive he might escape into it at
any moment. Death offered no such allurements.

There followed on this hour of awakening a period
when he was no longer capable of thought : when
he battled with death, and shook the nerves of his
nurses by his cries, his terrors, his entreaties.
Time after time he felt as a stifling weight the
perception of the shadow-land ; time after time
lost his grasp of solidity, slipped from the noises
of earth, and heard the call of the spirits who were
drawing him back to their ranks. For days he
hung doubtful on the borders, and proclaimed his
agony of soul. They said that he was delirious, but
it is more probable that he was intoxicated with
fright.

When the tide turned, the fever left him, and he
knew that Horror no longer stood close by him, but
had retreated to its normal place, Willie lay limp
on his bed in an ecstasy of thankfulness — his poor
frame as greatly shaken by the returning flood of
life as it had been by the violence of its ebb. He
was too weak for coherent thought at first : he
was satisfied to rest in a sense of safety and well-
being : and the sharpest memories of his ordeal

STAFF AND SCRIP 59

wore off during this somnolence. So that at
some three weeks after the crisis, he woke to a
detached and placid consideration of events.

It must not be held a reproach to Master Hop-
kinson that he felt himself to be at this moment
the centre of his own universe. Could others have
seen him as he really was, they must, had they
been by temperament philosophers, have held him
more than usually qualified for the position. The
invalid is a licensed egoist, the visionary an inevit-
able one ; and only those who vainly desired such
consolation for themselves could have grudged
him his silent self-importance.

The scarlet fever convalescent has ample oppor-
tunity for thought ; and this exercise, so difficult to
a childhood fresh from the perceptive state, had been
rendered possible to Willie by the strictly logical trend
of his education. He began, therefore, gradually,
slowly, and luxuriously, to think of what had hap-
pened. He thought about it in relation to the past,
and, more seriously, in relation to the future. It was
plain that he had been a bit of a fool. Had he
died in his fever, the eighteen years of grace which
he had won of life since his death in S. Nicholas
Infirmary would have seemed inconsiderable enough
against an eternity of boredom ; and he had a clearer
idea than many theologians of the black vacancy
which the word ' eternal ' hides. Yet this, he had
no doubt, was what he had escaped from, and
to this, unless he could discover some pass in the

60 THE GREY WORLD

secret barrier, he was bound eventually to return.
The prospect was very ghastly. He felt that he
could never bear to see a funeral again. It was
too evil, too ominous.

Then it occurred to him that perhaps there was
some way out ; that the hereafter as he knew it
was curiously cruel, and, if applied universally,
rather unjust. It was also at variance with the
optimistic creed whose catch-words he had casually
acquired, but this consideration did not affect
him much.

This, then, was his problem — an acrostic of deadly
import, to which he held few of the lights. This
was his only chance, this earthly life to which his
soul was still attached, of finding salvation from
the dreary Hades that lay so near to his gates.

He had a little knowledge now of astronomy and
physics, and these mingled themselves strangely
with his meditations, and seemed to make the finding
of a clue more hopeless than if he had only his
own memories and fancies to draw on. Yet as he
pondered, as he strove to link this world with that
other, the conviction grew on him that some did find
that salvation. In every variety of experience he had
hitherto found some division into classes : people,
he was told, were good and bad ; events, he knew,
were nasty or nice ; it seemed inconceivable that
amongst the dead there should not also be a few
who were happy to balance the miseries of the rest.

In the black hours of his illness an unmistakable

STAFF AND SCRIP 61

instinct had told him that he would not be one of
those happy ones ; that he was still bound to the
trail with his old comrades,- the hunters of the air.
But some were not so. He was sure of it. He
wondered and puzzled, and sent his soul questing for
the answer ; but the only result was to make him
tired and restless, and his nurse cut short the hour
of meditation with a sleeping draught.

Then, in a clearer hour, the truth came to him.
He perceived suddenly, illogically, irrefutably, that
within his own soul the solution was to be found.

' And by and by my Soul return'd to me,
And answer'd " I myself am Heav'n and Hell." '

The governing mood, that was the governing fate.
He saw in his mind's eye the long agony of the Dead ;
but saw it no longer as an unreasonable torture, rather
as the inevitable result of their mental attitude.
Their heaven had been the earth ; they had no true
existence apart from it ; and thus, once parted from
the body, they found no other song than a lament
for its pleasures, no other environment than the
shadowy outline of their once enduring homes.
It was plain that one could take nothing into death
but that which one had learnt during life ; and a
passion for some person, possession, or pursuit,
such as formed the equipment of most sensible
people, could not be regarded as a valuable spiritual
asset once one was permanently separated from
the senses and their joys.

62

Yet Willie had now given several years to the
careful cultivation of these material interests. He
shivered as he realized the narrowness of his escape.
He saw his Grey World now at a new angle — not as
the inevitable home of the soul, but as one amongst
many convolutions of the spiritual envelope. When
he reflected how various an aspect the material world
assumed towards different temperaments, and even
towards the same temperament when under the
dominion of shifting moods, he could not doubt
that subjective reality was the only one which had
any meaning for the individual soul.

He perceived that the Hell of the worldly might
be the Heaven of those who had nothing to regret ;
that those who looked up must find a different
landscape from their neighbours who looked down.
They, in the place of those intangible relics of life
which had haunted his own wanderings, might find
another outlook, and dwell before a Beatific Vision.
He seemed to see the Universe unfolding dimension
on dimension to the joyous eyes of some questing
soul as it cast off the shackles of life and drew
outwards toward the Beyond.

He looked firmly on the future, and made resolu-
tions which had little bearing on Mr. Hopkinson's
careful plans for his son's career. Earth, that
dusty magnet, should no longer fetter his spirit.
He was determined upon that. The claims of this
world were illusory. He had always known it,
but these later years, for expediency's sake, he had

STAFF AND SCRIP 63

deliberately turned from the truth. He would
learn to hold pleasure and sorrow alike with a
light hand, remembering that Real Life was but
one of many dimensions. He would no longer try
to assume to himself that the game was a serious
matter. He would refuse to care who lost or won,
to concern himself about the chances of wealth
or fame : would form no ties, make no terms with
the enemy.

He saw Life spread out before him in gay pageant,
as one may see the * coloured counties ' from the
top of a hill. A pretty show he judged it to be, but
dangerous. One must preserve detachment. The
household at home, with its intimate cares, the
wholesale tailoring business, the comments and criti-
cisms of interested friends, vanished. One does not
notice the ugliness of individual buildings when one
stands on the top of a hill. And his eye was so firmly
fixed on the Eternal now, that he came down to the
realities of jelly and beef-tea with a start. For his
body, of course, they were realities. He acknow-
ledged that : he wished to be fair to his body. But
he intended for the future to ride it on the curb.

Nor did it occur to Master Hopkinson that his
point of view was open to the charge of selfishness.
To the young, selfishness seems the least imminent
of all the vices. It is their normal condition.

CHAPTER VII

MARSHLAND AND WICKET
' We be all Souls upon the way.' — KIPLING.

AT the end of the infectious period, Willie was re-
turned to his family, a weedy and uninteresting
convalescent. To himself, he appeared more worthy
of notice than at any previous stage of his existence ;
but unfortunately the fact that he had realized the
illusory nature of life did not mitigate the distress-
ing angles of his figure. Only a burning faith can
distinguish the philosopher under the veil of the
hobbledehoy ; the founders of new religions have
generally been over twenty-one.

His mother met him at the station with a four-
wheeler and a large rug. Her solicitude was rather
irritating to a fastidious youth who knew his body
to be a phantasm. He could find no comfort in the
thought that the four-wheeler was a phantasm too :
it placed his soul at a disadvantage. His Ego de-
clined to assert itself in such surroundings. Master
Hopkinson felt cross.

He had been looking forward to a return after
64

MARSHLAND AND WICKET 65

sickness to the pretty pageant of life. He had
meant to play the game, since it was but a game,
gaily and with a light hand ; forming no bonds with
Earth, but hoarding amusing memories against the
chances of the After-time. There were secrets, too,
concerning that After-time ; and it was in his inten-
tion that he would adventure to discover them.

For one who cherishes these pleasant and pagan
ideals a London terminus is not an inspiriting point
of departure. The cab rattled, and Mrs. Hopkin-
son busied herself with the windows, and asked her
son how many carbolic baths he had had, because
of Pauline, who was very susceptible. She added
that they were very busy at home over a Cafe
Chantant in aid of the ' Dartmoor Holiday Camps
for Costers' Donkeys.'

* It's such a good idea, darling,' she said. * Finan-
cially good, I mean ; and that's everything in a
work of charity. You must help at it. A man —
and you're quite old enough to count as a man —
is such an advantage. You'll be feeling stronger by
then, and it will amuse you. And we've only got
to get enough money for railway expenses, because
land on Dartmoor is free, and of course the dear
things will eat grass.'

She continued talking amiably on homely topics,
but the conversation was rather one-sided. A slow
spirit of weary disgust was creeping over Master
Hopkinson. They were nearing home, and the
peculiar bleakness of the London residential street

5

66 THE GREY WORLD

struck him with a desolating force. He was born
subject to that elusive emotion which hangs about
the Spirit of Place — an evil gift for one who dwells
in a modern city. The ugliness and arrogance of
the houses, the pale and dreary desert of the road
which lay between them, combined to obliterate
that street-sense compounded of adventure and
inclusion which narrower and less pretentious by-
ways keep between their cuddled homes.

It is the narrow, winding street, with its social
suggestion, its doubtful destination, which contains
all the poetry of town life. Where attic whispers to
attic, and pavements run friendlily beneath the
walls, there is a sacrament present of the Brother-
hood of Man. But the isolated villas of our wide,
chill thoroughfares have nothing in common but
a mutual exclusiveness. When Willie, descending
from his cab, looked down the road with its rows
of gray stucco boxes, wherein blameless families
dwelt without remorse or discontent ; its legions of
painted railings whose tendency now was ' to reti-
cence rather than greenness '; its windows without
recess ; and the evil pilasters about its gates; a
spirit of rebellion was born in him. He had the
feeling that few things were more significant, more
foolish, to the visionary more depressing, than this
way which society has of disposing of its homes.

Within, the impression was continued with cruel
completeness. Mrs. Hopkinson had had the hall
done up, and the Moorish electric-light lantern now

MARSHLAND AND WICKET 67

depended from a ceiling whose Lincrusta covering
simulated Renaissance plaster- work. On the walls
a paper which the short-sighted might have mis-
taken for inferior tapestry, displayed a riot of inver-
tebrate forms thrown together in defiance of every
known rule of ornament.

Willie escaped from this, and from a minute and
unpleasant inspection of his appearance conducted
in concert by his mother, Pauline, and the cook, and
climbed up to his own little bedroom, where he
opened the window and looked out on a twilit sky.
It was the magic moment when blue fades by green
into grey. He watched that heavenly transforma-
tion, and it soothed his fretted nerves. The sky,
he found, had reassumed that secret power which
it had for him in childhood. He had won back the
world of vision in turning from the world of sense.
He stood there dreaming till Mrs. Hopkinson bustled
into the room to close the window, and spoke in
anxious tones of the fact that the tea was standing,
and night air notoriously unwholesome.

That broke the spell. He went downstairs pos-
sessed by the gnawing discomfort which a home-
coming is apt to induce. Everything looked as it
used to do, and no one seemed to notice his own
inward change. Yet how different things were
from their appearances : and how different he from
the being whom his garrulous mother and sister
thought that they were feeding with weak tea and
home-made cake ! These reflections pleased Master

5

68 THE GREY WORLD

Hopkinson, and helped him to endure with good
temper the minor trials of the evening, during which
his father explained to him in detail the germ theory
of infectious disease.

' So nice and homelike,' said Mrs. Hopkinson.
* All united once more round our own hearth !'

Willie arose next morning to a sense of struggle
and depression such as had long been absent from
his spirit. His sensitive nerves felt the weight of
coming events — those small, tedious, hollow events
which were going to make up the day. Things did
not seem promising for his projected Game of Life :
the pieces were rather shabby, and the board incon-
veniently arranged. He foresaw the eight o'clock
breakfast, prefaced by a discussion as to what he
had better eat, accompanied by annotated extracts
from the morning paper, which Mr. Hopkinson was
accustomed to supply for his family's mental nourish-
ment. After breakfast there might perhaps be a
tranquil interval, and later on he would be ex-
pected to go for a walk with Pauline.

For the present, in fact, Pauline seemed likely to
be his chief companion. She was now twenty-one ;
liked a good time — in the local acceptation of the
phrase — and saw that she got it ; made her own
blouses, held her own opinions, could talk with
technical accuracy about cricket, politics, and the
drama ; and was generally in the front rank of
Young Suburbia. But as a companion, a sister,
she had her limitations. She was apt to forget that

MARSHLAND AND WICKET 69

the attitude of superiority which Twelve Years Old
may lawfully assume towards Nine is less suitable
when the respective ages of the protagonists are
eighteen and one-arid-twenty. Willie knew that
should he attempt to be candid, or ask for sympathy
with his own view of life, she would still regard him
as a silly little boy.

So it did not look well on the whole for the pros-
pects of a pleasant life held lightly ; a perpetual
realization of illusion ; a mind always ready to con-
sider the spiritual aspect of things. Willie's mind
was young, crude, intolerant. It seemed to him
that the life of the Hopkinson family entirely lacked
a spiritual aspect. Certainly, if it had one, they did
not think about it. Earth for them was the one
actuality ; long life thereon the chief desire ; quick
interest therein the one duty. He saw in them
potential members of the Shadowy World, and
feared their slow, stultifying influence. How, in
such an atmosphere, keep his own armour bright ?
As well try to study astronomy in a fog-bound
city.

He found a way. The Fates are often kind to
those who expect nothing ; and six months after
his home-coming they suddenly pointed out to him
a road to adventure, if not to discovery. The dul-
ness had become very desperate by this time. He
did not find that the possession of special powers
added anything to the gaiety of existence ; on the
contrary, they enlarged in an unwelcome manner a

70 THE GREY WORLD

horizon which was in its dreariness already suffi-
ciently vast. The World of the Dead in its feature-
less monotony is not very unlike the world of the
suburbs.

He was too well assured of the illusory nature of
life and the futility of its occupations. He could
take no interest beyond a gentle amusement in work,
play, politics, or the acquisition of knowledge.
They were games, and curiously stupid ones. It
never occurred to him that he had a part to play
in them : duty becomes unreal when its object is
known to be impermanent. But turning his eyes
resolutely from Earth, he found himself confronted
by a dismal nothingness. If Earth was illusion,
Heaven was emptiness. So he was driven to his
dreams, in default of more actual possessions, and
to certain visionary books he had met with — Blake
and Swedenborg and the Dutch mystics. These
were congenial, if unintelligible, to him ; and with
them he lived — moped — drifted.

It became his habit to stroll of an afternoon
through the dingy by-roads of the neighbourhood,
wondering at their peculiar quality of squalor,
which was neither poor enough to be excusable, nor
extreme enough to be interesting. In this way he
found one day a little street : a very ordinary, un-
lovable little street, one of those grey alley-ways
which run between the cells of the human hive.
There was a public-house at one corner — the Purple
Elephant — and mews behind. One side of the road

MARSHLAND AND WICKET 71

was bordered by a high blank wall, which cloistered
the shy gardens of some villas in the next street.
On the other side, a depressed terrace of yellow
brick houses with unpleasant areas gave itself out
as the residence of- dressmakers, lodgers, and in-
numerable cats.

But half-way down there were shops : a pawn-
broker's, a dubious dairy, a plumber's and decorator's.
This last, a small tranquil establishment, was the
cleanest of the three ; it had drain-pipes in one
window and wall-papers in the other — a symbolic
display, in fact. At one side a private door, grained
to imitate some rare and gaudy species of oak, led
to the upper story ; and by the door a repousse
copper plate bore, in vague Gothic letters, the words,
' Searchers of the Soul. Ring and walk upstairs.'

Willie stopped and looked at this inscription, with
the instinct of the solitary pedestrian to look at
everything that he has not seen before. It struck
him rather pleasantly. He was sufficiently sophis-
ticated to find it astonishing, sufficiently desperate
to be tempted towards any promising investigation.
A bad cold had left him in a nervous condition which
renewed many of his worst terrors. He was like a
rudderless ship, in sight of a haven which he did not
know how to attain, and fearing a storm which
might wreck him before he could reach it. So he
did not feel justified in neglecting a chance which
might lead, not only to companionship with other
spiritual beings, but also to more security than he

72 THE GREY WORLD

now possessed concerning his after-existences. More-
over, he urgently required an antidote to the
materializing dangers of home. He looked at the
copper plate, and hesitated. Then he walked on.
Presently he returned, and glanced up and down
the street. There was only a dust-cart in sight. He
rang, and entered.

The stairs within were steep, narrow, and ill-
scrubbed : three flights of them. There was time
during the ascent for meditation ; and Mr. Willie
Hopkinson, somewhat elated on his first entrance, felt
his joyous anticipations undergo a certain transfor-
mation as he clambered, accompanied by perfumes of
varnish and putty from the shop below. In fact, his
heart sank as his body rose ; and it was in a state of
peculiar nervousness that he finally knocked at the
shabby door with ground-glass panels which he found
at the top of the third flight.

The young woman who opened to him cured his
timidity ^but did not raise his spirits much. Willie
had a sister, and neither feared girls nor admired
them ; and even a slave of the sex would scarcely
have been tempted to emotion by her flat face, black
sailor hat, and crumpled cotton shirt. It will be
acknowledged that the Searchers of the Soul had
not used discrimination in their choice of a janitor.

She received him with that curious effusion, at
once servile and supercilious, which the secretaries
of small but earnest associations keep for possible
converts. Willie did not quite know what he had

MARSHLAND AND WICKET 73

come for, but Miss Toyson had no doubts about
that.

* You wish to join us, perhaps ?' she said. ' The
movement is becoming, as of course you know, one
of great importance. We are on the eve of a
Spiritual Era. One feels that. It is in the air ;
and our Society will not be the least of its heralds.
The Soul,' continued Miss Toyson, whose ready-
made appearance lent a touch of unexpectedness
to her lyrical speech — ' what can be more important
to each one of us ? And the Search for it — what is
more beautiful ? The paths to Truth are so many ;
and the Society is quite non-sectarian.'

* Really ?' said Willie, who repressed with diffi-
culty a strong desire to fidget.

Miss Toyson's words might be fresh from the
Gospel of Truth, but her speech displeased him. It
was like hearing the Apocalypse read aloud by a
stammering curate.

' Oh yes, quite. We make a great point of that ;
our only aim is the finding of spiritual reality. The
Thing-in-Itself, you know, as — er — as a great philo-
sopher said. Our vice-president is a believer in
Shintoism — worships his ancestors, you know — and
we have several Buddhists.'

Willie did not feel attracted by the faith of the
vice-president. Yet, in some curious way, Miss
Toyson and her Society fascinated whilst they
repelled him. He was quite sure that they knew
nothing about it ; but their name had a glamour

74 THE GREY WORLD

which he could not resist. The subscription was
seven and six ; he paid it. His monthly allowance
was ten shillings. The meetings, said Miss Toyson,
were frequent. They encouraged free discussion.
It was worth something to have found a haven,
however shabby, where one might dare to speak
one's mind.

He went home with a lighter heart, and spoke in
a deceptively prosaic manner of the afternoon's
adventure. A little debating society, he said ; an
amusing sort of place, which would give him the
opportunity of meeting other fellows.

' How nice !' said Mrs. Hopkinson. ' I'm so glad,
Willie dear. Such a good plan for you to have some
interests of your own. But I am sorry the meetings
are in the evening, dearie. Coming out into the
night air from a hot room is so very risky.'

She looked at him with an eager, half -desperate
smile ; hesitating as a swimmer may amongst diffi-
cult currents, yet feeling cheerfulness, however in-
appropriate, to be a duty to the last. There was an
obscure sadness buried deep beneath Mrs. Hopkin-
son's stuff bodice. She found it very hard to adapt
her homely love to her son's peculiar ideas and many
intolerances. She was never quite sure how he
would take things, and, remembering the lawful
intimacies of his babyhood, she sometimes ventured
a humiliating familiarity, with disastrous results.
Willie was too young, as yet, to understand un-
decorative pathos.

MARSHLAND AND WICKET 75

In her baffled motherhood, she could only turn
to her daughter for consolation : but Pauline, whose
even life had never caused her to feel the need of
sympathy, was entirely incapable of giving it. So
it happened that Mrs. Hopkinson's existence was
lonely in spite of her garrulity, and she was happiest
when she was expending on a misplaced charity the
ardours which her children preferred to do without.

Mr. Willie Hopkinson could scarcely expect to
find the Searchers of the Soul an interest, in his
mother's meaning of the word ; but he did extract
from this connection a certain feeling of indepen-
dence, which is, after all, the chief object of youthful
hobbies and pursuits. A good many young men
and maidens join societies more deleterious in order
to differentiate themselves from their elders.

The first meeting astonished, the second disgusted
him. There was in the atmosphere a banality, a
childish affectation of occult knowledge, which he
found more stifling to the spirit than the candid
futilities of the home circle. But he persevered ; he
was not the son of a business man for nothing, and
he meant to receive full value for his seven and
six. He therefore went a third time, and was
rewarded ; for on this occasion he perceived the
existence of Stephen Miller.

Mr. Miller's personality distinguished him easily
from the majority of his fellow-members, whom
Willie early divided into two classes — the long-
haired and the beefy. He was vivid, highly-

76 THE GREY WORLD

strung, physically compact. The obsession of the
Aerated Bread Shop was not upon him yet. A care-
ful observer would have perceived that this was a
man who sought dreams deliberately, as an artist ;
did not follow them blindly, as a fool.

When he first came under the eye of Mr. Willie
Hopkinson, Stephen was striving to assimilate the
frothy periods of Mr. Verrian Spate, the expounder
— in minute detail — of a new doctrine of reincarna-
tion, elaborated by himself. Novel theories of the
Future State were a speciality of the Society.
Willie, who had grown accustomed to apathy, here
found himself plunged into a world of wild conjec-
ture. He listened with growing amazement whilst
Mr. Spate — he was the President of the year, and
belonged to the beefy class — vigorously defended
the dogma of Successive Incarnations, and turned
a battery of heavy facetiousness on his opponent,
exploiting the rich resources of the subject as a
fountain of personal abuse. Nor was he less aston-
ished when Mr. Spate's remarks, which had been
received with great favour, were succeeded by a
convincing exposition, by his anaemic vis-a-vis, Mr.
Norman Dawes, of the hypothesis that the human
spirit must of necessity return to its Mother the Sea
after death.

A genial tolerance of anything that was improb-
able seemed to be the distinguishing characteristic
of the Searchers of the Soul ; yet as Willie looked
round the ring of faces — weak, wistful, or dogmatic

MARSHLAND AND WICKET 77

— lit to cold pallor by the incandescent gas, he knew
himself farther from spiritual progress than he had
been for many months. With knowledge lying so
close to their doors ; with the emblems around them
of an unstable, impermanent world, which he knew
to be ready to rock and dissolve at the first blow
dealt upon the portals of sense; with phrases on
their lips which constantly touched edges of the
Truth ; it seemed incredible that these people could
continue so profoundly earthly, so desperately dense,
making game in their happy ignorance with the
secret beyond the veil. He felt that annoyed
astonishment which is often induced in persons
having the sentiment of Religion or Art when they
are confronted by the immutable limitations of the
Philistine or the Atheist. He knew that should
he rise to relate his own experiences, his fellow-
members would be pleasantly excited by his origin-
ality, and ask him to go on the committee. But
they would not believe in him, because that would
prevent them from believing in all the others, and
so rob the Society of half its charm.

But Stephen Miller was different. To Stephen
the objects of the Society were no pretence, though
its methods might be. His sincerity was manifest
in his disillusion. Willie looked at him, and in the
infallible knowledge with which spirit meets spirit
in the invisible place, knew that if that virile brain
once perceived the truth of his story, his years of
loneliness were over, and he had found a friend.

78 THE GREY WORLD

He woke from his meditation to find that Mr.
Dawes' remarks were drawing to a close.

' Yes !' he was saying, as his voice penetrated to
Mr. Hopkinson's consciousness — ' yes, in the beauti-
ful words of Browning, it is our aim when we meet
together here

' " To bring the Invisible full into play!

Let the visible go to the dogs — what matters ?"

That is our desire, that is the ideal we set before us !
And if each can contribute a little quota to the
grand total of Truth, we shall indeed be amply
rewarded !'

He subsided amidst murmurs of admiration, and
at the same moment Mr. Miller rose abruptly and
left the meeting. Pleasure had died from his face
and been succeeded by a tired disappointment as
the speaker slowly dragged his theory from the
heights of poetic speculation, and forced it into the
sticky by-paths of suburban argument. Mr. Willie
Hopkinson also had ceased to be interested or even
amused, so he went out after Mr. Miller, following
him without thought, as a needle after a magnet, and
they spoke together on the door-mat.

They were very young — under twenty — an age
when the founding of a friendship seems always the
first page of a romance. They looked at each other,
and the miracle was done. It was a case of love at
first sight, a phenomenon rather absurdly supposed
to occur only between persons of opposite sex.

MARSHLAND AND WICKET 79

They were both excited. The horrid gulf which
yawned between the title and transactions of their
Society had disgusted but not yet discouraged them.
They saw each other, and through each other the
trend of the event, hopefully, with the air of ex-
plorers who have found the justification of their
journeyings. The seal was loosened upon Willie's
lips, and even at that early moment he held back
confidence with an uncertain hand. Stephen, who
had the quickness of a spirit sensible of mystery,
that longs to look in the face of the unknown, per-
ceived some secret behind the strangeness of their
attitude. To one of his temperament, that was
more than enough. Each went home that night
the richer for a friend, though less than a dozen
words had passed as yet between them. Willie had
at last made one step forward.

CHAPTER VIII

THE FIRST SIGNPOST

' Nous nous sommes dit bien peu de choses. Mais nous
avons pu voir que nos deux vies avaient le meme but. . . .' —
MAETERLINCK.

IT was Mrs. Hopkinson's dearest hope that her son
should become a cultured person. Culture had
made strides in their suburb since the days when
studious tastes were considered effeminate in a man
and immodest in a woman. Girls now read transla-
tions of Russian novelists in the intervals of home
dressmaking, and sneered at their parents : and
these commented caustically in reply on the head-
aches which visited the victims of unaccustomed
learning. They had not yet reached the depths
at which a local Debating Society becomes impera-
tive. A little further westwards, where the omnibus
gave place to the tram, that came as a matter of
course ; but the district which was served by the
Inner Circle accepted membership of the London
Library as a certificate of intellect.

Mrs. Hopkinson, therefore, felt that as Willie
80

THE FIRST SIGNPOST 81

did not seem likely to develop into either a useful
or a popular young man, it was desirable that he
should be known as a clever one : and, looking about
her for an acquaintance who would start him in the
right direction, and turn his indolent attention
towards fashionable fields of knowledge, she sud-
denly perceived the peculiar merits of Mrs. Hermann
Levi.

Elsa Levi, as has already been remarked, was
the only child of Mrs. Steinmann. Her garments —
which they considered to be indecently suggestive
of a dressing-gown — gave scandal to her mother's
friends, and kept them, to her delight, at a sufficient
distance. They sometimes brought their country
cousins to call on her, thus bridging the gap between
the attractions of the Zoo and South Kensington
Museum ; but such visits were based more on
curiosity than approval. On these occasions Mrs.
Levi, who was too self-conscious to dislike admira-
tion, however strange its form, received her visitors
cordially, and made a point of saying something a
little bit shocking before they left. It was expected
of her, and she could not neglect so obvious a duty.

She was at this time a slender and alluring person
of thirty-eight ; and the uncomfortable tendencies
of her soul made her liable to brief joys and long
periods of boredom. She had a superficial know-
ledge of many things and a great respect for
efficiency ; her friends thought that she was
artistic, her enemies said she was soulful. In

6

82 THE GREY WORLD

reality she was a woman who lived, by predilection,
close to the tree of knowledge, but was not quite
tall enough to reach the apple which she ardently
desired for her own.

When she first married Mr. Levi, Elsa had sug-
gested that he should change his name to Darcy.
Mr. Levi refused ; what was worse, he did so in
an intolerably good-humoured manner, and thus
convinced his wife, even sooner than she had
expected, that he was utterly incapable of appre-
ciating either her talents, her aspirations, or her
soul.

'Mr. Levi,' she would say, 'is a Materialist.
He does not perceive the beautiful part which
Symbolism plays in the lives of the spiritually
intelligent.'

The curtain now lifts to disclose Willie Hopkinson
taking tea in the drawing-room of Mrs. Hermann
Levi. They were alone. She had arranged, with-
out ostentation, that this should be the case. For
two people, the room seemed empty. There was
an absence of small tables, and the walls, except
for a boldly designed frieze by Walter Crane, were
barely coloured. There were only two pictures.
One was a small and evilly-restored Madonna, which
Mrs. Levi in her more sanguine moments attributed
to Perugino ; the other a grubby and obvious Degas.
She had friends amongst the extreme right as well
as the extreme left of the artistic parliament, and
each by turns dictated her always admirable taste.

THE FIRST SIGNPOST 83

This arrangement had only one disadvantage —
Elsa never finally decided which picture she really
liked best. But with two such works of art, a
little fumed oak, and the poems of Emile Verhaeren
in a Niger morocco "binding, any room, she con-
sidered, was adequately furnished.

She leaned back now in the corner of the settle,
and carefully placed her dark head against a
cushion of violet silk. She wore a soft dress of
subdued and cloudy blue, and Willie, who was in
a happy and impressionable mood, thought of the
Bride of Lebanon. Mrs. Levi also was contented
with the atmosphere and the hour. It was her
hobby to act the Sybil to interesting young men.
and the fact that Willie's family found him difficult
to deal with inclined her to place him in this class.

He was shy, but his hostess was experienced. A
less subtle woman would have tried to make him
talk about himself, and failed lamentably. Elsa,
on the contrary, assumed towards him a confi-
dential air which was at once flattering and
instructive. She said little beyond generalities,
but her manner gave the impression that she was
baring her soul to his gaze. Under its influence
his petals uncurled rapidly. He looked into her
eyes, which were brown and pathetic, and knew for
the first time that other persons beside himself had
spiritual griefs.

They talked of Art, a subject which young Mr.
Hopkinson had seldom heard mentioned. Though

6 — 2

84 THE GREY WORLD

his father, he knew, disliked it — a fact clearly in
its favour — it conveyed to him no more than a
suggestion of strange cretonnes and bound volumes
of Academy Notes. But Art, he now gathered,
was an important thing ; a secret and mysterious
power, and also a pleasing one. It was spelt with
a capital letter. From the vague and reverential
way in which Mrs. Levi spoke of it, he inferred
that it stood somewhat on the same plane as
religion.

- Where should we be,' she had said, ' if it were
not for the Arts ? In the Neolithic cave, perhaps,
or even the ancestral tree. It is this which raises
us from the market-place, and leads us to the skies.
I am sure we think alike on these subjects, do we
not?'

Willie prudently remained silent, but his expres-
sion was rapidly becoming one of adoration, and
his hostess did not, like Mark Antony, pause for a
reply.

' Yes,' she said, ' Art is the real language of the
soul. I am convinced of it. How else can we
explain its existence ? It is the link with the
Beyond.'

At this point Willie, whose attention had wan-
dered from Mrs. Levi's words and fixed itself on
the fascinations of her person, suddenly became
interested. The matter seemed to have some
personal application. His alert but puzzled air
attracted her.

THE FIRST SIGNPOST 85

* Have you never felt the spell of Ultimate
Beauty ?' she murmured.

He had not, but it was obvious that he would
like to ; and she saw prospects of conversion ahead.
Your convert is alw'ays the best disciple. Elsa
liked her followers to be tame and appreciative?
and she warmed to her work.

' Beauty,' she said, ' is the only thing really
worth having. You will know that when you
have found it. Beauty in poetry, Beauty in form,
Beauty in life.'

' But '

She would not hear him.

' I tell you,' she said, bending forward and
looking exactly like Rossetti's ' Astarte Syriaca ' —
' I tell you that all the banners of Empire and
powders of the merchant weigh as nothing in the
scales of Eternity against Durham Cathedral or
the Samothracian Nike.'

These words suggested little to Mr. Willie Hop-
kinson beyond a sense of welcome change from
the atmosphere in which he daily dwelt. But his
eye, though untrained, was sensitive. He recog-
nised an essential peace in the simple graces of
Mrs. Levi's decoration which was lacking amongst
the photograph frames and antimacassars of home.
He saw himself, a creature of infinite capabilities,
evidently able to interest so brilliant a woman
as this, placed by Fate amongst cruelly inappropriate
surroundings. He remembered his old dreams of a

86 THE GREY WORLD

delicious, free, unconventional ; life, saw that some
people at least might realize these bright ideals ;
and felt very sorry for himself.

' My father,' he remarked bitterly, ' thinks that
nothing is of serious importance that has not some
bearing on practical affairs.'

' You must not blame your father,' answered
Mrs. Levi, and the gentle pathos of her tone was
itself a delight. * It is not his fault that he is
born a Materialist. You and I have windows
that look out on Eternity, but his are turned towards
the earth. It is sad for him, poor man! though
he does not know it. My husband is just the same.
He thinks Titian's " Flora " a fine woman, but he
has never got further than that. Of the life-en-
hancing qualities of Art he knows nothing —
nothing.'

In this particular Willie was in much the same
position as Mr. Levi, but he did not say so. The
conversation languished ; both were thoughtful,
he gazing dreamily at his hostess, and trying to
piece together the chief elements of the gospel
which he was sure that her scattered remarks
must contain.

' Do have another cup of tea !' she said presently.

Willie drank in new courage with his tea. He
was certainly having an exciting, astonishing,
ever-to-be-remembered afternoon. The Searchers
of the Soul had shaken his belief in spiritual possi-
bilities ; but Mrs. Levi had revived his faith, and

THE FIRST SIGNPOST 87

even augmented its strength. It is a curiosity
of youth that those who turn a blank wall of reti-
cence towards their families are often most ready
to confide in the first sympathetic nature that
they meet. Elsa's dexterous use of conversational
opportunities convinced him, as more open flattery
could not have done, that for once he was really
understood. He longed to tell her all, but refrained,
which was prudent.

She, on her side, saw a neurotic, perhaps a clever,
boy ; awkward and ill-educated, full of fancies,
rather absurd in the little airs of equality which
her careful encouragement was leading him to
assume. It would be amusing, she thought, to
detach him from those horrible Hopkinsons, and
show him something of the ideals which she loved,
or thought that she loved. She pined for intelligent
admiration ; and to train up one's own admirer
is one way to success. She perceived possibilities in
Willie. She was sure that he thought her hand-
some, and felt her to be sympathetic. He was a
nice lad.

The conversation revived, and took a more
intimate turn.

' The beautiful in life,' said Mrs. Levi — * that
is what we must look for, and refuse to see the
uglinesses in our path.'

' It is so difficult.'

' One must persevere.'

' The uglinesses discourage,'

88 THE GREY WORLD

' Even though one has a friend to help one ?'
asked Elsa softly.

Willie searched for a suitable reply to this intoxi-
cating utterance, but the cool deliberation with which
he was apt to regulate dialogue in the home circle
completely forsook him. He could only look at her,
and encouraged by the expression which he thought
that he saw in her eyes, ventured at last to press
her hand — that soft and manicured hand with its
strange rings of olivine, chrysoprase, and enamels.
He experienced in the act a new sensation, com-
pounded of terror and daring, which assured him
that he had yet much to learn.

And whilst he still held it, the goddess spoke again.

' Life is really very beautiful !' she said.

They had not heard the hall-door bang loudly
beneath them, or subsequent feet upon the stairs ;
so that when the electric lights were switched on
in a sudden click both started in astonishment,
and stared at each other with dazzled eyes which
had grown accustomed to the discreet shadows
thrown by firelight on a dusky room. Mrs. Levi,
who had been growing curiously younger during
the past hour, immediately resumed her rightful
years. Willie drew back, feeling dreamy and
insecure. Before he had recovered himself, the
door opened with unnecessary amplitude and
fuss, and Mr. Geraint Levi, red-tied and frock-
coated, entered noisily.

' What ho, mater !' said he ; ' been sitting in the

THE FIRST SIGNPOST 89

murky ? I've just got back from the shop. Lively
day at the House. Lollies are softening ; makes
the boss feel quite sick. Lollies and Babas are
his principal nutriment at present.'

Mrs. Levi offered no remark. Willie, horrified
by this too natural climax to their idyllic afternoon,
also remained silent. Geraint, unconscious of
offence, retained control of the conversation.

' Saw your governor, Hopkinson,' he said. ' Had
a chat with him going down in the Underground.
Same old bun, Science and Sewing.' He paused,
and showed some amusement at his own epigram.
' I suppose they'll be setting you on to the trouser-
stitching soon. What a lark !' He helped himself
to a cup of stale tea, grumbled at it, drank it ;
ate four pieces of thin bread-and-butter in two
mouthfuls, kissed his mother suddenly on the
nose, missed entirely her glance of candid dislike,
and went out of the room as noisily as he had
entered. ' I'm just going out to get this week's
Tuppenny Tips,'' he shouted from half-way down
the staircase.

There seemed to be a chill in the air after Geraint's
departure. Elsa, whom he always irritated, was
particularly vexed that so disastrous an illustration
of her precepts should have been brought to Willie's
notice at this early stage of their acquaintance.
She felt herself a partner in his vulgarity, and
knew that it imperilled her influence. He was
as bad as a poor relation.

go THE GREY WORLD

Willie, whose point of view was vague, but
already very serious where Elsa was concerned,
feared to intrude on what was certainly an annoy-
ance and probably a sacred grief. But he reflected
that a father like Mr. Hopkinson was almost
as great a trial to a spiritually-minded young
man as a son like Geraint could be to Mrs. Levi.
It was a bond between them. His assurance
returned, and he would have taken her hand
again, but she gave him no opportunity. Even
in moments of sentiment, she managed to steer
clear of bathos.

Presently she remarked in a new tone :

' I suppose your father means to take you into
the business ? Shall you like that ?'

He had nothing to say. He only looked at her,
felt a new power clutch at his throat, and wished
that he could go away without more words. He
had been having tea in Paradise, and now she
was helping him back to earth. But she was
merciful. She saw that he did not possess the
agility which allowed her to drop to fresh con-
versational planes without shock or disaster.

' You are sad,' she said. ' Geraint has spoilt
the moment for you. You must not mind ; in
life things always happen like that. Beauty,
you see, presupposes ugliness, and would hardly
be noticeable without it.'

' Oh, but why is life so horrid ?' said Willie.
' And why are all the real things mixed up with

THE FIRST SIGNPOST 91

hideous shams ? If only I could know what life
meant ! But it is so difficult.'

Mrs. Levi smiled at him, and nodded apprecia-
tively.

' I think sometimes,' she said, ' that perhaps
this world is a sort of pantomime for the angels.
If one can only get far enough away it is really
very amusing. And after one of the great tragedies
of the universe, when a splendid star has burnt
itself out to a dark cinder, or gives up its life in
fragments to the planets that are its sons, it must
do them good to laugh at us for a little.'

She forgot Willie's presence for a moment, and
laughed herself, but not very mirthfully. * Oh,
but it's all very ridiculous !' she said.

He was charmed. Here at last was a person
who put his own ideals into practice, and held life
with a light hand. He was sure that Mrs. Levi
perceived their essential sympathy, and found
him attractive. He did not know that the attrac-
tion consisted in his own ignorance and fundamental
simplicity. He was an empty and rather well-
shaped vessel into which she could pour the ferment
of her restless thoughts ; but he imagined himself
to be the wine as well as the pitcher. He went
away feeling that, with two such friends as Stephen
Miller and Elsa Levi, the future, which had once
seemed repellent in its nakedness, was amply
draped. How happy she, he thought, in such
surroundings ; lovelinesses springing up about her

92 THE GREY WORLD

at her will ! No doubt she knew hundreds of
interesting spiritual people ; for he had learnt that
afternoon that such people existed, and might even
be more interesting than he was.

He forgot what she had said about her husband ;
he found it impossible to remember that Geraint
was her son.

Mr. Willie Hopkinson reached home in a flushed
and excited condition ; happier than he had been
for months, and less tolerant of his environment.
Life was a charming game, and Mrs. Levi the most
accomplished of players. But there was beef-
steak with onions for dinner ; his father was a
hearty eater, and his spirits fell.

*****

Elsa was a woman who found conversation,
even with uncongenial persons, a necessity of exist-
ence. There is a certain luxury in laying pearls
before swine ; and she was never more appreciative
of her own jewels of speech than when spreading
them at her husband's feet. The process was sooth-
ing and self-explanatory, and there was seldom any
fear that his replies would eclipse the brilliance
of her own remarks.

' That boy of the Hopkinsons',' she said to
Mr. Levi during dinner, ' has been here this after-
noon. He affects me curiously. I detect a strange
element in him. I must have him to tea again.'

' He's an odd chap, certainly,' replied Hermann,
half occupied by an excellent omelette. ' Do

THE FIRST SIGNPOST 93

well with music or the stage, I should think. Fancy
he's an annoyance to Hopkinson, who expected
him to turn out differently. That fellow seems to
think that he can breed boys like puppies, with
any points he likes: But kids are queer ; you
can't depend on 'em ! Look at Connie !'

Mrs. Levi did look at Connie, whose portrait
hung near the fireplace ; and she sighed. She
would have given much for a share in that form of
queerness. It was beautiful and Bohemian ; attri-
butes specially dear to her ill-fed emotions.

Connie had brought with her into life one valuable
asset — an exquisite skin, moulded on to a form
of Grecian purity. Her swarthy but extremely
respectable family looked on the matter as one
of no moment, they only wondered whom she
took after ; but at fifteen Connie, already con-
scious of her charms, chanced upon Browning's
* Lady and the Painter.' The life it pointed out
was easy, lucrative, and adventurous ; and in her
case, curiously enough, it remained reputable.
She is famous in many studios, vainly desired in
many palaces, and her portrait adorns the galleries
of both worlds.

* Yes,' admitted Elsa, after a brief reflection on
Connie's career, ' kids are queer ! But I don't
think Willie Hopkinson will be an actor, dear ;
he's too thoughtful. I fancy he will develop into
a mystic ; he has that point of view.'

' No good,' said Mr. Levi decisively ; ' no money

94 THE GREY WORLD

in that. Hopkinson wouldn't stand it. All right
as a hobby, of course. But a lad must have some
serious employment.'

' And is not the search for Ultimate Truth a
serious employment ?' asked Mrs. Levi rather
warmly. Her controversial manner was apt to be
feverish, the temperature rising without warning
in sudden spasms.

' Of course it's not,' said her husband, ' except
for the nincompoops who can't do anything else !
Very pretty and all that, but it don't pay. It's
no use glaring, Elsa my dear, or sitting on your
chair as if it was a pin-cushion. I never saw the
mystic yet who could pay your dressmaker's bill.'

He carefully lighted a large cigar ; and Mrs. Levi.
who found it convenient to dislike tobacco, fled
to her boudoir, where she smoked cigarettes in
solitude for two hours, and thought of Willie
Hopkinson in a mood which she wrongly imagined
to be maternal.

CHAPTER IX

A FELLOW-TRAVELLER

' Those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings ;
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized.'

WORDSWORTH.

THE influence of Mrs. Levi on her disciple was soon
perceptible. She raised his standard of taste, with-
out conferring a corresponding benefit on his morals.
The result was of doubtful advantage to a person
who still lacked the power of omitting ugly externals
from his visionary field. In effect, Mr. Willie Hop-
kinson became more dreamy, and even less agreeable
to his neighbours than of old.

His mind had passed from the condition of bore-
dom to that of unrest. It hungered for Elsa's
society, and for the stimulus of her disturbing
ideals ; excluding her from the verdict of hollow-
ness which it passed on the rest of creation. She
was the one fixed point of his universe, and wander-
ing from that he felt lost. He cherished her occa-

95

96 THE GREY WORLD

sional letters, and valued the touch of her hand,
with an inconsistent materialism which he realized
but was unable to kill. He forsook the old dull
poise of disillusion, but found no new one.

He began to grow, too, with a spiritual growth,
painful and spasmodic ; for his soul, though always
conscious, had developed little since the childish
times when it first woke to its own existence. Its
powers, beyond those of mere panic, were immature.
It perceived, but could not co-ordinate. It was still
the baby spirit, the troublesome precocious child,
which takes notice easily but holds nothing in a com-
prehensive grasp. Its little fits of fear, its glimpses
of the Veil, and shuddering acknowledgments of the
Grey Country where the Dead search the fields of
life for something to love, were cast in petty lines.
Lacking as yet the Great Companion, Willie walked
only with the dim reflection of his own mean little
soul.

It was under the direction of his Egeria that he
now began to brood upon artistic problems, to read
the Studio and the Artist, and to pay secret visits to
the National Gallery. From these he returned ill-
tempered and disconsolate, tired out by uninstructed
efforts to appreciate Medieval Art. He found little
which accorded with his preconceived idea of the
Beautiful. Mrs. Levi, perhaps overestimating his
intelligence, had directed his attention to Memlinck
and to Gherard David, to Duccio and to Botticelli ;
and he spent puzzled hours before masterpieces as

A FELLOW-TRAVELLER 97

far beyond his apprehension as he was beyond that
of his relations. Only the quiet of the place pleased
him and compelled his respect ; speaking as silence
will of the Idea which lies beyond appearance. He
had been in other years with his mother and Pauline
to the Academy ; and he remembered the discord
with which the pictures seemed to shout from the
walls. Here there was the peace of mutual courtesy.
So. coming for Art, he stayed for Serenity ; and
still influences began their slow civilizing work upon
his soul.

Stephen Miller, in another direction, gave a
helping hand to the extrication of his spirit from
the marshlands of vegetative life. Their friendship
grew, slowly and carefully. Both youths suffered
from family criticism ; they had been led to think
their most ordinary actions eccentric ; and this gave
a coyness to their early advances. Even immortal
spirits dislike being laughed at. The emotion con-
ceived on the dim stairway of the Searchers of the
Soul could not at first endure a cold and unbecoming
daylight.

Not, indeed, till he had been introduced into
Stephen's family circle, did Willie discover how
valuable were the peculiar qualities of his friend.
They seemed to have been prepared for one another
by a good-natured and discriminating Providence.
Stephen had been reared, like himself, in an atmo-
sphere of overpowering solidity. But his home was
opulent : there were wide passages, and two foot-

7

g8 THE GREY WORLD

men. Circumstances were easier for him than they
had been for Mr. Willie Hopkinson, though scarcely
more inspiring. His father was a thin, radiant old
gentleman, who seldom gave himself the trouble of
rebuking his son : who read Punch through care-
fully every Tuesday night, and the Referee on
Sundays, smiling silently at every joke. He re-
fused to give any serious attention to the eccen-
tricities of the young.

' Stephen,' he said to Willie in the course of his
first visit, ' has run through all the religions, and
now he's reduced to the freaks.'

This, as Willie later discovered, was an exaggera-
tion. Mr. Stephen Miller had retained the fra-
grance, if not the dogma, of the cults by which he
had passed ; and morsels culled from the Upani-
shads, the Book of the Dead, and the Acta Sanc-
torum, embellished his view of the world. Each
new religion, he said, gave him the sight of a fresh
angle in the polygon of Truth ; a figure of which
old Mr. Miller, safely established in the pawky
materialism of middle age, probably doubted the
existence.

Stephen and Willie, however, were little bound
by the limitations of their elders. Each obtained
early, if vague, assurance of the other's interest in
spiritual things, and bridges were soon established
between them. Superior young persons often pride
themselves on isolation whilst they pine for com-
radeship. The flattering comprehension of an elder

A FELLOW-TRAVELLER 99

woman still leaves gaps to be filled. Willie had
room for Stephen ; and Stephen, whose spiritual
life was dominated by a lively and eclectic curi-
osity, eagerly desired the exploration of his friend's
soul.

But Mr. Willie Hopkinson preserved a certain
reticence. Stephen, he saw, followed every occult
clue, however bizarre the colours of the thread ;
and seldom refused his hand to an unproved pro-
position. He did not wish his own story to take
rank with these experiments. Stephen's spirit,
greedy for truth and sensible of its nearness, looked
towards him hopefully ; but though it seemed sad
that so intelligent a person should share the delu-
sions of the rest of the world, he avoided its con-
tact.

Stephen argued his way toward the light by
intellectual effort ; did not perceive as Willie didf
naturally and irrationally, the Grey World folded
in the shadow- world of sense. One could not con-
ceive of his giving to spiritual presences the same
cool assent that he accorded to the tables and chairs.
Yet as realities they were equally substantial. His
universe was still a concrete affair ; his diligent
dreams no more than the expression of an aesthetic
unsatisfied mind. He wished to know the Beyond
as children wish to see fairies ; because he believed
it to be strange, beautiful, exciting.

They went together fairly regularly to the meet-
ings of the Searchers of the Soul. Each had a secret

7—2

ioo THE GREY WORLD

hope that the absurdities of that Society might one
day draw from the other an indignant protest, and
incidentally confession of faith. It seemed a flint
on which, at any moment, one might strike out the
spark of truth. And it was, finally, in some such
way that they did actually come to understand
each other.

It was an evening in which the tone of the meet-
ing had been one of great intellectual, as well as
atmospheric, stuffiness. The dogmatism of the
Dark Ages, wedded to the unbridled speculation of
the present, had exalted the imagination, and para-
lyzed the intelligence, of the Society — ' The heirs of
all the ages in the foremost ranks of time ' as Mr.
Vincent Dawes had happily observed in his eloquent
speech. Table-turning, astrology, and divination
by coffee-grounds, had all been called in to provide
a facile solution to the great conundrum. Willie
and Stephen, escaping at last from the fumes of
gas and the sounds of aerated oratory, stepped
from that squalid stairway, with its suggestion of
putty and cheap lodgings, straight into the austere
pageant of the night.

They stood upon the threshold, amazed and com-
forted by the purity which the west wind blows from
a dark sky. It was such an abrupt change as Dante
felt when he came out from Hell ' a rivedcr le stelle.'
The moon rode high above London. Little clouds,
hurrying across the heavens, became opalescent
poems as they approached her — faded to grey prose

A FELLOW-TRAVELLER 101

as they rushed away. Bathed in that milky radi-
ance the town, coiled in massy folds of black and of
ashy grey, hid its shameful outlines as well as it
might. In the great west road, electric lamps
blazed with an angry blue fire, trying to put out
the splendours of the sky : but the moon looked
down on them serenely and was not afraid. Under
that heaven, so secret and so white, one seemed to
imagine wide spaces of quiet and happy country at
rest ; and the black shadow of London — man's ugly
attempt to build himself a world — lying like a blot
in the midst, yet sharing in the same merciful dis-
pensation of darkness and light. The spirit of
London was awed, too, by the guardianship of this
cold and gracious moon, as never by the brightness
of the sun. Even the traffic went with a muffled
tread. Cities dream on a moonlit night ; and in their
dream they smile and become beautiful.

' On a night like this,' said Stephen, * so magical
and still, one is almost tempted to wonder if any-
thing is real. These streets are not the same streets
now — their essence isn't the same — as in daytime.
And who's to say which is the Real street ?'

' It's we who are different,' said Willie. ' And so
we see another world.'

' I wonder ? Do you think the other Searchers
of the Soul will see what we see now ?'

Willie laughed.

' Quaint persons, those,' he observed.

' Quaint ? Horrible ! They make me ill !

102 THE GREY WORLD

Alwaj^s making a pretence of wanting to know, talk-
ing of the powers of the spirit and all that — words
they don't even know the fringe of. Want to know !
I want to know — you want to know. We're in
earnest. But they only want to gabble.'

' They used to disgust me at first,' answered
Willie, ' because I had expected them to be genuine.
Don't you understand ? One's always hoping for
companionship ; it seems incredible that everyone
should be blind. But now they rather amuse me.
Most burlesque is built on the ashes of tragedy. I
like to sit and listen, and wonder what would happen
if one got up and told them the truth.'

' They would say that they couldn't accept it
without investigation, and that the Vice-president's
hypothesis was more in accordance with their
spiritual intuitions.'

' Probably it is.'

' Oh,' said Stephen suddenly and violently,
' look ! look at the wonder and the mystery of it
all ! The great stars and the darkness ; and the
strange, careless, cruel earth. It must be different
really ; more ordered, more sane. Will one ever
find the thing itself ?'

' Better not. You're happiest in the searching.'

' How can you tell ? Think ! somewhere, per-
haps, there's an inconceivable glory, if only our
eyes were clear.'

' Yes ; but in searching for that you may find the
horror.'

A FELLOW-TRAVELLER 103

' The horror ?' .

' Yes : that comes first. It's not so difficult to
find it. But the other — the real secret — is hidden,
if it exists.'

Stephen looked at Willie rather oddly.

' Don't you begin to talk rot, Hopkinson,' he
said. ' I've always felt that you were very different
from those chattering fools we've just left. I
believe you're as keen to find the truth as I am ;
but it's not to be done by telling each other fairy-
tales.'

' Fairy-tales ! Good heavens ! A moment ago
you knew yourself, for a minute, that all this funny
dazzling bewildering world is nothing but a fairy-
tale. What could be queerer than the things our
senses show us ? Things that simply don't exist
in the forms under which we see them.'

' But do you know that ?' said Stephen. * If I
knew that much, it would be something.'

' Something ?' answered Willie — * something !
It would be Hell ! If only I didn't know ! Igno-
rance is the real happiness, after all.'

He stopped. He was astonished at himself. He
wished that he had not spoken with such picturesque
force.

Stephen was looking at him through half-closed
eyelids, with a strange, concentrated expression.
His hand, it seemed, was on the latch ; and he leaned
forward, directing all his will towards the words
which hovered between them.

104 THE GREY WORLD

Then Willie began to speak ; quite slowly, in a
curiously level voice. He had always known that
he would tell Stephen the truth about his life : it
seemed only fair to do so, where the knowledge would
quiet a searching mind. But he did not specially
desire the moment. Their superficial comradeship
had not ceased to satisfy. Now some hand touched
a spring that was not of his adjusting. He was
impelled to candour.

He spoke about his life in the slums as he remem-
bered it, and of his death in the hospital. His
manner was rather matter-of-fact ; not interesting.
He described — this in a lower key, for it was still a
present dread — the Grey World, and what he had
endured whilst it held his spirit. His account was
circumstantial, full of small detail ; he spoke in the
present tense. Stephen gradually realized that he
was describing something which he saw, and which
only his own imperfect vision prevented him also
from seeing. He quietly demolished the hedge-
rows of conventional experience, and exposed the
desolate uncharted country through which life runs,
a faint and wavering path. But the subject, in his
hands, seemed insusceptible of glamour. It was
coldly real ; as real as a dried flower, and as unim-
pressive.

Stephen, on his side, remained quite quiet. It
seemed to him that he was hearing a very ordinary
tale ; an addition, merely, to the sordid aspects of
life. It corresponded more or less with other

/

A FELLOW-TRAVELLER 105

theories that he had heard of, and had dismissed
for their sterile quality, which did not please his
active synthetic mind. He did not realize the
tremendous significance it possessed, as belonging
to the World of Fact, "and not the World o! Idea.
Those solid pavements on which they walked ; the
scuttling hansoms ; the hoardings with their insis-
tent presentation of food, tobacco, and amusement
as the real interests of life ; dulled his imagination,
and he was not conscious of the transformation of
his universe which Willie's slow sentences involved.

Mr. Willie Hopkinson felt disappointed. He was
making the great revelation of his life ; chiefly, he
thought, out of kindness to Stephen ; and he did
not appear to have produced much effect. He had
hoped to see a friendly spirit start to life at the
touch of truth — to communicate some of the wonder
and the fear, and find a companion on the lonely
road. But Stephen was impassive, unexcited ; he
seemed to be brooding. To Willie, now, the atmo-
sphere was full of dreadfulness : by force of his own
words he was turned towards the dark, and had lost
himself in the hateful desert of infinity. He forgot
the great blurring shadow which life casts for the
living. He was alone in space with Stephen, and
Stephen gave him no comfort. He saw no star.
Friendship had been a false beacon. The glow of
narration died, fright came instead ; his story
dwindled and ceased.

Then Stephen spoke.

io6 THE GREY WORLD

' Is it true ?' he said.

Willie only looked at him.

' You know,' continued Stephen in the same
placid, even tones, ' I don't want it to be true. It's
too ugly. If it isn't true — if the other country isn't
here, at the back of appearance, as you say — I may
forget it, and go back to my beautiful lies. Of
course they're silly and deceptive, but each new
one makes me hope I am going to find the Real. If
this is the Real '

' It's my Real,' said Willie.

He spoke sulkily, but with decision. Stephen, by
contrast, seemed to falter. Now that the strain of
listening was over, dim ideas were beginning to
surge, up in his mind and constrict his utterance.

' You and I, as we look to each other now, aren't
real,' continued Willie. ' All this city that you see
isn't real ; colour isn't real, or sound. There's
only space and silence, really ; and the living who
have one dream, and the Dead who have another.
What we call reality is only a sensation that we
throw outside ourselves. Don't you see that ?
We each make our own universe — or let other
people make it. But I've made myself a world
in four dimensions, and that's why I can never rest
in three.'

' It's wonderful !' said Stephen slowly. The
thing had filtered into his consciousness at last.
He fidgeted uneasily. ' And no one else has
it ! Just you ! Why can't we all know, if

A FELLOW-TRAVELLER 107

know ? If it's true, one ought to find it ; but no
one has.'

'I've thought sometimes,' said Willie, ' that
perhaps I am the first of a new regime. A trial
piece, you know; an 'experiment. It's about time
something new was evolved from the race, isn't it ?
And isolated specimens aren't usual in nature.
Which is lucky ; it's not nice to be one. That
mixture of fatigue and foolishness which the first
man who stood upright must have felt, when he
limped and stumbled amongst the four-footed
things, is just what I feel now. That want of incen-
tive for tree-climbing, weakness and lostness in
forests made for creeping and leaping creatures,
which he must have had — shame for his state
mixed with secret knowledge of his new powers —
all that is just a parable of my life, going with new
perceptions amongst people who instinctively resent
the light.'

* But is your world the True ?' answered Stephen.
' It can't be. It must only be another illusion
wrapped inside this one. This can't be all — can't
be the end — this Grey Horror that you talk of. It's
too mad, too evil, too unjust.'

' I have that feeling, too, sometimes,' said Willie.
They had reached the inner core of his mind now,
and he was impelled to confess it. 'I seem to know,
then, that there is a better country hidden away for
people who are not tied to the earth-side of dream.
But I can't find it yet. The other is the beginning

io8 THE GREY WORLD

anyhow. Always here — always there — and for most,
it's the end : I've proved that.'

Stephen shivered. He felt lonely without the
pretty, iridescent dreams which he had woven for
himself from varied psychic material. Willie's
cloud - land descended as a fog, and choked
him.

' Oh, but I will find a way back to beautiful
thoughts !' he said.

He parted from WTillie on the doorstep, and went
into the house. Mr. and Mrs. Miller were dining
out, and the drawing-room felt cold and lonely.
Stephen went up to his own den, turned up the
lights, tried to remember the words that Willie
had said to him. But he could not think very
clearly : the house was so horribly still.

Presently he found himself looking nervously
about the room. In spite of the stillness, the air
seemed full of inaudible sounds. He stood up, sent
quick glances towards the door. He thought he
would like to go downstairs again, and find com-
panionship : he felt cold, breathless. Solitude
ceased to be a fact, and became a dreadful person
robed in chilly winds, who stood close to him. He
had still sufficient self-control to wonder at himself,
to ask his muddled brain the meaning of its frenzy ;
but it could not answer him. It referred him to a
more cloistered inhabitant — to that Dweller in the

A FELLOW-TRAVELLER 109

Innermost whose calm vigil he seldom disturbed ;
for Stephen's activities were largely intellectual,
though he loved to give them spiritual names.

It was, then, the tremor of his soul whose reflec-
tion he now felt in physical wretchedness. Whilst
his reason doubted and argued, setting its teeth in
the framework of Willie's vision, it had perceived.
It had been roused by familiar accents, and now
reminded him of the dark places in which he stood.
It had pushed out suddenly into the transcendental
world, dragging his weak consciousness in its wake.
He could not hold it back.

Material life is only made possible by material
faith : by a childlike acceptance of appearances.
Stephen's belief in appearances had been rudely
shaken. The texture of his world had become thin,
unsubstantial : he thought that he could see
through it the shadowy outline of another landscape.
Old landmarks slipped from him. He grabbed sud-
denly and nervously at the nearest chair, longing
for solidity ; but his senses turned against him, and
he could not assure himself that it was hard and
durable to his touch. He was not even clear about
the floor that he stood upon. The brightness of
the electric light terrified him ; it seemed to be
veiling awful darks.

He had lost the sense of bodily existence, of
visual reality. He was

' Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails are never to the tempest given ' —

no THE GREY WORLD

alone and immaterial in an illusory and immaterial
world. No sound, no sight, no Real, between him
and grey nothingness. He stood and shivered,
choking with horror, and powerless to move, because
he had lost the sense of space.

Suddenly he heard a distant cry, a rustling
sound.

Then blind terror brought its own relief. He
fainted.

CHAPTER X

ROAD-MAKING

1 Indentures and Apprenticeships for our irrational young ;
whereby, in due season, the vague Universality of a Man shall
find himself ready - moulded into a specific Craftsman.' —
THOMAS CARLYLE.

MRS. STEINMANN was giving a little dinner. It was
at her own house : at restaurants, she said, one
never knew what one was eating. Margarine, she
felt sure, was used freely ; whereas in her own
kitchen she could rely on honest dripping and clari-
fied fat.

Both dinner and conversation were solid, but
easy of digestion. There were no insidious entrees
in either department. This was a comfort to Mrs.
Hopkinson, whose husband had lately suffered from
dyspepsia, and still required diplomatic supervision
at his meals. She had sent a note to her hostess in
the morning, asking that he might be given toast
instead of bread, and some weak whisky-and-soda
in a champagne glass. Mr. Hopkinson, when he
discovered these attentions, revenged himself on

in

H2 THE GREY WORLD

Fate by taking two helpings of fried potatoes, and
avoided the supplicating glance which his wife
directed towards him from the other side of the
table. He was sitting next to Mrs. Alcock, who
had developed with years a childish, appealing
manner, which made her popular with the husbands
of other women, and now impelled Mr. Hopkinson
to give her carefully diluted information on several
subjects with which she was already acquainted.

Elsa Levi, judiciously dressed for her mother's
eye in a tight-fitting frock of modest ugliness, sur-
veyed him from the opposite seat, and compared
him — as she always did all suitable specimens — with
her own husband. Mr. Hopkinson was of the
military - commercial type ; a thick moustache,
square shoulders, an assertive shirt-front. He
appeared to have been created to show off his own
manufactures. Mr. Levi, whose sandy hairs fringed
a bald pink dome, and who insisted on retaining the
whiskers of his early youth, seemed to find evening-
dress less chic but more comfortable. Elsa con-
cluded that there was little to choose between them ;
Hermann ate his soup less noisily, but Mr. Hopkin-
son's complexion did not become shiny as the even-
ing advanced. She balanced these advantages of
sight and sound for a little while, but could come to
no practical decision.

A sideway glance at Mrs. Hopkinson's uninspired
profile set her wondering how Willie came to be
mingled with this strangely unsuitable family. She

ROAD-MAKING 113

had seen a good deal of him ; and discovered that
though he tended more towards weak amativeness
than she considered desirable, he was capable of
amusing, even of interesting her. His rather effusive
gratitude made her feel unselfish, which was pleasant.
She was naturally self-indulgent, and knew it ; but
she liked to foster the illusion of altruism. Also,
the vacuous state of his mind in respect of fashionable
culture gave scope for her ideals of education : and
there was never any fear that he would think her
ridiculous.

When the ladies returned to the drawing-room,
she sat down near Mrs. Hopkinson and talked to
her in a gentle, rather pathetic voice. It was her
policy to make friends of the parents of her dis-
ciples.

' I love to be loved by the loved ones of those
whom I love,' she had said one day.

' I am so interested in your boy,' she now ob-
served. ' He is rather like you, is he not ?'

' Well,' said Mrs. Hopkinson, ' I've always thought
so, though it's never been noticed. My dear father,
you know, had a vivid imagination ; I've often
heard mother say that he would wake up in the
middle of the night screaming with terror — though
he always dined early, and never took meat at
supper, only savoury eggs, or fish cakes or some-
thing light like that — and I dare say that's where
Willie gets it from.'

* No doubt,' said Elsa. ' Heredity is so wonderful,

8

H4 THE GREY WORLD

isn't it ? But your son, I think, has great gifts.
With a little training in the right direction, he ought
to do well.'

Mrs. Hopkinson was pleased. One may think
one's own duckling ugly and ill-tempered, but it
is not disagreeable to hear other people call it a
swan.

' Mr. Hopkinson thinks,' she answered, ' that
Willie might start at the Factory at the beginning
of the year. He's had a long holiday, and is quite
strong now ; and training is just what he will get
there, being kept constantly under a father's eye.'

' I fancy, do you know?' said Elsa, ' from little
things he has let drop now and again — not that I
should think of encouraging him in any ideas of
that kind — that business does not attract him alto-
gether. It seems a pity, doesn't it ?'

' Oh, Willie's full of high-flown fancies,' replied
Mrs. Hopkinson. ' He has got into rather idle
ways, I'm afraid, these last few months ; always
staring at pictures and mooning over books. You
see, he's clever. But his health has got thoroughly
established, which is the main thing, and now he
must begin to learn what life really is.'

' Ah ! which of us knows that, dear Mrs. Hopkin-
son ?' answered Elsa softly. ' And do you think
Willie is likely to find the solution in Bermondsey ?'

' And then, by the time he's ready to marry and
settle down,' continued Mrs. Hopkinson, busy with
her own idea, ' he can be taken into partnership.'

ROAD-MAKING 115

' And that is to be his future ?'

' Yes : such a comfort, isn't it, to feel that he's
so well provided for ? It's getting quite difficult to
find any opening for boys. If only he takes to the
business! But he's easily unsettled. That young
Stephen Miller, I'm afraid, does him no good.'

' Stephen Miller ?' said Mr. Hopkinson, who,
being bored by Mrs. Alcock's mechanically recep-
tive manner, had arrived in the hope of detaching
Elsa from his wife's neighbourhood and demon-
strating to her that the art of flirtation was not con-
fined to aesthetes. ' An idle, loafing sort of lad.
He often comes in of an evening ; eyes Pauline and
talks gibberish to Willie. I sometimes wish him
further. But they're well connected people, the
Millers. Miller's Sapoline, you know — a very old-
established firm.'

Elsa did not know much of Stephen, but such
details as she had heard from Willie did not please
her. Spiritualism was out of date ; besides, he was
a possible rival, and she hated strangers in her own
line of business.

c I'm afraid he's rather a foolish youth.' she said.

' Glad you agree with me,' replied Mr. Hopkin-
son. She had only done her duty, but he liked to
be kind to women.

He sat down by her on the sofa, and intimated
that he was willing to converse. He thought her a
fool, she called him an animal ; but they were not
too narrow-minded to find amusement in each other's

8—2

n6 THE GREY WORLD

deficiencies. She had a small waist — a thing he
seldom saw at home — and her husband's financial
position lent a golden glow even to her most irritat-
ing follies. Mr. Hopkinson's claim to tolerance was,
perhaps, less obvious ; but he was a man as well as
a materialist, his eye was appreciative. Amongst
Mrs. Steinmann's commercially solid and mentally
woolly friends, he shone as the least polished tin
will do when surrounded by duller metals.

They warmed to one another perceptibly.

' So you are going to put Willie in the business ?'
said Elsa. She was really good-natured, and wished
to deliver the boy from the dragon which awaited
him ; seeing herself in the position of a strong-minded
princess, coming to the rescue of some helpless and
neurotic S. George. ' It seems difficult to believe
that he is old enough !'

She looked at Mr. Hopkinson — a look which sug-
gested both incredulity and admiration, and pleased
him.

' Why, goodness, yes !' said he. ' The boy's close
on twenty — a year younger than your Geraint, if I
remember right. You mustn't judge age by your
own appearance, Mrs. Levi.'

Elsa sighed.

' I'm getting an old woman,' she answered, ' and
beginning to take an old woman's interest in young
people.'

Mr. Hopkinson gave a laugh composed of polite
scepticism and quite honest embarrassment. He

ROAD-MAKING 117

began to perceive that the conversation had some
more serious aim than after-dinner dalliance ; and
he distrusted and disliked Elsa's serious edges.

* How's your second boy getting on in Paris ?'
he said.

' Tristram ?' said Elsa. ' He is perfectly happy.
The life of an art-student, I think, is an ideal one for
a young man. Technique and aspiration hand in
hand. I feel that he is learning to love familiar
beauties.'

' Very probably,' replied Mr. Hopkinson. He had
some knowledge of underground Paris.

* It seems so sad,' continued Elsa, ' so unjust,
does it not ? that all who feel the spell of loveliness
should not be able to tread the higher paths. Now
your Willie '

' Willie's path leads to the Factory,' said Mr. Hop-
kinson, ' and I hope the influence of environment
will soon knock the nonsense out of him, when he
gets there.'

* It may do, of course. A young soul is so easily

blunted by contact with earth ' She slid a little

farther back on the sofa : its pink and grey damask
covering gave sharp contrast to the lines of her
figure, and she knew that Mr. Hopkinson was secretly
enjoying her pose. ' But I don't think he will ever
be a successful business man,' she added.

' Don't you indeed ?' said Willie's father, with-
out demonstration of astonishment.

He had no illusions about his son, and looked for-

n8 THE GREY WORLD

ward with mixed feelings to the prospect of Willie's
daily presence in his office. A long experience had
taught him the signs which distinguish an efficient
clerk from a useless one.

' No,' said Elsa. ' And all his faculties ; those
which make him so different from the ordinary
young man of his class — how wasted they will be,
will they not ? His imagination, for instance.'

' Not at all,' replied Mr. Hopkinson. ' He can
design the new models. There's a great deal to be
done in that way ; and more to be made out of it
than most of these artists make out of their pictures,
I can tell you. Something the public wears, and
something it wears out — that's the thing to make
money by. Now, pictures must always be a fancy
article, and jolly lasting too : some of these Old
Masters, I understand, have been going for hundreds
of years, and are still quite fresh. But clothes — we
must have 'em ; and as long as men are born naked,
there'll be a living to be made out of trousers and
coats.'

' I do not think,' answered Elsa, ' that Willie will
make it. He does not seem to have inherited your
talent for practical matters.'

' Well, there it is,' said Mr. Hopkinson, modestly
evading the compliment. ' The place is ready-made
for him, and what can we do but put him in it ?'

' I think,' replied Mrs. Levi, ' that he has rather
a fancy for one of the artistic trades.'

She had, which came to the same thing. Tea and

ROAD-MAKING 119

twilight would secure Willie's acquiescence. But
Mr. Hopkinson looked at her with surprise and some
resentment.

' What ! retail ?' he said.

' Oh, no !' explained Elsa hurriedly. ' I don't
mean that at all. I ought to have said handicraft,
not trade.'

* Thought you meant Art Furnishing.'

' No, bookbinding, you know, or jewellery, or
metal- work — something of that kind. The creation
of really beautiful things, as the medieval craftsmen
used to do. That's so very delightful ; and all the
most cultivated people are taking to it. It's pay-
ing, too, I believe. They get enormous prices for
these things.'

' Do they indeed ?' said Mr. Hopkinson. He
seemed more interested.

' Yes. I know several girls who have gone in for
enamelling and bookbinding and so on '

' Oh, girls ! That's very different.' He employed
female labour, and did not wish to see its value in
the market increase.

'Not really,' answered Elsa. ' And Willie is just a
little effeminate, is he not ? And surely, what a
woman can do well, a man is sure to do better ?'

She smiled at Mr. Hopkinson. He temporarily
forgot that she was only an ingenious compound
of molecules, and owed her sinuous charms to Pre-
Glacial ancestors.

' You have interested me very much,' he said

120 THE GREY WORLD

kindly. ' I shall think of what you have been
saying. Of course, I saw long ago that Willie
would never make a smart man of business.'

' I'm sure he'd fail at it,' answered Elsa. ' And
that would be such a pity.'

' Oh, we'll hope he wouldn't quite come to that,'
said Mr. Hopkinson. ' I'm proud to think that so
far no member of my family has ever had to file
his petition. There's plenty of capital to fall
back on.'

He bade Elsa good-night with elephantine gal-
lantry ; and on the way home, having lowered both
windows of the four-wheeler for fear of infection, he
gave his shivering wife a summary of their conversa-
tion. From this she easily gathered that such
original features as it possessed had been entirely
of his creation.

CHAPTER XI

A BREEZY UPLAND
' All kinds of skill are gifts of the Holy Ghost.'— TAULER.

IT is a disability of the hurried children of Time
that — make as they may an illusion of the hours —
the boundary of each moment is for them firmly
set. The Angels, whose day is timeless, do not feel
this. Theirs is the delicious leisure of eternity, and
that is why they sometimes judge our omissions
rather harshly. They cannot understand that
time given to the outer, is taken from the inner
life ; that to earn one's living it is often necessary
to pauperize one's soul. They would laugh were
they told that in modern life, no hour has been left
for revery : that it has been given, perhaps, to
physical culture, or chip-carving, or local politics.
Rational religion, the Broad Church, and other
expressions of our spiritual state, do not claim
rights for meditation. It is hustled out of sight
to make room for more useful hobbies, and the
eye of the soul becomes dim in consequence. So
the spirit is drowned in the luxuries that the

121

122 THE GREY WORLD

restless brain and dominant body have earned it, as
the Duke of Clarence in the butt of Malmsey wine.

These matters occurred vaguely to Mr. Willie
Hopkinson during the ensuing days, when his
future career came to the family bar and was kept
waiting for judgment. They suggested to him
reasons why the wholesale tailoring trade should
not be allowed to swallow up his existence. As
opinion leant towards a career which would bind all
his hours to the City, he felt the Grey World grow
more immediate. Fifty years of moderate affluence
would ill prepare him for the eternal penury of
that dimension. He longed to say, ' These
careers that you speak of are all Maya, illusion.
The necessity is that my body shall be placed in
surroundings which will help, and not stunt, the
soul, which is real.'

He could not think Bermondsey consistent with
the transcendental life. There would be no intervals
for readjustment. It seemed impossible that its
enervating atmosphere could do other than weaken
his grip of the Unseen. He would fall back into
the power of the crowded country — a citizenship
both he and Stephen Miller had sworn to escape.

He had lived nearly twenty years in the know-
ledge of a dreary and apparently inevitable Hell, yet
had taken no valid step toward his own salvation.
Once immersed in a business life, hope would be over ;
he would be held for ever in the general stream.

Considerations of this kind, though unintelligible

A BREEZY UPLAND 123

to the rest of the family^ were to him a great means
of resistance. The fear of material illusion which
they induced strengthened him for the struggle
which Mrs. Levi had ingeniously set on foot. So
it was that after hours" of stagnant opposition, when
parental authority met youthful determination in
drawn battle ; after long chilly days of silent dis-
approval on one hand and stubborn indifference
on the other ; after scornful counsel from his father,
and the tearful administration of Bovril and good
advice by his mother, his first conflict with the
powers of the earth was won.

It was decided that he was not to follow the
wholesale tailoring trade. Elsa's secret encourage-
ments, his own detestation of commerce, a carefully
fostered idea that the professions vaguely known
as Arts and Crafts approach the higher life, had
armed him for a triumphant charge against preju-
dice and family inertia. Hopkinson, Vowles and Co.
would look elsewhere for their junior partner. It
even seemed possible that Mr. Geraint Levi might
one day occupy that position. Elsa thought that
the exchange would be excellent, and her opinion
was, for the moment, in power.

But matters went less smoothly when she was
not present. Tradition is not upset in a moment,
and Mr. Hopkinson had fierce reversions to his
original point of view. The sacrifice of prospects
was what struck him most. Willie would never
earn more than a bare competence, he expected,

124 THF- GREY WORLD

at bookbinding — the craft he had chosen — whilst
the Factory was always good for a solid two or
three thousand a year. But the boy, who had no
ambition towards clothing his fellow-beings, adored
books for a permanence of thought which they
possessed ; and extended his love of literature with
odd inconsequence to the leather which dressed it : —
as young and ardent lovers will sometimes confuse
chiffons and soul. As to the money, it did not
trouble him. Having scarcely in all his life wished
to buy anything, he did not understand the pleasure
or importance of wealth. Few of the things that
he loved were offered for sale in earthly markets ;
for the stuff that dreams are made of is not sold
by the yard.

It was Elsa, proud of her triumph but fearful
of a sudden sally from the enemy, who found the
bindery where he should begin his career. She
persuaded Mr. Hopkinson to pay the fees for a
twelve months' training in advance, representing
this course in its economical aspect. Mrs. Hop-
kinson— whose meek comments were now seldom
audible by her husband — thought that she perceived
a certain rashness in the proceeding. If the work
did not suit Willie's health, or he caught cold going
to and fro in the winter, it would be very awkward.
But knowing that women always make mistakes
when they speak of business matters to their
husbands, she went to bed for two days with a
headachej and said nothing.

A BREEZY UPLAND 125

An artist of the newest school, whose output
included pictures, altar-plate, and bedroom furni-
ture, had told Mrs. Levi that the work of the bindery
was beautiful and individual ; and was patronized
by several wealthy book-collectors, who paid —
with a cheerfulness unknown in husbands — high
prices for the luxurious dresses of their pets.

It was situated at Turner's Heath ; that new,
well-named, artistic suburb of the north-west. It
did not call itself a bindery ; that would have been
too obvious. Reticence is the note of the artistic
crafts. Above the doorway, a sign swung on
wrought-iron hinges. It bore two pierced hearts,
and said, in Kelmscott-Gothic characters, ' Atte
ye Signe of ye Presse and Ploughe.' Underneath,
in case the public might not understand this cryptic
phrase, there was added in English type the infor-
mation, ' Books bound Artistically and Inexpen-
sively.' On each side of the entrance a strip of
tired grass was kept within bounds by primitive
oak palings. Within, a vestibule, whose grey
canvas walls were relieved by pleasant but ordinary
Japanese prints, led to the workshop. This long,
well-lit building of galvanized iron was sharply
corrective of the feeble asstheticism of the front
door. Benches and presses were its furniture ; but
at one end a ' show-case ' held specimens of the
best work the bindery had yet turned out. On
the walls, racks of tools, shelves piled with folded
leather, designs for future work, studies of plants,

126 THE GREY WORLD

of lettering, of curves and scrolls, gave a strangely
combined impression of industry and ' artiness.'
The floor was not clean ; but numerous snippings
of paper, leather, and cloth, took the edge off its
griminess.

Willie made his first entrance to the workshop
to the cheerful sound of many hammers. Mr.
Tiddy, the superintendent, was trying to teach
his two apprentices, Miss Brent and Miss Vivien,
to ' back ' a book. From the other end of the room
an elderly workman glanced at them occasionally,
in the intervals of removing superfluous glue from
the backs of a pressful of books. He seemed to be
amused, but not pleased. His name was Carter ;
and he was the real instructor and mainstay of
the bindery, though this position officially belonged
to Mr. Tiddy.

Mr. Tiddy was short and dark : his razor was
scarcely efficient. A complexion like that of an
Old Master before it has been restored was not
enhanced by the collarless shirts of coarse blue
linen which the example of more celebrated crafts-
men compelled him to wear. Yet such is the power
of sex, that in spite of these disabilities the girl
apprentices were obviously pleased should he happen
to speak a word to them in passing, and were in-
capable of looking unconscious when he leaned over
them to criticise their work. He and Mr. Carter,
neither of them gifted with a talent for conciliation
or an appreciation of tact, often created for them-

A BREEZY UPLAND 127

selves situations of some difficulty ; which alarmed,
when they did not amuse, the apprentices. But
the position of each depending to some extent on
the approbation of the other, they relapsed, after
abortive explosions of mutual contempt, into a
condition of armed neutrality.

Willie, arriving for his first lesson, stood in the
midst of the workshop uncertain what to do. He
was nervous, confused, slightly disappointed. He
perceived much noise and muddle, but few signs
of that higher life which Mrs. Levi had led him to
expect. There was tension in the atmosphere,
and no one noticed him. He looked at the girls
and their teacher. The book upon which Mr.
Tiddy was operating slipped several times during
his attempt to put it in the press, and he became
annoyed. He gave the unhappy volume a vicious
blow with the hammer. Old Carter at the other
press was watching him carefully.

* That'll do, Mr. Tiddy,' he said presently.
' Remember it's a book you're 'itting.'

There was a silent interval, but Carter was a
power in the bindery. Tiddy removed his book
from the laying-press, and carried it away. Carter
cast a look of disgust after him.

' Mr. Tiddy is a gentleman and all that,' he
observed to the shop in general, and the two girls
in particular, ' but he don't know much about
backin'. I've bin learning how to back books for
forty year, and I haven't finished yet. But Mr.

128 THE GREY WORLD

Tiddy, he took a six-months' course, and now he
starts on at the teachin'. When I was a lad,'
continued Mr. Carter slowly, ' 'twas seven years'
apprenticeship, and learnin' all your life. I don't
like to see you young gents and ladies as come
'ere, hurryin' and scurryin' and hurtin' of the
books like you does.'

He fitted a fresh knife to his plough, and turned
silently back towards the cutting-press.

Willie was early drawn to Mr. Carter, whose
illusions seemed to him less noisome than those
of the persons amongst whom he had been reared.
A dwindling memory of the time when he also was
a child of labour helped him to understand the
limitations of his class, and placed him easily on
the footing of friendship.

This was the first happy and honest workman
whom he had met — the first who extracted the soul
of labour from its outer shell by his attitude of
steady reverence towards his craft. The relation
of a City man to his ledger, of a factory hand to
his machine, is not lovely : but there was a sincere
and beautiful connection between Carter and his
work. With him it* was a manual religion, faith-
fully followed without any sordid thought. He
felt slovenly work to be a sin towards his material,
as well as towards the master who paid him. He
hated the showily-finished bindings of cheap
polished leather and facile tooling which visitors
to the bindery thought so very artistic.

A BREEZY7UPLAND 129

' Fancy stationers' stuff,' he said contemptuously*

Carter liked Willie Hopkinson because he worked
without excitement and did not hurry. He waited
quietly whilst glue dried, and did not spoil a promis-
ing piece of work by a sudden hour of impatience.
Possessing the deliberation of the idealist who looks
to process not to completion for his pleasure, and
knows reality to consist in anything rather than
material results, he found each stage of the work
as important as its end. The girls were always
straining towards the finishing-point, incurring
Mr. Carter's wrath by their indifference to the more
solid portions of the craft'; and Mr. Tiddy only ceased
to be languid when construction gave place to orna-
ment. But Willie saw a symbolism even in the
paste-pot, and Carter began to hope that he would
train one master-binder before he died.

They conversed much together in the intervals
of work, and the reaction of homely intuition on
convinced idealism made them mutually interesting.
Willie would describe books that he had read, and
quote bits that pleased him, receiving earnest and
unexpected criticisms in exchange.

' I read somewhere the other day,' he said one
morning, as he worked by Carter's side at the
finishing-bench, * a bit that would make a nice
motto for a bindery. It was this — " We are each
of us a book in ourselves, but we only see the
bindings of each other." Rather true, isn't it ?'

* 'Tis,' replied Carter sententiously, * but it's not

9

130 THE GREY WORLD

always the best readin' that's put up in polished
levant, Mr. Hopkinson.' lie moistened his finger,
tested the heat of his tool, and continued : ' I've
known the works of Samuel Smiles, or the " Pilgrim's
Progress," or fine writings such as that, brought in
'ere, and all that's asked for is half-roan sprinkled
edges. And then people comes and orders inlay
and best tooling and all, for books of poetry as to
my mind it's barely decent to leave lyin' on the
table.'

' Yes, I suppose that is so,' answered Willie
doubtfully. He had begun to feel the technical
obsession which weighs so heavily on craftsmanship,
and found it difficult to believe that any book could
be more important than its binding. Minor poetry,
printed on Japanese vellum and morocco bound,
seemed to him as desirable as pocket classics in
plain cloth.

' Of course that's so,' said Carter. ' Insides and
outsides all to match — that 'ud be one of God
Almighty's own bindings ; and even He don't often
manage it. Take care with your toolin', Mr.
Hopkinson. You haven't done that last line very
nice.'

Willie rubbed the superfluous gold-leaf from his
book-cover, and looked with blind pride at the
rather uncertain pattern of hearts and lilies which
he had impressed upon it.

' It's effective,' he said.

' But 'taint effect you're 'ere for, Mr. Hopkinson,'

A BREEZY UPLAND 131

answered Carter. ' It's good toolin'. And that
work's not solid. Look at them corners : you
haven't mitred them neat. You don't want to
do your fmishin' shop-window style ; you wants
to do it so as it looks right when it's held in the 'and
after it's bought.'

' Oh, I can't do it over again !' said Willie.

' Then you ain't no workman, Mr. Hopkinson,'
answered Carter.

In spite, or perhaps because, of this tonic discip-
line, Willie found his daily life so happy that he
was not often tempted to impatience or haste.
He wished to savour each moment of his day, and
felt sad when the time came for leaving the quiet
bindery, and going out into the windy world.
There was a flavour of past ages about the work-
shop ; and the tram which took him home, took
him also into another and less peaceful century.
He learnt here for the first time in his life the
meaning of his hands, and discovered their use.
They gave his soul a new and inexplicable pleasure.
Regular manual occupation steadied him, drawing
off his earth energies and leaving his spirit clearer.

As he sat at the sewing-press, or mechanically
pared the edges of leather for the covers of his
books, he meditated. Busy hands and dreaming
soul balanced one another, and he felt sane, alive,-
untrammelled. Though the future was still blank
to him and the outer world an unsubstantial chaos *
he caught the fringes of a larger hope. The symbolic

9—2

132 THE GREY WORLD

Tightness of quiet work justified to him the existence
of his body, and sometimes allowed him a glimpse
of the gateway which leads to the Heaven of the
Industrious.

Behind labour, he felt, there was Something — a
spirit or power which blessed. The misty disease
of unreality and confusing presence of the Grey
Dimension, never attacked him when he had a
tool in his hand. That forced him to singleness of
outlook. And persons who did their work lovingly
and honestly, for Tightness, not for profit, might
hope for a happier eternity, he fancied, than the
earth-bound populations of the Sorrowful Country
whose presence still shadowed his daily life. He
told some of these thoughts, but not all, to Elsa,
who approved them.

* He has quite the Medieval tone of mind,' she
said.

But Miss Mildred Brent and Miss Janet Vivien,
the apprentices, who had felt the arrival of a young
man in the bindery to be a possibly significant
incident in their lives, were disappointed. They
perceived with acid astonishment that he saw them
as Persons, not as Girls ; and decided that he was
very odd.

CHAPTER XII

MAPS ARE CONSULTED

' Then the Divine Vision like a silent Sun appeared above
Albion's dark rocks : setting behind the Gardens of Kensington
On Tyburn's River.' — BLAKE.

THE grief of knowledge is the gain of sympathy.
From the moment when Stephen shared Willie's
vision, a link, stronger than that of friendship, was
forged. Each now held by the other for support,
and found the immaterial world which bathed
existence less awful for the presence of his friend.
To each, the other was a rest and a point of reference
in the difficulties of his conflict with experience and
with fact.

There came a day, however, when divergent
ideals strained this invisible fetter, and each of
its prisoners drew away from the other as far as
he might. There was surprise on both hands, and
some sadness, but temperament the bond-breaker
had its way. It was impossible that the ethereal
roads on which Willie was destined to travel should
suffice for Stephen's more human and adventurous
tread.

134 THE GREY WORLD

There is a path in Kensington Gardens which,
running north and south, is good to walk along at
sunset-time. Its western boundary shows trees
and sky in nice proportion, and a glint of water
to the right. On a seat arranged for the enjoyment
of this landscape Mr. Willie Hopkinson and Mr.
Stephen Miller were sitting about four o'clock of
a November afternoon. There were few people
about. It was still too light for lovers, and most
of the babies had gone home to tea.

There had already been a change in their relation.
Since Willie entered the bindery, he had become
more patient, less assertive towards existence.
But Stephen, his eyes once opened upon the un-
charted country, could not think of it peacefully.
Willie, learning slowly — almost unconsciously — to
treat his work as a sacrament which bore some
mystic relation to truth, lost the constant itch
to step from his path, and hunt for solutions to
the Great Conundrum. He had an inner content,
equally removed from piety and despair, which
anaesthetized his spirit.

Stephen had recently been placed in the office
of an architect, whose terra-cotta palaces, majolica
fa9ades, and miracles of plate glass and iron girders,
had done something toward the introduction of
humour to the City streets. He found little nourish-
ment for his imagination in the details of plan,
measurement, and material, there placed before
him. Thus he turned naturally and vehemently

MAPS ARE CONSULTED 135

from the atmosphere of the drawing office to that
of the transcendental world — searching, with a fever
that was the index of his helplessness, for some clue
to the tangle, and some escape from the dread, to
which Willie had introduced him. Each time they
met he had some new theory to offer ; but Willie,
braced by the tonic society of Mr. Carter, often
gave him an attention more repressive than
enthusiastic.

Sitting now in Kensington Gardens, feeling very
near him the delicious contours of the trees and
sorcery of the sky, he listened rather languidly to
Stephen's talk. He felt dreamy, disinclined to
occult discussion. He began to discover that a
disciple can be very boring. Mr. Stephen Miller
had been thinking hard, he said, about Appearance
as distinguished from Reality. His black hour had
passed ; he was in a cheerfully credulous mood,
treating the shadow-side of the universe as a fluid
medium in which he could swim and splash at will.
He hinted at results which might interest Mr. Willie
Hopkinson.

Willie was not pleased. It seemed to him
inappropriate that Stephen, groping in the dark
and only aware of the darkness through his friend's
magnanimity, should take upon himself the pro-
pounding of theories and hopeful exploration of
the Unknown. He was unique — a consoling fact.
He did not desire a partner. He was very willing
to save Stephen, should a way of salvation ever

136 THE GREY WORLD

appear to him ; but he found his behaviour in work-
ing his own way towards the light ungracious and
objectionable. It constituted a failure in the duties
of comradeship. Friendship had done nothing to
disturb his cold, deliberate egoism. He liked his
friend ; he liked more the sense of power which
affection gives to its object. His flattering inter-
course with Mrs. Levi did not offer this. But
vStephen cared more for him than he for Stephen —
a desperate condition.

The spirit of Mr. Stephen Miller was exalted.
He fidgeted ; his eyes flashed ; his phrases, though
meaningless, possessed a Celtic glamour. Willie,
to whom work and his own personality now appeared
as two fixed lights in the midst of a shifting illu-
sion, was irritated by this contradictory optimism.
He judged it, as he judged everything he disagreed
with, to be materialistic. He suggested to Stephen,
in crisp sentences devoid of charm, his own industrial
standpoint.

' Work,' he said, ' is the thing. Any kind of work^
so long as you do it thoroughly. Nothing else gives
the same satisfied feeling. Only, of course, one must
not forget that work is only part of one's dream.'

' But,' said Stephen, ' there must be something
that isn't only part of the dream — that is a per-
sistent element right through the real and the
illusion. Learn to know that, and you will learn
the secret of existence.'

' How is one to learn it ?' answered Willie. He

MAPS ARE CONSULTED 137

was cross, but he could never resist an argument.
' To learn anything that really matters seems
impossible ; everyone is so busy teaching games.
But one can learn to work, and that has a meaning,
however useless the material work may seem in
itself. Sometimes I know there is something behind
— a world far more lovely, which saves from the
colourless place. But we have not got the key.'

' We have,' said Stephen, ' and I have found it.'

Willie was excessively surprised.

' What is it ?' he asked rather brusquely.

He was not prepared for Stephen's reply.

' It is love.'

* Rubbish !'

' Oh, I don't expect you to believe me,' answered
Stephen. He appeared confused, though his tone
was dogmatic. ' But I have found it out lately,
and I know it's the truth. Someone has shown
me — but I needn't go into that. When you know
what love is, you will have found out everything
you want to know. It is beautiful, which is enough
for me ; but it is more than that. It is the only
thing that lights up the Real behind the dream.
Oh, Willie, that will save you from the horror of
the afterwards. It is the people who have never
known love who cannot escape the Grey World.
They are held there hunting for the best part of
themselves.'

* That,' said Willie, ' is nonsense. Life means
more than getting fond of a girl.'

138 THE GREY WORLD

4 So does love.'

'Oh!'

' It does. It means everything. One finds one's
soul in a woman. I have found mine, so I am sure.
That is what we are here for — to find ourselves in
loving one another. Those who don't, are lost.'

Willie was filled with a helpless disgust. The
contempt which the passionless person feels for
love is of an acrid kind. To him, it appeared a
sickly and unpleasant thing : he did not know that
it existed apart from kisses and engagements. In
the Hopkinson family it was not referred to in a
manner which left room for reverence. Elsa
avoided the subject ; prudence was born in her
when she approached the frontier of genuine feeling,
and thanks to her tact he had never analyzed the
vague sensations which moved him when he touched
her hand or came unexpectedly into her presence.

It followed that to make Love the pivot of the
Universe was a monstrous and revolting proposition.
Stephen had said, when truth first laid siege to his
dreamland, ' I will find a way back to beautiful
thoughts !' This utterance had remained with
Mr. Willie Hopkinson, and inspired a happy vision
in which he and Stephen won their way by transcen-
dental paths to the high cold splendour of some
Ineffable Reality. But it seemed that a Lover's
Lane was the path Stephen had chosen ; and Willie,
astonished and disappointed, declined to believe
that it led to the top of the hill.

MAPS ARE CONSULTED 139

Stephen, meanwhile, was speaking sketchily of
the miracle which he believed to have occurred to
him. It was not a common love affair : it was a
spiritual experience peculiar to himself. He was
certain of that. The greater part of the ecstasy
seemed to have taken place in his own heart, without
other incentive than that supplied by his busy
imagination. But it was none the less life-
enhancing.

' Even to know her,' he said, ' is enough. I don't
ask more than that.'

There is a Maeterlinckian flavour which steals
over Kensington Gardens as the sun goes down — a
sense of secrets hidden in the trees. The white
walks become magic pathways which converge on
the Ivory Gate ; the Round Pond a haunted pool,
where Melisande might lose her crown. As Stephen
spoke, therefore, Willie looked at the dreamy scene
before him ; and his mind being occupied with
what he was hearing, it did not intrude itself on
the simple vision of his eyes. He saw the row of
trees which were near him, very black to the last
filmy twig stretched out from the earth. They were
exquisite in their delicate strength. And in the
sky behind — the shining, mystic sky of autumn
after rain — a faint pink cloud, just visible, threw
one tree into fresh tone-relations with the rest. On
the horizon, distant trees were blue. Behind all,
that sky, strangely transparent — like a face whose
apparent candour veils an unfathomable soul.

140 THE GREY WORLD

The magic of this vision removed him many
worlds from Stephen's sentimental commentary
on life, and led him to think dreamily and luxuri-
ously of the Beautiful. He thought of the pro-
ducts of the bindery, praised with strange adjec-
tives by Mr. Tiddy and appreciative visitors; of
the performances of other craftsmen which he had
been bidden to admire — angular furniture set with
strange ornament, clumsy metal-work, deliberately
barbaric jewels. The effortless masterpiece of
nature now before him revealed these things as
ugly and unskilful. All the nobility they possessed
came from the industry which created them ; the
hours spent without impatience on the slow journey
towards a craftsman's ideal.

' The Grey World,' he said abruptly, ' is the
Purgatory of the inefficient.'

' Oh yes, that's just what I meant,' replied
Stephen happily. ' And it is love that helps us
to climb and struggle and perfect ourselves.'

This was not at all what Willie had meant. But
he perceived that argument was useless, and waited
with a patience born of the sunset whilst Stephen
extracted, with some diffidence, a messy manuscript
from his coat-pocket.

' I have written a little thing about it,' he said.

Willie knew that his friend practised literature in
secret, having sometimes helped to buy stamps
for the return postage of his ineligible efforts — a
matter of several pounds in the course of the year.

MAPS ARE CONSULTED 141

' Where are you going to send it ?' he asked,
as he noticed the action, and the extreme slimness
of the work produced.

' This is not for publication. I have written it
for a friend, and because I think it is true. One
should write down a bit of truth when one finds it ;
it helps one to remember. But I don't care to
pour out my soul on paper for a lot of idle women
to flick over between a muffin and a yawn.'

He was pleased with this sentence, and looked
toward his friend for appreciation. But Willie was
again entranced by the sky. It was fading to dim
silver and transparent grey, making him feel melan-
choly and very quiet. Allegories of his own vivid
ideal of life, which time was changing to greyer
tints, occurred to him. He enjoyed the sadness
of these sensations, taking them to be the hall-
mark of a superior soul.

He suddenly woke from his revery to find that
Stephen had commenced the reading of his story.
The opening paragraphs had already gone by, and
he took up the thread in the midst of a sentence.

'" . . . So Pan left the happy nymphs and the
little dancing fauns ; and he sat down alone by the
waters of Lethe, and took some red earth from the
river-brink to play with. And whilst he played
the clay began to take shape beneath his fingers,
until at last a rough red image lay in his hands.

' " Then Pan took his pipes and blew on them softly*
and the image moved and stood upright on its feet.

142 THE GREY WORLD

* " ' See !' he cried, ' I have made a man.'

' " But his Master looked down from the mountain
and said :

' " ' Nay, friend, not so fast. More than red clay
and wild music go to the making of Man.' And
his breath, coming gently over the river, fell on
the figure, which opened its mouth and spoke.

' " ' This is a fine toy we have made,' said Pan.

' " ' It must be made better yet,' his Master
replied.

' " Pan was annoyed : he had been proud of
his skill.

' " ' It is good enough,' he said. ' I can carve
it no finer, for I have no tools. Also, the clay is
fragile, and easily crumbles away.'

' " But the Master answered : ' It needs no tools ;
from the weakness of the earth and the virtue of
my breath shall come its beauty. A day of toil
and a night of rest, and Man will be perfected.'

' " Then he set the image on a very dreary hill-
side, and he marked a rough path before its feet ;
and Pan and his Master sat down to watch their
toy. Some time they watched him, but he did not
move — he stood on the hill where the Master had
placed him, a helpless figure of inanimate earth.

* " ' We must urge him on,' said Pan ; and he took
up his pipes again. The air he played was fierce
and plaintive, and at its sound the Man started
forward, savage eagerness and cunning on his face.
Pan laughed as he laid down the pipes.

MAPS ARE CONSULTED 143

' " * It is a mighty march,' he said. ' I do not
know a better ! Hunger is the tune that moves
the world !'

' " Searching for food, and struggling with the
beasts whom he hunted, the Man moved upwards
slowly; for his limbs were feeble and his eyesight
dim. He stumbled very pitifully on the stony road,
and often missed his way.

1 " ' Poor wretch !' cried Pan ; ' he cannot see.
We must give him better eyes.'

* " But the Master said : * No : if he saw what
was before him he would have no courage to climb.
Truth is for the gods alone.'

* " So Pan refrained, and the toy was left in his
blindness. But presently dark clouds came up
from the mountains and hid the sun, and a bitter
wind blew across the river and made sad sounds
amongst the rocks. Then heavy shadows fell on
the pilgrim's path, his steps flagged, his energy
diminished ; and at last he bowed his head in
complete despair.

' " ' We have tried him too hard,' said the
Master. * He is only red clay after all : he needs
to be companioned on his way.'

' " His hand caressed the rock which edged
the pathway ; and suddenly a figure of mist and
sunlight stood by the lonely traveller, and shed a
radiance on the darkened road. But Pan, who
cannot love an ethereal essence, viewed the new-
comer with great disdain.

144 THE GREY WORLD

* " ' What use is a creature like that ?' he growled.
' He cannot hew wood or hunt game. At most
he will only draw foolish pictures, or tell lying tales.'

' " ' What of that, if he make the hills seem
shorter ?' said the Master. ' It is more than you
could ever do.'

' " So Art was born.

' " Now the Man stepped out more bravely, and
always his comrade was by his side to whisper
sweet stories, and point out new beauties in sky
or earth ; so that his search for food grew languid,
the pleasures of Art absorbed him more and more,
and he lost the strength of body born of his arduous
life.

' " ' Aha !' cried Pan, ' you have spoilt your toy ;
he grows soft and idle. We must find him a better
friend than this dreamy fellow — a mate, for whom he
will work.' And taking red earth, he made another
image, smaller and softer than the first, and placed
it at Man's side. But he looked without joy at
the Woman thus committed to his care, and heeded
her not.

' " Then the Master said : ' Oh, Pan, thou foolish
god ! will earth strive for earth, or clay suffer for
clay ?' and he turned the brightness of his face
toward the Man and Woman, so that they shrank
back, dazed and awed. But they saw each other, in
that bewildering moment, illuminated by the light
of Love.

' " So side by side they started up the path,

MAPS ARE CONSULTED 145

falling amongst stones, in the sun and the rain,
each helping the other and working for the common
good. And presently, as they climbed, evening fell,
and the summit was nearly reached.

' " ' Courage,; dear heart !' the Man whispered,
as he bore the Woman up the last steep slope.
' Night comes, we shall sleep !'

' " ' It has been a long day,' said Pan, ' and the
clay wore well. The hardships of the way have
even improved its form. What reward shall we
give our toys after all their toil ?'

' " But his only answer was the sigh of the
night-wind, as it cried upon the hills—

' " ' Oblivion !' " '

Stephen folded the manuscript with elaborate
carelessness, and stuffed it untidily into the outside
pocket of his overcoat. Then he waited ; rather
proud and very expectant.

' It's a bit high-flown,' said Mr. Willie Hopkinson.

Stephen blushed, but did not answer.

' Rather pretty, though,' added Willie. He had
been, to his surprise and annoyance, uncomfortably
touched by the concluding phrases. It was no part
of his programme to permit himself to be weighted
by these earthy emotions.

* Pauline thought it beautiful !' said Stephen.

But Willie did not hear him. The spell of narra-
tive was broken, the cold magic of the sky had
called him back, and he missed the astounding
information which Stephen's last words conveyed.

10

CHAPTER XIII

MR. WILLIE HOPKINSON TRIES A SHORT CUT

'A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.' —
EMERSON.

THE things which are called little are oftenest those
which put persons in the disposition to act. They
spur the emotions gently but sufficiently : the
great event presses too heavily upon the soul, and
results in inertia.

The story of Pan and his Master left an impres-
sion on Willie's mind. Like most boys who possess
sisters and lead a sequestered life, he did not tend
easily towards love. Pauline, who had provided
Stephen's inspiration, was to him no more signifi-
cant than the other furnishings of his home. But
a natural ear for literature had been struck by the
note of sad sincerity in the conclusion of Stephen's
clumsy parable, and now inclined him to look upon
girls in a manner strange to him, if normal to man-
kind. It seemed to him that work, in its spiritual
aspect, might gain an added value, were it linked
with a friendship more equable than the fevered
service which he offered Elsa, more romantic than

146

WILLIE TRIES A SHORT CUT 147

the affection he now felt for his fellow-traveller
Stephen. He had no thought of marriage, only
of an idyllic comradeship. Matrimony, he supposed,
was a purely utilitarian measure.

These ideas crystallized in his consciousness as
he strolled one morning from the tram to the
bindery, and perceived Mildred Brent, the less sig-
nificant of the lady apprentices, walking before him.

She was a small, neat, mouse-like person ; and, by
the fact of her unsuggestive face, seemed the living
negation of her own temperament. Hair turned
smoothly back from a forehead of ordinary mould,
brown eyes of a certain intelligence carefully veiled,
ready-made clothes and a London accent — these
tell no tales. But a fire and a coldness lived side by
side in her heart : a fire for the future, a coldness for
the present. She hated grey walls and monotony,
and the mingled art and commerce of the bindery.
She longed to escape to those higher circles of handi-
craft which are celebrated in the art magazines.
Yet a sense of humour, running on disastrously
commonplace lines, kept her from the appearance
of sestheticism which would have best expressed her
inner state. Picturesque dress was only possible
to her in the best materials. She had two ambi-
tions— to become a member of the Arts and Crafts
Society, and buy her clothes at Liberty's. These
seemed unattainable. She was content that they
should be so. But she would not offer herself the
consolation of a cheaper success.

10 — 2

148 THE GREY WORLD

She had her secret pleasures. As she walked now
in front of Willie, she noticed with appreciation the
white glitter of some raindrops caught on the bare
twigs of a plane-tree ; and was glad to find herself
capable of these artistic enjoyments. Mr. Willie
Hopkinson perceived the touch of assurance which
this sudden contentment gave to her pose, sil-
houetted for him against a red-brick villa still in
the flamboyant stage of architectural infancy. It
pleased him. He knew that she had seen some
unobtrusive loveliness ; and to him also landscape
could impart a peculiar ecstasy. The lights of
London, her crown of topaz and opal, flashed into
instant existence on a wintry afternoon, or the sudden
vision of trees folded in blue mist, revived a fever
latent in his blood. Still young enough to hope
that one taste held in common might presuppose a
universal sympathy, he was drawn to a careful
examination of Mildred's outline.

She had now that mysterious significance which
anything may acquire if we look at it with sufficient
intention. It distinguished her, as an aureole might,
from all other persons afoot. It became impera-
tive that he should watch her actions. He liked to
feel that she was walking in front of him, uncon-
scious of his attention ; but presently she entered
a little shop, and he was left to digest the slightly
heightened picture of her personality which fancy
offered him.

He saw her as he passed the door, buying tracing-

WILLIE TRIES A SHORT CUT 149

paper and an H.B. pencil. The shop dealt also in
firewood, soda, and other sordid necessities of the
household. But Mildred thought that she detected
a look of relief on the face of the proprietor when
he turned from these things to the sale of ' artists'
materials '; and feeling this to be a sign of grace,
she endured smells of soap and tallow, and en-
couraged him.

Miss Brent was aware, without turning her head,
of Willie Hopkinson's attentive glance. In women
not yet possessed of a lover, this faculty of perceiv-
ing rearward admiration is often highly developed.
She thus entered the bindery with his image plea-
santly fixed in her mind, and spoke of him to Janet
Vivien in phrases which a grammarian might have
parsed as Conditionally Possessive.

Miss Vivien, however, was not sympathetic. She
detested Willie. She had the cold virtues of the
Vestal, and liked to exhibit them ; but he had given
her no opportunity. Few attitudes are more fatiguing
than that of defence against an attack which never
comes. Because he did not make advances for
which she would certainly have snubbed him, she
considered him to be an excessively ill-mannered
young man.

Her father was a clergyman of uninteresting
orthodoxy ; she had been reared amongst grey
proprieties. She knew that her hair was particu-
larly nice — soft, and warmly flaxen, with a fas-
cinating twist in it. The elder Mr. Hopkinson, on

150 THE GREY WORLD

his preliminary visit to the ' Presse and Ploughe,'
had looked at her — first judicially, and finally with
approval. He liked girls of the deep-bosomed, slow-
moving type ; they made good wives and mothers.
For these reasons Janet thought that she, rather
than Mildred, should have wakened Willie's dormant
manliness. Mildred's hair was sepia-colour, a lank
and unpoetic mass. Her accent frequently annoyed
Miss Vivien, whose own intonation was correct, even
ecclesiastical.

' I should doubt,' she said, ' if that young Hop-
kinson meant anything by staring at you. It was
probably absence of mind — unless it was imperti-
nence.'

* It wasn't either the one or the other. In
fact, now I come to think of it, I've noticed
before '

' You're always noticing things !'

' Oh, so would you,' said Mildred violently, ' if
you felt like me ! Anything to avoid noticing
what's always under one's nose !'

' It's no use to be discontented.'

' Discontented ? I'm starved ! Is it discon-
tented to be hungry ? People who've got plenty
seem to think it is. Don't you see that this place
and all its pretences don't satisfy you if you want
to live ? It's like those patent foods that don't
feed you — it keeps an ache alive. Oh, I would
notice anything if it would make me forget to notice
that ! But I'll escape ! I'll get to know the bright

WILLIE TRIES A SHORT CUT 151

clever people, who know the difference between
emotion and strawberry jam !'

' D'you think young Hopkinson does ?'

' Well, he's not like us.'

'That's true. He's awfully queer.' Sometimes
he doesn't look altogether like a human being. Mr.
Tiddy thinks he isn't quite right in his mind, and
that's why his people have put him to bookbinding.'

' Nice compliment to us !'

' Isn't it ? But there's something in it. It
makes me feel positively creepy to be left alone
with that youth — I keep expecting him to do some-
thing uncanny.'

' I'd rather feel creepy than feel nothing,' said
Mildred slowly. ' But I know what you mean ; it
is the air he has of always looking at something that
we can't see. Have you ever noticed his eyes ?
They are so strange — a queer pale blue, the colour
that you see in the deeps of a moonstone, and black
round the outer edge.'

Janet laughed sarcastically.

' You're half gone already,' she said.

During this and the succeeding days, she offered
Mildred the insolent attentions which unimagina-
tive propriety is so ready to bestow on more cour-
ageous, less conventional natures. Miss Brent was
not happy. She knew her attitude to be superior
to Janet's, and her understanding greater ; but Miss
Vivien possessed the knack of creating the opposite
impression.

152 THE GREY WORLD

It is always exasperating to feel like a fool ; and
specially so when you know that you are not one.
Before a week was over, the atmosphere of the work-
shop had become inimical to Mildred. She lived
with the knowledge that two pairs of eyes — for Mr.
Tiddy, jealous of his supremacy, had early caught
the meaning of Janet's censorious glance — hourly
accused her of desiring a flirtation with Willie. But
she set her teeth, and deliberately sought his com-
panionship. Being ignorant of love, she despised it :
she had been known to say that it spoiled a good
artist. She refused to sacrifice a friendship because
others held more vulgar views.

The charm which drew her to Mr. Willie Hopkin-
son was no physical fascination. She was suffi-
ciently perceptive to know that he was abnormal,
but still too conventional to like it. His queerness
lacked colour. He did not talk of it — a defect.
But she felt the spell of his detachment, and looked
to him, as a prisoner to S. Leonard, for the freeing
hand which should hit off the fetters from her soul.

At this time, when Janet's point of view was
painfully obvious and Willie's attitude as yet
indefinite, Mildred sought refuge in her work, and
chained her attention to the creation of a wonderful
book-cover for a Christmas play, called by its
writer ' A Masque of Marye's Childinge.' One
copy — for the author — had been printed on large
paper ; and this she dressed in cloudy blue leather,
whereon inlaid wash-leather sheep were kept by
grey morocco shepherds.

WILLIE TRIES A SHORT CUT 153

Willie admired this work, and complimented Miss
Brent upon it very kindly : he was acquiring some
of his father's condescension towards women.

' Have you read the book ?' she said.

She was quick to seize opportunities for congenial
conversation.

' No ; but I've heard it well spoken of.'

'Ah, by Intelligent Catholics, I expect. He is
quite the poet of that movement.'

' What do you think of it ?'

Mildred read the Academy and the Outlook at the
Free Library every week, and knew what to reply.

' There is a great deal of spiritual feeling in it,'
she said. ' And, I think, that combination of
paganism and pageantry is very attractive. After
all, few people are more truly and artistically Christ-
like than the heathen.'

These remarks impressed Willie, already struck
by Mildred's original methods of work — the despair
of the bindery and the solace of her own spirit.

Bookbinding is the most conservative of the
crafts, and originality in its apprentices is apt to
be considered as a vice. It irritates the tender
vanity of superiors. Mildred's wash-leather sheep
hurt Carter's feelings and ruffled the temper of Mr.
Tiddy. The idea had never occurred to them, and
they were sure that it was wrong. Yet she was
modest in respect of her performance, being easily
deceived by the apparent excellencies of self-
advertising craftsmen.

154 THE GREY WORLD

She worked hard ; partly because her mother was
poor, and she had never questioned the necessity of
wage-earning, partly because of her smouldering
ambition, which pointed to industry as a possible
way of escape. But she found no peace. Heredity
was disastrous to her happiness. Romanticism in
her was crossed by a strain of obtuse convention.
Her father, a brilliant and unpleasant man, early
perceived that he could never hope to find a woman
who was his intellectual equal. He therefore
decided, with a denseness peculiar to the super-
cilious, that his best chance of serenity lay in
marriage with a domesticated fool. He chose a
type at once amiable and irritating. Mrs. Brent
never learned that repetition does not add point to
an argument, or that it is useless for the naturally
dull to attempt to shine. Too stupid for intel-
lectual joys, yet not quite stupid enough for uncon-
scious content, she became a miserable compromise
between parrot-house and parlour.

Her husband had said to her, whilst their married
life was still young, ' My dear, you will never be
wise. Pray God you may become more foolish.'

But she did not. She remained dimly percep-
tive, and was always wretchedly aware of her own
denseness when she failed to see one of her daughter's
infrequent jokes.

Mildred, blending the characteristics of both
parents, often missed the best pathways in life for
want of the mental agility needed to perceive them ;

WILLIE TRIES A SHORT CUT 155

as she spoilt the flavour of her friendships by lack
of conversational sweetness. Subjective stupidity
and objective cynicism do not make an attractive
blend. To Willie, however, they suggested that
aloofness from worldly interests which is so difficult
and desirable. He thought that Mildred might
possibly possess a soul. As the weeks went by he
began to take notice of her, criticised her designs,
and recommended books, and found this new
patronage pleasant. She seemed grateful when he
spoke to her, and never resented her own failure to
understand his remarks. As a fact, she preferred
that he should sometimes be incomprehensible.
The higher he was above her now, the greater his
power of leverage should he choose to exert it.
She was not yet of the incorrigible company of
dreamers, but knew that in that direction lay her
hope.

This gentle and appreciative attitude won its
way with Willie, so that he began to connect the
bindery with the sugar of Mildred's smile, not any
more with the salt of Carter's discourse. He was
not in love with her. He imagined that she would
resent and despise soft tendencies even as he did.
He ranked her with Stephen and Elsa, as a person
of intelligence whose society pleased him.

Gradually he discovered that he was more com-
fortable in her presence than in that of Mrs. Levi ;
more certain of his own identity. To Elsa, he would
never venture to speak of his vision of the universe :

156 THE GREY WORLD

he sometimes thought that she did not take him
quite seriously, she baffled and distressed him,
though he could not escape her net. Stephen, who
shared his outlook, disputed its interpretation at
every turn. Willie now desired a friend at once
intelligent and subservient, to whom he could point
out the hollowness of the scenery which they had
learnt to call actual ; the ridiculous seriousness of
the society of men, gravely concerned with details
of station and appearance on its little moment of
respite between two deaths. Such a companion
could be taught to share his moods, respect his
knowledge ; would help, not hinder, the real busi-
ness of life — the journey of his soul toward truth.
Mildred could be trusted to understand enough,
but not too much. His dignity would be safe
with her : he was sure that she would never laugh
at him.

So two restless spirits drew toward one another '
one craving for a wider, the other for a more peopled
world. In each, the dominant motive was an
egoism. Willie desired that the grey infinity in
which he existed should contain at least one other
being by whom he was admired and understood.
Mildred saw Willie as a person from the outer world,
who had stepped into the narrow circle which
hemmed her in : and clung to his hand in the hope
that he would drag her beyond its 'boundaries into
an ideally interesting society where her work would
be appreciated, her intellectual longings fed, and

WILLIE TRIES A SHORT CUT 157

she could come to the growth which lack of nourish-
ment now denied her.

But whilst Willie the dreamer saw no need to
exchange these silent fancies for the awkward
paraphrase of speech, Mildred became anxious and
insecure. She believed herself to be possessed of
intuition, but was actually unable to assure herself
of any but concrete facts. She wanted a sign from
this elusive and desired companion. Her imagina-
tion was only skin-deep ; it beguiled, but did not
convince her.

The word came ; but, being long awaited, did not
satisfy. They were walking together to the tram
after a day spent in dreary forwarding. Willie's per-
formance had not pleased Mr. Carter, who had
expressed his opinion with unusual tartness.

' It's extraordinary how slip-slop a young chap
gets once 'e starts on courtin',' he had said.

This speech had been very distasteful to Willie,
and an occasion of confusion to Mildred. He said
very coldly to Carter :

' I think I shall go now ; I can't do any more
to-day. I'm waiting for the green morocco to cover
those books.'

But before he could get out of ear-shot, Mr.
Carter's sarcastic gloss reached him.

'Ah, it's somethin' softer than morocco that's
hinderin' you, Mr. Hopkinson !' he said.

As he walked down Titian Road toward the H igh
Street with Mildred by his side, Willie felt upset,

158 THE GREY WORLD

depressed, and lonely. He knew some explana-
tion to be imperative. He glanced at her : she
was looking straight before her, and holding her
skirt with one badly-gloved hand. A sudden shy-
ness had him by the throat. It choked him. He
could not speak to her.

But presently an omnibus passed close to the
curb. It was a day of liquid mud : he was obliged
to draw back hastily from the ensuing splashes. In
doing so, he touched Mildred's arm, and at once felt
more at his ease.

' I am lonely !' he said abruptly. ' I want your
friendship ! We are in sympathy, I know. But
there are things that I must tell you. I am not
quite like other people.'

'Of course,' answered Mildred, ' I always saw that.'

She ceased on the expectant note, and Willie
knew that his next words must be definite.

' Yes,' he said, * I am '

He stopped. It was absurd, but he did not know
how to go on. He could not say, ' I am an im-
mortal spirit,' and his condition as yet lacked other
substantive. He thought a little, and then added :

' I live in two worlds.'

The phrase came to Mildred as a spark in dark-
ness. It startled, but did not illuminate. She did
not perceive that this was their moment of com-
munion : she was a person who needed explana-
tory titles to the chapters of her Book of Life.

' How interesting !' she said.

CHAPTER XIV

1 How could he see what is hid
If it were not so, the lover ?
How could he say, " She alone and no other"?
Maya, illusion !'

ALICE HERBERT.

MR. WILLIE HOPKINSON did not again offer his
confidence to Miss Brent : his desire for sympathy
was held in check by a wholesome fear of appearing
ridiculous. He established her, very suitably, in
the suburbs of his spirit, where she soon assumed
a commanding position.

New factors were bringing unwelcome complica-
tions to his view of the universe. Each step of
his road was now disputed by the varied powers
within him — by a restless, poetic imagination, as
yet scarcely conscious of itself; by a confused
and unhappy soul fearful of all entanglements ;
by a body which age was ripening for assertion.
Stephen's influence, which he distrusted but could
not escape, urged love upon him as the sacrament
of a spiritual reality. The unromantically robust

159

160 THE GREY WORLD

Pauline, still unconscious of her conquest, main-
tained her inexplicable ascendancy over Mr. Miller's
heart ; and Willie was compelled to unwilling atten-
tion whilst Stephen described his sister's merits,
and laid bare to him the very human transports
which he mistook for illumination of the soul.

Stephen had a way of calling to spend the
evening with Mr. Willie Hopkinson, thus placing
himself, as he said, in Pauline's aura if not in her
presence. As a matter of fact, like many tactful
people, she did the wrong thing in a spirit of pure
kindliness, and made a point of leaving the two
youths together in the dining-room whilst she retired
to do needlework in another part of the house. It
was then that Willie's acid comments on Stephen's
ardours would lure his friend on to explanation
and defence.

' Can't you understand ?' he said one day when
the controversy had been specially embittered.
' It seems so odd, because you never lost the light ;
you have intuitions which ought to help. You're
a mystic if you are anything, and yet you deny
Love; and Love's the only mysticism that's any use.'

' Perhaps so, when two souls are created for each
other. But Pauline !'

' You don't think, do you ?' said Stephen, ' when
I idealize Pauline ; when I make her the whole type
for me of woman in the world ; that I imagine my
own words to be actual and literal — think her other
than a human girl ?'

THE ROAD BECOMES MUDDY 161

* No,' replied Willie ; * but you will before you've
done.'

' I shan't. I shall always know that it is just
because she is my girl that she means so much.
Every man must find his Madonna in a woman —
perhaps every woman may find her Christ once in a
man. Can't you see that there's a sort of perfection,
a nobility, in loving the imperfect ? In giving your-
self to something that can't really help you, that
can only give itself to you ?'

' No,' said Willie, ' I can't see it. It's a chain,
a tie to earth.'

' No, it's a way through really ; an escape. The
power of your love, you see, is not exhausted by the
earth-object, because that's partly illusion. But
the love is real, and goes on far beyond : and in
the end, perhaps, it finds the True Beauty.'

His known taste for literature obliged Stephen
to speak like a book. He stopped now, feeling
rather tired, and began carefully stroking Pauline's
black Persian, which, feeling equal to a little con-
versation, had jumped upon his knee, and now sat
purring with the assured condescension of an
obliging archangel. Bertie Anthracite Hopkinson
was a cat of intelligence and charm. His names,
emblematic first of softness, secondly of blackness,
thirdly of his position as a son of the house, excluded
further description. Stephen, so alert in his
sympathies toward all that was alive, had culti-
vated a mesmeric touch which made Bertie

ii

162 THE GREY WORLD

Anthracite his friend. They held long conversa-
tions, which irritated Willie as much as they pleased
his sister; and went through dignified and ceremonial
games together with a footstool and a ball of string.

This attitude of Mr. Miller in the house — an
attitude at once amorous and homely — stirred
dormant forces in Willie's subconscious self. It
introduced into his attitude towards Mildred an
element which he did not in his cooler hours desire.
Stephen's exalted phrases stood like stained glass
between him and the world. They affected his
outlook, and at times he dreamed that an ideal love
might indeed be the Graal of his quest. Mildred's
ardent mind and clever fingers pleased him ; he
imagined her always beside him, sharing his fears,
his discoveries, his success. The idea had charm.
He played with it. Then a sense of the Grey
Dimension rushed back. He dreaded the chain of
earthly interests ; and came hastily to his old
attitude of determined detachment.

But he could no longer look on Miss Brent as
a Person rather than a Girl. His environment
warred against this happy neutrality, and steadily
pressed frank comradeship into more sordid paths.
Mr. Carter, to Willie's disgust, still took the issue
of the situation for granted. He watched his pupil's
progress with a benevolent smile, and by persistent
presentation of Mildred in the light of normal
courtship, dimmed the idea of Platonic love which
Willie struggled to keep in mind.

THE ROAD BECOMES MUDDY 163

' You might do worse, Mr. Hopkinson,' he said.
* Miss Brent, she has ideas as I don't altogether 'old
by as to design and such ; but she's a rare 'and at
the sewin' press, which is what you'll find useful
in the future, and I'll allow 'er toolin's very nice.'

In Mildred's presence, however, Willie retained
his remote, therefore interesting, attitude. His
attentions were meaningless ; he seemed content
to drift without thought in the delicious tides which
ebb and flow between friendship and passion.

' Young Hopkinson doesn't seem much inclined
to come to the point,' said Janet ; she had become
more sweet-tempered since Mr. Tiddy's interest
was concentrated on herself, and pitied Mildred's
equivocal position.

* What a vulgar idea !' answered Mildred coldly.
' Can't you realize that friendship is possible without
flirtation ? Between cultivated people, sympathy
is quite sufficient.'

She was happy. After all, a slight improvement,
if it be unexpected, is enough to turn Earth into
Heaven. She liked to think that her friendship
was an intellectual one, and had nothing in common
with an ordinary entanglement. It meant much
that she should be preferred before Janet, whose
fascinating hair was enhanced by a good com-
plexion. Willie's self-control did not annoy her-
He appreciated her, and she him. He lived in
town, and brought the air of a larger world to the
workshop. She, coming every day from her cheap

II — 2

164 THE GREY WORLD

and hideous home on the edge of a newly-developed
building estate, envied and admired him. Much
of Elsa's philosophy was now repeated for Mildred's
benefit, and increased her respect for Willie's
cultivated mind.

There came a morning, however, when a well-
defined feeling of discomfort was noticeable in the
bindery. Its happy atmosphere of security had
gone, and the air was full of fretfulness. It was
known, vaguely but universally, that Mr. Tiddy
and Miss Vivien had been ' carrying on.' The
fall of Propriety is generally more sudden than
elegant. Janet's descent amused even Mr. Carter,
a Puritan at heart. A less virtuous, more experi-
enced maiden might have repelled Mr. Tiddy's
onslaught with success ; but she had allowed him to
kiss her behind the door of the dressing-room, not
knowing that her mother was waiting for her within.

Now Miss Vivien applied gold-leaf to her book-
cover with a trembling hand ; she was leaving next
week. And Bertram Tiddy, at the opposite end
of the workshop, made end-papers with sullen
energy. Both were suffering from loss of dignity,
and beside this the decline from virtue seemed
insignificant.

These events reacted on Miss Brent and Mr.
Willie Hopkinson, and caused them to realize their
sex with some acuteness. Mildred, who was more
receptive than perceptive, and found every passing
emotion an amusement or a grief, suddenly felt

THE ROAD BECOMES MUDDY 165

it as an injury that Willie showed no disposition
towards inconvenient passions. She forgot the
superiority of ideal affections, and longed to be
kissed. It was a demonstration in little of the
psychology of the crowd. Willie was uncom-
fortable, depressed. He could not understand
himself ; an irritating condition. He had felt
uneasy lately when away from Mildred, yet dis-
satisfied when he was with her ; and his mind,
which despised this weakness, could not control it.

For some weeks, his bad appetite had alarmed
his mother, who was afraid that the gas stoves
used for heating the workshop dried the air too
much, and lowered his vitality. The only remedy
for this, she knew, was good food ; and, with a well-
founded distrust of the local confectioner, she
supplied him with lunches of meat-pie and home-
made cake, and a patent medicated cocoa which
nourished the brain without upsetting the liver.

At one o'clock Mr. Carter retired to the Sun in
Splendour for a cut off the joint and a pint of half-
and-half, and Mr. Tiddy and Miss Vivien vanished
towards secret places where they fed. Then
Mildred, who took her poor lunch of buns and apples
at the bindery, did illicit cookery upon the finishing
stove, and shared Willie's cocoa in a spirit of pure
comradeship. These picnics, when they sat
together on the table and talked of Literature and
Art, had developed a familiarity both innocent and
delightful. Once or twice he had called her his

166 THE GREY WORLD

little sister, and she had pretended to like it. It
made Mrs. Hopkinson very happy to find that her
son got through a quarter-pound tin of cocoa
every week.

But on this day they were nervous, shy of each
other. A possibility to which neither desired an
introduction had been forced upon them. Mildred's
manner was slightly frosty ; there was an unusual
formality in Willie's phrases. It was a grey day
in February ; he was miserable. Weather affected
his outlook, and he felt earth-bound and hopeless.
It seemed that their happy friendship was in danger,
and he suddenly realized all that it had meant to
him.

' Aren't you happy ?' said Mildred abruptly. He
had only eaten half a mutton-pie and one piece of
cake.

' No,' he said.

' Anything wrong ?'

' Nothing's wrong, but I'm wretched. Every-
thing is so medium. When I try and look into the
future, I see such a foolish, meaningless life ahead
of me — no truth, no sincerity ; everything sordid,
earthy. I dread it.'

' I think, if I had your life to live, I should be
happy. You have clever friends, you're in the
movement, you can develop your powers. You
haven't got to be always thinking about what sort
of work pays best. Suppose you had to live down
here, with nothing beautiful to see, no cultivated

THE ROAD BECOMES MUDDY 167

people to talk to, no one to understand you, no
hope of escape ?'

' If I did,' said Willie, ' where would be the differ-
ence ? Only in externals, after all. You think I
have more chance of finding myself than you have,
a better environment, more freedom. I haven't
really. We're both struggling in chains, you and
I — silly, soft chains we can't break. My existence
is quite as ugly, quite as dead as yours, if you only
knew it. I sometimes wonder whether there are
any real existences, any real meanings in life. I
muddle along through a world of spectral nothings,
and never leave them behind. I'm lost in them,
they shut the light out, and yet they're unreal.'

' Oh, but I've often felt that too — that feeling
that one is missing the real things. It's only in
dreams I come near them — perhaps it's in dreams
I live best. But it's horrible when one thinks that
one has only one life, and it's going — going all the
time.'

A passionate discontent shook in her voice. It
did not occur to Willie that her idea of reality and
of life might not correspond with his own. She
was dissatisfied ; she desired the real things. He
looked at her with new interest, a kindness from
which condescension had gone.

'Oh, do you feel that ?' he said. ' I've been
lonely all my life because I could never find anyone
who felt just as I did about it. All the people
I live with are so busy with the detail of existence,

1 68 THE GREY WORLD

that it never occurs to them to look at its shape
as a whole.'

His tone was sincere, agitated ; a subtle flattery.
It roused the woman in Mildred to the wounding
of the artist, and prompted her to an effective and
fatal utterance. At heart an actress, she could
not bear to miss her cue.

* I've always been lonely too,' she answered.
* No one has really understood me, because my
outside doesn't match my soul. It's horrid to look
ordinary and not to be it. I seem to have been
waiting and waiting, for the person who could help
me to live my own life.'

A sudden vision of completed existence flashed
upon Willie's inner eye. For one happy instant
he thought of Mildred as a soul which shared his
restlessness and his hopes. He was standing very
near to her ; and now he saw her radiant, trans-
formed, the focus of his inarticulate craving.

He took one step nearer. It seemed to Mildred
that he was staring at her with a curious intensity.
Really, he saw nothing but a coloured blur before
him. Then the connection between mind and
action snapped. He became an automaton in the
hands of a strong emotion, and words came to him
so quickly that he could not arrange them in order,
as he might have done in a quieter hour.

' Oh, don't wait !' he said. ' I want you ! I
want you ! What does it matter about dreams of
the future ? That's nothing. I'm here, and you're

THE ROAD BECOMES MUDDY 169

here, and we can't do without one another. That's
all that matters. Dearest ! I'll make you live. I
know you understand me. We shall find the
meaning of it all if we look together. The heart
speaks sometimes, and then one knows the truth.'

He took her in his arms and kissed her — a timid,
inexperienced kiss. But Mildred, in spite of her
rather mean ideals, was essentially virginal. The
thing, coming with the violence of an accident,
appalled her. She hated crude emotions. A
natural horror crossed her triumph, and she drew
away from him.

' Oh, what's happened ?' she said. There was
pain as well as amazement in her voice.

Willie could not answer her. The hot phrases
which he had so suddenly let loose had lowered his
temperature in their passage. He felt, compara-
tively, cold. Astonished reflection trod close on
the heels of impulse : he had strongly the
mysterious sense of being a stranger to his own
actions ; of standing aside and watching that
ingenious machine, his body, perform a series of
evolutions in whose direction he had no share.

In a mood of entire detachment, he looked on, —
amused, critical, almost interested. He began to
wonder what strange being had spoken by his lips.
He noticed that his body was curiously excited by
the attitude it had taken up. Its pulses raced, it
trembled helplessly, its agitations almost disgusted
him — he, the spiritual Willie Hopkinson, who had

170 THE GREY WORLD

thought to find something very different from this
in love. He wanted Mildred : he was pleased to
have won her — for now she was passive in his arms,
and he knew that she was won — he could not dis-
associate himself altogether from his sex. But
he was secretly troubled and disappointed by the
quality of his emotion. ' Is this all ? Is this
all ?' the feverish soul in him cried out, whilst
some other and irresistible impulse drew his
trembling lips to Mildred's cool and steady ones,
and found him the caressing words which the situa-
tion obviously required.

And Mildred, the idealist, had only one coherent
thought.

* How awfully astonished Janet will be !' she
said to herself.

At the end of an afternoon spent in simulating
an elaborate unconcern, Miss Brent and Mr. Hop-
kinson parted with such emotional display as the
publicity of Titian Road allowed. Each, for
different reasons, was anxious to be very modern
and collected. But they could not help feeling
agitated, even upset, by what had occurred.

Mildred, always verbally cynical in matters relat-
ing to love, came from her first encounter with it
surprised and rather sad. Her official views had
been unconsciously modified by the softer imagi-
nations of her favourite novelists. These now
invited comparison with immediate experience,
and the vivid tints of the ideal brought out the

THE ROAD BECOMES MUDDY 171

greyer tones of the fact. The heart seldom wakes
at the first touch. Mildred's had only stirred
sufficiently to feel a drowsy disappointment in
its own sensations. Hers was that spurious love
founded on light fiction, which debases the currency.

The thorough training she had received in all
branches of Ornamental Design made her capable,
however, of appreciating the artistic possibilities
of the situation. She felt that Willie's proposal
should have been arranged with due regard to the
laws of composition. He was the most abnormal
young man she had ever met. He affected her like a
Voysey wall-paper, and this alone proved how suit-
able he was to become the background of her life.

But his wooing, coming as the last term
of an intellectual friendship, should have com-
bined the emotional atmosphere of ' Wuthering
Heights ' with the spiritual platitudes of ' Middle-
march.' Mildred was very well read. Willie's
hurried onslaught had been on a different level
from the passionate epigrams of her dreams. It
was breathless and ungrammatical ; its phrases
were objectionably homely. She decided that it
lacked the lyrical impulse. Considering the matter
on her way home, she told herself with growing
bitterness that she was not satisfied. She had
been too hasty. The whole incident now struck
her as tame : and its memory annoyed her the more
when she remembered that for a moment it had
contrived to make her lose her self-control.

172 THE GREY WORLD

She wondered now what blind impulse had forced
her to return Willie's nervous kisses, and could
find no answer to the question. She felt hot with
shame as she thought of the wild moments when
she had trembled in his arms — and their sudden,
inelegant separation when they heard Carter's step
in the corridor. He had entered with a specially
benevolent grin, and had gone promptly to work
cutting the edges of a large atlas, leaving them
together at the finishing bench. Probably he had
suspected. A sudden loathing of love and its vulgar
accessories overcame her. It seemed to her that
it was very like bookbinding — full of poetic charm
when seen from outside ; but made up, for those
who chose to investigate its technique, of ordinary,
sticky, even unpleasant materials.

But just as she reached home, a sense of comfort
relieved her burning eyes, and softened the curve
of her firm thin lips. She was Engaged ; and only
an emancipated woman can savour the full joy of
that astounding knowledge.

The homeward soliloquy of Mr. Willie Hopkinson
was not much more cheerful than that of Miss Brent.
He too had suffered a certain disillusion, though
the more romantic disposition of the amorous male
kept him from the depths of his fiancee's cynicism.
It had seemed to him in the moment before he kissed
Mildred that a great light was about to break upon
his life ; that its local colour was going to be of an
indefinite golden tint, instead of the disagreeable

THE ROAD BECOMES MUDDY 173

brown of the past. More than mere passion —
the longing for an- unknown beauty — had driven
him to love. He could not tell himself that these
hopes had been fulfilled. The afternoon's experi-
ences toned in with the rest of his existence in an
artistic but depressing manner : he would have
preferred a more violent contrast. Grey World
and brown earth were still with him, but the golden
light refused to come. Willie had a pretty taste
in metaphor. He told himself as he strolled away
that he had thought to fit a key to the lock which
shut him from a Burne- Jones country, and it had
only opened upon a Dutch interior after all.

The engagement caused some stir, but little
enthusiasm. Mr. Hopkinson said that it was in-
fernal nonsense. Willie was only one-and- twenty,
and juvenile marriages were bad for the race.
Mrs. Hopkinson only hoped that Mildred was a
thoroughly nice girl ; but her inflection was sceptical.
Fiction and France together have contrived to
discredit the art-student, and Willie's friends were
usually peculiar.

But Mrs. Levi, at whose altar he had so long
offered a romantic incense, felt it as a personal grief.

' I had hoped,' she remarked to her husband, ' that
he would have too much sensibility for this. Love
is the most beautiful of the passions : but only when
it has no ulterior object can it really minister to
the higher life.'

She reflected on the superior habits of the Middle

174 THE GREY WORLD

Ages, when young men were content to worship at the
feet of married beauty without any hope of reward.
' In those days,' she said, ' life was really beautiful.
An engagement, I think, is almost indelicate.'

She had some justification for annoyance. Hers
had been the first hand extended to help Willie
to escape the stagnation of family life. Now,
with the callous ingratitude of intelligent youth,
he left her on one side and deliberately framed
his own career. She had taught him too well.
He had learnt to appreciate women, and desired
to possess one. He told her all about Mildred,
sitting at her feet in the old confiding way, and
holding her hand. He described her with some
rapture, for he wished to assure himself that he
was very much in love. Elsa felt that she was
being treated as a favourite aunt.

Yet she still busied herself with his well-being,
and appeared interested in the engagement. She
even allowed him to bring Mildred to tea with her ;
endured her accent, her awkward manners, and
her pretentious aestheticism ; and told Mrs. Hop-
kinson that she seemed a sensible girl. She was
absurdly kind-hearted for so handsome a woman ;
it seemed unnecessary, and Willie did not really
appreciate it. But in matters of sentiment Mrs. Levi
was an expert diplomatist. She had early divined
the true state of his emotions ; and, believing in the
value of contrast, she hoped that the advantages of
the connection might not all be on Mildred's side.

CHAPTER XV

A WAYSIDE SHRINE

' Now soone from sleepe,
A Starre shall leap ;
And soon arrive both King and Hinde.

Amen, Amen ;
But O the Place co'd I but finde !'

L. I. GUINEY.

IT was no impulse of inquisitive piety which drove
Willie to enter the church of Our Lady of Pity. He
had a love for London, his true mother, greater than
that which he found for any human being. Child,
first of her slums, and secondly of her suburbs, she
held him tenderly but relentlessly in her great, grimy,
yet strangely poetic hand. He found in her streets
the mystical place-spirit which is seldom permitted
to enter her houses ; and it fed his soul. Seeing her
as a dream-town set over against the city that has
foundations, he felt that in her entity she knew
herself so to be.

Now that his working hours were linked with
Mildred, and so robbed of the quiet inward happi-
ness they had possessed, an oldjcraving for solitude

J75

176 THE GREY WORLD

returned to him. Miss Brent retained her power
over his senses, and compelled a lover-like de-
meanour which he found wearisome, and she
lacking in enthusiasm. This killed the peculiar
fascination of the workshop, for the religion of labour
is austere, cloistral ; it may tolerate a high passion,
but it hates an entanglement. That gate was shut :
he was driven to look for some other resting-place.

Holiday afternoons, therefore, he spent alone
when he could ; on the pavements, or in museums
looking at beautiful things which pleased him. He
discovered that a bit of Limoges enamel, or a
casket of old French ivory, may be the best of com-
panions to those who can concentrate their atten-
tion and hear its thin faded voice. Education now
helped him to appreciate exquisite handiwork ; and
the immortality of works of art, which, once created,
outlive their fragile makers and take their place
amongst eternal things, struck his imagination.

On one such day, when suggestions of blue in the
sky and a dancing breeze in the west kept him out
of doors, he first noticed, in a wide street of osten-
tatious shop-fronts veiling squalid tenements, a
dark passage between the dingy houses. It was
not a thoroughfare ; a swing-door under an arch
closed its farther end. Willie had a curiosity for
doors ; the never-extinguished hope of the adven-
turous that they may hide something worthy of
discovery. This one seemed oddly placed. He was
interested — walked down the passage. Then he

A WAYSIDE SHRINE 177

saw that it was a church door, and paused. Churches
had never attracted him.

But at that moment it opened, and a young man
came out. He had a clever face, the thin, nervous
hands of an artist, ardent eyes which shone with
grave rapture, as of one who has been about a happy
business. Willie had not imagined it possible that
men should enter a church on a week-day. He
was greatly astonished. Almost mechanically, he
caught the door as it swung to, and went in.

It was a large church, with wide aisles, a high
vault, transepts : but being ignorant of architec-
ture he was not impressed by its plan. The first
thing that he noticed was a faint aromatic smeU
which soothed his senses. He was nervous, not
knowing the meaning of the things he saw, or what
his own right of admittance ; so that his percep-
tions were rather exalted, and he felt that there were
mysteries very near. An influence, real though
elusive, imposed quietness and respect. He had
been of course in Protestant churches, but they
had left no mark on his spirit, and gave him no clue
to this experience — to the hush, the awe, the weight
of a new form of life. The idea of a religious build-
ing as provocative of emotion was strange to him.

The place was so still, so remote from ordinary
existence, that it seemed incredible that fifty yards
away newsboys were offering the latest details of
the Bootle Horror, and omnibuses full of cheerful
persons were hurrying eastwards to matinees and

12

178 THE GREY WORLD

exhibitions. He did not know what to make of
this dim hall, and these quiet people who passed
him. He had been accustomed to live with the
sense of aloofness ; but here his want of compre-
hension came from inferiority, not detachment. He
had suddenly come upon a new country. He re-
membered old stories of people who had found an
open door, and walked through it into fairyland ;
and realized that the door which shut silently
behind him had cut him off as a prison gate might
have done from his daily world.

He looked down the long aisles. They were
misty, half lighted by coloured windows in the
south. Far away, he saw lights burning, and
persons who knelt by them. It all seemed to him
profoundly unnatural. He felt as if he had pene-
trated to the home of a race of beings not entirely
human — an unsuspected world within the world.

A woman passed by him. In the street, he would
have known her for a very ordinary, well-behaving
person, not to be suspected of vivid emotions.
Here she was remote, magical ; caught up by the
strong love of the initiate. He watched her as
she made the sign of the Cross, and knelt very
simply and without shame before an altar. It
seemed to him that she stayed there a long time :
he dared not move, because of the tension of her
attitude. Presently she kissed the feet of a statue
that stood there, and came away. Her face as she
passed Willie was serious but very contented. No

A WAYSIDE SHRINE

179

doubt she would go out into the foggy sunshine and
take a hansom or the omnibus and go home : but
her real life had been in the moment when she kissed
the image with a convinced sincerity which did not
belong to Suburbia and its gods. It was evident
that great matters happened in this building.

He had wandered now as far as the northern tran-
sept. The little chapel which opened from it was
empty of worshippers. Its altar had a plainer look
than others which he had passed — the shrines of
S. Joseph and S. Anthony, crowded with votive
gifts. Willie looked up, and his eye was caught by
a mysterious invocation — words, written in tall gold
letters above the altar — Veni, Creator Spiritus ! He
did not recognise its relation to the commonplace
English hymn, the clumsily-phrased ' Come, Holy
Ghost.' It seemed a strange, majestic utterance.
He felt the full weight of its tremendous appeal.

Veni, Creator Spiritus ! — this, after all, was what
he had been asking all his life. People, then, came
to this place to find an answer to his own tormenting
questions ; to gain an attitude, an interest, above
the petty illusions of visible life. They were living
in an air he could not breathe, amongst realities
which he could not apprehend.

He looked back down the aisles. Everyone else
was kneeling. Evidently, it was right to do this.
Willie, naturally aesthetic, valued ceremonial and
symbol. He also knelt. He disliked the sensation :
it is not easy for an Englishman to kneel in a public

12—2

i8o THE GREY WORLD

place. He felt sure, as he bent his knees, that he was
being observed ; and felt hot, ashamed, desperately
foolish. But with the deliberate humility, there came
a new sense of peace. He felt a power near him ; a
touch, new and purifying as the Angel's wing which
fanned Dante's forehead on the mount. I think that
he was purged of the sin of pride in that moment.

He rose with a knowledge of his ignorance such
as he had never yet possessed : aware that he, the
unworldly person whose unique perceptions showed
him the blindness of his neighbours, the hollowness
of life, was himself without understanding, blind
and speechless, when ushered suddenly into the
presence of one of the spiritual secrets of the world.
But he divined the beauty which he could not com-
prehend : it quieted him, gave him new hope. As
he went out, and down the grey squalid passage to
the street, he passed a little shop-window where
statues and rosaries were for sale. There were
some books, too. He noticed the name upon one
of them — ' The Garden of the Soul.'

' Why, that is what this place should be called !'
he said.

He came back to the church again and again :
fascinated, puzzled, always without comprehension
of the charm which drew him there. Once he heard
a High Mass sung, and was disappointed. It was
ornate, dazzling, but it did not impress. He loved
best the quiet moments of devotion, when the place
was a home, not a court. When love outweighed

A WAYSIDE SHRINE 181

ceremonial respect, and showed itself in a familiar
simplicity, tears came to his eyes, and sorrow for
his dumbness to his heart. He knew then that a
beautiful reality wrapped him round and helped
him ; that this place, where invocation of the In-
visible never ceased, had an existence in Eternity
not granted to the hurrying City streets. But the
music and the incense were no part of that vision ;
they confused the image and frightened it away.

A curious change was worked in Willie by this
quaint access of piety. He came back now to
books read in the past, and found in himself a new
spirit of evocation. Phrases long familiar raised
unsuspected veils and permitted him to look into
their eyes, and there read messages and prophecy.
These were old friends, loved for their verbal magic,
now understood. From a prayer for admittance at
another gate, he turned to find this door held open.

But Mildred had no share in his new radiance.
Her eccentricity, cool, well-balanced, deliberately
fostered, was at the opposite pole of idealism from
Willie's dim intuition of beauty and holiness. The
sun which lit his newly discovered country plunged
her into a winter of shade. Caught up by the grave
fascination of the sanctuary, he thought contemptu-
ously of Stephen's remarks on the spiritual nature
of love, and wondered what would be left of his
passion for Mildred when once he had thrown off
the shackles of sense. Already, he felt a change in
the quality of his affection when she put off her

182 THE GREY WORLD

working overall and came to meet him in all the
fatiguing fluffiness of dressy blouse and home-
trimmed hat. It was the fellow-worker, the com-
rade, that he loved ; not the flesh-and-blood girl
whom custom compelled him to kiss.

He realized that his old state of isolation had been
very dear to him, and that now he had lost it.
Stephen had made a fatal mistake. This was not
the Companion who would lead him up the hill.
He must climb that path alone ; and Mildred, in
the valley, would always be a drag upon his steps.

Divergent ideals soon became apparent. He told
her of his religious intuitions, and she was vexed.
Catholicism was fashionable, but had many incon-
veniences. She wondered how many more fads
Willie would develop. As persons professionally
connected with wall-papers end by decking their
own rooms in whitewash, so Mildred's association
with Willie induced in her a love of normal things.
Engagement necessarily involved some readjust-
ment of her point of view. Originality in a friend
is often eccentricity in a husband. She was deter-
mined to manage Willie : she wished him to get on.
There was in Mildred that strain of meanness which
often goes with a sharp, shallow intelligence. She
could sacrifice nothing of her hopes, nor weigh
Willie's love and happiness against her own rebel,
lious ambitions. Love, pleasant as an entree, could
never form the staple of her life.

But when she attacked him for his dreamy out-

A WAYSIDE SHRINE 183

look, she met an obstinacy which she did not
expect.

* What I want you to do, Willie, dear,' she said,
' is to take a more reasonable view of things. You
get on so much better if you treat things as if they
were important, even if they're not. And surely
that isn't difficult.'

* Oh, of course not ! Nothing's easier. All you
want is that I should banish my sense of propor-
tion ; and after all most people manage to do that
very early in life. Anything can be profoundly
important so long as one is careful to look at nothing
else. But once glance at the stars, once open the
books of the mystics, and the game is up — the
panorama can never deceive us again.'

' Yes, well. That's all very well, but it isn't the
way to get on.'

' Get on ! Who wants to get on ? What does it
matter about succeeding here ? It's the afterwards
that counts.'

' Oh, I never could get up any interest in religion.'

' Religion ? It isn't religion : it's reality. What-
ever you believe or don't believe, life's only a tiny
snippet of existence ; and it's not worth counting
against the afterwards.'

' Well, you may think that, but you don't know
it. I'd rather make the most of what I've got, not
invest all my capital in a dream.'

' See here, Mildred,' said Willie abruptly ; * un-
fortunately for me, I do know it. You always say

184 THE GREY WORLD

you understand me, but I see now that it was only
a fancy of your own that you understood. You
bathe your mind in a froth of mysticism because it
amuses you and makes you feel clever, but you
don't believe in it one bit. I don't have to believe
it, because I know. It isn't a case of intuition or
anything like that, it's a case of what has happened.
I wasn't always Willie Hopkinson. I lived once —
a street boy in the slums. I died once. I was ten
years old then, and my view of life was rather like
yours. But I passed over into the horrible country
where the Dead, who made the most of life, as you
wish to do, live for ever in empty loneliness — because
they took with them out of this existence nothing
that could subsist when the body had died. I'll not
risk that Hell again. I saw the world you and I
live in now, as the shadow and the dream it really
is : yet I longed to get back into touch with it —
back to the old pretences, the colour and light. It's
not much, but it's all you have to hope for if you
chain your ideals to earth-interests and earth-
success. I've got back : but I've never lost that
knowledge. The Grey World is with me all the
time, and the voices of the miserable dead ; who
spent all their energies, all their opportunities, for
the sake of a few years of " getting on."

Mildred shivered.

' Oh, don't be so horrible !' she said. ' Your
imagination is positively morbid.'

' People with a sense of proportion — a sense of

A WAYSIDE SHRINE 185

background — generally are morbid. Most prophets
and truth-tellers have been called that — or some-
thing similar — at one time or another.'

' And quite right too. Prophets and truth-
tellers, as you call them, are usually only dreamers
who let their little fancies stand for facts.'

* Oh, no !' said Willie. ' Some are : but the real
thing isn't to be mistaken. One or two have seen
truth, and those who know can recognise that
element in their vision, however they may wrap
it up. Of course, the ordinary human creeping
thing who never looks at the sky, is bound to think
everything above his own head a morbid fancy.
I've no doubt that if a blackbeetle ever conceived
of human beings as they really are, all the other
blackbeetles would lock him up, as a sufferer from
dangerous delusions.'

' Perhaps you'll mention some others who had
this knowledge that you boast of ?'

' Well, look at the mystics, for instance. Look
at Plotinus, Blake, Swedenborg, the Indian philo-
sophers— contemplatives all over the world who
have looked beyond the shadow of earth and seen
another Reality, some as a dim reflection, some as a
perfect truth. Look at Dante, at the poets. They
all speak a different language, but what they are
trying to say is substantially the same. It's an
ineffable news, not to be put down in human
symbols. I've only seen the dark side yet, but
I'll find sunshine and safety before I die.'

186 THE GREY WORLD

* It's ridiculous,' said Mildred, ' to bring in Dante
and people like that. They were artists, poets who
tried to invent something beautiful. And it seems
to me that's what you're aiming at.'

' Poets see further than most people. They don't
get the dust of daily life in their eyes, as practical
persons do. And as for Dante, you read him now,
and call him a fine poet — he has no actuality for
you : he lived too long ago. But suppose that any
person came to you now, and said, " I — I, who stand
here, have been over that frontier. I have passed
out from this solid, ordinary, modern world, — the
world of comfortable mahogany-furnished dining-
rooms, and motor-cars, and milliners' shops — and
I have wandered with the Dead in another dimen-
sion, which is near you now, if you would only
believe it. And I have returned, holding fast by
my knowledge." That has actuality, hasn't it ?
That is real ? And Dante's dream must have been
as real as that to his neighbours.'

' And a nice mess he made of his life !'

' No one who finds the Ideal as early as he did,
and holds it all his life, can have the inner misery,*
said Willie. ' It's uncertainty, not knowing what
to aim at, helpless groping in dark places, which
brings that.'

' It's all a dream.'

' You said once,' answered Willie rather sadly,
' that it was in dreams that you lived best.'

' Oh yes, in the pretty airy ones that made one

A WAYSIDE SHRINE 187

happy — not in this. You may be right or not —
how am I to know ? If you're wrong, you've
made life a horrible nightmare for nothing. It's
awful to have to think about death — really think
about it, not take it for granted and forget. And
if you're right, you've got knowledge that we are
not meant to have.'

' Meant to have ? But I can't help knowing.'

' Well, I can help it, and I won't know ! I won't
have air my hopes and my ambitions poisoned, and
made to seem not worth while. I've only one life
as far as I know, and I claim it as a right to order it
as I think best. I can't live it on your lines. You
terrify me. I don't think you're quite alive in the
human sense of the word.'

' Oh, Mildred,' replied Willie, * if only you knew !
If only I could make you see ! It seems incredible
that you shouldn't believe me. Can't you see that
I'm speaking the truth ?'

He went towards her in a sudden access of com-
passionate tenderness.

' Oh, poor little dim-eyed girl !' he said, ' don't
be lost in the shadows ! Why should the truth be
dreadful ? Can't you trust me ? Can't you feel
the Invisible Things ?'

But Mildred drew back from him.

' No, no ! don't kiss me !' she said quickly.

From her tone, one might almost have thought
that she was frightened.

CHAPTER XVI

DIFFICULT PATHS

' The singing of the office . . . was like a stream of water
crossing unexpectedly a dusty way — Mirabilia Testimonia tua!
— WALTER PATER.

IT was at this time that the heart of Miss Pauline
Hopkinson, long besieged, opened its gates to Mr.
Stephen Miller. It was not to be expected that she
could resist a lover at once so ardent and so unsuit-
able. At first disposed to despise him because of
his friendship for her brother, she was caught at last
by his freshness and sincerity. To a person of her
temperament, his courtship was full of surprises.
The ecstasy with which he kissed her well-developed
fingers administered a shock to her theory of life.
Even her fringe, waved twice daily and confined by
a net, had its poetic element for him. In the in-
tervals of playing hockey and making blouses, she
found herself thinking of this odd, intelligent boy.
His dark face, his fervent anxious eyes, haunted
her. She was impressed by his writings. They were
obscure, and seemed to her remarkable.

Pauline was a wholesome English girl — a good-
188

DIFFICULT PATHS 189

tempered, self-reliant animal — Stephen told her that
she made him think of the Valkyrs and of Juno. His
flaming imagination, turning from transcendental
things, fused sentiment and fancy in the crucible of
desire. Finally, Pauline was trapped in the meshes
of his passion, and for the first time in her life
obsessed by an interest which was neither a game, a
fashion, nor a food.

As was right in so muscular and well-educated a
woman, she was ashamed of her emotion. She took
to wearing veils, lest anyone should notice the new
radiance of her smile. She walked in a delicious
dream, and told herself hourly that she was an idiot.
But the Hopkinson family, who found in this engage-
ment an antidote to the annoyance of Willie's
entanglement, saw other grounds than those of
sentiment for hearty congratulation. Pauline was
marrying well. She was a sensible girl, and had
sufficient savoir faire to keep this fact well in the
foreground. It veiled the unreasoning pride which
she felt in her vivid, picturesque, and dreamy lover.
Mr. Hopkinson, not suspecting his daughter's
secret aberration, was pleased with her. To him,
Stephen was a repulsive young fool, but he gave his
consent with astonishing cordiality. Mr. Miller's
extreme youth was no impediment. The best of
theories becomes untenable when opposed by an
advantageous fact. The race had to take care of
itself when an alliance with Miller's Sapoline was in
question.

THE GREY WORLD

One may pity Mr. Willie Hopkinson, hemmed in
by lovers, yet — in other than the Biblical sense —
very sick of love. Universally accepted as a member
of that happy fellowship, he suffered, as only a
sensitive spirit can suffer in a distasteful environ-
ment. In the midst of the confusion to which- he
had now reduced his life, two spots alone remained
where he might hope for peace. In the church of
Our Lady of Pity — his constant refuge — his best,
humblest, most hopeful self trimmed its lamp and
patiently waited for the day. In Mrs. Levi's
drawing-room, where a flattering sympathy awaited
him, his meaner personality plumed its ruffled
feathers and regained its self-esteem.

His position was ridiculous. He should have lived
with eyes wide opened on the ugly illusion which
his fellow-men had made of life : indifferent to its
claims, its little vexations and silly excitements. He
remembered the hour when he first saw that Heaven
and Hell were equally near his grasp — that all de-
pended on the attitude his soul took up : when he
knew that wonderful worlds, more real than the
dusty earth, were his if he could but see them.

The attitude his soul had taken up was com-
pounded of fractiousness and despondency. He had
done nothing with his knowledge and his chances.
True, he had tried to open the eyes of two persons to
the true meaning and real dangers of life ; but the
experiment had scarcely been successful. One he
had estranged, — for Mildred's altered manner was

DIFFICULT PATHS 191

unmistakable — the other he had kept, but less as a
friend than as a prospective brother-in-law.

It was Mrs. Levies peculiar merit that, knowing
nothing of these things, she did not perceive the dis-
comforts and inconsistencies of his situation. She
spoke pleasantly of Mildred at every opportunity,
admiring her artistic taste, her intelligence. Miss
Brent had recently decorated Willie's sanctum with
a stencilled frieze of may- trees blown by the wind.
Mrs. Hopkinson thought that the design made the
room feel draughty, and had put up thick curtains
of crimson serge. But Elsa admired it.

' Such a beautiful symbolism,' she said — ' the
blossom of life blown to your feet by the zephyrs of
Love. Dear Willie ! I'm sure you'll be happy
together. You are both so very artistic.'

Willie listened to her rather gloomily. His
dignity was comforted, but his irritation hourly
increased. Mildred often snubbed him now, treating
his fads as follies, not as the natural accompani-
ments of talent. She took her work to Bertram
Tiddy for correction and encouragement, and only
accepted from Willie those useful attentions and
ceremonial gifts which ameliorate even the most
tedious engagement.

Mr. Tiddy, who had suffered an eclipse since
Janet's departure and Mildred's betrothal, began,
under these circumstances, to recover his normal
air of omniscience. He was lonely. The girls, in
their earlier and simpler developments, had been

192 THE GREY WORLD

much to him. More had been the consciousness
that he was much to them. Miss Vivien was now
placed beyond his reach. He met her occasionally
in the public gardens, walking with a sister of repel-
lent propriety. It was rumoured that she intended
to train as a children's nurse. Miss Brent, whom he
had once thought available but unattractive, was
the acknowledged property of Willie Hopkinson.
Mr. Tiddy, left without an admirer, watched them
working together under Carter's benignant eye, and
longed for the advent of some new apprentice on
whom he could impose his view of Art.

So it was that when Mildred — bored, disappointed,
pining for any excitement — again turned to him for
appreciation, she met with an almost abject response.
Mr. Tiddy came to her side stroking his bristly chin
regretfully, and smoothing the soft collar of his
canvas shirt. He had an inner conviction that he
was a fine craftsman ; its sacramental result, as
expressed in his manner, reminded his enemies of an
insolent shop-walker.

Willie was absent : Carter was selecting materials
in the store-room. Bertram, smiling pleasantly,
leaned over Mildred as she sat before her work. He
missed the nervous flutter with which she had
been accustomed, involuntarily, to acknowledge his
presence. Mildred had known deeper emotions, and
mere propinquity no longer moved her.

He considered her work with a flattering but
critical attention. She was decorating the insides

DIFFICULT PATHS 193

of a book-cover with a pretty fretful pattern of fish
and sea-birds, painted in faint colours upon the
vellum doublure.

' Very nice !' he said — ' very nice indeed ! So
quaint and original. You are developing quite a
style of your own, Miss Brent ; it's New-Arty, and
yet it's individual.'

' I'm sick of the old traditional patterns — all the
borders and panels and dot-work.'

' So's the public, I believe. We want freshness in
design, a return to nature, imagination.'

' Carter doesn't approve of that a bit ; he says that
my ideas aren't workmanlike.'

' Ah, yes ! Carter ! He's an excellent forwarder,
of course ; but one can't expect him to understand
the artist's point of view.'

* He's so horribly particular about neatness and
all that.'

* Absurdly so, in my opinion. After all, Art
doesn't consist in minute finish, which is all Carter
cares about. Look at the Impressionists ! We're
here to produce beautiful things, not abnormally
strong ones. You want to be practical, not perfect,
if you're going to succeed with Arts and Crafts.
And I think, you know, that's where Hopkinson
makes such a mistake — that is, if he wants to get
on '

Mildred moved nervously ; she did not feel
capable of conducting Willie's defence. But Mr.
Tiddy left his sentence incomplete. Carter had

13

194 THE GREY WORLD

come back to the next press, carrying a roll of cloth
and the shears. He looked at Mildred's animated
face, and noted Bertram's position.

' Beg your pardon, Mr. Tiddy,' he remarked, ' but
your glue-pot will boil over in a minute, and then
there'll be a mess.'

Bertram retreated.

' Get on ! He'll never get on — not at what you
might call a good class o' bindin',' said Mr. Carter.
* Very different from Mr. 'Opkinson, 'e is : always
slip-sloppin' and chatterin', thinking about prettiness
instead of mindin' his work. 'E calls them things
he does Art ; / calls 'em whited sepulchres, all
messy within. Now your young gentleman, Miss,
with all his little ways, he do know how to 'old a
paste-brush or a paring-knife proper. Mr. Tiddy
cuts 'oles in the leather, and then 'e makes another
'ole in his manners with the language as he lets out.'

Carter collected his tools quietly around him, and
remained on guard near the indignant Mildred for
the rest of the afternoon. He felt it his duty later
to caution Willie against Mr. Tiddy's encroachments,
which recurred at every opportunity. But though
he hinted as well as he dared at the dangers of the
situation, his remarks made little impression. Mr.
Hopkinson was neither alarmed, angry, nor in-
credulous. Distracted between the difficulties of
his outer and his inner life, he forgot, as thoroughly
and often as he might, the nature of the chain which
bound him to Mildred Brent. He lived in a state

DIFFICULT PATHS 195

of dream, neglecting his work, often leaving the
bindery early to enjoy an hour of meditation in
Our Lady of Pity before submitting to the stifling
influences of an evening at home.

The secret of the sanctuary still eluded him. He
knelt before an Unknown God, and his prayer for
light received no acknowledgment. Yet that the
light was there he never doubted : and one day a
sign renewed his hope and gave to him some measure
of serenity.

He came into the church as a procession left the
altar to carry the Host between the ranks of the
kneeling congregation. Choir-children walked before
the canopy with great baskets of flowers — all of the
simple, homelier sort ; as daffodils, narcissus, violet.
They took out the blossoms one by one, and kissed
them with the affectionate importance of solemn
babies before casting them under the feet of the
priest. He, a real and eternal Christopher, bowed
down almost with awe of the monstrance he carried,
trod carelessly enough upon that exquisite carpet.
It seemed so small a sacrifice in the presence of the
mightiest offering in the world. Willie felt all the
majesty of that progress : that prostration of the
loveliest in Nature before the humblest of the servants
of God. He picked up a poor crushed violet, and
placed it between the leaves of his book : it seemed
a shield, an amulet, wrapped round with the peculiar
powers of any natural object that has touched the
fringe of another universe. But still, the passion with

13-2

ig6 THE GREY WORLD

which he kissed its leaves was idle. His will refused
to consent to his longing : he could not believe.

He left the church more than usually troubled.
Outside, the street was dark with fog. He was tired
out by his own sick sensations of spiritual aridity,
his sight confused by long gazing at the glory of a
painted saint. He blundered in the doorway and
collided with some person also going hastily out :
and they found themselves together on the threshold.

Willie looked up, apologized, and was ready to
pass on : but the tall bent figure, the clever sen-
sitive face which he saw, seemed familiar. He
looked again, and met an answering recognition. It
was the young man who, coming out with a convinced
and happy expression, had determined his first visit
to the church.

He looked now at Willie's pale despondent face,
and smiled at him. His smile was illuminative.
Behind his spectacles, one saw grey eyes of an extra-
ordinary clearness and charity.

' I've seen you here before,' he said, ' haven't I ?
But I don't think you're a Catholic ?'

'No.'

' I thought not. You have that anxious look of
a person who is not quite sure of his road. But
you will be.'

' I come here because it is so quiet, and one seems
to feel the real thing near one.'

' If you've found that, you're on the way already.'

' Isn't it odd ?' said Willie suddenly. ' I've often

DIFFICULT PATHS 197

been in Protestant churches, and they never feel like
this. They have the same atmosphere as the rest
of the world ; but here one's feet are not any more
on earth.'

'Ah, no! this is a joint in the armour of the
material world. Where there is a shrine set apart,
you know, the other world presses through into this.
The curtain of separation is torn : one may get a
glimpse of the Vision. That atmosphere which you
notice is faith — ecstasy — the knowledge of spiritual
things, which overflows in the soul and affects every-
thing which is near it. Catholic sanctuaries are
charged with a kind of holy magic. They are so
old, so venerable ; their very walls are saturate
with God. " Raise the stone, and there thou shalt find
Me : cleave the wood, and there am /." But Protes-
tants discourage ecstasy. Theirs is the religion of
common-sense. They turn their enthusiasm towards
work, not towards faith. You will find their
churches empty except at the hours of service.'

' Yes, I know.'

' Even then, you won't find any intimate sense of
joy in the congregation. It seems natural to the
Englishman to behave coldly and correctly to his
God.'

' In this church,' said Willie, ' people seem to
forget their bodies. They slip away from the grey,
ordinary earth, and find an answer to everything
in some heaven that's close to them though it's shut
to me.'

ig8 THE GREY WORLD

' Yes, that's a secret the Church has never lost,
even in these blind centuries. But the reformed
religions knocked all the poetry out of Christianity.
Extraordinary ! One hopes that in the closet of
the believer the prayer of passion is still raised and
the rapt accomplished : but I'm afraid it's an axiom
of the Puritan to be dour, even with the Deity.'

He looked at Willie carefully and slowly.

' But you'll find faith,' he said : ' one can see
that. It's there, you know. And your soul is set
at an angle which will catch the light, once you're
strong enough to tear the Veil away.'

He smiled at him again as they parted — a very
friendly smile of sympathy and comfort. Then he
turned down a neighbouring street and walked away
quickly. Mr. Willie Hopkinson watched the tall,
thin figure and bent shoulders till they were out of
sight. Then he realized that a new element of con-
solation had come to him : that a certainty had been
added to his hope. His friend had spoken to him of
faith with the quiet balanced conviction with which
one accepts the ordinary and indisputable in life.
To him it was not less real than sunshine or his
bodily raiment and food. In his soul, lit up by an
inner light, Willie saw for the first time a reflection
of the Beautiful God.

They never met again ; but he was stronger and
happier all his life because of that instant of com-
munion.

CHAPTER XVII

A SHARP CORNER

' Romance . . . depends on the Soul and not on Upholstery.'
— JOHN OLIVER HOBBES.

' THOSE clever little fingers/ said Mr. Tiddy, ' were
made for success.'

Mildred smiled, and continued to glair the letters
upon the back of her book with a steady hand. She
wished that she knew how to blush. She found Mr.
Tiddy 's vulgarity restful. His slovenly work made
her own seem exquisite : his attentions restored the
feeling of power which Willie had rudely disturbed.
Bertram now shaved three times weekly, and wore
his hair short — a concession to prejudice which did
not suit his style. But his conversation remained
on Mildred's level, making Mr. Hopkinson's fre-
quent absences from the bindery so many holidays
for his fiancee. She could then, as she said, devote
herself entirely to her art.

Mildred despised Willie, and she feared him. She
could not forget the horrible confidences which he
had made to her, although she had refused to believe

199

200 THE GREY WORLD

them. His dreaming eyes, which she once had
proudly described as ' not altogether human,' now
filled her with terror. But he was her affianced
husband ; young men were scarce in Turner's
Heath ; she had not sufficient trust in a kindly
Providence to bring her engagement to an end.

Mr. Tiddy, who possessed something of the cun-
ning of an experienced fox-terrier, knew how to
extract a double advantage from this state of things.
He flattered Mildred. He spoke with vague
grandeur of his theories of art, and hopes of their
future success. Incidentally, he cast an unbecom-
ing light on Willie Hopkinson, first as a man and
secondly as an artist. Mildred, still at that stage
of culture in which it seems clever to be contemp-
tuous, was not disgusted by Bertram's hints. They
amplified and excused her own thoughts, which
were more critical than kindly.

Her attitude now suggested that she was willing
to talk to Mr. Tiddy whilst waiting for her glair to
dry. She was a girl who never wasted her time.

' I wonder,' she said, ' if I ever shall succeed. It
seems so difficult to get one's work well known,
doesn't it ? Of course, advertising is horrid. But
I've always longed to develop a style of my own,
like Sidney Henders, or Miss Delmere, or the Little
Gidding people ; so that everyone could recognise
my things, you know, and I could exhibit at the
Arts and Crafts.'

' I bet you anything I'd make your work succeed

A SHARP CORNER 201

There's a tremendous opening for artistic novelties
— chic, original, Japanesy things with plenty of
colour. All the swell craftsmen are hampered by
tradition ; they're afraid of being eccentric. But
the public expects artistic things to be eccentric ;
it don't understand expensive simplicity. If they
have their books bound by artists, people want the
price to be moderate, and the design not too artistic
to be understood.'

' I suppose good work always succeeds in the long-
run.'

' Not it ! Quaint work does. And that's your
line — and mine too, for that matter. In these
days, one must look at things in a practical light.
Dress artistic ; talk artistic. That's all to the good,
it impresses people. But don't you get taken in
with all that stuff about the beauty of labour and
reticence in design. After all, it's the public we've
got to look to, and it's our business as artists to
make the public take to Art. That's a good enough
ideal for me ; and the way to do it is to give people
something a bit better than they would have
thought of for themselves, not something so
artistic that it won't live in a middle-class drawing-
room.'

' I wish I could get Willie to see it like that — so
much more sensible, when we've got to live.'

* You won't. Hopkinson's a different type from
you altogether. You're a born craftswoman, Miss
Brent. You'll do well if you get a chance. But

202 THE GREY WORLD

he's got no push : clever, of course, only not in that
way. I sized him up directly he came here : one of
those dreaming impractical chaps, always worrying
about perfection. He's a cross between Carter and
a minor poet.'

' I'm afraid he doesn't realize how important it is
to succeed.'

' No,' said Bertram ; ' it's a pity. Seems such a
waste. What I feel is, you ought to be in your own
little bindery, don't you know ? Somewhere West
Kensington way to start with, moving into Blooms-
bury when we — I mean, when you had got a bit of a
connection together. There's hundreds a year in
those ideas of yours, your inlay and designing and
so on, if the thing was run on a business footing.
But I doubt if you'll ever get Hopkinson to consent
to it.'

' Oh, I can't let him ride rough-shod over all my
chances. I'm ambitious. I must develop myself.
Because I'm going to marry him, it doesn't follow
we think alike.'

' Ah, but you wouldn't be able to manage it alone.
You wouldn't like to be worried with all the com-
mercial details. You want a man to look after you
and take all that off your hands. My idea of a
small business like that would be, just an artistic
industrious fellow and his wife working together,
don't you know, with one apprentice perhaps. And
no flexible sewing, or revival of antique methods, or
any rot like that. I know the swell binders talk a

A SHARP CORNER 203

lot about it when they're lecturing to amateurs, but
it's all bunkum. We'd get all the foreign art
magazines, and introduce the new French and
German fashions before they got common. That's
the way to run a successful bindery — you must be
arty, and you must be up to date.'

Mildred sighed. Mr. Tiddy had never appeared
to her in a more attractive light. She forgot his
sticky hands and her own high ideals, and remem-
bered only the agreeable picture suggested by his
words. A spray of almond-blossom tapping against
the window-pane reminded her that she had now
been engaged to Willie for more than a year. She
looked back, recollecting her hopes. She looked for-
ward, and saw no chance of their fulfilment. She
desired admittance to an appreciative, artistic
society. But Mr. Hopkinson's very ordinary
family treated her with condescension — his irritat-
ing unworldliness forbade her to expect any con-
siderable improvement.

' It sounds lovely,' she said to Bertram ; ' and
once one got known, I dare say one would get to
know Sidney Renders, and the Battersea Press
people, and even the Little Gidding Guild. It
would be so nice, I think, to be in touch with other
artists. In a congenial atmosphere, one develops
one's highest powers. But I shall never get Willie
to see that : I don't believe he cares a bit whether
he's an outsider or in the swim.'

' Ah,' replied Bertram, ' I often think, if you won't

204 THE GREY WORLD

mind my being candid, that it's a pity in some ways
that you're engaged to Hopkinson. Best for you,
no doubt, but one hates to see a good artist sacri-
ficed. I used to fancy once, you know, that you
and I might have done some good work together if
we'd gone into partnership.'

' I'm afraid that would be impossible.'

' I know. I'm too late — just my luck. I was
wrapped up in my work, never saw. But I can't
help wondering, if Hopkinson hadn't spoken
first '

Mr. Tiddy leaned towards Mildred, and looked at
her with anxious eyes. She had seen the same
expression in those of a well-fed dog who hankers
for yet another bone. But she remembered Janet.
She could not be sure of his intentions. She drew
back.

Bertram, however, was in earnest. Miss Vivien's
enchanting hair might invite to dalliance : Mildred's
talents made her desirable as a wife. He would
not be rebuffed. He placed a questioning hand
upon her arm.

It is interesting to notice how small are the
instruments by which Providence often contrives
to effect its ends. Mildred did not intend to behave
treacherously towards Willie. She was in the act of
telling herself that she had really gone far enough.
But the draught caused by Mr. Tiddy's abrupt
movement caught the sheet of uncut gold-leaf
which lay upon her gilding-cushion, and sent it in

A SHARP CORNER 205

a fluttering dance across the workshop floor. The
traditions of the ' Presse and Ploughe ' were econo-
mical. Bertram and Mildred, from force of habit,
started in pursuit : he eager to be of use, she proudly
unconscious of his assistance. Gold-leaf is a subtle,
human, very aggravating thing. It has moods, it
is nervous. This sheet, after settling upon a back-
ing-board, where it seemed quietly to await capture,
rose suddenly in the air as Miss Brent approached
it, and fled to the cutting-press, under which it lay
perdu for some minutes. But presently its edge,
shining amongst the snippings of mill-board and
paper, caught her eye. She rushed towards it, a
large dab of cotton-wool in her hand, not noticing
Mr. Tiddy's simultaneous approach from the oppo-
site side of the room. He saw the gold-leaf, bent
down, and stretched a long arm tentatively towards
it. She stooped, dived under the cutting-press, and
found herself on her hands and knees within a few
inches of his face.

Miss Brent's natural fear of knocking her head
against the press made quick retreat impossible to
her. Her position was too cramped to permit her
much liberty of action. There was a slight scuffle.
Then she rose from the floor ; flushed, confused, and
without the gold-leaf. But she was not disgusted.
She was a woman who admired promptitude and
resource. Mr. Tiddy had vindicated his man-
hood.

' Give me another, Millie,' he said.

206 THE GREY WORLD

Mildred smoothed her hair and looked at him
seriously.

' Oh, Bertram,' she answered, ' are you sure that
it is right ? I can't bear to be cruel to poor Willie.
But it's very difficult to know what to do when one's
duties conflict. After all, we aren't really suited to
one another, are we ? And I feel I ought to think
of poor mamma.'

*****

Miss Brent found no difficulty in making Mr.
Willie Hopkinson aware that their marriage would
not take place. Her love of delicacy in outline had
not helped her to appreciate the same quality in
human affairs. The luncheon interval seemed to
her a fitting moment in which to reveal to him her
change of plans. Her sense of design was satisfied
by the idea that their engagement would begin and
end under the same conditions of background and
boundary. It was like a half-drop repeat pattern :
circumstances had compelled her to lower herself a
little, but otherwise her attitude was unchanged.

She glowed with womanly virtue as she made his
cocoa, and saw that he had his lunch comfortably
before dealing a blow which would certainly have
destroyed his appetite. She arranged her tools
ready for the afternoon's work, took away the cups
and washed them. Finally, as he lighted his second
cigarette, she came to the point.

'There's something I've got to tell you, Willie,'
she said. ' But I'm afraid you won't like it.'

A SHARP CORNER 207

Willie started nervously. His father, in a sudden
spasm of generosity, had that morning offered him
an allowance which would enable him to marry im-
mediately. Willie had not yet found a reason at once
valid and diplomatic for refusing this inconvenient
gift. It did not seem possible that any annoyance
emanating from Mildred could equal this. He
answered her rather indifferently.

' Yes, dear ? What is it ?'

' I think perhaps it's better to put it plainly —
kinder to you. You see, Willie, I've seen for a long
time that we weren't really suited to one another.
I'm sure you must have noticed it too. And I have
my profession to think of — and, the fact is, I've
decided to marry Bertram Tiddy.'

* Tiddy ?' said Mr. Hopkinson.

He had controlled with difficulty a spontaneous
movement of relief and surprise when he perceived
the origin of Mildred's embarrassment. His first
feeling was gratitude to his deliverer ; but this was
overwhelmed by a natural disgust caused by
Mildred's want of proper feeling. He thought that
he could have trusted her to realize that his sup-
planter must, at any rate, be a gentleman.

' Oh, I know he's common and he can't draw. I
shall have to put up with that. There's always
something to put up with. But, you see, he's
human. Your kisses make my blood run cold, they
seem to come from such a long way off.'

' I quite understand.'

208 THE GREY WORLD

' Oh, do you ? I hope you do. I wouldn't like
you to think I had behaved meanly. You see,
Bertram really requires me. He says I do him
good. When I'm with you, you do all the im-
proving, and that bores me. I didn't think it
would, but that was my want of experience. Now
I do feel that I shall be improving Bertram all the
time, and as he's given me the opportunity it is no
more than my duty to do it.'

' From your point of view, I dare say you're
right.'

' Yes, well, my point of view, after all, is what
I've got to go by. And when one recognises one
has made a mistake, it's more honest to say so,
isn't it ? My temperament isn't like yours, and
however much I might care for you, I feel we should
never get on. I'm not a gentle doormat sort of
woman. I must express myself. Art's what I
care for really — Art and life. And I feel if I only
get my opportunity I could do something at that,
and so does Bertram. There's a great future in
Arts and Crafts, but one must look at it from a
practical point of view. And I've got poor mamma
to consider. And, of course, I always saw that
your people didn't really like me, and I have some
pride '

Willie was not listening. He was released with
honour from an unendurable situation, and his one
desire was for active flight. He stretched out eager
hands towards air, light, freedom : towards re-

A SHARP CORNER 209

admission to the privacies of his own soul. Mil-
dred's companionship had always entailed a certain
spiritual stuffiness.

Miss Brent, watching his face, admired his courage.
She was sure that he adored her : was surprised that
he concealed his sorrow so well. She did not wish
to be unkind, and attributing to him her own love
of emotional garnishings, she touched him gently
on the arm.

* Would you like to kiss me good-bye ?' she
said.

He started. He had been thinking of other
things.

* No, thanks ' — he answered shortly, and walked
out of the place.

' Poor Willie !' murmured Mildred.

CHAPTER XVIII

INCIPIT VITA NOVA

' The Beautiful is essentially the Spiritual making itself known
sensuously.' — HEGEL.

ALL things have their price. Mr. Willie Hopkinson
paid in mortification for his freedom. Everyone
pitied him — an insufferable thing. Sometimes, how-
ever, he pitied himself, for Mildred had preferred
Mr. Tiddy before him, and this was a humiliating
thought.

It had been his conviction that he was superior
to his surroundings. They were impermanent ;
deceiving and deceived. His soul was eternal.
Few of his friends appreciated the distinction ; but
that he attributed to the ignorance in which he
chose to keep them. And though experience now
compelled him to acknowledge the existence of
forces, even in the time-process, which were greater
than himself, these had formed no part of his relation
with Mildred Brent. He had been superior to her,
and he knew it. He had admired his own constancy,
sometimes regretted it. She, in discarding him,

210

INCIPIT VITA NOVA 211

had released him from a strain which he had long
known to be unpleasant — even inimical to his
spiritual growth : but approving the end, he found
it difficult to justify means so wounding to his
vanity.

Stephen and Pauline offered him a tactless and
heartfelt commiseration which inflamed his already
tender self-respect. They hid as well as they might
their own raptures, not wishing to suggest painful
parallels with his immediate past. Pauline, for the
first time in her life, felt able to understand her
brother. A broken engagement appealed to her
as a solid and reasonable ground for mental distress.

' Poor old Will !' she said. ' It is hard luck !
And you were so devoted to her. I can't think
how a girl can be such a beast.'

Stephen, with real unselfishness, deprived himself
of Pauline's society, and took his friend for long
walks, encouraging him to talk of his grief. But
Willie's very actual miseries were not those which
Mr. Miller could best comprehend. His chief
torments arose from a humiliating inability to grasp
the principle which guided his devious career.
Life seemed to lay traps for his spirit. One after
another, hopeful paths failed him, and he came
wearily back to the endless road. Elsa — Mildred
— Stephen — each name brought the memory of
fresh discouragements. These had offered com-
prehension and companionship, but they had failed.

To Stephen, perhaps, the Real World had some

14 — 2

212 THE GREY WORLD

actuality. His love for Pauline raised him in some
mysterious way above the sordid scamper after
material success. He looked out on a dreamy
earth with contented eyes, and breathed a serene
and satisfying air. But the others only toyed with
the symbols of transcendent truth, and their careless
agnosticism clouded Willie's perceptions.

He had travelled far from the child who had
prayed for a return at any price to the adventure of
life : from the boy who had looked out on existence
as a game to be played lightly, a pageant to be
watched. The dark night of his soul was upon
him. He felt spiritual realities slipping away,
yet the pleasures of life seemed savourless and dull.
All was unreal ; nothing was worth effort. Even
in the holy places he found no peace. He remem-
bered the words of the young man of Our Lady of
Pity, but told himself that faith was only one
illusion the more.

It was to Elsa, long-suffering and secretly joyful,
that he now poured out his mixed emotions. She
had got her boy back again. She cared nothing
for the twisted paths by which he had come. He
was relieved — jealous — despondent. Her attitude
towards each angle was correct. This was a part
which she played to perfection, and she was delighted
to have the opportunity.

' There is,' she said, ' such an exquisite pleasure
in pain ! Many of our greatest poets have noticed
that. I could almost envy you your suffering.

INCIPIT VITA NOVA 213

To suffer for love ! Oh, believe me, dear Willie,
this is much better than to marry for it. Yours is
indeed the more beautiful part.'

' I'm so confused,' said Willie, ' so wretched ! I
don't know what's beautiful or what's real. It
isn't love that makes me unhappy — it's the weary
not knowing what to do. There must be some aim
in life that's genuine, some experience that won't
fail when one tries it.'

Elsa had one restful characteristic. She never
asked for explanations. She accepted Willie's
words as evidence of his abundant imagination,
stroked his hair, and sent him to the National
Gallery — her one prescription for agitations of the
soul.

A subtle sense of the fitness of things had kept
him from seeking the consolations of religion ;
Elsa's suggestion was a compromise which pleased
him. He had a grateful recollection of those very
silent rooms, watched by brooding Madonnas, by
still gods, dream-portraits of personalities long ago
released from the fret of life.

He went there — melancholy, feverish, impatient.
He hurried through the turnstile, up the stairs, pushed
open the door which leads to the great Tuscan room.
But as it closed behind him, the healing process
began. Something arrested him on the threshold —
a restraining touch, a feeling that he was seeking
with ungracious intention admittance to a company
of friends. The quiet festival of colour on the

214 THE GREY WORLD

walls seemed an invitation to some serious kind
of happiness for which he was unprepared. The
influence of beauty imposed its peace on him, as
great communities always impose their etiquette :
he felt that in such society one could not grumble
of one's petty griefs. The place was full of the
calmness, the ineffable hush, which belongs to
transcendental things. It filled him with a grave
delight. No sound of voices, no sense of human
fellowship : only the repeated echo of footsteps
upon the wide spaces of the polished floor.

There were other persons in the gallery, I think.
A superior woman leading a meek, tired friend,
and murmuring of L'Amico di Sandro and the
Early Sienese. A curate, polite to the Madonnas,
but coldly observant of the lesser saints. A pair
of happy foreigners, for whom the place had all the
glamour which the Uffizi and the Louvre keep for
us. It did not matter. A great wall shut them
from Mr. Willie Hopkinson. Only the pictures
broke his solitude.

He sat down presently before that very lovely
panel which is called ' The Madonna adoring the
Infant Christ.' Its ceremonious beauty caught
his eye ; the ardour of its emotion held him fast.
The peculiar fascinations of Florentine piety, at
once so mystical, reasonable, and austere, come
together in this picture — in its joyous purity of
line, the intimate holiness of its atmosphere, the
strange majesty of the rapt Madonna, who sits with

INCIPIT VITA NOVA 215

hands folded in prayer and looks silently down
on her Son. The wistful angels who lean against
the sides of her throne are hushed by her intense
stillness. They are spiritual persons, who cannot
understand the earthly love which blends Mother
and worshipper in one. One turns a dreamy face
to her, asking explanation of the mystery : but she,
in an ecstasy of contemplation, scarcely knows of
their presence. She dreams above her child, lying
very helplessly and gladly upon its mother's knee —
as all that is holy in us lies upon the lap of Perfect
Beauty.

Willie sat opposite this picture for a very long
time, and looked ; steadily, intently, without con-
scious thought. In the face of Our Lady was infinite
promise, infinite peace. As he watched her, some-
thing unearthly, something remote from life, laid
its quieting hand upon him. These things had
not been conceived in the petty agitations of ordinary
life. The Beyond had been at their birth, and left
token of its presence. A door seemed to open : an
unspeakable sensation warned him that he was
lifted up past the boundary of grey illusion.

* Donna, se' tanto grande e tanto vali,

Che qual vuol grazia, ed a te non ricorre,
Sua disianza vuol volar senz' ali.'

These words recurred to Mr. Willie Hopkinson,
and brought with them new, undreamed significance.
A master-key, it seems, may unlock the gates of
many mansions. Those who have once prostrated

216 THE GREY WORLD

themselves before Invisible Powers have gained a
perception which is never lost. For the first time,
he detected a truth behind the absurdity of Elsa's
dictum that prie-dieux ought to be placed before
the master-pieces of devotional art. The National
Gallery, she said, always made her want to say
her prayers. To Willie, now, there came that
sensation of real worlds and unknown splendours
very near, which had descended on him when he
knelt before the Altar of the Holy Spirit. He
discovered, as he had done when he wandered in
the Grey Dimension, that one has only to turn
one's eyes resolutely from Earth to lose its obsessing
influence. It is the downward glance that anchors
us to the world of sense.

Mrs. Levi's favourite catch-words came back to
him — ' Ultimate Beauty,' * life-enhancing qualities
of art,' * spiritual significance of Italian Painting '
— phrases to which he had never attached definite
meaning. But this face, this picture which had
worked a miracle in his tormented spirit, gave to
them a sudden vitality. He saw, wondering at
his past blindness, that it was above all things
strange and significant that things should be
beautiful at all. The ecstasy induced in him by
loveliness had no relation to the necessities of human
life. It was inexplicable. The ritual of light and
colour veiled, as it adorned, inconceivable secrets.

He asked himself what indeed could be the spirit
of loveliness if it were not a penetration of the

INCIPIT VITA NOVA 217

Visible by the Real : the link between Truth and
Idea for which he had been groping all his life.
This thought he naturally imagined to be as original
as it was profound, and pride of invention modified
the crushing power of its truth. Beauty seemed to
offer him an assurance of exquisite realities, to be
given to those who desired them in faith and in love.

He looked at the quiet pictures — at the angels
in their mystical dance before the manger ; at
the gentle faun who knelt by Procris, weeping
that so much loveliness should have been taken
from life. They seemed to him so many windows
built towards heaven. He had a new vision of
the world. He saw it as a shadow cast by Divine
Beauty — a loveliness of which material beauty was
the sacrament, the faint image thrown by God on
the mirror of sense. In the Madonna he found
the symbol of a reconciling principle, looking lovingly
upon humanity, which it cherished and fed. Her
manifestation was earthly enough : an illusion built
up of paint and panel by some man held, as he
was held, a prisoner in Time and Space. But her
powers stretched into the Invisible. He wondered
whence the vision had come which inspired the
secret of her picture.

Then it occurred to him that the soul, in him
conscious and perceptive, must exist in all men :
obscure, mysterious, withdrawn from the squalid
battle. Beyond the threshold of consciousness
that unsuspected visitor sits, looking with steady

218 THE GREY WORLD

eyes upon the eternal light. That light shone in
these pictures. It seemed possible that in their
creation the soul, which saw beyond the illusions
of Time, had guided the artist's hand to some great
purpose. Their message was the message of the
churches, translated to a language which he could
understand. He had found a religion. He recog-
nised that the inarticulate ecstasy which came to
him in the presence of all beautiful things was the
same in essence as that emotion which he felt in
Our Lady of Pity — another way of approach to
the same God.

There are few more compelling confessors than
a great work of art. Willie looked still at the
Madonna, and the small details which obscure the
issues of life fell away from him. He regained the
power, long lost, of detecting fact in the midst of
illusion. He looked back down the years, and
was annoyed to find little in them that was worth
notice. It was a petty record — a matter of drifting
and discontent. That, too, had been the note of
the Grey World : it seemed that his pretension
of knowledge had not enabled him to escape its
grasp. He remembered how he had broken the
spell of that Dimension — the intensity of desire
which had thrown him back again on life.

The will which had done that miracle was still with
him. He asked himself how it was that he did not
exert it, did not set it to the realization of reality,
instead of stopping every moment to consider the

INCIPIT VITA NOVA 219

chances of the road. He was twenty- three years
old ; a fully developed being. Yet he had allowed
every influence to have power over his actions, had
no dominant motive, no hope in his life.

There had been places, he knew, at which he
had seen the faint outlines of happy countries,
had caught a glimpse of the Delectable Mountains
shining in the sun. For their sake he had set out
upon his pilgrimage — a pilgrimage which might
have offered him visions of beautiful landscape,
and the bow of promise in the clouds, had he given
his attention to the horizon instead of to the dust
under his feet. He gathered up and compared
the fragments of his knowledge. In the fret of
work and passion, the old true outlines had grown
dim. In the early years, terror of the after-death,
of an eternity spent in the languid miseries of the
Grey World, had driven him to search for truth.
Now he fancied that Love might have been a
worthier motive than fear, a better companion for
the quest. There had been a certain meanness
in his scramble after personal salvation, which
sufficiently explained its non-success.

The adorable face of Our Lady shone as a favour-
able light at the end of a dark road. The reality
at the back of the picture was speaking to him ;
telling him of exquisite places of the spirit to
which he might aspire. He asked himself how
he stood in relation to this universe, which strove
towards Beauty as the realization of itself. In a

220 THE GREY WORLD

spasm of self-knowledge, he saw his years in their
petty ugliness, saw that he had done nothing
with them, had not raised himself above the hope-
less herd. He had stayed on the level, sneering
at his equals. Now, with the clear sight of the
newly-converted, he perceived how great had been
his spiritual stupidity. He was disgusted with
himself. The mountain road had been close to
him all the time, and above him the austere majesty
of the hill-tops.

' Oh, to climb !' he cried.

* * * * *

Mrs. Hopkinson heard him that night sobbing
in his room very bitterly. She told Mrs. Levi
about it.

' Quite hysterical !' she said. ' I nearly went
in to him with the sal volatile, but I thought perhaps
he wouldn't like to think I'd heard him — boys are
so absurdly sensitive about those things. That
horrid girl has evidently upset his nerves more
than he'd allow.'

' A thorough change of scene,' said Elsa, ' is
what he really wants. In contemplating the
Beautiful, we forget our earthly griefs. And he
can't go back to the bindery whilst that creature
is there.'

' No, indeed,' replied Mrs. Hopkinson. ' Poor
boy ! I'm only thankful he found her out in time.
She would have made him a wretched wife ; full
of modern ideas, and absolutely undomesticated.

INCIPIT VITA NOVA 221

It's quite pulled him down, one can see that. I
think we must really try if we can't send him away
for a little change : all the doctors are recommending
sunshine and fresh air for the nerves.'

It was Elsa who discovered the method of his
pilgrimage — a personally conducted tour for pro-
fessional men and others, ' A Fortnight with Saint
Francis for £13 ios.' Taking its charges as far as
Perugia, it there allowed them to wander at will.

* Nothing could be better for him than that,'
said Mrs. Levi. ' Italy has such a wonderful
effect upon the soul. Exquisite climate ; and then
the associations ! Francis and Claire, and the
beautiful wicked Baglione ! And Perugino, of
course. Florence is so hackneyed : and Rome —
well, Rome is Rome.'

' Yes, you can't do Rome under £25,' said Mr.
Hopkinson.

It was thus that Willie found Umbria.

CHAPTER XIX

THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS

' What more beautiful image of the Divine could there be
than this world, except the world yonder ? — PLOTINUS.

IN Umbria, where little hills reach up towards the
kiss of God, bearing her small white cities nearer
heaven : in Umbria, clothed with olive-woods where
Francis walked, and crowned by turrets of the
Ghibelline, there is a Peace of God eternally estab-
lished. In this country, long beloved of the dreamy
arts, spirits wearied by dark journey ings may still
feel the quieting touch of Immanent Peace. Yet the
soul of Umbria is as the soul of a very melancholy
queen. The nostalgia of the distant descends on the
hearts of her lovers, giving them a delicate sadness
not easily to be effaced. Her very breezes seem to
come from far off, charged with the murmur of dim
memories. But the joy of a wonderful passion
transfigures her regret. In her, the image of the
Delectable Country, in whose likeness Earth was once
made, is still to be apprehended.

On the walls of the city of Spello, high up on the
222

THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 223

hill between Foligno and Assisi, Mr. Willie Hopkin-
son sat, dreamed, and contemplated the world from
a new standpoint. He looked down into the mar-
vellous valley which has known the footsteps of so
many saints. He enjoyed, with a vague but very
serious delight, its exquisite cadences of blue and
green, the magical light that hangs over it, the old
dim roads that pattern its fields and vineyards into
the semblance of some faded tessellated work.

Three hundred feet below him, the little Roman
amphitheatre was a round shadow on the grass.
Young and happy verdures had buried its ancient
cruelties in the secret earth. The Etruscan blocks
that he sat upon had been in their position perhaps
two thousand years. They had remained for de-
fence, as their dark-eyed, voluptuous builders had
left them : had seen the Romans come and go, had
watched the Northern emperors on their march to
Rome, the Popes going up to Perugia. Finally,
they had seen the patriot come, and the poetry of
Italy fade under his fingers. In their old age they
were very stately. Man, creeping under their
shadow or perched upon their height, seemed some
ephemeral insect.

Yet, under that vivid sky, in an atmosphere where
all things are fresh and definite and the air sings the
hymn of Brother Sun, Willie could not believe in
antiquity. He felt that he looked out on a world
which always had existed, always would exist, and
he with it : for the only real existence was in Beauty,

224 THE GREY WORLD

and Beauty was eternal. He had quite forgotten
Mildred — Elsa — his home — the slow grey life he
must return to when this happy fortnight was done.
These things had never had a very real importance for
him ; but whilst he knew them to be illusion, he had
not been able to shake them off. He had felt them
as a shadowy net, confusing and confining. In the
sunshine of Italy they seemed tedious accidents.
She was real, potent. She completed for him the
vision of life first dimly seen in Our Lady of Pity,
intensely felt in the National Gallery when the
Tuscan Madonna spoke to him of peace.

The Umbrian landscape is essentially religious. It
fulfils the message of the Church, the revelation of
the painters. He knew that it had symbolic import,
some bearing on the transcendental life : that
atheism and despair were impossible in its presence.

He looked back down the path towards the town
and saw, through the little Roman arch which spans
the road, a group of people coming up to him. He
was sorry. He had enjoyed his solitary hour. But
Mr. and Mrs. Finchley supposed that he was sight-
seeing. They felt that it was their duty to miss
nothing of interest, and they had followed him.

They headed a procession representative of the
population of Spello : several unpleasant beggars ;
many children ; a woman bearing a jar on her
head, whose face, poise, figure suggested a Tanagra
statuette. Mrs. Finchley was trying to photograph
her ; but an old man with no nose, and hands in an

THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 225

advanced state of decomposition, insisted on placing
himself in the foreground.

The Rev. John Finchley, who had a fussy manner
and no Italian, seemed unhappy.

' Horrible place, this,' he said to Willie as soon as
he came within earshot — ' a disgrace to the authori-
ties ! We found the frescoes, but they weren't up
to much : and they were cleaning the floor of the
church, which was most unpleasant. I'm afraid my
wife's got her feet damp.'

' Yes,' said Mrs. Finchley. ' But still, I liked
them better than those things at Montefalco —
they were Bible incidents, not those everlasting
saints.'

' Saints seem natural here,' said Willie.

' Yes, I suppose they are ; one must expect that
in Roman Catholic countries. But I can never get
really used to them : they seem to me such wicked
creatures ! It's the way I was brought up, I sup-
pose. And to think of praying to them !'

' It's a great pity,' said her husband, ' that the
Protestant religion hasn't produced any great
artists. They would have painted the truths of
Evangelical Christianity, and prevented Popish
art attracting so much attention. These Romanist
subjects are harmful to weak minds ; they promote
idolatry. Of course, the reason is that our great
thinkers have been engaged with the higher aspects
of things, and had no attention left for outward
display.'

15

226 THE GREY WORLD

' A spiritual religion scarcely needs pictures, does
it, dear ?' said Mrs. Finchley.

Willie sighed, looked at her figure — short skirt and
Panama hat clearly outlined against the delicate
Perugino landscape — and supposed his happy day
was at an end. He had suffered a good deal from
the Finchleys since leaving England in their com-
pany nine days before.

Now they would drive back to Perugia, Mr. Finchley
speaking of the political condition of the country,
his wife much occupied by the private history of her
fellow-tourists at the hotel. He wanted so much
another hour of solitude, of secret conversation with
the spirit which Umbria had knit up for him out of
loveliness and antiquity.

Mr. Finchley looked at his watch.

' Half-past two !' he said. ' And you wanted to
photograph Rivo Torto on the way back, didn't you,
dear ? and I promised to hold a little service in the
hotel drawing-room at six. We must be starting
back. Perhaps, Mr. Hopkinson, you wouldn't mind
telling the coachman to whip up the horse a bit more
than he did coming : in Italian, of course. It
walked up all the hills.'

It was at this moment that Willie discovered that
an afternoon spent in the society of the Finchleys
was impossible to him.

' I think, if you don't mind,' he said, * I shall walk
back. It's under ten miles, and you will go quicker
with only two in the carriage.'

THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 227

' Oh, do you think you ought, Mr. Hopkinson ?'
answered Mrs. Finchley. ' You look tired already,
I'm afraid you do too much ; and your mother
warned me that you weren't very strong. It's no
use over-exerting one's self, is it ? and the mental
strain of seeing so many new things is dreadfully
exhausting.'

She was a thin, active little woman, like a brown
grasshopper ; very good-natured, and devoted to her
husband and her camera. She and Mrs. Hopkinson
had been schoolfellows, and both thought the co-
incidence which enabled her to take charge of Willie
a fortunate one. But a week of travel had given a
touch of decision to Mr. Willie Hopkinson's rather
fluid character. He was polite but firm with Mrs.
Finchley. These days were sudden jewels set in the
dull circlet of his life. He dared not waste them. The
white roads, the lanes that went between the olives,
were sending him a mystic invitation. He would
tramp with the Lady Poverty, as S. Francis did.

From the ancient market-place, where a twelfth-
century Madonna stands above the Roman gate
to bless her citizens, he saw the carriage start.
Its occupants had no farewell to offer Spello ; they
were carefully shielding the camera from dust and
sun. He looked back gratefully to the grey walls,
the friendly clambering streets with their Gothic
houses, and went down alone into the valley of the
Tiber.

' The broad road that stretches ' took him to its

15—2

228 THE GREY WORLD

bosom. The symbolic attitude of the traveller on
the highway set the tune of his thoughts. He
walked firmly, steadily, with a growing exhilaration.
Blue sky, white blossoming trees, were as wine to
his heightened perceptions. He smiled happily as
he caught sight of Assisi, folded pale against her
hill like an angel at rest. He felt himself to be, not
any more the man in the world, but the pilgrim soul
footing it between the stars. He was walking alone,
sturdily self-dependent, through exquisite landscape
towards an appointed goal. That, surely, should be
his life. That was life — a journey upon the great
highway of the world towards an abiding city : a
journey to be taken joyfully and in gratitude because
of the beauty of the road.

He conceived now of the world, of the body, as
momentary conditions in the infinite progress of the
spirit. Used rightly, a discipline, an initiation ;
used wrongly, a peril whose deeps he had once
known. His idealism had come to this ; to a
guarded, tolerant acquiescence in the queer dis-
torting medium of his senses, a willingness within
limits to accept their reports. But it was the
holy, the beautiful aspect of things that he asked
them to show him. That was significant, true.
No illusion of time and space, but an eternal thing
which it was the very business of matter to shadow
forth, the duty of that pilgrim soul in him to appre-
hend. One must not arrive at the Continuing City
deaf and blind to the music and radiance, obsessed

THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 229

by the incident worries of life. That was to have
passed through the Great University in vain.

Willie was beginning to recover from the disease
of spiritual self-seeking which had crippled his first
years. He had seen at last the face of the Great
Companion. He knew what he wanted ; the con-
stant presence of that mysterious guide, the constant
assurance of a strange but enduring amity. He had
come to the second, or illuminative, stage of the
journey : for his way, after all, had been the old
mystic's way. There is no other practicable path
for those who are determined on reality, who have
found out the gigantic deception we accept as the
visible world, the gigantic foolishness of our comfort-
able common-sense.

The old formula came back to his mind :
' Purgation, Illumination, Contemplation ' — the
three stages of the Via Mystica, acknowledged by
all the masters who had trod it, the explorers
who had left notes of its geography behind. This
trinity of experience seemed to co-relate in some
way with the triune vision of reality — ' The triple
star of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty ' — promised
to those who attained its highest stage. In his
wanderings, apparently so devious, he had followed
the old lines very exactly. He looked back on
his feverish years : his poor efforts to grasp some
detail of the shadow show as it passed him, and make
it real for himself. He remembered his terrified
search for safety, the Mildred episode and its humilia-

230 THE GREY WORLD

tions, the hope that his first meeting with Stephen
had brought : lastly, the quest of security amongst
the Mysteries of Catholic belief. He recognised in
the slow abasement of his spirit, the gradual re-
nunciation of pride involved in each failure, a
purging of the eye of the soul that it might look with
understanding on a clearer prospect.

All, it was evident, could not tread the same road.
The idealizing power of his love for Pauline had made
a breach for Stephen in the ' flaming rampart of the
world ' : the Secret of the Altar offered a sure and
certain hope to its initiates. But tor Willie the
shadow of an Everlasting No was across those paths.
His way of escape lay through another gateway.

Climbing the steep lane between the olive groves
in the silent heat of an Italian afternoon, everything
seemed rather supernatural in its loveliness. He
came to a shrine, where a faint Umbrian Madonna
held out her Child to the traveller : and stopped to
thank the Unknown God who had framed for his joy
this wonderful Rose of the World. Each moment
brought its miracle, in the further opening of those
mystic petals. He had glimpses of all the worlds, —
the holy, elfish, dark, and terrible countries — which
are folded together to form the bewildering appear-
ance which civilized persons call solid fact. Some
resolving power in him separated these aspects of
things, and set his feet in a magical place where all he
saw and felt had the glamour of a fairy land in-
extricably entwined in this. So that he was not very

THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 231

surprised when, at a bend of the road, he came pre-
sently on a wayfarer of another century, left behind
by the ebbing tide of poetic faith.

A brown-frocked Franciscan trod the path very
soberly before him, unconscious of the road and of
company upon it. His eyes were on the open book
he carried : it was evident that his thoughts were
far away from the dust and the sun. Willie, easily
touched by the subtle charm of the religious habit,
said ' Buona sera ' very pleasantly as he passed.

' Grazie, signore ; e buon passeggio,' replied the
friar mechanically.

He continued reading, his lips moving busily as if
in voiceless prayer. But as Willie's shadow fell
across his book, he raised a brown, ill-shaven face,
and looked at him. His eye took in the contours of
Mr. Hopkinson's strictly patriotic dress, and rested
approvingly on his hat. It seemed that, like most
persons who lived a cloistered life, he was interested
in small detail.

1 Teh ! un' Inglese /' he said joyfully. ' If the
signore would have the goodness to assist me a little
in the pronunciation ?'

He held out his book. It was perfumed with
garlic, and in general want of repair. Mr. Hopkin-
son, expecting a Breviary, observed the title with
surprise, ' La Lingua Inglese in tre Mesi — Gram-
matica, Vocabolario, Idiomi?

The little friar placed an odorous and insinuating
head close to Willie's shoulder, and fell into step with

232 THE GREY WORLD

him. He pointed to a tired-looking page of charac-
teristic English puzzles — * Bough,' 'cough,' 'bought,'
'enough.' Escape was impossible. Willie, half an-
noyed, half captivated by the oddness of the thing,
said the words over slowly ; and this queer little son
of S. Francis, twisting his tongue into strange posi-
tions, parodied him as well as he could. He also
offered for criticism several obscure sentences,
recognisable with care as British forms of speech.
Anxious not to lose an instant of this precious
opportunity, he grew very hot and breathless in the
effort to combine hill-climbing with irregular verbs.
It was evident that he was much in earnest.

To Willie, the situation seemed a paradox ; absurd
enough, yet with a certain irony at its heart. This
friar, marked with the ensigns of a religious life, was
living there in the cradle of his Order an existence
which could scarcely avoid the fringe of Invisible
Things. Yet all his heart was put in a struggle to
acquire the language of a people so far behind his
spiritual ancestors in all that. The very life he led
— that temperate, ordered life of the Franciscan
Observant — must place him on a hill which was not
very far from heaven. But his most ambitious
dream was of a scrambling down from that quiet
altitude into the busy, noisy valley of the world.

' Is it by command of your Order that you learn
English ?' said Willie presently.

' No, signore. I learn it because I wish to live — to
improve myself — for the glory of the blessed S.

THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 233

Francis. But in the convent there are indiscreet
ones, who would say " Fra Agostino wishes to make
himself wiser than his brothers." So it is only when
I go into Spello to get a newspaper for the Father
Superior that I can study a little of the grammatica
on the road.'

' I can't think why you should want to learn it.
It isn't beautiful, like Italian — I would forget it if
I could.'

' Ah, signor mio? said Fra Agostino, ' one must
study the world the good God has given us, must one
not ? And to know all the excellencies He has given
it, one must truly know the English, for it is from
England that now all the new things come. The
more one knows, the more one will love ; and
S. Francis laid on us the duty of loving all things.
So, to study the English language is a true opera
di devozione. It is that I may daily thank the good
God for all the interesting things he has placed in the
world. The English are so strong, so modern. In
Italia, all is old, nothing moves.'

'Oh,' said Willie, ' we may be modern, but we
don't understand things ; we haven't religion, and
the sense of beautiful living, innate in us as you must
have here. We have to come to Italy to find the
real loveliness, the old spirit left over from the happy
days of the world.'

' If the signore were Italian he would not speak
thus,' said Fra Agostino. He was trotting steadily
by Willie's side, a moist forefinger carefully keeping

234 THE GREY WORLD

his place in the grammar-book. ' In Italy is only
the old things, the remnant : in England is fertility,
growth ; and liberty — even for the religious. The
signore is like the English signora who was here two
years back. She loved our Italy. In Italy, she said,
the soul lives. She was surprised, too, that I should
wish to learn the English. She called it turning my
back on heaven. She came here for beautiful
thoughts, being an artist ; for it is true that Italy is
the mother of artists. In England, she said, she
had no inspiration. But veda, signore, she returned
home, and she has sent an Ancona for our chapel.
She painted it, altogether in the ancient manner, in
her cell in England. She lives there alone ; she is
an anchoress. In Italy, there is none who could have
painted that picture. The English are great artists,
a great people also. I will show the signore, and he
can judge.'

They had come now to the gate of the convent.
They crossed the courtyard, went into the little
church. It was very bare — truly a mendicant sanc-
tuary. Crude coloured statues of S. Francis and
S. Anthony contrasted painfully with the white-
washed brickwork, the rough wooden stalls of the
choir. The cheap ornaments and artificial flowers
of the altar, jarred senses which had come straight
from the exquisite shrine of the earth where Nature
offers her sacrifice. Fra Agostino walked up the
only aisle, and Willie after him. The place seemed
dark after the sunshine, and they were at the altar-

THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 235

step before he saw the picture that was behind the
Holy Table.

It was not, as he had vaguely expected, a stigma-
tized S. Francis, or an Anthony of Padua dreaming
on the Infant Christ. What he saw was a woman's
figure ; spare, simple, ugly almost, in its short torn
canvas dress that showed the bare feet worn by long
travelling. Behind her was the dim green Umbrian
landscape, as it stretches out from S. Mary of the
Angels. Round her head, a cloud of wheeling birds
made a halo ; and within the halo a vision of the
Cross. But what struck him most was a reticence
of handling, which suggested behind the plain lines
of the picture an ineffable peace, the secret of a
complete inward happiness. This woman held out
thin delicate hands in a sort of compelling welcome
to her lovers. Her personality was the climax, the
essential charm, of the place : so that it really seemed
as if all who approached that altar must come to her
arms.

Fra Agostino saw Willie's bewildered movement
of admiration.

' It is the Lady Poverty, whom the Blessed S.
Francis loved as a bride,' he explained. ' He left
her to the care of his sons. They lost her, some say,
after his death : but the Government has given her
back to us. It was a beautiful idea of the English
signora that she should be placed above our altar.
A fine painting, is it not ? I show it to all the
English, for we are very proud of it in the convent.'

236 THE GREY WORLD

* What is this signora's name ?' said Willie.

' The signore may read it at the bottom of the
picture.'

There, on a little scroll, were words indeed, in clear
black letters. ' Hester Waring painted this Picture
in the fear of God and for love of S. Francis. At her
cell of S. Mary-le-Street, in the year of the Lord 1900.'

* Is this signora in religion ?'

* No, signore. She has not taken the habit. But
she is a visionaria, a solitary ; she spends much time
in contemplation. It is curious : there is a look in
your eyes, signore, which reminds one of her. It is
not often seen : it is the look of the ecstatic. The
signore also has had experiences.'

They went out presently from the church ;
Willie much possessed by the personality of this
unknown painter who also had seen the Secret
behind the Veil. The image of this woman, living
happy in her solitude, placidly translating her vision
of things into material beauty, fascinated him. He
had an irrational conviction that she was his friend.
He said over to himself her name and designation :
' Hester Waring, in her cell of S. Mary-le-Street.'
From far off, her example beckoned him.

He thought of her still, when he stood in the
garden of the convent, walled in on the brow of
the hill and looking down on great, peaceful spaces.
The austere silence of the place, its attitude of ex-
pectation, helped his dream. Leaning over the wall
at the end of the little orchard, he looked out on a

237

sky and hills which seemed to him to be bathed in
holiness, and wondered how much of what he felt
was Earth, and how much Heaven.

' The Father Superior,' said Fra Agostino pre-
sently, ' comes much to the garden for holy medita-
tion, as the Blessed S. Claire used to do.'

' But are not the Franciscans vowed to works
rather than contemplation ?' said Willie. ' Does
not the Father Superior have to occupy himself with
useful things ?'

* Ah, signer mio? answered Fra Agostino quietly,
' there is only one rule for the good Franciscan — to
live in S. Francis' spirit as well as he can. The
signore will remember that it was not when he was
about useful things that S. Francis received the great
favour of the Stigmata ; it was when he meditated
amongst the hills. The good God gives us useful
things for seventy years only ; but to His lovers He
gives beautiful things for ever. It would be a pity,
would it not, if we were not able to recognise them ?'

But at the gateway the little friar's mood changed
suddenly. The approach to the road drew his
thoughts from the charm of the cloister to the drama
of the great world.

' If the signore desires to do a good action,' he said
softly, as Willie bade him good-bye, ' perhaps he
would send me an illustrated post-card occasionally,
when he has returned to his family in England.
Views of the great cities of England, and of the
streets. The beautiful ladies also. If the signore

238 THE GREY WORLD

will do this I will send him Italian post-cards ; and,
if he desire it, I will remember him in my prayers.'

Mr. Willie Hopkinson reached Perugia at the
moment of sunset, when a radiant sky shut blue hills
and white cities in a warm embrace. He felt alive,
exalted, intimately joyful. It was the ecstasy which
comes with first knowledge of the secret of Being,
with the first dim apprehension of the Shadowy
Friend. But the atmosphere of the hotel, so warm,
British and respectable, checked the raptures of the
road. In the corridor he heard the ungracious tones
of a harmonium. Mr. Finchley's little service was
evidently in progress. Twelve travelling spinsters
and a tired schoolmaster were singing the last hymn.

Willie stood to listen as he passed the door. The
tune, it seemed, was ' Lead, Kindly Light,' but the
words were new to him —

' Too long we followed that misguiding light

Which points to Rome :
Now Luther's torch illumes the Church's night

And leads us home.

Far from Confession, Incense, Feast and Fast,
Till in the Gospel we repose at last.'

These lines had been added to Cardinal Newman's
poem by the orthodox muse of Mr. Finchley, who
considered that they made the hymn peculiarly
suitable for use in Roman Catholic countries.
Mrs. Finchley's wiry voice could be heard leading the
congregation : she sang the last line in an acrid cres-
cendo. This was her favourite verse. ' It breathes,'
she said, ' such a thoroughly Christian spirit.'

CHAPTER XX

THE RIVER

' The afternoon draws quiet breath

At pause between the eve and morn,
And from the sacred place of Death
The holy thoughts of Life are born.'

ISRAEL ZANGWILL

MRS. HOPKINSON was ill — so ill, that she almost
seemed interesting. It had begun with a cold,
which she would have nursed carefully in others
but naturally neglected in herself. Her family
were accustomed to leave matters of health entirely
in her keeping : they had therefore nothing to
offer — neither sympathy, patent medicines, nor
advice. It seemed so unlikely that she should be
seriously ill ; it would be too inconvenient.

But when Mrs. Hopkinson began to let the hours
slip by without concern ; when the news that the
butcher had called for orders did not stimulate her
sleepy brain ; Pauline, in whom Stephen's love had
opened the gates of sympathy, became frightened.
She sent for the doctor, and telegraphed for Willie,
who hurried from Milan to find the household in

239

240 THE GREY WORLD

disorder, dominated by a shadowy but very awful
presence.

Curiously, in all his brooding on the quick flitting
of life he had never contemplated the deaths of his
family ; the unpreventable obliteration of faces
which made up the actual landscape of home.
And quite suddenly, without any of the solemn
preparation which mankind never ceases to expect
before a crisis, this shifting of the scenes had come.

The certainty of impending death was written
up : a helpless feeling, the consciousness of a Destiny
not to be evaded, had abruptly replaced the whole-
some bustling atmosphere which was natural to the
house. He felt the strange hush, as of fear, with
which the unsubstantial side of Being waits for
the great change. All the cheerful, indeterminate
sounds of the home-life seemed muffled. A sharp
noise struck on the tense waiting nerves with a kind
of horror. Already, as it seemed to him, the Grey
People of the Sorrowful Country were gathering,
expecting a new mourner to be added to their com-
panies. They jostled him in the passages. In
silent moments, he thought that he heard their
faint cry as they circled about his mother's bed.

Meanwhile, though there was invalid cookery in
the kitchen, and a dark whisper in the air of heart
failure and want of recuperative power, no one but
himself quite realized that Mrs. Hopkinson was in
danger ; that few inches remained of the skein of
grey wool — dull, but warranted to wash — which the

THE RIVER 241

Fates had apportioned to her homely life. Mr. Hop-
kinson could not believe that she was no longer able
to take a personal interest in the airing of his linen
on Saturday night. The thing fell so far outside
the daily routine as to seem almost like a miracle :
and Pauline and her father did not countenance
miracles, even domestic ones.

All through her life, Mrs. Hopkinson had possessed
the knack of doing things in an unimpressive way.
Her remarks fell flat ; her unselfish actions passed
without notice. There is a slightly squalid way of
handling the profound and essential things in exist-
ence, which is peculiarly British. It was this method,
this secret, which had depoetized Mrs. Hopkinson's
life. She had brought forth her children amongst
flannel and stuffiness ; now she was slipping from
existence surrounded by the uninspiring perfumes
of eucalyptus and camphorated oil.

For Willie, however, the illness had a certainty of
issue, and that certainty a horror, which kept all
his thoughts chained to the sick-bed. In its last
stages of purgation, his spirit had dropped many of
the petty arrogances and intolerances which had
made him in the past a thorny if intelligent neigh-
bour. He now vaguely saw a beauty in those un-
decorative virtues which before had only irritated
his hyperaesthetic mind. Believing that all things
exist because of the loveliness that exists in them,
he discerned with a certain sad and tender love
some beautiful meaning hidden under his mother's

16

242 THE GREY WORLD

garrulous kindness ; as a majesty lurks behind the
homely features of a Rembrandt portrait.

Yet he could not doubt that she was destined to
the Grey World ; to an eternal, useless flitting to and
fro on the edges of life, which would be torture to her
busy spirit. By a horrible irony, those very qualities
for which he might have been grateful were her ruin.
That intimate carefulness for home, that selfless
preoccupation with her children's external comfort,
which had been fostered by education, approved by
convention, by religion even ; these combined to tie
her spirit to earth. She was an admirable animal,
but she had built no immaterial heaven for her-
self. WThere should she go, who had never in all
her life longed for anything but the health and
success of herself, her husband, and her family ?
It is very clear that the Eternal and Imaginative
world is for those with eyes to see and hearts to
desire it.

Willie knelt by her bedside ; held her hand ;
watched her face. The whole scene had a horrible
fascination for him. The brightly lighted bedroom,
with its white enamelled furniture, pink striped walls,
cretonne hangings, made the idea of imminent death
incredible. All seemed orderly, earthly, actual.
The fire had been made up, and burned cheerfully.
There was a table near it with the remains of beef-
tea, and a novel, ' Lily the Cheiromant,' which only
two days ago Mrs. Hopkinson had been reading with
great interest. Yet now she lay on the bed, as he

THE RIVER 243

once had lain, and struggled, half unconscious of her
extremity, to retain her hold upon life.

Two worlds, two powers, were fused in that little
room, and she was the link between them. Body
and soul had entered on the last assault of their long
tournament. He remembered, with a shock almost
of fear, that in this same place he had made his
second entry into the visible world. ' The houses
of death and of birth ' — the terminals of the time-
process — came together here and showed to him
the sameness of their secret.

He wondered whether she felt, as he had done,
the dreadful isolation of the dying. It suddenly
occurred to him that he, of his experience, should
be able to help her in this passage as no other could
possibly do. They were alone together. Pauline
had thought the patient better, and had gone for a
walk. Willie, with an indefinable knowledge that
the time had almost come, that the last chains were
loosed, felt that no interest would be served by
candour. There is a horror in vociferous grief. He
let his sister go. He would be with his mother, to
help her take an atmosphere of serenity as near the
boundary as she might.

For more than half an hour she had lain quite
quiet. Everything suggested a drowsy calm ; but
it was the stillness of an armistice, not of a peace.
The April sunshine, coming through the muslin
curtain of the window, cast warm lights on her
shapeless homely face, on the faded shawl about

16 — 2

244 THE GREY WORLD

her shoulders, the crumpled long-cloth nightdress
underneath. The bright light and the silence,
things so opposite in their tendency, strained
Willie's nerves, made him sensible of the strange-
ness, the awful quality in the appearance of things.

There was on one hand the feeling of inclusion, of
safety, bound up in the walls of a home. On the
other, there was the knowledge that all this, this
haven, was a shadow, a dissolving view ; that one
of those whom it now seemed to hold so securely
would presently pass out of its boundaries, un-
hindered by its walls, unhelped by all its comforts.
She lay on the bed — she, for whom in a few moments
nothing should be warm or durable any more — know-
ing nothing of all this ; adventuring ignorantly into
the darkness.

Then he looked at her, and saw that a change had
already come. There was a new tension in her
hand as it clutched the sheet, a hunted look in her
eyes. Willie felt sorry for her ; he knew that she
had reached the first stage of the terror. She was
cut off now from the rest of humanity. She could
not speak to him. She was afraid that he would go
away and leave her alone on the brink. He moved
the pillow to help her struggling anxious breath ;
moistened her lips, which were dry and parched ;
bathed her temples, where the skin was already
curiously drawn. He wondered whether any know-
ledge of his presence could force its way to the inner
place where her spirit was fighting for life ; whether

THE RIVER 245

he had power to galvanize the sleepy senses and
send her assurance that she was not alone. Re-
membering the agony of loneliness he had passed
through, he felt very pitiful. He would have wished
his mother's death to be a more beautiful thing.

Another barrier fell before the enemy. It seemed
that her comfortable trust in the solid earth and its
furnishings went. She sat up suddenly in the bed,
reaching out terrified hands to grasp something
which should reassure her by its reality and firm-
ness. Willie took the poor hands in his own, and
held them tightly ; trying with all the force of his
will to fight the horror now so strong in her spirit.
It was the convulsed, uncontrollable terror of a
frightened child ; horrible to see on that sane
elderly face, never since his knowledge of it given
over to other than tepid emotions. Our decorously
insipid way of living makes the great terrors and
joys of the human soul seem almost indecent.
Willie shuddered and felt sick before the agony of
his mother's first look upon death. He knew him-
self in some degree guilty of her torment ; felt that
perhaps the cares of his nurture had been for some-
thing in the maiming of her soul. To their parents,
children must always be either wings or weights :
he could not remember that he had ever helped his
mother to rise.

Presently her lips moved ; she was trying to
speak to him. He leaned to her, but the words
were difficult to hear. Two only he caught — an

246 THE GREY WORLD

intense and bitter whisper — ' Help me !' an appeal
as it were from behind the barrier to some potent
but negligent saviour still on the remembered shore.
She was on the edge now : had seen something of
the grey and empty places towards which her spirit
was hurrying fast.

That cry, almost inarticulate, raised a passion of
sorrowful love in Willie's heart. Always till now a
solitary, living in a self-contained universe which
only in externals touched the lives of his fellow-men,
in this moment he suddenly felt the inter-depen-
dence of all human things in their time of discipline.
He perceived the impossibility of any perfect happi-
ness for himself in the face of this torture of another
spirit. He longed, as he had never longed for any-
thing in his life, for the release of Mrs. Hopkinson
from the Sorrowful Country. He was ready for a
supreme sacrifice, forgetting altogether his cher-
ished safety. His own future peace seemed a
small price to pay for some surety of his mother's
salvation.

' Mother,' he said, ' be comforted ! I'll find a
way, I'll save you ! There's a heaven here quite
close, ii.only you would see it, only look at that.'

But it was too late ; his words could not reach
her. In her twisted lips, the fixed gaze of her stony
eyes, he could see signs that the agony of the pas-
sage had begun. The sensual world had gone from
her. The other, in its dreary monotony, momen-
tarily became clearer. But as he watched, her face

THE RIVER 247

relaxed abruptly. A little hint of some glad sur-
prise crept into her expression. Some mystical
sixth sense was added to her endowment, and gave
her a glimpse of unexpected things. She looked at
Willie, and smiled. It was a mother's smile ; the
radiance of a quite unselfish happiness.

* You'll be all right, dearie,' she said joyfully.

The stress passed from her face then ; it did not
seem that she was frightened any more. In another
moment, the hand that he held became limp in his
grasp. The empty body fell back on the pillows.
Mrs. Hopkinson had passed over.

*****

It was done ; but so quickly, with so little fuss,
that it seemed hardly credible. Willie, versed in
the fictions of Maeterlinck, the poetry of static fear,
had somehow expected that the visible side of
things would show a certain sympathy, a knowledge
of the soul's crisis. Impossible, he thought, that so
irrevocable a thing could come so simply.

But nothing happened. There was no knocking
on the door of life, no sudden gust of wind, no
vaguely symbolic bird fluttering at the window.
It was difficult to realize that the routine of exist-
ence had been sharply broken.

The fire crackled as before. A tradesman's van
went down the street. Someone at the next house
whistled for a hansom. WTillie heard all these things
quite clearly, noting them as he sat gazing stupidly
at the corpse upon the bed. The hansom came and

248 THE GREY WORLD

went. After that, silence. In another moment, he
knew, he must go out from the room and tell the
news to the household ; start the useless and elabo-
rate machinery of grief. But suddenly a harsh
clang broke the stillness. The abruptness of the
sound drew a sob that was almost of fear from him ;
but its origin was normal enough. Only a piano-
organ, very new and insistent, which had stopped
before the door and struck up the ' Old Hun-
dredth '—

1 All people that on Earth do dwell

Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice ;
Him serve with fear, His praise forth tell,
Come ye before Him and rejoice!

It was London's dirge for her citizen.

CHAPTER XXI

WILLIE TRIES TO LEND A HAND

'Be not the slave of Words : is not the Distant, the Dead,
while I love it, and long for it, and mourn for it, Here, in the
genuine sense, as truly as the floor I stand on?' — THOMAS
CARLYLE.

IN the days of studied and slightly hypocritical
gloom which followed Mrs. Hopkinson's death,
Willie sank back into himself, rearranged the
disturbed images which filled his House of Life.

A new duty had come to the footlights, jostling
the dreamy hopes that he loved. Himself so certain
of his road, though hardly yet in sight of the Peaceful
City, the state of those blind adventurers who
blundered thoughtlessly through their moment of
life seemed to have become his responsibility, not
any more his amusement. ' Save me from my
friends,' cries the Egoist. * Save me from the con-
viction that I ought to save my friends,' were a
better prayer for the Dreamer.

His secrecy, his aloofness, took on for him now
a character almost murderous. How different, he
thought, might his mother's death have been,

249

250 THE GREY WORLD

had he always spoken candidly and with insistence
of the world as he knew it to be ! Some criminal
cynicism had paralyzed his sympathies, made him
profoundly unconscious of the duties that belong
to knowledge. The stifling, ostentatiously dismal
air of the house ; the days spent behind closed
blinds ; the honours, to him so ridiculous, which
were paid to the decaying corpse ; these gave to
his remorse an acid tendency. It bit into his soul,
driving out the guiding lines which he had traced
there in the careful hours of peace.

The life of a bereaved household is always full
of petty discomforts. To everyone but himself,
this state of things seemed natural — a fitting
tribute to the memory of an excellent housewife.
The fact that the tea had been made with luke-
warm water, that there was a feeling in the air
of charwomen and spring-cleaning of a specially
lugubrious kind, only drew their thoughts more
tenderly to the virtues of the deceased. Mrs.
Hopkinson had been of so little account during
her life, that the peculiarly unpleasant emptiness
she left behind her came almost as an agreeable
surprise.

The family sat in the dining-room, vaguely aware
that its odours and inconveniences were more
suited to their state than gipsy tables and brocaded
chairs. Pauline, red-eyed, worried by her own
incomprehensible sense of desolation, was trying
to find some interest in the choosing of blouse

WILLIE TRIES TO LEND A HAND 251

materials from a box of patterns. Her head was
heavy with tears, but she attached no real meaning
to her miseries. Grief had become automatic —
a reflex action.

Bertie Anthracite sat on her knee, a sharp con-
trast to her fatigued wretchedness. The outline
of her lap suited his figure, and he had condensed
into a compact mound of purring happiness. His
society gave to Pauline a certain comfort. At
meal-times he was fussily affectionate, as Mrs.
Hopkinson used to be ; and his intense blackness —
he had no white hairs — had its own mournful
suitability.

Mrs. Steinmann, who had come in to see if she
could be of use and had remained because no one
worried her to do anything, sat in the largest
armchair with her hands before her. Her thick
and bead-trimmed dress looked dusty in the April
sunlight, and seemed to Willie like a woolly epigram
which epitomized the mental atmosphere of the
room. Opposite to her, Mr. Hopkinson, balancing
his weight on the edge of the sofa, stared moodily
at the fireplace. He wanted to read the new
number of Science Gossip, and wondered whether
anyone would think it an act of disrespect. Always
more sensuous than emotional, an abstract grief
bored him : but he stood in awe of Mrs. Steinmann,
who was expert in the etiquette of death ; he was
anxious to do the right thing.

Willie, near Pauline, watched her idly, focussing

252 THE GREY WORLD

his gaze upon the table-cloth on which she had
spread her bits of voile and silk. Its red surface,
covered with a pattern as black and shapeless as
the nether world, had an air of hateful actuality
which seemed to involve its owners in a small and
satisfied materialism. He wondered what was at
the root of this subtle antagonism between crimson
felt and the spiritual world.

In a little while, Pauline gave up her attempt at
occupation, pushed the box away, looked wearily
at the clock. It was only half-past three. Mr.
Hopkinson shifted his position slightly and began
to clean his nails with a tooth-pick. The life of the
room was stagnant, airless. The boredom of sorrow
was weighing heavily on it — that attitude of weary
unconcern towards life which lingers in the neigh-
bourhood of death. Mr. Hopkinson and his
daughter felt it the more because they were not
sufficiently intelligent to understand it. Mrs.
Steinmann felt it too, but it did not trouble her
nerves. She recognised it as a normal accessory
of bereavement.

Willie also was oppressed : drawn in spite of
himself very near to the borderland of unsub-
stantial things. He could not remember Italy, or
call back the knowledge of reconciliation that had
come to him there. A cloud lay across the Beautiful
Land. In that happy place, all the world had
seemed strange and symbolical, the medium of
adorable secrets. But beyond that, in the Dreadful

WILLIE TRIES TO LEND A HAND 253

Country, the shadowy side of the circle of life, it
showed itself to be emptiness and illusion. To
this plane of perception some force was drawing
him now. He felt that unless the strong silence
of the room were broken, the activities of daily
life brought back, he should step over into the
Grey World, and renew all the old vanquished fears.

Looking so closely at death had put the vision
called Reality out of focus. He seemed to see
the world-process as a great pendulum, swinging
silently and incessantly through the seen and the
unseen spheres. Always, on its journey and return,
it carried the helpless, semi-conscious human soul.
How casual and trivial, after all, was his short
tenancy of the body : no more than the moment
of rest before the return swing began ! The magne-
tism of the Dead fought with him, as if demanding
an interpreter in this deserter from their ranks.
His mother was having her revenge.

He got up abruptly, went to the window, looked
out between the slats of the closed Venetian
blinds. In the presence of dearth, he still turned
instinctively for relief to the poor little assurances
of diurnal existence. But even the street gave
back an inert image to him. There was something
monstrous in the impassive stare of the houses.
The sky, his great refuge, was vacant ; it seemed
immovable, as if the Earth had ceased to dance
on its way through the heavens. He received the
impression that the whole world was dead, and

254 THE GREY WORLD

life itself a rare and confusing accident. He saw
that the souls which filled the Grey World were
really dead — had in fact never lived ; and that
this deeper and more terrible death, of which the
extinction of the body is a symbol, was the source
of all their miseries.

' Can't we do something ?' he said suddenly. The
sense of suspended life was becoming unbearable.

Mr. Hopkinson looked at him dully. ' One
must respect the dead, my boy ; it's customary,' he
answered.

' This sort of thing isn't respect of anything,'
said Willie. ' It's awful. We might almost as
well be dead ourselves !'

' I wish I was !' murmured Pauline. ' I shall
never be happy again. Poor mother !' The sound
of her own words reminded her how wretched
she was ; she began to cry.

Mrs. Steinmann got up. ' You're a little bit
overwrought, Pauline,' she said. ' It's not to be
wondered at. I'll just get you the salts off your
poor mother's dressing-table — ammonia and eau-
de-Cologne — I noticed them when I was arranging
the wreaths. They'll do you a world of good.'

She went out of the room. Pauline choked,
swallowed her sobs, but could not control herself.
Willie looked gravely at his sister. Her outcry
had startled him, for he had a superstitious feeling
that standing so near to the edge of things, even
the spoken word was dangerous.

WILLIE TRIES TO LEND A HAND 255

' Oh, hush !' he said. ' You shouldn't speak so.
Never ask for death. Life, even if it's lonely, is
less terrible than that.'

' Perhaps mother's lonely now. Perhaps she
wants us !' wailed Pauline. Her tears fell on
Bertie Anthracite's head and ran down his ruffj
making damp and unbecoming streaks upon the
fur. Bertie got up, sniffing reproachfully, and
went to look for drier quarters on the sofa.

' My dear Pauline !' said Mr. Hopkinson very
kindly, * you are distressing yourself without cause.
The dead cannot be lonely. It is impossible for
emotion to survive the destruction of the brain-
cortex. To the biologist, remember, consciousness
is inconceivable without protoplasm. You know
that quite well, but you are rather upset. Calm
yourself. Death is a most distressing phenomenon,
but unfortunately it's the rule of creation. No
getting out of it, you know. We must resign
ourselves. Mustn't expect Nature to preserve
outworn material.'

Mr. Hopkinson blew his nose, and seemed more
cheerful for his own explanation. ' Let us be
thankful,' he added, ' that we live in a scientific
age ; and don't let us confuse ourselves with any
mediae val nonsense about future states.'

Willie, to his own surprise, began to speak eagerly
and imperatively.

' Oh, but it's Pauline who's right,' he said, * and
it's we who talk nonsense, not the old wise peoples

256 THE GREY WORLD

who made allegories of Heaven and Hell. The
dead are lonely, when they die as mother has died,
without seeing the real meaning of life. Listen,
father ! Oh, you shall listen because it's the
truth. Why will you take the shadow for the real,
and the veil for the limit like this ? Can't you
see, on your theory, what a senseless, unreasonable
performance existence is ? Isn't it arrogance to
think that there's nothing more beyond the little
scale of vibrations your senses and your instru-
ments can pick up ? That's what your view seems
to lead to ; and on the face of it, it looks a silly lie.'

' My dear lad !' replied Mr. Hopkinson, still
preserving an admirable good temper, ' conclusions
founded on Causation and Experience cannot lie.
Modern science is as sure of its results as double
entry. No room there for chance and fancy.
What's put down on one page is bound to turn up
finally on the other.'

' Oh, yes !' answered Willie. ' But not as you
think, father. It's the invisible things, all the
unnoticed forces, and the real critical events of
life : they turn up again in death and make the
future. All the steps the soul has taken, and all
the loves and hates it has — those are the causes
which have effects that count. I must tell you.
You must listen. You're wasting your life on
meaningless acts, living in great danger every
minute. You've got to die, and you never think
of that, never notice the real proportions of things.'

WILLIE TRIES TO LEND A HAND 257

Mr. Hopkinson became annoyed. He felt that
his son's remarks were in bad taste. He could not
conceive where such silly notions came from. He
was listening anxiously, too, for Mrs. Steinmann's
returning footsteps. But he could not sneer as he
wished. Willie was in earnest ; and real earnest-
ness, though it is generally grotesque, always
shames its tepid audience into attention.

This it was, together with a complete uncertainty
as to what he ought to do, which set Mr. Hopkin-
son's teeth on edge. He was in the state of wrath-
ful discomfort to which any polite person may
be reduced when an earnest missionary suddenly
suggests a word of prayer in the drawing-room.

Willie noticed the expression of respectable
disgust which came over the dull pink oval of his
father's face. It did not astonish him. He went on.

' This world you think so important and
trustworthy,' he said, ' is only a shadow, an imper-
fect way of seeing something that is very different
in itself. Everyone seems to hate that thought >
but why should they ? When it fades for you to
a colourless mist, as it has for me ; when the dead
become more real than the living, and Time and
Space only empty words, modern science won't be
much good. You're'disgusted, of course : you think
I'm mad : but I daren't let you die without saying
the truth. Mother's gone, lost, and I never helped
her. I'll not easily forgive myself for that '

At this point, Pauline cried out quickly, 'How

17

258 THE GREY WORLD

can you be so wicked, Willie ? How dare you say
mother's in Hell ?' But he went on.

' Listen ! your senses only know one world, and
that the cheapest and most obvious ; but there's
world after world, and mode after mode of percep-
tion, wrapped behind it : only you will look down
all the time, not up, to where the real things
are written. And what will be the use, when earth's
gone from you, of all the earth-powers you fuss
about so much ? It's the strong soul you will
want then ; and your soul isn't any further now
than when you were a baby. All you will do, if
you die like this, will be to hang about on the
fringe of the old earth-life, just out of reach of
everything you care for. That's the real Hell,
and it's kept for those who have never been born
in the spirit.'

He left off speaking, and no one answered. But
Bertie Anthracite, awake, somehow conscious of a
strangeness in the room, raised a black nose from
between folded paws and looked at him solemnly.
^ There was a remote and dreamy fellowship in his
great amber eyes.

Otherwise, Willie's attempt to the breaking of
barriers had resulted only in a stronger isolation.
Mr. Hopkinson felt insulted — always the first re-
action of a mean soul in the presence of truth.
He had the comforting conviction that the boy
was either off his head or playing the fool, but
he did not know what to do. He missed his

WILLIE TRIES TO LEND A HAND 259

wife, who would doubtless have removed Willie
on some convenient if undignified pretext. To
Pauline, the whole scene seemed a puzzling aggrava-
tion of the general wretchedness of things. Only
to Mr. Willie Hopkinson were his own words sharp
and pregnant.

His speech, indeed, had been rather an incanta-
tion than a confession ; for of his actual intention
his father and sister had understood nothing at all.
They were left with the impression that he was
uncomfortably queer, and that his remarks had an
obscure and undesirable bearing on religion. But
his words fell back on himself, and the Gates of
Horn, for him always on the latch, swung open. He
lost the visible and the obvious, and won back his old
sense of the extreme naturalness of unseen things.

The Grey World, in fact, rushed back on Willie,
and he met it almost gladly as a relief from the
suffocating limits of his home. It brought with
it the colourless landscape of infinite space, and
space was what he needed as an antidote to the
littleness of life. He did not feel any more the
terrors which it had used to hold for him. The
crying of the dead filled him now only with a
purging sadness. Their Hell had become his
Heaven — a place of great clarity and peace.
Beyond them, he saw all things reconciled and made
good. Knowledge gave him faith ; he looked out
on the desert of death very steadily.

He knew now of nothing at all but the grey

17—2

260 THE GREY WORLD

endless fields of that other Dimension. There,
among the crowd and confusion of its populations,
he was aware of the spirit of Mrs. Hopkinson, lonely
and anxious, struggling to communicate with her
children in the world. It seemed that his own
spirit was being dragged back from visible life by
her imperative longing, and met her on some
intermediate plane. Her soul sank into his. She
spoke to him ; not coherently at first, but with
the inarticulate hurry of a garrulous person who
has been deprived of opportunity for chatter.
There was nothing, it seemed, to be said. Their
planes of being were too far separate. Only she
rushed with relief on this unexpected gap in the
barrier, took up the homely intercourse which had
been the whole life of her soul.

She was overflowing with all the old, human
sympathies which he had despised until she had
taken them from him. She was still one with her
children, and in some sense vicariously happy
through them. He missed the note of boredom
and despair which was his one sharp memory of
the Other Side. Otherwise, he felt her presence to
be absolutely natural. He lost with it the sense
of something missing in the household which had
worried him since her death. This force in the
Grey World, loving him and leaning out to him,
gave him a new feeling of unity and content.

' Dear mother !' he said suddenly. His voice
was low but very penetrating, as if it had come

WILLIE TRIES TO LEND A HAND 261

from a great way off. It was not, in fact, his voice
at all ; but like that of a stranger using his lips.
It caught Mr. Hopkinson 's attention.

' Eh ? What ?' he said.

Willie, all his attention turned to another dimen-
sion, saw the sensual world uncertainly, through a
distorting haze. No doubt he had a vague know-
ledge of the room, and of people in it, but their
personalities did not affect him. He answered his
father automatically, as one may answer questions
given in a dream.

' Mother's here,' he said, ' watching us. Of course
one knew she must be, but it's nice to feel it. And
she's not so very unhappy ; aren't you glad ?
She wants to get back to us, of course ; but she'll
find out presently that it's impossible.'

' Don't be such an infernal fool, Willie,' said
Mr. Hopkinson very sharply. ' We've heard
enough of your morbid fancies for one day. Besides,
this is no time for ghost stories ; you're upsetting
your sister.'

Pauline, in fact, had turned very white. As
Willie paused, she burst into loud harsh sobs of
terror. But her brother was now beyond the
reach of hysterics or reproofs : he did not hear or
see anything of what was happening in the room.
Mr. Hopkinson, as he realized this fact, was seized
by an uncontrollable fear which he knew to be un-
reasonable, and which made him feel a great dislike
for his son. He attributed it to the religious views

262 THE GREY WORLD

of his semi-human ancestors ; but this did not
mend his damaged pride.

Willie had slipped from the visible world as com-
pletely as in the first years of his childhood, before
his communications with the earth-life were solid
and complete. He was now established on the
other plane ; recognised its misty landscape, the
texture of its life. He was puzzled. His mother
seemed to be happy — incomprehensibly happy for
that empty and desolate place. She had so long
been accustomed, it seemed, to find contentment in
the well-being of her children, that now their exist-
ence on earth made a little Heaven for her soul.

Love that was not love of self appeared to bring
ts own reward — an arrangement which struck
Willie as extremely odd. It was in this that
Mrs. Hopkinson lived, secure from the loneliness of
the self-centred dead who hunt forever for their
lost happiness. But her life was not firmly estab-
lished. She was uneasy. As his spirit was driven
against hers by the tide of his thought, or drawn
back by the drag of the world, he knew that all
was not secure with her, that there was something
she had to tell him. He remembered what a friendly
listener would have meant to him when he was
amongst the Dead, and turned his whole will towards
the understanding of her message.

' Mother, what is it ?' he said. ' I'm here. I
know. I can speak for you.'

The answer came like a voice within his own

WILLIE TRIES TO LEND A HAND 263

mind. He knew at the moment of speaking what
it was that she wanted. She was afraid. Not
afraid of the place where she was, but of being
forgotten, seeing her place filled, her memory in the
world overlaid with living interests. When that
happened, he saw, she would be quite alone, would
have lost her anchorage to earth. Love gave her
a part still in the home that she had cared for, but
it was a reciprocal love, a magnetism in which the
living had to do their part. Only in their remem-
brance she retained her hold upon visible things.
The forgotten die, as the loveless die : except those
happy dreamers who have found the Heart of the
Rose, and pass from the Earth-sphere to the
Absolute. He saw suddenly and unforgettably the
one great duty of the living, in the loving com-
memoration of the dead.

' It's all right, mother dearest,' he said. ' We
shall never forget you. You shan't be forsaken.
We love you, and there's no barrier. You'll
always be with us now.'

He felt then her personality enfolding him — the
affectionate, deprecating being whose constant
timid questions ' Anything you want, dearie ?
Are you sure you're feeling quite the thing ?' had
filled so great a space in the tissue of his life. Now
the irksome guardianship was over, and he, instead,
was made the keeper of his mother's happiness.
He seized on the new duty gladly. He stood up,
held out his arms — irrationally, but with an utter

264 THE GREY WORLD

conviction, as if he were indeed going to hold her
to safety. He said nothing. He seemed to have
gone past speech to the place of pure thought.

Mr. Hopkinson, watching him uneasily, decided
that he was going to faint. As a matter of fact,
he was acutely but narrowly conscious ; blind to
the sensual world, but with eyes wide open to an
inner secret, the holiest that he had known.

His mother was his to care for, and he was her
son. He knew, for the first time, that he loved

her.

*****

He came back with a violent sense of physical
shock to a roomful of startled persons : Pauline
in hysterics on the sofa, Bertie Anthracite standing
fascinated and rigid at his feet, ears forward and
fluffy coat nervously erect. Mr. Hopkinson, red-
faced, awkward and angry, patted his daughter
with a helpless hand. Only Mrs. Steinmann stood
triumphantly upon the hearth-rug, undisturbed by
anything more exciting than her own promptitude
and common-sense. She had just thrown a large
glassful of cold water in Willie's face.

' Just in time!' she said joyously. ' You'd have
been off in another minute. Still feel giddy ? I
thought you'd been looking poorly all the afternoon.'

' Neurotic young ass,' growled Mr. Hopkinson.
His shaking hand reminded him that he had passed
through a very creepy ten minutes ; but Mrs.
Steinmann's sensible attitude reassured him, and

WILLIE TRIES TO LEND A HAND 265

he was now only uncertain whether Willie's display
meant illness or folly.

* Nothing like a sharp shock at the right moment !'
Mrs. Steinmann continued, as the wrathful Willie,
suffering from the insecure sensations of the recently
anaesthetized, hastily dried his face, and tried to
check the rivers which were running down his back.
' Only over-excitement with a touch of liver in it,
most likely. You never can tell what form bile
will take. I remember, Willie, you had an attack
something like this when you were quite a little
boy. It made your poor mother very anxious at
the time : she thought it was your brain. I told
her she was wrong, I've had so much experience
with boys : and as a matter of fact it turned out
to be nothing but stomach.'

Mrs. Steinmann's tone was full of cheerful
authority : but she raised her eyebrows in a knowing
manner as she glanced at Mr. Hopkinson, and he
touched his forehead with one finger and nodded
gravely in reply.

CHAPTER XXII

CROSS-ROADS

'Quand on veut noyer son chien, on dit qu'il a la rage.1 —
French Proverb.

STEPHEN, in the double capacity of Willie's friend
and Pauline's lover, was forced into a family con-
sultation. The situation was serious. Mr. Willie
Hopkinson had neither repented nor explained his
outburst. Knowing that explanation between the
ignorant and initiate must always be a paradox, he
had chosen an attitude of smiling unconcern which
strained not only his own nerves, but also the under-
standing of his relations. It seemed to Mr. Hop-
kinson irrefutable evidence that his son's conduct
proceeded from disease rather than conviction. But
a medically inclined cousin, invited to lunch in order
that he might pronounce on Willie's mental state,
had been disappointing. He found, he said, nothing
organically wrong with the boy. A nervous tem-
perament, which wanted taking out of itself. He
advised his disgusted host, who longed to discuss
the question of neuroses, to give his son a good
tonic and let him go to the devil for a bit.

266

CROSS-ROADS 267

' He's wrong,' said Mr. Hopkinson. ' I'm con-
vinced of it. Symptoms are everything in these
cases, of course, and he couldn't judge in a short
interview. But that attack the other day ; the
simulated voice, and the hallucination, and all that
false excitement — distinct traces of a lesion there,
to my mind.'

' In my opinion,' said Mrs. Steinmann, ' Willie's
never been quite the same since his trip abroad. I
put it down a good deal to the sudden change.
Many constitutions can't stand it. All his usual
habits altered ; and then foreign food. That alone
was almost bound to upset him. So oily.'

' Yes,' replied Mr. Hopkinson. * Your daughter
meant kindly when she recommended that trip, but
I always thought it a foolish plan myself. I've no
belief in these changes. Oxygen's the same all the
world over, and after all there are few places where
the comforts of life are so well understood as in this
dear old England of ours.'

' Oh, Elsa's a fool when it comes to questions of
health. She seems to think a course of bad hotels
and old churches will cure anything. But as I say
to her, what on earth's the good of this rushing about
Europe nowadays, when you can buy all the same
things in London ? It's silly as well as expensive,
and I'm afraid it's had a good deal to do with Willie's
queerness — that, and his mother's death on the top
of it.'

' I think,' said Stephen, ' one must not expect

268 THE GREY WORLD

Willie to be quite normal. He has unusual gifts,
and his own way of seeing the world '

He was wondering, as he uttered these facile
phrases, how best to solve the equation of which
Willie, Mr. Hopkinson, and his own convenience,
were the principal terms. Stephen at this time
hung in the balance between solid interests and
spiritual hopes. To be engaged to be married to
a wholesome young woman, must in the end prove
a sobering influence. He was growing older and
wiser in the strictly useful sense ; approximating
the texture of his dream to the texture of life. His
sharp intellect, as little content with the isolation
of the mystic as it had been with the gregarious
greyness of common life, sought incessantly for
compromise. He was not deceived by appearance ;
but many of its aspects pleased him, and he refused
to give them up.

Toward Willie, he felt respectful but impatient ;
wanted to help him, was irritated because he showed
himself so little ready to be helped. His visionary
strength, flung into his love and his profession, still
gave him a glamour that was not quite of the world.
It explained his hold upon Pauline's heart, as his
restless, critical mind explained the gulf which
broadened between him and her brother.

Stephen wished to succeed both as the lover of the
Ideal and the husband of Miss Pauline Hopkinson.
This programme called for a tolerant spirit best de-
veloped amongst persons unfamiliar with the flaming

CROSS-ROADS 269

visions of his youth. Hence, he did not care to be
thrown too much in Willie's company. It made him
uncomfortable, like living opposite a church that he
had ceased to attend. He had now so disciplined
his mind, that he had become something of that
ideal spectator of life, who is willing to accept every-
thing, and even to be credulous when the play
demands that exertion. He could turn without
any disagreeable emotion from the writing of a
sonnet on the Virgin to the designing of a Gothic
hall for political meetings. But he knew in his soul
that Willie, the tedious fanatic, remained spiritually
superior to himself, the intelligent taster of life.

Gratitude, of course, should have had some place
in the matter. This consideration troubled Mr.
Stephen Miller in his better moments. Willie had
once opened for him a treasure-house at which he
had long been knocking. But he had walked
through it to another which lay beyond, and now
he was sure that the first one had been not a trea-
sure-house, but a dream.

In substance, therefore, Stephen leaned to the
view that Mr. Willie Hopkinson's elimination from
the family circle was expedient, if not inevitable.
He foresaw constant collisions between Willie and
his world, only to be avoided by his own permanent
employment as buffer. But to succeed as an archi-
tect, pose as a Platonist, and manage a commercial
father-in-law, seemed vocation enough for Stephen.
He told himself that Willie would be happier away

270 THE GREY WORLD

from home. He knew that everyone else would be
happier without Willie, for it is horrible to live in
the constant presence of something which you know
that you do not understand. Mr. Hopkinson and
his daughter had been nervous and irritable since
the afternoon when the Unseen World was brought
into sudden and confusing proximity with their
dining-room furniture.

Loyalty, however, was expected of him. It was
the mere duty of friendship to break the impact
between Willie's idealism and his father's well-
educated mind. Remembering with terror the
unpopularity of his own early beliefs, he entered
delicately upon the defence.

' I think,' he said, ' you must make allowances.
You were startled the other day by Willie's be-
haviour, but he has a curious way of putting things
— always has had. It's quite likely, too, that he
sees much that we do not see. You don't believe
that, perhaps, Pauline ; but Mr. Hopkinson knows
as well as I do that it's a scientific possibility. Our
senses are not perfect agents by any means '

He looked carefully at Mr. Hopkinson. He
desired to confuse, without offending, his future
father-in-law. A bold excursion into the enemy's
country seemed his only hope.

' I don't think,' he continued, ' that because
Willie's brain reacts on experience rather differently
from yours and mine, Mr. Hopkinson, it's necessary
to say that he's insane.'

CROSS-ROADS 271

' No— no,' replied Mr. Hopkinson. ' Possibly
not.' He regretted this admission immediately,
and hurried on to get out of sight of it before it
could be recognised. ' But he's a deuced nuisance
in the house. Transcendentalists, and seers of
ghosts, and so on are out of date. He ought to
conform to modern notions. It's an atavism —
about a century behind the times. Reminds me,
Stephen, you were rather taken up with the spook
business yourself at one time.'

' That was before I knew you and Pauline,' said
Stephen hastily.

' Ah, nothing like a bright, sensible girl for settling
a young chap. But the question is, what's to be
done with Willie ? Bookbinding no go, thanks to
that love-affair ; business no go, he's no head for
figures. Can't have him loafing about here all day.'

* If you like,' said Stephen, ' I'll speak to him.'

He found Willie in low spirits. The sunshine of
Italy had faded. Much of the old misery had come
back. Those deeps of experience in which his
mother and he had found each other had ill pre-
pared him for the squalid questions and strictly
pathological sympathy of the following days.

' What on earth am I to do ?' he said. ' I can't
stay here. They look at me suspiciously. They
think I'm mad. Funny, isn't it ? but it doesn't
amuse for ever. This life is stifling me. I'm not
strong enough to breathe through it. When I'm
here, I lose the holy strangeness of the world.'

272 THE GREY WORLD

' That's true. You're all out of key here. Some-
thing will have to be done.'

' Oh yes, I must go. It's no use to stay. I thought
it was my duty to tell them the truth, so I tried.
They saw I meant it, too, though they'll never
acknowledge it. I made them feel for a minute
that there is an invisible world, and father won't
forgive that ; people are so tenacious of their own
little lies. And anyhow I can't stay. I've seen
the road, and at the end the Beautiful Gate ; but
here I drop back to the grey, I can't follow the
star.' He stopped. ' But it seems wrong, waste-
ful,' he said slowly. ' I ought to help someone
else to see it. Won't anyone ever believe me,
don't you think ?'

' No,' said Stephen — ' never. Haven't you
learnt yet, my dear old chap, that no one is con-
vinced of anything second-hand ? The idea of it
must be in their minds first, or you can't wake it
up there. You've had a try, and you see the
result. Everyone takes you for a lunatic. Con-
form, or clear out. It's the rule of the world, and
you'll be happier if you give in to it.'

' As you've done,' said Willie. ' And live round
the trivial almanac of games when I might be in
touch with the Real.'

' Well, suppose I have done that ? It's no good
to sneer about it. Your way can't be my way ever ;
give that idea up. My existence is run on quite
other lines than yours, but I think and hope that

CROSS-ROADS

273

there's more than one way home. You're too arro-
gant ; why should your vision be the only one ?
Your knowledge of things is the determining fact
for you, but it's not for me. It's I, as I stand in
the world, that counts in my own life. If I live
purely and with all my might, and react to every
object in my world, — the simple things, like love
and work and home — I can't be far wrong.'

' I feel that about work,' said Willie. ' I must
work, whatever happens. Somehow, this week has
made a difference in that — seeing a death-bed, and
the grave silently filled up. Why, already her
memory is beginning to fade ; isn't sharp-edged any
more. It's awful to fade out of life like that, as if
one were some painting washed from the wall. I
feel now, I must leave a mark in the world, some
patrin to show that I've passed.'

' But don't you see, that's just the root of my
life ? The world put its impress on me, I want to
leave my impress on the world. It needn't be
work ; life will do it. If I only leave children that
I've trained behind me, that's something. The
fault of your sort of life for me is just its aloofness
from things. I hate that detached feeling. I feel
now, I've got a poise, adjusted myself to every part
of existence. It's a compact, temperate happiness.
I've developed my powers all round '

' But you've lost the Vision,' answered Willie.
' Oh, Stephen, and you nearly had it once ! Re-
member the old days, how clearly you saw then.'

18

274 THE GREY WORLD

' I persuaded myself that I did, because it was so
amusing. No one can get your conviction unless
they're born fey.'

He spoke sharply, remembering a night when he
too had been fey, and dropped for an instant his
birth-right of belief in the solid earth.

' This,' thought the intelligent Stephen, ' is the
worst of letting one's self be run away with by other
people's ideas. There's nothing like an old belief
for making one feel awkward and foolish. One
should keep one's creeds upon the literary
plane.'

' Perhaps,' said Willie, ' I am fey. If so, it's a
happy fortune. But not here. The weight of all
these people that refuse to see life as it is, presses
me into a sort of insincerity. I can't love here ; I
can't hope. I must be alone, where there's a space.
Here, I always remember the Illusion, but I only see
its miserable side.'

' Then go,' said Stephen.

Willie knew that he was glad. He had already
hinted to his sister that he would like to leave home,
and the suggestion had been well received ; and
Pauline, whose engagement took precedence of her
intellect, might always be trusted to echo, without
editing, Stephen's opinions. It was humiliating,
but natural enough. At close quarters, Willie was
an element of uncertainty. At a sufficient distance,
he might be counted as an asset — ' clever, but
peculiar.'

CROSS-ROADS 275

' If you'll think,' Stephen continued, ' you'll re-
member, those who had intuitional truth were
always solitaries. It's always been the same ;
they never could mix with the rest. You've got
your truth in a different way, but it comes out
the same in the end. You can't be a citizen when
you've ceased to believe in bricks and mortar.'

' She is a visionaria, a solitary ; she lives as an
anchoress? Willie heard again the voice of Fra
Agostino, saying as a very ordinary thing these
words. They mixed themselves with Stephen's
last remark, ' You can't be a citizen when you've
ceased to believe in bricks and mortar.' The idea
of that artist, working in her cell, had never gone
far from his mind. To think of her was to feel the
cool fragrance of the cloister, the quiet yet busy air
of some ideal working-place.

Work, he knew, he must have. Contemplation had
brought him peace only whilst his troubles came from
within. Now that death — the death of friends — had
become a fact for him, nothing but the anodyne
of manual labour would bring him back the poise
from which he saw the joyous mystery of things. He
began to understand something of the feeling of the
hermits, whose refusal of the world, he thought, had
been more a development than a denial of self. He
too longed passionately for silence, the clean contours
of the country. The restless ennui which he felt
could only be abated there. For him, impure in-
fluences hung round the life of the City. He could

18— 2

276 THE GREY WORLD

not pray in her churches, remember the holy
Dead, work under her sky. Yet he knew himself
able to recognise the cadences of the great Song.
Should he not go to the place where they were
audible ?

Because many persons liked to herd in cities and
bargain with their neighbours, and had grown into
the idea that this was of the essence of life, that was
no reason why he should do so. It was just as pos-
sible now as it ever had been to withdraw from the
crowd and live quietly. He was set for a while on
a great round world, tumbling through space. It
was clearly in his right to choose for himself that
part of it where his probation should be passed — the
place that could offer him the one thing he wanted,
that ecstasy of knowledge which he had felt for a
moment or two. Not stones and slates, but the
intangible world of sordid personalities, shut him
in. Their dream must always be unreal to him,
therefore useless. Stephen, in spite of his vivid
intelligence, was really a groundling. Once he had
reached a hand to his friend through a window in
the wall of sense ; but now he had drawn back with
merely a grudging remembrance of the landscape
he had seen. Love has more than one way of
anchoring a soul to earth.

But Hester Waring in her cell : she, it seemed,
had built herself a world from the happy difficulties
of her art and the silent spaces of the earth. If she
could so throw off the clogging habits of the crowd,

CROSS-ROADS 277

he could too. He longed for freedom. But he was
lonely ; wanted flattery, encouragement. Now as
ever, at the last resort it was a weakness not a
strength that determined him.

' I'll go and speak to Mrs. Levi about it,' he
said.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION

' I have talked once or twice of the Shadowy Companion, but
one must not forget that there is the Muddy Companion also.' —
ARTHUR MACHEN.

WHEN Willie came in to her, Mrs. Levi was sitting
with her back to the window, and in becoming prox-
imity to a group of daffodils, arranged in the Japanese
manner in a Wedgwood soup-plate. She received
him on the plaintively expectant note, which her
admirers were intended to mistake for cordiality.
He was welcome. Elsa had been dull during his
absence. Mr. Levi had recently taken to golf ; it
affected his conversation, and the passive contempt
which she had always felt for him was rapidly
changing to active dislike. One cannot speak, even
cryptically, of the high lights and values of life, to
a person who replies in terms of tees and niblicks.

Willie came to her in the mood of a world-worn
warrior returning to the kindly nurse of his youth.
He wanted advice, practical counsels for the future.
He did not know as yet what to do with his new
freedom, how to act so that he might not lose the

278

THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 279

light he had gained. Elsa, who pointed so persis-
tently the way she did not go, might solve the
problem. He longed for an environment in which
he could talk truthfully and without fear. This,
perhaps, were too much to hope for. But he felt
that he had in her a safe and comfortable feather
pillow for his weary soul : and his first impression,
greeting eyes that were fresh from the schooling of
Italy, pleased his taste. In the soft secretive folds
of her mauve white and gray tea-gown, she looked
like an inky rainbow set for promise in the cloudy
skies of his life.

But he noticed a change in the room. Its atmo-
sphere, always very personal, did not any longer
agree with the quiet lines of its decoration. There
was a sense of insecurity. Elsa had a restless ex-
pression, unexpected movements : some unfamiliar
attribute had been added to her.

Mrs. Levi, in fact, was unhappy. At forty years of
age, she found herself with a vulgar family, a vanish-
ing figure, and few resources beyond her unimpeach-
able if shallow taste. A handsome woman dissatisfied
with her husband is at best a percussion cap — at
worst a bomb. Her explosive power, increasing
with maturity, varies at last in inverse ratio to her
charm. Elsa had passed her perihelion : now she
was retreating from the sun. The last stages of her
inflorescence had been accomplished with the vio-
lence peculiar to her race. With advancing years,
the circle of her waist grew larger, and that of her

28o THE GREY WORLD

admirers correspondingly decreased. She became
eager, nervous ; lost the assured pose of the divinity
and took on the subtleties of the huntress, as Diana
when she left Olympus for the woods.

Willie's engagement to Mildred had been the first
check in a career at once virtuous and successful.
He had worshipped her, and she had ceased to be
enough for him. It was astounding, but so obvious
that she was obliged to believe it. But the break-
down of his passion had restored her self-esteem.
Evidently, it had been a temporary aberration.
She allowed herself the pleasure of forgiving him for
a crime of which he was unconscious, and supposed
that as consolatrix she had regained in full her old
power over his mind.

Now that he returned to her — cool, cured and free-
she felt that the time had come to drive firmer rivets
into the loose chain by which she had bound him.
She did not want love. That was often inartistic
and always dangerous. She wanted subservience.
Her husband had never given it to her, and she still
supposed that it was worth having. Willie's deser-
tion was a sign, unmistakable if unexpected, that
her charm was no longer sufficient to hold all the
allegiance of a man. Who shall describe the spectres
that wait upon fading beauty ? Elsa saw long
dreary years of respectable nonentity ahead, when
her title to consideration would be that of wife, not
of woman. Even whilst Willie kissed her fingers and
called her his only friend, this vision wrecked her

THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 281

peace. At all costs, she was bound to forget it ;
for her self-respect was hinged on more delicate
matters than her knowledge of Italian Art. She
knew that ideal loveliness would give her no con-
solation in the moment when it became her only
hope.

She set herself now to a careful flattery, a judicious
condescension. But she found a change in their
relation. Willie was older, more manly. He no
longer sat at her feet. This new air of inde-
pendence, this assumption of equality, pleased
Mrs. Levi. She perceived that her prize, could she
secure it, would be something better than the
charming, neurotic boy of the past. She was placed
on her mettle. This was a man who could, if he
chose, dominate her, rather than be possessed. As
she looked at him, she felt again the delicious weak-
ness, the happy helplessness of sex, which she was
afraid that she had lost with her youth. She thanked
Providence for this unexpected mercy : it took ten
years off her age.

She leaned to him, held his hand, spoke of their
long separation.

* But it has been good,' she said. ' I find a change
in you. You are happier, stronger, are you not ?
Oh, I know your trouble. Death is terrible always,
and a parting. But your soul, I think, is more
quiet ?'

' Yes,' said Willie. He spoke meditatively, as if
reasoning with himself. * Yes, I think I begin to

282 THE GREY WORLD

understand. It's not all so simple as one thinks at
first ; there's more gradation. Italy helped ; I owe
you the thanks for that. I shan't be confused by
the ugliness and artifice now. But I've thought
lately that Stephen was partly right when he spoke
of love as the real key.'

' Yes ?'

' But only so far as it's a sort of beauty. It must
be a mystic unfettered love ; an ardour, not an
instinct. An attitude of rapture towards something
outside one's self — beautiful things, or exquisite
emotions.'

He seemed to be gazing at Elsa, reading her,
wanting her. But really he was seeing in a far-away
vision Umbria, and the Franciscan chapel, and the
picture which had filled his heart with a humble and
a passionate desire. Mrs. Levi, however, met and
claimed that brooding look, and a pleasant excite-
ment possessed her.

' Ah,' she said, ' I so thoroughly agree with you.
Ultimate Beauty is not to be found in conventional
passions, is it ? It is the strange and the obscure in
love, the panic rapture, that feeds the soul I think.
So few understand that ! Modern love seems always
to lead to the altar or the divorce court. In either
case, the advertisement is a profanation.'

She had slid into the dreamy, rhapsodic tone ; the
tone that had always held her fascination for him.
But he no longer found her entirely convincing. He
had made the inevitable progress from a general love

THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 283

of the lovely to a passion for simplicity, Tightness,
and distinction in Art. Elsa lacked the touch of
austerity which was necessary to the satisfaction of
his taste. She had developed, too, that dangerous
tendency of brilliant women, which leads them to
parody, when they intend to accentuate, their own
charms. She was tempted to add artifice to art, and
the effect was disagreeable. Her languid voice was
a little too slow and precious ; the delicate perfume
which hung about her possessions was a little too
strong. So that a suggestion of the panther crept
in to mar Willie's admiration ; he thought of the
subtle claws ; and a memory of the mouse-like
Mildred rose gratefully before him, as of something
brought forth indeed of the earth, but sane and
temperate.

Elsa had intuition ; she saw her influence in the
balance ; and an appealing, baffled look, veiled the
assured vanity of her beautiful eyes. She wanted
his unqualified devotion. It had soothed her as
nothing else could do. She could not be aesthetic
without an audience.

' How lonely we are, you and I !' she said. ' How
absolutely lonely ! I sometimes think that because
of that there should be more than a common com-
munion between us. We felt it from the first, did
we not ?'

' You were always most kind to me,' said Willie.

He moved uneasily : Elsa frightened him. It is
uncomfortable to owe a debt of gratitude to an

284 THE GREY WORLD

idol whose clay foundations you have just found
out.

' If I have been kind, it is because kindness is so
easy, so natural, when one spirit is in sympathy with
another '

She crossed over to the low divan where he was
sitting, dropped her voice to a lower and more
tremulous key.

' You and I,' she said, ' alone amongst all these
domesticated animals, these human machines, trying
to extract sweetness and light from the comfortable
squalor of things ! How could we help turning
towards each other ? It's strange, but from the
beginning I knew that we should think alike about
all that really matters — the sadness and the glamour
of life. We both look at existence so thoroughly in
the Botticelli way.'

' It was you who first taught me to do that,' said
Willie, rather nervously. Some form of civil thanks-
giving seemed safe.

' You would have found it for yourself sooner or
later : one cannot deny one's temperament. Some-
times, I'm almost tempted to wish that one could.
There are moments when I long for human inter-
course, and the warmth of things. But I'm too
fastidious. I cannot care for kisses unless they are
the medium of a spiritual embrace. A husband's
caress, I fancy, must always be a very desolate thing.'

' You're bound to be lonely,' answered Willie, ' if
you care for loveliness at all, I think. People don't

THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 285

understand it just now, whatever they may have
done once. When the soul wakes, it sees that it is
really shut off from the others who still sleep, can
never communicate with them. One must find one's
own happiness, and no one can help anyone else.'

' Ah, we are each so truly alone upon the road, are
we not ? But now and then, a miracle may happen,
as it has between you and me, and two spirits under-
stand one another. I often think, as I look at lovers,
at husbands and wives perhaps, What use is this
appearance of comradeship between your bodies,
when your souls can never be companions ? With
us, how different ! It is a joy to take the hand of a
friend when there is no conventional glove between.
There must be something beautiful, something
emblematic, I think, in the material touch, the
caress perhaps, which is born of a mystical friend-
ship.'

' Oh no,' said Willie. ' It's the material part of
life that spoils everything. You begin by trying to
be fair to your body, and it turns round on you and
stifles your soul. It's a danger. One must keep it
down if one wants to see the Vision.'

' But I have felt sometimes,' she said, * have not
you ? that material life has a use, perhaps,that is not
inimical to the Higher Beauty of things. It should
be the symbol that interprets the needs of the soul,
its communions and its revulsions. What else,
indeed, can it be for ? Our physical acts, in that
way, may become the paint upon the canvas of life.'

286 THE GREY WORLD

' Perhaps. I'd never thought of it like that. Of
course, all sensual things must be the shadows of
some great Reality '

' Yes, yes ! That's what I mean. And the outer
and visible signs that are enough in themselves to
satisfy the lower, denser natures — they might become
for us the symbols of a transcendental mystery.'

Very suddenly, and without in any exact manner
defining to himself the meaning of her words, Willie
felt frightened. Some power on watch within his
spirit trembled : he became coldly, numbly afraid,
as if he were a small animal waiting for the spring of
an evil beast.

' We, who have courage, who are independent of
all the silly regulations of the world,' said Elsa, ' why
should our lives remain incomplete ?'

He did not answer. He was dazed by his own
vivid intuition. A dreadful silence sprang up
between them. It was like the slow droppings of
cold water. As each second passed, and each drop
fell, Willie, knowing that Mrs. Levi watched him
carefully, felt her personality come round him like a
cloud. At first, he was passive under the influence :
then, as the silence took shape, and weighed more
heavily on him, he perceived in himself quite sud-
denly the birth-struggles of a new individual.

It seemed to be called into existence by the
strained atmosphere, in which he could hear Elsa's
quick breath calling to him. Her eyes, wide open,
tried to meet his. In her, too, there was a change.

THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 287

Both had dropped to some dark, elemental plane of
existence. They were dominated by a force much
stronger than the tidy conventional Self of daily life.

The heavy scents that hung about the room dulled
Willie's brain. Something tremendous had hap-
pened ; he did not quite know what it was. The
unknown powers which lie at the back of Silence
and constitute its danger and its charm, seized hold
of him. He recognised in himself a dark personality,
now fully born, of which he had known nothing in the
past. It was hideous, yet it had a horrible fascina-
tion. It lived, he perceived, in some black and un-
suspected world to which he had never penetrated ;
yet it was as truly a part of his Ego as the soul that
he watched over so carefully.

Still in silence, he saw a monster rear itself up
in Mrs. Levi's spirit, look at him through her eyes
with a horrible longing. And the creature that was
hidden in him said to him insistently, * Seize your
prey. It is yours : why do you wait ?'

The silence seemed now to have lasted many hours.
It was this that had loosed these prisoners upon them.
The chatter of daily life shuts down many terrible
captives, which struggle to the light in the rare
moments when the tongue is still. This silence was
strong and dangerous : more dangerous than all the
subtleties of speech. There was distilled from it
some violent impulse ; morbid, evil, unspeakable.
Willie knew now of pleasures more piercing than the
common things of sense, and of the obscure tempta-

288 THE GREY WORLD

tions which come to those who have tried to live
altogether in the spirit.

The inner enemy was creeping upwards. The
stillness and that strange glow in Elsa's eyes seemed
to be crying ' Shape your dream as you choose.
Matter means nothing. It is only the clumsy vehicle
of soul.' He began to tremble. She saw it, and
her excitement increased. She would not move.
She wished to taste the full intoxication ; and for
that it was necessary that he should be the captor,
not the slave.

One must suppose that the gods were not on the
side of Mrs. Levi ; for it was at this moment that the
sun came from behind showery clouds and shone
brightly. It foiled the hastily drawn curtains, and
laid a beam of strong clean light across the room.
It struck Willie's eyes with a sharpness that was
almost a sound : he turned to the window and saw
blue sky, and the innocent loveliness of a flowering
laburnam-tree against the drab stucco of the opposite
house.

The sky stood between the dingy roofs and
chimneys — the same immaculate purity that had
vaulted in the magic of Italy. Below it, the tree
tossed its sacrifice of yellow blossoms, in a gay
revel of perfection which was piety and daintiness
in one. It drew his thoughts abruptly to the
ordered and exquisite places unsullied by human
grime, where life could be beautiful, temperate,
ideal. He looked back at Elsa and the elaborate

THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 289

artifice of her setting. The creature whom she had
roused in him knew nothing of the heavens, and only
the baser secrets of the earth. It shrank back, like
a germ of disease, unable to bear the sunlight. The
dark magic had vanished. Everything, after all,
was sane and normal.

Mrs. Levi seemed to have faded, become ordinary.
He had thought of Lilith : now he saw only Eve.
The horrible things that he had learnt in the silence
retreated to a great distance. He came back from
the dark dimension and looked about him : first
with a sick disgust, then in a puzzled, doubtful way.

As the image grew less distinct, he began to question
his own perceptions. Finally, Elsa sank back to her
old easy careless attitude, smiled at him with the old
assured condescension. Then it came to his mind
that he had wronged her : her words could not have
carried the weight which his nervous fancy had sup-
posed. He had been betrayed into the last meanness
of male vanity. He felt hot, ashamed : wondered
how much she had read of his thought. He dared
not speak. But he withdrew the hand that she had
kept between her fingers. Her touch burnt it.

Elsa, perceiving her mistake, behaved well. To
shock Willie would be to humiliate herself : she set
herself to the saving of his modesty. Fortunately
the conversation had been metaphorical from the
first. One dexterous touch from her would be
enough to make it entirely unintelligible.

* The legend of S. Catherine,' she said, ' puts the

19

2go THE GREY WORLD

idea of a spiritual union so exquisitely, does it not ?
A ring given in a dream ! What symbol could be
more appropriate ?'

Willie's instant and obvious relief was perhaps
the greatest of the afternoon's cruelties. Elsa drove
back the unbecoming tears from her eyelids, and saw
for one hateful instant the gulf which her years of
maturity had placed between them. Then she
pushed him a little from her and looked at him,
almost in her old, kindly, patronizing way. Perhaps
there was a new glitter in her eyes had he seen it, but
he was glad to avoid them.

' Why weren't you my son, Willie ?' she said. ' I
often think the fairies must have changed you with
Geraint. There is something in you that appeals to
me so strangely, makes me feel almost that you are
mine.'

Willie received this idea gratefully, and discussed
it in all its bearings : so that the phantom which lay
between them was pushed out of sight, seemed
unreal, impossible. It is really quite difficult to
believe in the evil elemental things, when one is
eating thin bread-and-butter in a pretty house
rented at £250 a year. The tense expression, the
wildness, had gone from Elsa's face. Willie began
to wonder whether it had ever been there.

But as he was leaving, her acting broke abruptly.
She caught his arm and looked into his face. He
felt the fingers shake upon his sleeve.

' I'm a fool !' she said. ' Oh, what a fool ! But

THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION 291

I thought for a minute that it could have been
beautiful : oh, indeed I did. With us, because of
the artistry we could have put into it. And all my
life, I've wanted something beautiful and secret.
Glamour — even a wicked glamour. Anything to
break this neat, stucco existence ! And there's a
strangeness in you, Willie ; a magic. With you, it
could never have been the sordid thing.'

She forgot her pose and her reservations. She
came closer to him, showing in her carelessness the
loose folds of tired skin on her neck ; the peevish
lines of unwilling age about her mouth. Her lips
were almost on his cheek : his soul felt suffocated.
It was horrible. He broke away, found himself
blundering down the stairs, came into the street.

But once in the air, he had a sudden sense of liberty
and exhilaration. It seemed that he had left a part
of himself — a baser part, unnoticed, none the less
existent — behind. He knew himself now strong,
free, a Man. In her clumsy effort toward binding
him, E]sa had loosed the last of his chains.

Willie had led a white life, kept chaste by the
shining quality of his dream. Curious innocencies
were mixed with his thoughts about things. That
Elsa, for him the first priestess of the Higher Beauty,
should actually seek as pleasurable and rare this de-
basement of their intercourse — this made him rock
with the violence of the impact, as it came into col-
lision with all his past hopes of the world. For the
first time, his light contempts of matter turned to

19 — 2

292 THE GREY WORLD

hatred. He perceived some positive principle of
evil — venomous and aggressive — in the body. It.
confirmed in him that latent asceticism which is
natural to the contemplative mind.

He stood on the pavement, outside the door — that
door where he would never again ask for admittance.
All the words of their interview passed across his
memory in endless procession ; over and over again,
with a firm tread not to be stilled. They made a
horrible and tuneless noise. But for them, his mind
was silent. Their steady tramp drowned the rushing
trebles of the street. It is so hard for a man, if he
be of pure life, to realize that there is anything
of the animal in his woman-friend. Elsa, clever
and absurd, kindly and affected, always restfully
appreciative — he had felt so safe with her ! Now
he should never forget the evil thing which had
brought a quick savagery into that placidly artistic
drawing-room, and roused with its stealthy touch
some unnameable creature latent in him. Half the
anger he felt was for this : that he had found an
actual temptation where he had thought himself
invulnerable. There had been a ' beauty of ugli-
ness ' in the morbid forces which Elsa had loosed
between them ; and another, unexpected element
was added to the tangle of life.

When the tidy vestments of social intercourse are
torn, it is generally that we may see how necessary
is their presence : even for our immaculate selves.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE PATH RUNS TO THE WOODS

' Then he went on till he came to the house of the Interpreter,
where he knocked over and over. . . . Then said the Interpreter,
Come in ; I will show that which will be profitable to thee.' —
JOHN BUNYAN.

LOOKING into the depths of the woods, seeing against
white sky strong trunks and wandering branches
laced together in a mysterious friendship, nothing
is easier than to believe in nymphs, dryads, elemental
presences of the forest. They stand shadowy upon
the paths ; they laugh and sigh ; and sometimes
the soul hears them with a sudden terror.

Paganism is thrust upon one in the country ; a
whole invisible, immemorial population walks upon
the lonely heaths and makes the brushwood tremble.
It cries, ' You come with your new beliefs ; your
religions, dragged from the East and seated in the
heavens ; your science, and your blinded common-
sense ; and deny us. But we — we looked out on
Arthur's knights, to us the old Romans came in fear
and in secret ; we are of the Earth, all-powerful and
intangible. You cannot touch us, and we cannot die.

293

294 THE GREY WORLD

All is of the Earth ; the teeming spirit-world is her
breath, pervading all and seen of none. You speak
to us of a Christ who came from the Heavens. We
say no, He came from the Earth. The sum of her
pure impulses and poetic forces, her power for a
magical righteousness," reached their term in Him.
He is the Fair Brother of whom the dark creatures
of the forests know dimly ; as Jacob and Esau, so
Pan and Christ. Both live. But do not fling back
the terrible birth on Earth's bosom, and deny her
her Beautiful Son. Look back, and see how many
times she has strained toward the ideal which He
perfected ; see the Buddha births, the fair god of
the Norsemen, Phoebus Apollo, and the rest. The
Incarnation was an incarnation of Earth-holiness,
which God gave her with the breath of life when
she was made.'

In such a way the voices of the woods spoke to
Mr. Willie Hopkinson, as he trod a path between
the trees. He gave them a willing attention. He
had developed the sense of adventure ; that power
which differentiates the romantic from the prosaic
world. He felt that everything was possible, and
to one who is in this disposition the impossible is
sure to come. Want of faith in the improbable is
really responsible for all that is deliberately dreary
in our lives. Those who go whistling down the
road, eyes raised to the sun and hope waiting round
the corner, seldom find the excursion of life a dis-
appointing one.

THE PATH RUNS TO THE WOODS 295

Memory of Fra Agostino, his altar-piece and its
painter, and the finding on a map of the woody
hamlet that is called S. Mary-le-Street, had set
him upon these travels. He looked for a happy
termination ; for some beautiful surprise, and the
discreet discovery of a friend. The whole world
seemed smiling, helpful, and unexpected. So that
he was not astonished when the turning of a corner,
as the trodden path wandered through the pine-
wood, brought an abrupt change in the scenery.

From the moment when he left the open country
for the forest, he had felt himself to be in surround-
ings that were charged with romance. Now he
thought of the background of some old picture —
stiff, quaint, definite. The trees stood up straight
and high on each side of him like sanctuary
candles, their upper branches shining where they
were caught by the sun. Between the austere ranks
of their brown and purple trunks and dark network
of their crowns, the sky, very blue, peeped in. But
where he stood, trees fell away suddenly for a little
glade of vivid mossy grass. It seemed to thread its
way far down into the heart of the wood, as if
searching for a treasure-house hidden there ; and
ended where a small white red-roofed building stood
solitary, giving to its surroundings a touch of un-
English magic.

He had strayed into the country of Diirer's
etchings, or the legendary landscape of Benozzo
Gozzoli. He expected that at any moment he might

296 THE GREY WORLD

see a white hart flash past him, and follow it till it
reached the cave where S. Giles was praying. He
wondered which would be the most likely encounter
— Snow-white and her dwarfs, or the Three Magi
with their camels and their gifts. The background
demanded pretty miracles, and he did not care
whether folk-lore or piety supplied them.

But the centre of the picture was that little
building, delicately withdrawn and gardened
amongst the trees. The afternoon sun hit its
roof, which flamed rosily against an emerald back-
ground. It looked oddly self-conscious in that very
sombre solitude. Willie walked towards it ; he was
curious. It was like nothing that he had seen in
English woods. He did not know what it could be.

Then he came up to it, where it stood guarded
by two great larches. And it was a shrine that
he saw — a whitewashed shrine, with red-tiled roof
deep-eaved to keep it from the rain. There was
a picture, painted with direct, affecting simplicity
of the primitive masters ; clear flat tints, firm
outlines, a minute and loving finish of detail. It
was charming and appropriate in this place, where a
pretence at realism in art would have declared itself
vulgar against the eternal simplicity of the woods.
One saw the Madonna, very tall and grave, stand-
ing in that forest. Behind her, stone-pine and
larch, dark and solemn, like the pillars of a temple
against the sky. At her feet was all the population
of the wood, come out to welcome and worship her ;

THE PATH RUNS TO THE WOODS 297

rabbits and weasels, badgers, squirrels, dormice and
birds, sitting together in friendship. She raised a
veil from her face and smiled at them ; she was the
Mother of all simple and delightful things, of natural
happiness and pious gaiety. One black-cap had
perched on her lifted arm the better to sing his
Venite ; two fluffy white rabbits, painted as Pisa-
nello might have painted them, were against the
hem of her blue dress.

It was a quiet picture, full of the kindly sorcery
of the forest. In front of it, a plain silver lamp
was alight ; it gave that suggestion of a mysterious
cult which lamps burning in the sunlight carry with
them. Two dishes of white violets in moss stood
on the red-tiled step ; behind them and beneath the
picture, a painted scroll was nailed up. It was
there that Willie read these words : ' Of your
charity think kindly on the soul of Francis Waring,
for whose remembrance this place has been made.''

The mystical air of the place was explained to
him then. He had come upon a spot set apart for
the recollection of the Dead. At such, he knew,
one is more than ordinarily near the Eternal Thing.

He knelt down. Again, as when he saw the Lady
Poverty, he felt that some great invitation was being
offered to him ; that there was here a new, simple,
wholly satisfying reading of life. He found the
attitude, if not the words, of prayer ; and with it
the solemn happiness which waits for the spirit that
has strength to abase itself in the heart of the woods.

298 THE GREY WORLD

All the natural and delightful sounds which are
thwarted by mere active human presence, rush in
on its stillness then. It is the saints in their open
cells, the artists alone with their work, who know
what magic of suggestion goes with the murmuring
leaves and delicate movements of the earth.

All these things came to Willie as he knelt, and
raised up in him the Pagan passion of the soil. It was
one of those moments, for him so rare and precious,
when his dream wrapped him round closely and
he could not believe in ugliness. So that he stayed
there, not in any serious meditation, but merely
enjoying his own visionary idea of the absolute
unity of things, till the sound of a footstep amongst
crisp pine-needles raised his head and crimsoned
his face with the ensign of an entirely common-
place shame.

It was a woman who stood by him ; a woman
whose hair ran away from her face in interesting
ripples, and twined itself into an umber coronet for
her head. Willie's first thought of her was that he
had never seen anyone before Who had so much of
the thirteenth-century in her look ; and indeed
Nature, hesitating between a grotesque and a Gothic
Madonna, had given to her a quaintness which was
the quintessence of all charm. One almost missed
her features — delicate and irregular, with a sort of
knowing, elfish purity stamped on them — because
her smile seized the eye first and held it. It was
the delightfully naughty smile of a fundamentally

THE PATH RUNS TO THE WOODS 299

good person ; an angel up to mischief. It was
evident that she was the child of humour and holi-
ness, a rare and very splendid ancestry.

She stood beside Willie for some moments. He
had conquered the first impulse toward flight, and
knelt still on the step of the shrine. Human life,
be what it may, seems dream-like and elusive in the
forest. He had no very direct sense of her nearness,
for two things only were now real to him — the
picture of Our Lady, and the sombre ecstasy of
the pine-trees where they flung their branches to
the light.

But she meant, it appeared, to bring him within
her atmosphere.

* What are you doing ?' she said.

Willie did not look at her. He wished to keep
what he had got, undisturbed by external strange-
ness.

' I am trying to pray,' he answered.

' At any rate,' she said, * you are honest ; and
that is the first step toward success.'

He glanced at her then, and knew her for a friend.

' It's hard,' he said. ' Dreadfully difficult. And
yet prayer ought to be the easiest thing.'

' It's easier in the woods, or should be. There
are no discords to interrupt. Perhaps you've come
from a city. That's so suffocating. But you'll shake
it off ; the whole of life is a sort of prayer in the
forest, and a language grows to suit it.'

Then, for the first time, he thought whom she

300 THE GREY WORLD

must be, and saw in this quiet meeting in the woods
the Event that his spirit had waited for. But he
doubted, because she moved with such a gay liberty ;
more, he thought, like a pious squirrel than a person
vowed to the religious life. There was nothing
cloistral in her air.

' You cannot,' he said, ' be Hester Waring, who
lives here as an Anchoress ?'

She laughed.

' Can't I ?' she answered. ' Why not ? Am I
too healthy ? Or perhaps not solemn enough ?
But when you've lived alone with the sky and the
forest, right away from the squalor of things, you
can't be solemn. Everything's right. Life goes

with a dance * She stopped. ' But it's a

dance before the Altar,' she added.

' But,' said Willie, ' does no one ever find you
here ? Have you really freed yourself ?'

That, he thought, was the great matter.

' Yes, really ! It's the loneliest place. One of
those bits of solitude that's been waiting for its
Crusoe. I'm as unknown now as when I came.
The owner doesn't preserve, so there are no keepers ;
no other murder is done here than the natural law
of the wood. Jays may live as well as pheasants,
and sometimes pussy-cat owls look in on me at
night. My friend, who possesses all this forest, has
never stirred out of Italy since he came into his own.
He is one of those happy visionaries whom the
North lends to the South.'

THE PATH RUNS TO THE WOODS 301

' I've come from Italy to you.'
' Of course you have ! It's where all the mystics
come from, first or last. The Holy Land of Europe !
The only place left, I suppose, which is really
medicinal to the soul. There is a type of mind,
you know, which must go there to find itself.'

' I was only there for thirteen days.'

' Days ? What are days ? It's the spirit, not
the hour, that counts. One may live through a
year of experience for every moment that Time
sends flying into the Infinite. And specially in
Italy. Time's torch burns slower there than in
other places.'

She rubbed her eyes with a little impatient move-
ment, as if she wanted to see something beyond the
picture that they showed to her mind. Far down
in their depths, a sombre angel sat and weighed all
that he saw. He was considering very gravely the
case of Mr. Willie Hopkinson, whose freckled face
and careful clothing scarcely agreed with the atti-
tude of his soul. Mrs. Waring loved an adventurer,
but hated an affectation. \Vho, she wondered, was
this rather second-rate young man, who had thrust
himself so suddenly between the tight branches of
her home ? He looked less the Fairy Prince than the
Commercial Traveller. She said to him brusquely

' Why have you come ?'

* There seemed nowhere else. Fra Agostino told
me. He showed me your picture, and I knew that
you understood.'

302 THE GREY WORLD

Willie looked round him. The hush of the woods
seemed like an invocation. He felt an intruder,
small and mean in the midst of the enduring forest ;
but it gathered him up without effort and folded
him in the general peace.

' Here,' he said, ' one could recollect the Dead.'
He looked at the shrine as he spoke.

Her face lit up with a sudden friendship.

' Yes,' she said, ' you can ; and if you've got
that, you're never lonely.' She stooped and trimmed
the silver lamp. It had flickered. ' When Francis
passed over,' she said, ' it seemed that there was
only a great darkness left. But I said to myself
" Pazienza ! I shall die too. It is a regrettable
accident that he should go first, but why be incon-
solable for a temporary loneliness ?" And I settled
down for the long wait. But I found that other
people blurred the image that I had of him. I did
not wish that. So I came here, to be alone with the
wild clean creatures. I thought that I would like to
pass the time as beautifully as I could. It would be a
pity if I met him with a sullied spirit ; he went away
before life had time to tarnish and finger his soul.'

' And you found him ?' asked Willie.

She looked at him sharply.

' How did you know that ?' she said.

' I know it,' said Willie, 'just as I know that I
shall never be sure of the Secret whilst I live in the
crowd. I've got two things to do : to remember
the soul of my mother and live the Imaginative Life.

THE PATH RUNS TO THE WOODS 303

You are on the same road, and you're at peace ; so
you must have found him.'

She considered him very gravely.

' I wonder,' she said, ' how far you have got.'

' Oh, not far. In Italy, I just began to see. But
my life's been passed in ugly places, and I wasn't
strong enough to pierce through that.'

' It's difficult, isn't it ? It seems so much easier,
in these days, to live morally than to live beauti-
fully. Lots of us manage to exist for years with-
out ever sinning against society, but we sin against
loveliness every hour of the day. I don't think the
crime is less great. Beauty, after all, is the visual
side of goodness : it is Christ immanent in the world ;
and its crucifixion still goes on.'

' Oh, I've seen that, too,' said Willie. * I've seen
Heaven and Hell, and the light at the back of things.
But I lose it all so quickly. I daren't live the con-
ventional life ; it makes me forget the real things.
And it seemed that you'd found a way to live rightly,
and do work, without shutting your eyes on reality.'

' I think that I have,' she said. ' But it's a very
old way, you know. The way of the hermits, and
of Blake, and Thoreau : and of all the men who
have wished to possess their own souls and be still.
It's only a shaking off of the idea that you must live
like the rest ; an exchanging of the world Man muti-
lated for the world God made.'

' It's hard to do, all the same.'

'Oh no. It's childish to think that. All the

304 THE GREY WORLD

great things are free, aren't they ? Sun, and water,
and air — all the everlasting symbols ? Well then,
why can't you take them and enjoy them in sim-
plicity ? You haven't got them for long, you know.
And afterwards, if you've only ugly years to look
back on, you'll regret. Here, one can be absolutely
happy. I can be a saint or a baby or an artist, just
as I wish. Yes, a baby ! Haven't you ever noticed
that there's a sort of divine babyishness about people
who are really at peace, just as there is about people
who are really in love ? They get back to the ele-
mental stage, and express themselves through a
simplicity that seems childish because children, as a
rule, are the only creatures pure enough to have it.'

She showed him her cottage, of a shining order.
He saw her books, her little cooking-stove ; in one
corner, a demure work-table, in the other a shelf
with her tiny store of china, and a knife, fork, and
spoon laid out. Everywhere, the neatness was so
satisfying that it verged on actual beauty. There
was a cot folded sailor-fashion against the wall, and
behind it a cast of Michael Angelo's stern and im-
passioned Mary with her Child. Hester caught
Willie's look as he saw it.

' That goes deeper than a crucifix,' she said. ' It's
the essence of the offering.'

He said to her : ' It's perfect here ; one could
live in the right kind of dream. But doesn't the
solitude turn evil sometimes, don't the days ever
seem tedious ?'

THE PATH RUNS TO THE WOODS 305

* No, not now ; there's such heaps to do. The
painting, and thinking things out, and keeping the
cottage and the shrine perfect. And then I've
generally some creatures in the infirmary to look
after ; and in the winter, when it's stormy, I can
always cook, and that never bores me.'

' Cook ?'

' Oh yes ! there's nothing so absolutely satisfy-
ing. It's a sort of triumph of art over the most
animal part of us.'

She opened a cupboard door, and he saw pans
and dishes of fire-proof china, moulds, pastry-board,
and things to sift and grate with. There were
groceries in their little labelled jars.

' My toy-cupboard,' said the Anchoress.

A ladder led to the sky-lit attic where her work
was set out : panels and gesso, tempera colours, and
all the fine careful apparatus of the water-gilder.
Willie, one part craftsman, felt his heart going out
to those clean, well- tended tools ; knives, brushes,
size, and colour-pots, all disposed with a loving
touch which spoke of happy and deliberate labour.
He felt himself in the midst of a diurnal piety,
which made an anthem of the meanest acts. Outside
were the sheltered hutches of her infirmary. Two
maimed rabbits, a broken-winged pigeon, a damaged
field-mouse, were convalescing very tranquilly.

' When I came here,' she said, ' some people
talked to me of the selfishness of a secluded life.
But is it more selfish, do you think, more recluse,

20

306 THE GREY WORLD

to live here with the natural creatures instead of
with the distorted human ones ? We are all alive
under the sky. The Spirit of God is in the woods
as well as in the churches ; He broods over the
sheep-folds as well as over the hearts of men.'

' I never thought,' said Willie, ' that it was possible
to live such a reasonable, unentangled life as this.
It's all so right. And because others won't come with
you to live in the open, surely that's no reason why
you should go back and live in the dark with them.'

' That's just what I think. If only one could
make them believe how satisfactory this is ! The
civilized, scramble-after-illusion people always re-
mind me of a harlequinade. They spend all their
time in bustle and hitting one another. And the
joyous, significant life is so easy to get ! so cheap !
It's only to live beautifully, laboriously, and aus-
terely : in the air, with the light and colour to
remind you of the hidden Beauty behind. And to
work with your mind, soul, and body ; face diffi-
culties ; accept the discipline. That's life. Live
so, and in the moment when you die you'll flame up
towards the other side and live there vividly and
eternally in a happiness that's all your own because
you will have built your own heaven. But one must
be detached, keep clear of the games and the gossip :
they glue you to the earth. But I think you've
learnt that. What you've not learnt is that only
love can give you your liberty.'

' Oh, I know all about love.'

THE PATH RUNS TO THE WOODS 307

She laughed at him.

' You delicious infant !' she said. ' You don't
think I mean passion, do you ? Oceans of bathos
peppered with islands of desire ! That's no use,
but Love is. You must love everything, don't you
see, because everything in the whole world is being
offered to you as a symbol of an adorable Idea that
is beyond. It's only when you've entered into
loving alliance with the Universe that you are
making the most of life. Because flowers and trees
live beautifully for you, it's your duty to live beauti-
fully for others. That's the only law. You've got
your moment of self-expression, and if you use it
for ugliness you will die. You know that, and you
fear it. But you mustn't be afraid, you must love.
You've been hunting all your life for initiation,
haven't you ? But initiation and love are all one.
And don't worry. Worry's the negation of God.'

He went away from her ; thinking her wise,
charming, enviable. Her manner to him had been
so gentle that he never noticed that she was clever
too. Yet, with light touches, she had helped his
discontent to pass from the sensory to the motor
region. She knew very well that he was one of her
company : made for quiet journeyings, not for that
frenzied rush to catch a hypothetical train which
is called the strenuous life. As he left her, she said :

' Go back by the right-hand path. It is better
for you.'

The path pushed its way by winding stages from

20 — 2

308 THE GREY WORLD

the old forest to the new : then wandered by open
glades where rows of baby spruces stood fresh and
prim. Finally, it turned outwards, passed through
a gateway, lost its firm outline and became grassy
and uncertain of itself. In another moment it was
gone ; and Willie checked his stride with a sudden
catching of the breath. He seemed to have stepped
abruptly to one of the edges of the world.

He had burst, in fact, from the woods to the
downland ; from inclusion to infinite space ; from
a home-world to the very far country which stretches
to the Hills of Desire. The downs went away from
him ; green, grey, mauve on the horizon. One
could not conceive that they would ever come to an
end. There was something religious in their aus-
terity. Far away, on a ridge in those lucent dis-
tances, a flock of sheep spread fanwise. He saw
no other living thing. But the silence was benevo-
lent ; there was at once an entire loneliness and a
very intimate sense of consolation. Earth, undis-
turbed, took up her maternal rights : showed him,
in a flash of vivid insight, the Imaginative Universe
shining dimly through the Vegetative World. The
mesh of Time had broken. Eternity was here and
now : and he, wondrous, immortal, saw through
the glassy symbol which is Nature the glory of the
spiritual flame.

Willie flung himself upon the grass and kissed it.
Hester had divined him well : he felt like a wanderer
come home.

CHAPTER XXV

COMMENTARIES
' I feel for the common chord again.' — BROWNING.

* MY dear,' said Mrs. Steinmann, ' have you heard ?'

* I hope not,' answered Elsa languidly. ' Judging
by your expression, it seems likely to be vulgar.'

' On the contrary,' replied Mrs. Steinmann, ' it's
more your business than mine. That wretched
young Hopkinson, whom you made such an absurd
fuss of '

' What, Willie ?' said Elsa with some eagerness.
She had heard nothing of Mr. Willie Hopkinson since
their last interview. She missed him. His presence
might be embarrassing, but his absence was insipid.

The involuntary propriety of her life, and
Mr. Levi's cheerful confidence in her virtue, com-
bined to irritate and depress her. There are
circumstances in which an unsuspicious husband
is an insult as well as a convenience : Elsa longed
for a breath of scandal to stir the stagnation of her
home. To be interesting and not to look it, is the
hard fate of many intelligent women. As Mrs.

3°9

3io THE GREY WORLD

Levi lost her slender outlines, her friends spoke less
than they had done of her soul. Their wives
began to call on her, and showed by their friendly
behaviour that her reign was at an end. Charm
is a matter of corsets as well as of culture : it is not
picturesque to murmur spiritual secrets into the ear
of a stout matron, however well-read. To a small
mind, such an occupation may even appear ridicu-
lous : and the minds of Elsa's confidants, though
perfect in detail and often uncommon in shape,
were rather restricted as to size.

All this made her look back regretfully to the
time when the obtuseness of her relations only
threw into sharper contrast the intelligent compre-
hension of her disciples. Destiny seemed deter-
mined to annoy her. Even her children refused to
feed her vanity. Geraint she detested. Tristram
had written from Paris of his engagement to an
American student of voluptuous charm, and she
saw the future in a horrid vision. She had longed
for a lover, but Providence, it appeared, was
inclined to give her a grandchild instead.

Religion might have provided her with a refuge
both natural and artistic ; for she had always been a
sentimental Theist, finding God so poetic a back-
ground to existence that she was careful not to
blot Him out. But now she became impatiently
atheistical as the morning sunshine faded. She could
not believe in a Deity who was rude enough to permit
her to suffer in such an uninteresting way.

COMMENTARIES 311

Mrs. Steinmann — whose dislike of her daughter's
anaemic insolence was tempered by her passion
for imparting unpleasant information — now brought
to her the news of Willie's withdrawal from civilized
life. It had long been her belief that Elsa had
made a fool of him : a work of supererogation not to
be classed amongst the duties of a wife and mother.
The discomfiture of their erring relations is an act
of charity which few good women would willingly
neglect. Having noted Mrs. Levi's excitement,
Mrs. Steinmann kept her waiting for several minutes,
took off her gloves, re-tied the strings of her bonnet,
and then condescended to speak.

' Well !' she said, ' of course everybody could
see that he was bound to do something foolish
sooner or later : but no one imagined that it would
be anything so idiotic as this. It seems he went
off into the country the other day by himself —
quite suddenly, without a word to Pauline, who
went on ordering in his extra milk just as usual.
Young men are so selfish ; no consideration for the
housekeeper. However, when he came back, he
said he'd only come to fetch his things, as he was
going to live down in this place in future — some
little hamlet in Sussex, miles from a railway-station
and altogether as inconvenient as you could find :
it's called S. Mary-le-Street. He'd seen a cottage
on the downs that he liked, and nothing would do
but he must live there alone and do bookbinding.'

The blow was sudden. Elsa, unable to pretend

312 THE GREY WORLD

gratified interest, leaned back in the shadow and
contrived a becoming languor.

' How strange !' she said, ' and how courageous !
I am not entirely surprised ; it is the true expression
of his temperament, I think. Alone with Nature
and Art ! He can scarcely fail to find peace.'

' Wait till you've heard the end of the story,
my dear. Of course, he's his own master, being
over twenty-one ; and Mr. Hopkinson allows him
£100 a year, so he can't starve. But he's going,
if you please, to do his own cooking and everything,
just like a common working-man. Think of the
discomfort and the mess ! And no one will take any
notice of him. You know what County people are
— they'll think he's a Socialist.'

' That,' said Elsa, ' must console him a good
deal.'

' And what upsets me,' continued Mrs. Steinmann,
' is the risks that he must run. He was always
delicate : and out in all weathers, with no one to
see that he changes his boots ! Cooking for himself,
too ; and one knows what that means — chronic
dyspepsia for a certainty, if not gastritis. It's
really a mercy that his poor mother died before this
happened ; it would have killed her, for he was
always her favourite. And then, as I said to Pauline,
what sort of a place do people of that kind live in ?
Some horrible little hovel, I suppose, with windows
that won't open at the top : and ten to one the
drains have never been inspected.'

COMMENTARIES 313

' Nevertheless,' said Elsa, ' I can imagine being
happy in such a life. It appeals to all that is best
in me.'

* The risk of typhoid, and the constant society
of earwigs, don't appeal to me,' replied her mother.
' Willie doesn't know what it is. If he had con-
sulted those older than himself, instead of rushing
away so hurriedly, it would have shown more
common-sense, as well as being more respectful.
What I quite intended to suggest to him was, that
he and Geraint should take a little flat together —
somewhere towards Hammersmith, or Chiswick.
That is the right locality for Willie, with his fancy
for Arts and Crafts ; and Geraint could have come
up by the tram and tube.'

' I don't think they would have agreed very well
together ; their temperaments are so diverse.'

' Oh, but Geraint's such a good-natured fellow >
he could have put up with anything. And Willie
needs a cheerful companion : he is just the one
person who ought never to live alone. I could have
found them a nice cook-general, and they would
have been very comfortable indeed.'

' For a permanency, I should prefer the society
of the typhoid bacillus to that of Geraint,' said
Geraint's mother pleasantly.

' You never appreciated that boy, my dear. He
has got more sound, robust common-sense, than all
the rest of you put together. Mr. Hopkinson
thinks great things of him. Only the other day, he

314 THE GREY WORLD

said to me " Young Levi will do well ; he knows
the smell of money."

' What,' said Elsa quickly, ' is Mr. Hopkinson
going to do about Willie ?'

' Well, he's really behaving most sensibly ; not
but what he always was a very reasonable, intelli-
gent man. He says that he considers Willie isn't
quite right. Such an unbalanced mind must mean
organic mischief. If he were a little queerer, he
might be a genius ; but as it is, he's only a fool.
Of course he isn't dangerous ; but being like that,
naturally it isn't any use putting him into business
or anything, so he'd just as well be in the country
as anywhere else. It's cheap, and not so exciting
for him as town life ; and the main thing is to
prevent him from making a nuisance of himself.
A terrible thing, isn't it ? I can't think where it
can come from, for poor Mrs. Hopkinson was quite
normal. It's lucky Pauline shows no signs of
eccentricity. Mr. Hopkinson says that Willie is a
waste product of our civilization.'

' Ah, well,' said Elsa, ' from the point of view
of material life, he may be so perhaps. But his
soul had powers that were not of this age. I shall
miss him. The companionship of a mystic is like
a pool of water in a sandy land. But I cannot
blame his decision. His environment was not
congenial, and solitude is better than boredom.
As Meister Eckhardt so beautifully said, " A crowd
is often more lonely than a wilderness." But

COMMENTARIES 315

still, I should think he may feel the want of comrade
souls, of sympathy, after a time.'

Mrs. Steinmann laughed. Her daughter, who
was trying to feel exalted, thought the noise
unpleasant.

' I didn't think you were so innocent, Elsa,' she
said. ' A woman of your age ! It isn't want of
sympathy that Willie will suffer from. I should
have thought you might have guessed that there
was a young woman at the bottom of this ridiculous
plan of his.'

' That,' replied Mrs. Levi, ' is most improbable.
You do not know him as I do. It was his peculiar
charm that he combined the ardours of a mystic
with the cold purity of a cloistered life.'

' Ah, that was because he hadn't found what
he wanted, my dear. He's got it now, and we shan't
hear much more about the cold purity phase. An
artist, I understand, who lives down there entirely
unchaperoned. She gives herself out as a widow,
but there's nothing to prove it. Willie's infatu-
ated : told Stephen Miller that she had " raised
him to the plane of the imaginative life " — whatever
he means by that.'

Elsa received the shock with a fortitude which
she usually kept for her cold baths.

' Ah, I understand so well !' she said. ' It is an
illusion, of course, but for the time being it will
probably obsess him. It was bound to happen —
life is so difficult. But still, it is very disappointing

316 THE GREY WORLD

for those who took an interest in his soul. No
doubt, he has been deceived by an ingenious sim-
plicity : a picturesque and rustic woman, I expect,
who milks a cow and talks of the poetry of mother-
hood.'

' I hear she has no family,' answered Mrs. Stein-
mann, ' and to me that looks all the worse. No
means of proving her age, which is the one hope
in these cases. Pauline told me all about it, and
I said to her, " Well, my dear, of course he thinks
that she is immaculate at present ; but in six months
time it will be a very different tale." Those moony
boys always fall a victim to the first adventuress
they come across.'

Mrs. Levi changed the conversation.

*****

Stephen had been down to visit Willie : an
ambassador from the outraged proprieties of home.
His mission included an inquiry into the sanitation
of the cottage, and the investigation of Willie's
flannel shirts, Hester's morals, and the cost of living
in S. Mary-le-Street. He came back with a sort
of wistfulness in his face.

' To see them,' he said to Pauline, when he had
tersely mentioned the result of the visit to Mr.
Hopkinson — ' to see them, is to feel that one has
somehow missed fire in life. They have everything,
I think, that matters — health and innocence and
hope. Willie is transformed. He's got a little
cottage there in a hollow of the downs, about a mile

COMMENTARIES 317

from the shrine in the wood. He's set up his presses
and his finishing bench, and he works there binding
books, as she works at her paintings. It's all so
simple and joyous ; whilst one is there, one feels
it's the only possible life. Just that one example
seems to have taught him what he wanted. It
shames me when I think of our drawing-office, and
all the inefficiency and ugliness and fuss.'

' Oh, but Stephen dear ! you wouldn't like to
be a failure, like poor Willie ?'

* What is a failure ?' said Stephen. His dark
intelligent face had a discontented look. ' I couldn't
help thinking, when I was with him, that the sort of
thing we call a successful life is very paltry after
all. Of course, it's amusing : but it's rather the
type of amusement supplied by a comic paper. I
don't know that providing burlesque for the Deity
is a very high destiny for a man.'

* You are very profane,' said Pauline stiffly. As
her marriage-day approached, she began to treat
Stephen with the firm common-sense which she
usually kept for her relations. ' One has one's
duty to consider ; and of course Willie has shirked
all his responsibilities and buried what talents he
had in the most disgraceful way.'

' Well, I don't know. He's responsible for him-
self in the first place : and as for talents, he is doing
beautiful work. I saw some of the bindings he
had finished. They had a sort of distinguished
Tightness about them. He's found himself, that's

3i8 THE GREY WORLD

the truth ; and he's lost that look of grasping after
something out of reach. I felt that he couldn't
have worked like that in London. It's the great
spaces and quiet influences that are turning him
into an artist. I asked him if he were sure he'd
made a wise choice : and he said " I don't want
to be wise. The Wise Men had no peace, they
journeyed after their Star ; but my Star is carried
and hidden." '

' How perfectly ridiculous,' said Pauline with
decision. Much as she believed herself to love —
even admire — Stephen, she felt that it was only
right to check him before these objectionable ideas
took root. ' I'm sure people who are any good
can work just as well in town as they can in the
country. I never could bear it myself except for
the holidays, and then it had to be a place where
the cycling was good.'

' Oh, it would never do for us,' answered Stephen

rather sadly. ' But he and Mrs. Waring ' He

stopped : Hester had charmed him, and he knew
that it would be better not to speak of her. But
Pauline was curious.

' I hope,' she said vaguely, ' that it is quite — all
right ? She's fairly young, isn't she ?'

' Yes, but she has the active innocence that's
invulnerable. And I believe she has Willie's queer
ideas about dead people : she loves her husband
now in exactly the same way as when he was alive.
I noticed that she sometimes looked sad when she

COMMENTARIES 319

was talking, but her face was always happy in repose.
She smiled then at something she saw, which was
not visible to other people.'

' Still,' said Pauline, carefully balancing herself
between purity and knowledge of the world, * it
seems a little risky. Willie must admire her, to
go and model his whole existence on her like that.'

' Yes, but then, they are so exactly suited to
each other that it's perfectly safe. Men don't fall
in love with their stronger selves ; it would be too
appropriate.'

' Did Willie talk about her much ?'

* No. He talked about his work — our work —
making beauty. He seemed as though he still
wanted to help me to see what he has seen ; trace
out the Divine in the world. As I came away, he
said to me, " / think the honest artist is very near to
God /" '

' What rubbish !' said Pauline. She was
thoroughly exasperated. It was too humiliating
that she should have to fight with Willie for the
possession of her lover's soul.

Stephen remained silent. He was thinking out
a little poem which had been suggested to him by
Willie's words. It should be, he decided, a canzone,
and he would call it ' Heaven's Atrium.' His
sadness vanished — ' few sorrows can outlive a little
song.'

Presently Pauline recovered her temper. She
perceived that Stephen's appreciation must have

320 THE GREY WORLD

been poetic, not personal ; and reflected that remarks
which might seem irritatingly foolish if made by a
common-place person, are often clever when they
come from a literary man. Stephen's vagrant
views were sometimes tiresome ; but what did that
matter, so long as they were not sincere ? All
men, she knew, required management. She took
his hand, and rubbed her cheek against it.

' Darling !' she said contentedly, ' how nice it
is to think that you've never let yourself be taken
in by any of those morbid ideas !'

THE END

August, 1902 — July, 1903.

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