CHAPTER III A CURE FOR BLINDNESS

"The British thoroughbred is not played out by any means. Look at the success of imported blood all over the world. Look at Phantom, the grandsire of Voltaire, and Bay Middleton——" Mr Bevan paused. He was addressing George Lambert, and suddenly found that he was addressing the entire dinner-table in one of those hiatuses of conversation in which every tongue is suddenly held.

"Yes," said Hamilton-Cox, continuing some desultory remarks on literature, in general, into which this eruption of stud book had broken; "but you see the old French ballads are for the most part by the greatest of all poets, Time. Beside those the greatest modern poems seem gaudy and Burlington Arcady,[Pg 224] if I may use the expression. An old folk-song that has been handed from generation to generation, played on, so to speak, like an old fiddle by all sorts of hands, gains a sweetness and richness never imagined by the simple-minded person who wrote it or invented it.

"You write poems?" asked Miss Morgan.

"My dear lady," sighed Hamilton-Cox, "nobody writes poems nowadays, or if they do they keep the fact a secret. I have a younger brother who writes poetry——"

"Thought you said no one wrote it."

"Younger brothers are nobodies. I say I have a younger brother, he writes most excellent verse—reams of it. Some years ago he would have been pursued by publishers. Well, only the other day he copied out some of his most cherished productions and approached a London publisher with them. He entered the office at five o'clock, and some few minutes later the people in Piccadilly were asking of each other, 'What's all that row in Vigo Street?' No, a publisher of to-day would as soon see a burglar in his office as a poet."

"I never took much stock in poetry," said[Pg 225] the practical Miss Morgan. "I'm like Mr Bevan."

"I can't stand the stuff," said Charles. "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck, and all that sort of twaddle, makes me ill."

Pamela looked slightly pained. Charles was enjoying his dinner; Burgundy and Moselle had induced a slight flush to suffuse his countenance. If you are engaged and a gourmand never let your fiancée see you eat. A man mad drunk is to the sensitive mind a less revolting picture than a man "enjoying his food."

"I heard a man once," said Miss Morgan, "he was squiffy——"

"Lulu!"

"Well, he was; and he was reciting I Stood on the Bridge at Midnight. He'd got everything mixed, and had got as far as
"'I stood on the moon by bridgelight
As the church was striking the tower—'

when every one laughed, and he sat down—on another man's hat. That's the sort of poetry I like, something to make you laugh. Gracious! what's the good of manufacturing misery and letting it loose in little poems to[Pg 226] buzz round and torment people? isn't there enough misery ready made? Hood's Song of the Shirt always makes me cry."

"Hood," said Professor Wilson, "was a man of another age, a true poet. He could not have written his Song of the Shirt to-day; the decadence——"

"Now, excuse me," said Hamilton-Cox, "we have fought that question of decadence out, you and I. Hood, I admit, could not have written his Song of the Shirt to-day, simply because shirts are manufactured wholesale by machinery, and he would have to begin it. 'Whir—whir—whir,' which would not be poetry. Women slave at coats and waistcoats and other garments nowadays, and you could scarcely write a song of the waistcoat or a song of the pair of—you understand my point. Poetry is very false, the matchbox-maker is as deserving of the poet's attention as the shirt-maker, yet a poem beginning 'Paste, paste, paste' would be received with laughter, not with tears. You say we are decadents because we don't encourage poetry. I say we are not, we are simply more practical—poetry is to all intents and purposes dead——"

[Pg 227]

"Is it?" said George Lambert. "Is King Lear dead? I was crying over him last night, but it wasn't at his funeral I was crying. Is old Suckling dead? I bought a first edition of him some time ago, and the fact wasn't mentioned or hinted at in the verses. Is Sophocles dead? Old Maloney at Trinity pounded him into my head, and he's there now alive as ever; and if I was blind to-morrow, I'd still have the skies over his plays to look at and the choruses to hear. Ah no, Mr Cox, poetry is not dead, but they don't write it just now. They don't write it, but it's in every one's heart waiting to be tapped, only there's no man with an augur sharp enough and true enough to do the tapping."

Pamela looked pleased.

"I did not know that you were fond of poetry," she said.

"I love it," said Lambert, in a tone that reminded Charles Bevan of Fanny's tone when she declared her predilection for cats.

"I declare it's delightful," said Professor Wilson, "to find a man of the world who knows all about horses, and is a good [Pg 228]billiard-player, and all that, confessing a love for poetry."

"Perhaps Mr Lambert is a poet himself," said Hamilton-Cox, with a suspicion of a sneer, "or has written poetry."

"Poetry! yards of it," answered the accused with a mellow laugh, "when I was young and—wise. The first poem I ever wrote was all about the moon; I wrote it when I was eleven, and sent it to a housemaid. Oh, murder! but the things that we do when we are young."

"Did she read it?"

"She couldn't read; it was in the days before the Board schools and the higher education of women. She couldn't read, she was forty, and ugly as sin; and she boxed my ears and told my mother, and my mother told my father, and he leathered me. He said, 'I'll teach you to write poetry to housemaids.' But somehow," said Mr Lambert, admiring with one eye the ruby-tinted light in his glass of port, "somehow, with all his teaching, I never wrote a poem to a housemaid again."

"That must have been a loss to literature."

[Pg 229]

"Yes, but it was a gain to housemaids; and as housemaids seem the main producers of novels and poems nowadays, begad," said Mr Lambert, "it's, after all, a gain to literature."

"That's one for you, Cox," said Professor Wilson, and Hamilton-Cox laughed, as he could well afford to do, for his lucubrations brought him in a good fifteen hundred a year, and his reputation was growing.

On the lawn, under the starlit night after dinner, Bevan had his fiancée for a moment alone. They sat in creaky basket-work chairs a good yard apart from each other. The moon was rising over the hills and deep, dark woods of Sussex, the air was warm and perfumed: it was an ideal night for love-making.

"When I left you I had some dinner at the Nord," said Mr Bevan, tipping the ash off his cigar. "The worst dinner I've ever had, I think. Upon my word, I think it was the worst dinner I ever had. When I got to Dover I was so tired I turned into the hotel, and came on next morning. What sort of crossing did you have?"

[Pg 230]

"Oh, very fine," said Pamela, stifling a yawn, and glancing sideways at a group of her guests dimly seen in a corner of the garden, but happy, to judge from the laughter that came from them.

"Are the Napiers back in England yet?"

"No, they are still in Paris."

"What on earth do they want staying there for so long? it must be empty now."

"Yes, it was emptying fast when we left, wasn't a soul left scarcely. Do you know, I have a great mind to run over to Ostend for a few weeks. The Napiers are going there; it's rather fun, I believe."

"I wouldn't. What's the good of going to these foreign places? stay here."

Pamela was silent, and the inspiriting dialogue ceased.

A great beetle moving through the night across the garden filled the air with its boom. The group in the corner of the garden still were laughing and talking; amidst their voices could be distinguished that of Hamilton-Cox. Mr Cox had not a pleasant voice; it was too highly pitched, and it jarred on the ear of Mr Bevan and on his soul. His soul was in an irritable mood. When we speak of the soul[Pg 231] we refer to an unknown quantity, and when we speak of its condition we refer sometimes, perhaps, to just a touch of liver, or sometimes to an extra glass of champagne.

"I can't make out what induces you to surround yourself with those sort of people," said Mr Bevan, casting his cigar-end away and searching for his cigarette case.

"What sort of people?"

"Oh, that writer man."

"Hamilton-Cox?"

"Yes—is that his name?"

"I am not surrounding myself with Mr Cox; the thing is physically and physiologically impossible. Do talk sense, Charles."

Charles retired into silence, and Miss Pursehouse yawned again, sub-audibly. After a few moments—"Where did you pick up the Lamberts?"

"You mean Mr Lambert and his daughter?"

"Has he a daughter?"

"Has he a daughter? Why, Lulu Morgan, when I asked her what you and she had found to talk about, said Fanny Lambert——"

"It is perfectly immaterial what Miss Morgan said; some of her sayings are[Pg 232] scarcely commendable. I believe she did say something about a Miss Lambert. When I said 'has he a daughter?' I spoke with a meaning."

"I am glad to hear that."

"What I meant was, that it would have been much better for him to have brought his daughter down here with him."

"Do you mean to insinuate that she is—unable to take care of herself in town?"

"I mean to insinuate nothing, but according to my old-fashioned ideas——"

"Go on, this is interesting," said Miss Pursehouse, who guessed what was coming.

"According to my old-fashioned ideas it is scarcely the thing for a man, a married man, to pay a visit——"

"You mean it's improper for me to have Mr Lambert staying here as a guest?" "Improper was not the word I used."

"Oh, nonsense! you meant it. Well, I think I am the best judge of my own propriety, and I see nothing improper in the transaction. My aunt is here, Lulu Morgan is here, you are here, Professor Wilson is here, there's a poet coming to-morrow—I suppose that's improper too. I do wish you would be[Pg 233] sensible; besides, Mr Lambert is not a married man, he is a widower."

"Does he know that you are engaged?"

"Sure, I don't know. I don't go about with a placard with 'I am engaged' written on it on my back. Why do you ask?"

"Well—um—if a stranger had been here at tea to-day he would scarcely have thought that the engaged couple——"

"Go on, this is delightful; it's absolutely bank-holidayish—the engaged couple—go on."

"Were you and I."

"You mean you and me?"

"Yes."

"The behaviour of 'engaged couples' in decent society is, I believe, pretty much the same as our behaviour has been, and I hope will be. How would you have it? Would you like to walk about, I clinging to your arm, and you playing a mouth-organ? Ought we to exchange hats with each other? Shall I call you Choly and put ice down your neck at dinner? Ought we to hire a brake and go on a bean feast? I wish you would instruct me. I hate to appear gauche, and I hate not to do the correct thing."

[Pg 234]

"Vulgarity is always painful to me," said Mr Bevan, "but senseless vulgarity is doubly so."

"Thanks, your compliments are charming."

"I was not complimenting you, I simply——"

"I know, simply hinting that I was senseless and vulgar."

"I never——"

"I know. Shall we change the subject—what's all this?"

"Please come and help us," said Miss Morgan, coming up. "We've got the astronomical telescope, and we can't make head or tail of it."

Miss Pursehouse rose and approached the group surrounding an astronomical telescope that stood on the lawn. It was trained on the moon, and Hamilton-Cox, with a hand over one eye and the other eye at the eyepiece, was making an observation.

"Sometimes I can see stars, and sometimes nothing. I can't see the moon at all."

"Shut the other eye," said Lambert.

"Perhaps," said Miss Pursehouse, "if you remove the cap from the telescope you will be able to see better. A very simple thing sometimes cures blindness."