Where the Blue Begins

WHERE THE BLUE BEGINS

by Christopher Morley

TO FELIX and TOTO

“I am not free-- And it may be

Life is too tight around my shins;

For, unlike you,

I can't break through

A truant where the blue begins.

“Out of the very element

Of bondage, that here holds me pent,

I'll make my furious sonnet:

I'll turn my noose

To tightrope use

And madly dance upon it.

“So I will take

My leash, and make

A wilder and more subtle fleeing

And I shall be

More escapading and more free

Than you have ever dreamed of being!”

CHAPTER ONE

Gissing lived alone (except for his Japanese butler) in a little

house in the country, in that woodland suburb region called the Canine

Estates. He lived comfortably and thoughtfully, as bachelors often do.

He came of a respectable family, who had always conducted themselves

calmly and without too much argument. They had bequeathed him just

enough income to live on cheerfully, without display but without having

to do addition and subtraction at the end of the month and then tear up

the paper lest Fuji (the butler) should see it.

It was strange, since Gissing was so pleasantly situated in life, that

he got into these curious adventures that I have to relate. I do not

attempt to explain it.

He had no responsibilities, not even a motor car, for his tastes were

surprisingly simple. If he happened to be spending an evening at the

country club, and a rainstorm came down, he did not worry about getting

home. He would sit by the fire and chuckle to see the married members

creep away one by one. He would get out his pipe and sleep that night

at the club, after telephoning Fuji not to sit up for him. When he felt

like it he used to read in bed, and even smoke in bed. When he went to

town to the theatre, he would spend the night at a hotel to avoid the

fatigue of the long ride on the 11:44 train. He chose a different hotel

each time, so that it was always an Adventure. He had a great deal of

fun.

But having fun is not quite the same as being happy. Even an income of

1000 bones a year does not answer all questions. That charming little

house among the groves and thickets seemed to him surrounded by strange

whispers and quiet voices. He was uneasy. He was restless, and did not

know why. It was his theory that discipline must be maintained in the

household, so he did not tell Fuji his feelings. Even when he was alone,

he always kept up a certain formality in the domestic routine. Fuji

would lay out his dinner jacket on the bed: he dressed, came down to

the dining room with quiet dignity, and the evening meal was served by

candle-light. As long as Fuji was at work, Gissing sat carefully in

the armchair by the hearth, smoking a cigar and pretending to read

the paper. But as soon as the butler had gone upstairs, Gissing

always kicked off his dinner suit and stiff shirt, and lay down on the

hearth-rug. But he did not sleep. He would watch the wings of flame

gilding the dark throat of the chimney, and his mind seemed drawn upward

on that rush of light, up into the pure chill air where the moon was

riding among sluggish thick floes of cloud. In the darkness he heard

chiming voices, wheedling and tantalizing. One night he was walking on

his little verandah. Between rafts of silver-edged clouds were channels

of ocean-blue sky, inconceivably deep and transparent. The air was

serene, with a faint acid taste. Suddenly there shrilled a soft, sweet,

melancholy whistle, earnestly repeated. It seemed to come from the

little pond in the near-by copses. It struck him strangely. It might

be anything, he thought. He ran furiously through the field, and to

the brim of the pond. He could find nothing, all was silent. Then the

whistlings broke out again, all round him, maddeningly. This kept on,

night after night. The parson, whom he consulted, said it was only

frogs; but Gissing told the constable he thought God had something to do

with it.

Then willow trees and poplars showed a pallid bronze sheen, forsythias

were as yellow as scrambled eggs, maples grew knobby with red buds.

Among the fresh bright grass came, here and there, exhilarating smells

of last year's buried bones. The little upward slit at the back of

Gissing's nostrils felt prickly. He thought that if he could bury it

deep enough in cold beef broth it would be comforting. Several times he

went out to the pantry intending to try the experiment, but every time

Fuji happened to be around. Fuji was a Japanese pug, and rather correct,

so Gissing was ashamed to do what he wanted to. He pretended he had come

out to see that the icebox pan had been emptied properly.

“I must get the plumber to put in a pukka drain-pipe to take the place

of the pan,” Gissing said to Fuji; but he knew that he had no intention

of doing so. The ice-box pan was his private test of a good servant. A

cook who forgot to empty it was too careless, he thought, to be a real

success.

But certainly there was some curious elixir in the air. He went for

walks, and as soon as he was out of sight of the houses he threw down

his hat and stick and ran wildly, with great exultation, over the hills

and fields. “I really ought to turn all this energy into some sort of

constructive work,” he said to himself. No one else, he mused, seemed to

enjoy life as keenly and eagerly as he did. He wondered, too, about the

other sex. Did they feel these violent impulses to run, to shout, to

leap and caper in the sunlight? But he was a little startled, on one of

his expeditions, to see in the distance the curate rushing hotly through

the underbrush, his clerical vestments dishevelled, his tongue hanging

out with excitement.

“I must go to church more often,” said Gissing.

In the golden light and pringling air he felt excitable and high-strung.

His tail curled upward until it ached. Finally he asked Mike Terrier,

who lived next door, what was wrong.

“It's spring,” Mike said.

“Oh, yes, of course, jolly old spring!” said Gissing, as though this was

something he had known all along, and had just forgotten for the moment.

But he didn't know. This was his first spring, for he was only ten

months old.

Outwardly he was the brisk, genial figure that the suburb knew and

esteemed. He was something of a mystery among his neighbours of the

Canine Estates, because he did not go daily to business in the city, as

most of them did; nor did he lead a life of brilliant amusement like the

Airedales, the wealthy people whose great house was near by. Mr. Poodle,

the conscientious curate, had called several times but was not able to

learn anything definite. There was a little card-index of parishioners,

which it was Mr. Poodle's duty to fill in with details of each person's

business, charitable inclinations, and what he could do to amuse

a Church Sociable. The card allotted to Gissing was marked, in Mr.

Poodle's neat script, Friendly, but vague as to definite participation

in Xian activities. Has not communicated.

But in himself, Gissing was increasingly disturbed. Even his seizures of

joy, which came as he strolled in the smooth spring air and sniffed the

wild, vigorous aroma of the woodland earth, were troublesome because

he did not know why he was so glad. Every morning it seemed to him that

life was about to exhibit some delicious crisis in which the meaning and

excellence of all things would plainly appear. He sang in the bathtub.

Daily it became more difficult to maintain that decorum which Fuji

expected. He felt that his life was being wasted. He wondered what ought

to be done about it.

CHAPTER TWO

It was after dinner, an April evening, and Gissing slipped away from the

house for a stroll. He was afraid to stay in, because he knew that if he

did, Fuji would ask him again to fix the dishcloth rack in the kitchen.

Fuji was very short in stature, and could not reach up to the place

where the rack was screwed over the sink. Like all people whose minds

are very active, Gissing hated to attend to little details like this. It

was a weakness in his character. Fuji had asked him six times to fix the

rack, but Gissing always pretended to forget about it. To appease his

methodical butler he had written on a piece of paper FIX DISHCLOTH RACK

and pinned it on his dressing-table pincushion; but he paid no attention

to the memorandum.

He went out into a green April dusk. Down by the pond piped those

repeated treble whistlings: they still distressed him with a mysterious

unriddled summons, but Mike Terrier had told him that the secret of

respectability is to ignore whatever you don't understand. Careful

observation of this maxim had somewhat dulled the cry of that shrill

queer music. It now caused only a faint pain in his mind. Still, he

walked that way because the little meadow by the pond was agreeably soft

underfoot. Also, when he walked close beside the water the voices were

silent. That is worth noting, he said to himself. If you go directly at

the heart of a mystery, it ceases to be a mystery, and becomes only a

question of drainage. (Mr. Poodle had told him that if he had the pond

and swamp drained, the frog-song would not annoy him.) But to-night,

when the keen chirruping ceased, there was still another sound that did

not cease--a faint, appealing cry. It caused a prickling on his shoulder

blades, it made him both angry and tender. He pushed through the bushes.

In a little hollow were three small puppies, whining faintly. They were

cold and draggled with mud. Someone had left them there, evidently,

to perish. They were huddled close together; their eyes, a cloudy

unspeculative blue, were only just opened. “This is gruesome,” said

Gissing, pretending to be shocked. “Dear me, innocent pledges of sin, I

dare say. Well, there is only one thing to do.”

He picked them up carefully and carried them home.

“Quick, Fuji!” he said. “Warm some milk, some of the Grade A, and put a

little brandy in it. I'll get the spare-room bed ready.”

He rushed upstairs, wrapped the puppies in a blanket, and turned on the

electric heater to take the chill from the spare-room. The little pads

of their paws were ice-cold, and he filled the hot water bottle and held

it carefully to their twelve feet. Their pink stomachs throbbed, and at

first he feared they were dying. “They must not die!” he said fiercely.

“If they did, it would be a matter for the police, and no end of

trouble.”

Fuji came up with the milk, and looked very grave when he saw the muddy

footprints on the clean sheet.

“Now, Fuji,” said Gissing, “do you suppose they can lap, or will we have

to pour it down?”

In spite of his superior manner, Fuji was a good fellow in an emergency.

It was he who suggested the fountain-pen filler. They washed the ink

out of it, and used it to drip the hot brandy-and-milk down the puppies'

throats. Their noses, which had been icy, suddenly became very hot and

dry. Gissing feared a fever and thought their temperatures should be

taken.

“The only thermometer we have,” he said, “is the one on the porch, with

the mercury split in two. I don't suppose that would do. Have you a

clinical thermometer, Fuji?”

Fuji felt that his employer was making too much fuss over the matter.

“No, sir,” he said firmly. “They are quite all right. A good sleep will

revive them. They will be as fit as possible in the morning.”

Fuji went out into the garden to brush the mud from his neat white

jacket. His face was inscrutable. Gissing sat by the spare-room bed

until he was sure the puppies were sleeping correctly. He closed the

door so that Fuji would not hear him humming a lullaby. Three Blind Mice

was the only nursery song he could remember, and he sang it over and

over again.

When he tiptoed downstairs, Fuji had gone to bed. Gissing went into his

study, lit a pipe, and walked up and down, thinking. By and bye he wrote

two letters. One was to a bookseller in the city, asking him to send (at

once) one copy of Dr. Holt's book on the Care and Feeding of Children,

and a well-illustrated edition of Mother Goose. The other was to Mr.

Poodle, asking him to fix a date for the christening of Mr. Gissing's

three small nephews, who had come to live with him.

“It is lucky they are all boys,” said Gissing. “I would know nothing

about bringing up girls.”

“I suppose,” he added after a while, “that I shall have to raise Fuji's

wages.”

Then he went into the kitchen and fixed the dishcloth rack.

Before going to bed that night he took his usual walk around the house.

The sky was freckled with stars. It was generally his habit to make a

tour of his property toward midnight, to be sure everything was in good

order. He always looked into the ice-box, and admired the cleanliness

of Fuji's arrangements. The milk bottles were properly capped with their

round cardboard tops; the cheese was never put on the same rack with

the butter; the doors of the ice-box were carefully latched. Such

observations, and the slow twinkle of the fire in the range, deep down

under the curfew layer of coals, pleased him. In the cellar he peeped

into the garbage can, for it was always a satisfaction to assure himself

that Fuji did not waste anything that could be used. One of the laundry

tub taps was dripping, with a soft measured tinkle: he said to himself

that he really must have it attended to. All these domestic matters

seemed more significant than ever when he thought of youthful innocence

sleeping upstairs in the spare-room bed. His had been a selfish life

hitherto, he feared. These puppies were just what he needed to take him

out of himself.

Busy with these thoughts, he did not notice the ironical whistling

coming from the pond. He tasted the night air with cheerful

satisfaction. “At any rate, to-morrow will be a fine day,” he said.

The next day it rained. But Gissing was too busy to think about the

weather. Every hour or so during the night he had gone into the spare

room to listen attentively to the breathing of the puppies, to pull the

blanket over them, and feel their noses. It seemed to him that they

were perspiring a little, and he was worried lest they catch cold. His

morning sleep (it had always been his comfortable habit to lie abed a

trifle late) was interrupted about seven o'clock by a lively clamour

across the hall. The puppies were awake, perfectly restored, and while

they were too young to make their wants intelligible, they plainly

expected some attention. He gave them a pair of old slippers to play

with, and proceeded to his own toilet.

As he was bathing them, after breakfast, he tried to enlist Fuji's

enthusiasm. “Did you ever see such fat rascals?” he said. “I wonder if

we ought to trim their tails? How pink their stomachs are, and how pink

and delightful between their toes! You hold these two while I dry

the other. No, not that way! Hold them so you support their spines. A

puppy's back is very delicate: you can't be too careful. We'll have to

do things in a rough-and-ready way until Dr. Holt's book comes. After

that we can be scientific.”

Fuji did not seem very keen. Presently, in spite of the rain, he was

dispatched to the village department store to choose three small cribs

and a multitude of safety pins. “Plenty of safety pins is the idea,”

said Gissing. “With enough safety pins handy, children are easy to

manage.”

As soon as the puppies were bestowed on the porch, in the sunshine, for

their morning nap, he telephoned to the local paperhanger.

“I want you” (he said) “to come up as soon as you can with some nice

samples of nursery wallpaper. A lively Mother Goose pattern would do

very well.” He had already decided to change the spare room into a

nursery. He telephoned the carpenter to make a gate for the top of the

stairs. He was so busy that he did not even have time to think of his

pipe, or the morning paper. At last, just before lunch, he found a

breathing space. He sat down in the study to rest his legs, and looked

for the Times. It was not in its usual place on his reading table. At

that moment the puppies woke up, and he ran out to attend them. He would

have been distressed if he had known that Fuji had the paper in the

kitchen, and was studying the HELP WANTED columns.

A great deal of interest was aroused in the neighbourhood by the arrival

of Gissing's nephews, as he called them. Several of the ladies, who had

ignored him hitherto, called, in his absence, and left extra cards. This

implied (he supposed, though he was not closely versed in such niceties

of society) that there was a Mrs. Gissing, and he was annoyed, for he

felt certain they knew he was a bachelor. But the children were a source

of nothing but pride to him. They grew with astounding rapidity, ate

their food without coaxing, rarely cried at night, and gave him much

amusement by their naive ways. He was too occupied to be troubled with

introspection. Indeed, his well-ordered home was very different from

before. The trim lawn, in spite of his zealous efforts, was constantly

littered with toys. In sheer mischief the youngsters got into his

wardrobe and chewed off the tails of his evening dress coat. But he

felt a satisfying dignity and happiness in his new status as head of a

family.

What worried him most was the fear that Fuji would complain of this

sudden addition to his duties. The butler's face was rather an enigma,

particularly at meal times, when Gissing sat at the dinner table

surrounded by the three puppies in their high chairs, with a spindrift

of milk and prune-juice spattering generously as the youngsters plied

their spoons. Fuji had arranged a series of scuppers, made of oilcloth,

underneath the chairs; but in spite of this the dining-room rug, after a

meal, looked much as the desert place must have after the feeding of

the multitude. Fuji, who was pensive, recalled the five loaves and two

fishes that produced twelve baskets of fragments. The vacuum cleaner got

clogged by a surfeit of crumbs.

Gissing saw that it would be a race between heart and head. If Fuji's

heart should become entangled (that is, if the innocent charms of the

children should engage his affections before his reason convinced him

that the situation was now too arduous), there was some hope. He tried

to ease the problem also by mental suggestion. “It is really remarkable”

(he said to Fuji) “that children should give one so little trouble.”

As he made this remark, he was speeding hotly to and fro between the

bathroom and the nursery, trying to get one tucked in bed and another

undressed, while the third was lashing the tub into soapy foam. Fuji

made his habitual response, “Very good, sir.” But one fears that he

detected some insincerity, for the next day, which was Sunday, he gave

notice. This generally happens on a Sunday, because the papers publish

more Help Wanted advertisements then than on any other day.

“I'm sorry, sir,” he said. “But when I took this place there was nothing

said about three children.”

This was unreasonable of Fuji. It is very rare to have everything

explained beforehand. When Adam and Eve were put into the Garden of

Eden, there was nothing said about the serpent.

However, Gissing did not believe in entreating a servant to stay. He

offered to give Fuji a raise, but the butler was still determined to

leave.

“My senses are very delicate,” he said. “I really cannot stand

the--well, the aroma exhaled by those three children when they have had

a warm bath.”

“What nonsense!” cried Gissing. “The smell of wet, healthy puppies?

Nothing is more agreeable. You are cold-blooded: I don't believe you are

fond of puppies. Think of their wobbly black noses. Consider how pink is

the little cleft between their toes and the main cushion of their feet.

Their ears are like silk. Inside their upper jaws are parallel black

ridges, most remarkable. I never realized before how beautifully and

carefully we are made. I am surprised that you should be so indifferent

to these things.”

There was a moisture in Fuji's eyes, but he left at the end of the week.

CHAPTER THREE

A solitary little path ran across the fields not far from the house.

It lay deep among tall grasses and the withered brittle stalks of

last autumn's goldenrod, and here Gissing rambled in the green hush of

twilight, after the puppies were in bed. In less responsible days

he would have lain down on his back, with all four legs upward, and

cheerily shrugged and rolled to and fro, as the crisp ground-stubble was

very pleasing to the spine. But now he paced soberly, the smoke from his

pipe eddying just above the top of the grasses. He had much to meditate.

The dogwood tree by the house was now in flower. The blossoms, with

their four curved petals, seemed to spin like tiny white propellers

in the bright air. When he saw them fluttering Gissing had a happy

sensation of movement. The business of those tremulous petals seemed to

be thrusting his whole world forward and forward, through the viewless

ocean of space. He felt as though he were on a ship--as, indeed, we are.

He had never been down to the open sea, but he had imagined it. There,

he thought, there must be the satisfaction of a real horizon.

Horizons had been a great disappointment to him. In earlier days he had

often slipped out of the house not long after sunrise, and had marvelled

at the blue that lies upon the skyline. Here, about him, were the clear

familiar colours of the world he knew; but yonder, on the hills, were

trees and spaces of another more heavenly tint. That soft blue light, if

he could reach it, must be the beginning of what his mind required.

He envied Mr. Poodle, whose cottage was on that very hillslope that rose

so imperceptibly into sky. One morning he ran and ran, in the lifting

day, but always the blue receded. Hot and unbuttoned, he came by the

curate's house, just as the latter emerged to pick up the morning paper.

“Where does the blue begin?” Gissing panted, trying hard to keep his

tongue from sliding out so wetly.

The curate looked a trifle disturbed. He feared that something

unpleasant had happened, and that his assistance might be required

before breakfast.

“It is going to be a warm day,” he said politely, and stooped for the

newspaper, as a delicate hint.

“Where does--?” began Gissing, quivering; but at that moment, looking

round, he saw that it had hoaxed him again. Far away, on his own hill

the other side of the village, shone the evasive colour. As usual,

he had been too impetuous. He had not watched it while he ran; it had

circled round behind him. He resolved to be more methodical.

The curate gave him a blank to fill in, relative to baptizing the

children, and was relieved to see him hasten away.

But all this was some time ago. As he walked the meadow path, Gissing

suddenly realized that lately he had had little opportunity for pursuing

blue horizons. Since Fuji's departure every moment, from dawn to dusk,

was occupied. In three weeks he had had three different servants, but

none of them would stay. The place was too lonely, they said, and with

three puppies the work was too hard. The washing, particularly was a

horrid problem. Inexperienced as a parent, Gissing was probably too

proud: he wanted the children always to look clean and soigne. The last

cook had advertised herself as a General Houseworker, afraid of

nothing; but as soon as she saw the week's wash in the hamper (including

twenty-one grimy rompers), she telephoned to the station for a taxi.

Gissing wondered why it was that the working classes were not willing

to do one-half as much as he, who had been reared to indolent ease. Even

more, he was irritated by a suspicion of the ice-wagon driver. He could

not prove it, but he had an idea that this uncouth fellow obtained a

commission from the Airedales and Collies, who had large mansions in the

neighbourhood, for luring maids from the smaller homes. Of course Mrs.

Airedale and Mrs. Collie could afford to pay any wages at all. So now

the best he could do was to have Mrs. Spaniel, the charwoman, come up

from the village to do the washing and ironing, two days a week. The

rest of the work he undertook himself. On a clear afternoon, when the

neighbours were not looking, he would take his own shirts and things

down to the pond--putting them neatly in the bottom of the red

express-wagon, with the puppies sitting on the linen, so no one would

see. While the puppies played about and hunted for tadpoles, he would

wash his shirts himself.

His legs ached as he took his evening stroll--keeping within earshot of

the house, so as to hear any possible outcry from the nursery. He

had been on his feet all day. But he reflected that there was a real

satisfaction in his family tasks, however gruelling. Now, at last (he

said to himself), I am really a citizen, not a mere dilettante. Of

course it is arduous. No one who is not a parent realizes, for example,

the extraordinary amount of buttoning and unbuttoning necessary in

rearing children. I calculate that 50,000 buttonings are required for

each one before it reaches the age of even rudimentary independence.

With the energy so expended one might write a great novel or chisel a

statue. Never mind: these urchins must be my Works of Art. If one

were writing a novel, he could not delegate to a hired servant the

composition of laborious chapters.

So he took his responsibility gravely. This was partly due to the

christening service, perhaps, which had gone off very charmingly. It

had not been without its embarrassments. None of the neighbouring ladies

would stand as godmother, for they were secretly dubious as to the

children's origin; so he had asked good Mrs. Spaniel to act in that

capacity. She, a simple kindly creature, was much flattered, though

certainly she can have understood very little of the symbolical rite.

Gissing, filling out the form that Mr. Poodle had given him, had put

down the names of an entirely imaginary brother and sister-in-law of

his, “deceased,” whom he asserted as the parents. He had been so busy

with preparations that he did not find time, before the ceremony,

to study the text of the service; and when he and Mrs. Spaniel stood

beneath the font with an armful of ribboned infancy, he was frankly

startled by the magnitude of the promises exacted from him. He found

that, on behalf of the children, he must “renounce the devil and all his

work, the vain pomp and glory of the world;” that he must pledge himself

to see that these infants would “crucify the old man and utterly abolish

the whole body of sin.” It was rather doubtful whether they would do so,

he reflected, as he felt them squirming in his arms while Mrs. Spaniel

was busy trying to keep their socks on. When the curate exhorted him “to

follow the innocency” of these little ones, it was disconcerting to have

one of them burst into a piercing yammer, and wriggle so forcibly that

it slipped quite out of its little embroidered shift and flannel band.

But the actual access to the holy basin was more seemly, perhaps due to

the children imagining they were going to find tadpoles there. When Mr.

Poodle held them up they smiled with a vague almost bashful simplicity;

and Mrs. Spaniel could not help murmuring “The darlings!” The curate,

less experienced with children, had insisted on holding all three at

once, and Gissing feared lest one of them might swarm over the surpliced

shoulder and fall splash into the font. But though they panted a little

with excitement, they did nothing to mar the solemn instant. While Mrs.

Spaniel was picking up the small socks with which the floor was strewn,

Gissing was deeply moved by the poetry of the ceremony. He felt that

something had really been accomplished toward “burying the Old Adam.”

And if Mrs. Spaniel ever grew disheartened at the wash-tubs, he was

careful to remind her of the beautiful phrase about the mystical washing

away of sin.

They had been christened Groups, Bunks, and Yelpers, three traditional

names in his family.

Indeed, he was reflecting as he walked in the dusk, Mrs. Spaniel was

now his sheet anchor. Fortunately she showed signs of becoming

extraordinarily attached to the puppies. On the two days a week when she

came up from the village, it was even possible for him to get a little

relaxation--to run down to the station for tobacco, or to lie in the

hammock briefly with a book. Looking off from his airy porch, he could

see the same blue distances that had always tempted him, but he felt too

passive to wonder about them. He had given up the idea of trying to get

any other servants. If it had been possible, he would have engaged Mrs.

Spaniel to sleep in the house and be there permanently; but she had

children of her own down in the shantytown quarter of the village, and

had to go back to them at night. But certainly he made every effort to

keep her contented. It was a long steep climb up from the hollow, so

he allowed her to come in a taxi and charge it to his account. Then, on

condition that she would come on Saturdays also, to help him clean up

for Sunday, he allowed her, on that day, to bring her own children too,

and all the puppies played riotously together around the place. But this

he presently discontinued, for the clamour became so deafening that the

neighbours complained. Besides, the young Spaniels, who were a little

older, got Groups, Bunks, and Yelpers into noisy and careless habits of

speech.

He was anxious that they should grow up refined, and was distressed by

little Shaggy Spaniel having brought up the Comic Section of a Sunday

paper. With childhood's instinctive taste for primitive effects, the

puppies fell in love with the coloured cartoons, and badgered him

continually for “funny papers.”

There is a great deal more to think about in raising children (he said

to himself) than is intimated in Dr. Holt's book on Care and Feeding.

Even in matters that he had always taken for granted, such as fairy

tales, he found perplexity. After supper--(he now joined the children in

their evening bread and milk, for after cooking them a hearty lunch of

meat and gravy and potatoes and peas and the endless spinach and carrots

that the doctors advise, to say nothing of the prunes, he had no energy

to prepare a special dinner for himself)--after supper it was his habit

to read to them, hoping to give their imaginations a little exercise

before they went to bed. He was startled to find that Grimm and Hans

Andersen, which he had considered as authentic classics for childhood,

were full of very strong stuff--morbid sentiment, bloodshed, horror, and

all manner of painful circumstance. Reading the tales aloud, he edited

as he went along; but he was subject to that curious weakness that

afflicts some people: reading aloud made him helplessly sleepy: after a

page or so he would fall into a doze, from which he would be awakened by

the crash of a lamp or some other furniture. The children, seized with

that furious hilarity that usually begins just about bedtime, would race

madly about the house until some breakage or a burst of tears woke him

from his trance. He would thrash them all and put them to bed howling.

When they were asleep he would be touched with tender compassion, and

steal in to tuck them up, admiring the innocence of each unconscious

muzzle on its pillow. Sometimes, in a crisis of his problems, he thought

of writing to Dr. Holt for advice; but the will-power was lacking.

It is really astonishing how children can exhaust one, he used to think.

Sometimes, after a long day, he was even too weary to correct their

grammar. “You lay down!” Groups would admonish Yelpers, who was capering

in his crib while Bunks was being lashed in with the largest size of

safety pins. And Gissing, doggedly passing from one to another, was

really too fatigued to reprove the verb, picked up from Mrs. Spaniel.

Fairy tales proving a disappointment, he had great hopes of encouraging

them in drawing. He bought innumerable coloured crayons and stacks

of scribbling paper. After supper they would all sit down around the

dining-room table and he drew pictures for them. Tongues depending with

concentrated excitement, the children would try to copy these pictures

and colour them. In spite of having three complete sets of crayons, a

full roster of colours could rarely be found at drawing time. Bunks had

the violet when Groups wanted it, and so on. But still, this was often

the happiest hour of the day. Gissing drew amazing trains, elephants,

ships, and rainbows, with the spectrum of colours correctly arranged

and blended. The children specially loved his landscapes, which were

opulently tinted and magnificent in long perspectives. He found himself

always colouring the far horizons a pale and haunting blue.

He was meditating these things when a shrill yammer recalled him to the

house.

CHAPTER FOUR

In this warm summer weather Gissing slept on a little outdoor balcony

that opened off the nursery. The world, rolling in her majestic seaway,

heeled her gunwale slowly into the trough of space. Disked upon this

bulwark, the sun rose, and promptly Gissing woke. The poplars flittered

in a cool stir. Beyond the tadpole pond, through a notch in the

landscape, he could see the far darkness of the hills. That fringe of

woods was a railing that kept the sky from flooding over the earth.

The level sun, warily peering over the edge like a cautious marksman,

fired golden volleys unerringly at him. At once Gissing was aware and

watchful. Brief truce was over: the hopeless war with Time began anew.

This was his placid hour. Light, so early, lies timidly along the

ground. It steals gently from ridge to ridge; it is soft, unsure.

That blue dimness, receding from bole to bole, is the skirt of Night's

garment, trailing off toward some other star. As easily as it slips from

tree to tree, it glides from earth to Orion.

Light, which later will riot and revel and strike pitilessly down, still

is tender and tentative. It sweeps in rosy scythe-strokes, parallel to

earth. It gilds, where later it will burn.

Gissing lay, without stirring. The springs of the old couch were creaky,

and the slightest sound might arouse the children within. Now, until

they woke, was his peace. Purposely he had had the sleeping porch built

on the eastern side of the house. Making the sun his alarm clock, he

prolonged the slug-a-bed luxury. He had procured the darkest and

most opaque of all shades for the nursery windows, to cage as long as

possible in that room Night the silencer. At this time of the year, the

song of the mosquito was his dreaded nightingale. In spite of fine-mesh

screens, always one or two would get in. Mrs. Spaniel, he feared, left

the kitchen door ajar during the day, and these Borgias of the insect

world, patiently invasive, seized their chance. It was a rare night when

a sudden scream did not come from the nursery every hour or so. “Daddy,

a keeto, a keeto!” was the anguish from one of the trio. The other two

were up instantly, erect and yelping in their cribs, small black paws on

the rail, pink stomachs candidly exposed to the winged stilleto. Lights

on, and the room must be explored for the lurking foe. Scratching

themselves vigorously, the fun of the chase assuaged the smart of those

red welts. Gissing, wise by now, knew that after a forager the mosquito

always retires to the ceiling, so he kept a stepladder in the room.

Mounted on this, he would pursue the enemy with a towel, while the

children screamed with merriment. Then stomachs must be anointed with

more citronella; sheets and blankets reassembled, and quiet gradually

restored. Life, as parents know, can be supported on very little sleep.

But how delicious to lie there, in the morning freshness, to hear the

earth stir with reviving gusto, the merriment of birds, the exuberant

clink of milk-bottles set down by the back-door, the whole complex

machinery of life begin anew! Gissing was amazed now, looking back upon

his previous existence, to see himself so busy, so active. Few

people are really lazy, he thought: what we call laziness is merely

maladjustment. For in any department of life where one is genuinely

interested, he will be zealous beyond belief. Certainly he had not

dreamed, until he became (in a manner of speaking) a parent, that he had

in him such capacity for detail.

This business of raising a family, though--had he any true aptitude

for it? or was he forcing himself to go through with it? Wasn't he,

moreover, incurring all the labours of parenthood without any of

its proper dignity and social esteem? Mrs. Chow down the street, for

instance, why did she look so sniffingly upon him when she heard the

children, in the harmless uproar of their play, cry him aloud as Daddy?

Uncle, he had intended they should call him; but that is, for beginning

speech, a hard saying, embracing both a palatal and a liquid. Whereas

Da-da--the syllables come almost unconsciously to the infant mouth.

So he had encouraged it, and even felt an irrational pride in the

honourable but unearned title.

A little word, Daddy, but one of the most potent, he was thinking.

More than a word, perhaps: a great social engine: an anchor which, cast

carelessly overboard, sinks deep and fast into the very bottom. The

vessel rides on her hawser, and where are your blue horizons then?

But come now, isn't one horizon as good as another? And do they really

remain blue when you reach them?

Unconsciously he stirred, stretching his legs deeply into the

comfortable nest of his couch. The springs twanged. Simultaneous

clamours! The puppies were awake.

They yelled to be let out from the cribs. This was the time of the

morning frolic. Gissing had learned that there is only one way to deal

with the almost inexhaustible energy of childhood. That is, not to

attempt to check it, but to encourage and draw it out. To start the day

with a rush, stimulating every possible outlet of zeal; meanwhile taking

things as calmly and quietly as possible himself, sitting often to take

the weight off his legs, and allowing the youngsters to wear themselves

down. This, after all, is Nature's own way with man; it is the wise

parent's tactic with children. Thus, by dusk, the puppies will have run

themselves almost into a stupor; and you, if you have shrewdly husbanded

your strength, may have still a little power in reserve for reading and

smoking.

The before-breakfast game was conducted on regular routine. Children

show their membership in the species by their love of strict habit.

Gissing let them yell for a few moments--as long as he thought the

neighbours would endure it--while he gradually gathered strength and

resolution, shook off the cowardice of bed. Then he strode into the

nursery. As soon as they heard him raising the shades there was complete

silence. They hastened to pull the blankets over themselves, and lay

tense, faces on paws, with bright expectant upward eyes. They trembled a

little with impatience. It was all he could do to restrain himself from

patting the sleek heads, which always seemed to shine with extra

polish after a night's rolling to and fro on the flattened pillows. But

sternness was a part of the game at this moment. He solemnly unlatched

and lowered the tall sides of the cribs.

He stood in the middle of the room, with a gesture of command. “Quiet

now,” he said. “Quiet, until I tell you!”

Yelpers could not help a small whine of intense emotion, which slipped

out unintended. The eyes of Groups and Bunks swivelled angrily toward

their unlucky brother. It was his failing: in crises he always emitted

haphazard sounds. But this time Gissing, with lenient forgiveness,

pretended not to have heard.

He returned to the balcony, and reentered his couch, where he lay

feigning sleep. In the nursery was a terrific stillness.

It was the rule of the game that they should lie thus, in absolute

quiet, until he uttered a huge imitation snore. Once, after a

particularly exhausting night, he had postponed the snore too long:

he fell asleep. He did not wake for an hour, and then found the tragic

three also sprawled in amazing slumber. But their pillows were wet with

tears. He never succumbed again, no matter how deeply tempted.

He snored. There were three sprawling thumps, a rush of feet, and a

tumbling squeeze through the screen door. Then they were on the couch

and upon him, with panting yelps of glee. Their hot tongues rasped

busily over his face. This was the great tickling game. Remembering his

theory of conserving energy, he lay passive while they rollicked

and scrambled, burrowing in the bedclothes, quivering imps of absurd

pleasure. All that was necessary was to give an occasional squirm, to

tweak their ribs now and then, so that they believed his heart was in

the sport. Really he got quite a little rest while they were scuffling.

No one knew exactly what was the imagined purpose of the lark--whether

he was supposed to be trying to escape from them, or they from him. Like

all the best games, it had not been carefully thought out.

“Now, children,” said Gissing presently. “Time to get dressed.”

It was amazing how fast they were growing. Already they were beginning

to take a pride in trying to dress themselves. While Gissing was in

the bathroom, enjoying his cold tub (and under the stimulus of that

icy sluice forming excellent resolutions for the day) the children were

sitting on the nursery floor eagerly studying the intricacies of their

gear. By the time he returned they would have half their garments on

wrong; waist and trousers front side to rear; right shoes on left feet;

buttons hopelessly mismated to buttonholes; shoelacings oddly zigzagged.

It was far more trouble to permit their ambitious bungling, which must

be undone and painstakingly reassembled, than to have clad them all

himself, swiftly revolving and garmenting them like dolls. But in these

early hours of the day, patience still is robust. It was his pedagogy to

encourage their innocent initiatives, so long as endurance might permit.

Best of all, he enjoyed watching them clean their teeth. It was

delicious to see them, tiptoe on their hind legs at the basin, to which

their noses just reached; mouths gaping wide as they scrubbed with very

small toothbrushes. They were so elated by squeezing out the toothpaste

from the tube that he had not the heart to refuse them this privilege,

though it was wasteful. For they always squeezed out more than

necessary, and after a moment's brushing their mouths became choked and

clotted with the pungent foam. Much of this they swallowed, for he

had not been able to teach them to rinse and gargle. Their only idea

regarding any fluid in the mouth was to swallow it; so they coughed and

strangled and barked. Gissing had a theory that this toothpaste foam

most be an appetizer, for he found that the more of it they swallowed,

the better they ate their breakfast.

After breakfast he hurried them out into the garden, before the day

became too hot. As he put a new lot of prunes to soak in cold water, he

could not help reflecting how different the kitchen and pantry looked

from the time of Fuji. The ice-box pan seemed to be continually brimming

over. Somehow--due, he feared, to a laxity on Mrs. Spaniel's part--ants

had got in. He was always finding them inside the ice-box, and wondered

where they came from. He was amazed to find how negligent he was growing

about pots and pans: he began cooking a new mess of oatmeal in the

double boiler without bothering to scrape out the too adhesive remnant

of the previous porridge. He had come to the conclusion that children

are tougher and more enduring than Dr. Holt will admit; and that a

little carelessness in matters of hygiene and sterilization does not

necessarily mean instant death.

Truly his once dainty menage was deteriorating. He had put away his fine

china, put away the linen napery, and laid the table with oil cloth. He

had even improved upon Fuji's invention of scuppers by a little

trough which ran all round the rim of the table, to catch any possible

spillage. He was horrified to observe how inevitably callers came at

the worst possible moment. Mr. and Mrs. Chow, for instance, drew up one

afternoon in their spick-and-span coupe with their intolerably spotless

only child sitting self-consciously beside them. Groups, Bunks, and

Yelpers were just then filling the garden with horrid clamour. They had

been quarrelling, and one had pushed the other two down the back steps.

Gissing, who had attempted to find a quiet moment to scald the ants out

of the ice-box, had just rushed forth and boxed them all. As he stood

there, angry and waving a steaming dishclout, two Chows appeared. The

puppies at once set upon little Sandy Chow, and had thoroughly mauled

his starched sailor suit in the driveway before two minutes were past.

Gissing could not help laughing, for he suspected that there had been a

touch of malice in the Chows coming just at that time.

He had given up his flower garden, too. It was all he could do to shove

the lawn-mower around, in the dusk, after the puppies were in bed.

Formerly he had found the purr of the twirling blades a soothing

stimulus to thought; but nowadays he could not even think consecutively.

Perhaps, he thought, the residence of the mind is in the legs, not in

the head; for when your legs are thoroughly weary you can't seem to

think.

So he had decided that he simply must have more help in the cooking and

housework. He had instructed Mrs. Spaniel to send the washing to the

steam-laundry, and spend her three days in the kitchen instead. A

huge bundle had come back from the laundry, and he had paid the driver

$15.98. With dismay he sorted the clean, neatly folded garments. Here

was the worthy Mrs. Spaniel's list, painstakingly written out in her

straggling script:--

MR. GISHING FAMILY WOSH

8 towls

6 pymjarm Mr Gishing

12 rompers

3 blowses

6 cribb sheets

1 Mr. Gishing sheat

4 wastes

3 wosh clothes

2 onion sutes Mr Gishing

6 smal onion sutes

4 pillo slipes

3 sherts

18 hankerchifs smal

6 hankerchifs large

8 colers

3 overhauls

10 bibbs

2 table clothes (coca stane)

1 table clothe (prun juce and eg)

After contemplating this list, Gissing went to his desk and began to

study his accounts. A resolve was forming in his mind.

CHAPTER FIVE

The summer evenings sounded a very different music from that thin

wheedling of April. It was now a soft steady vibration, the incessant

drone and throb of locust and cricket, and sometimes the sudden rasp,

dry and hard, of katydids. Gissing, in spite of his weariness, was all

fidgets. He would walk round and round the house in the dark, unable

to settle down to anything; tired, but incapable of rest. What is this

uneasiness in the mind, he asked himself? The great sonorous drumming of

the summer night was like the bruit of Time passing steadily by. Even

in the soft eddy of the leaves, lifted on a drowsy creeping air, was a

sound of discontent, of troublesome questioning. Through the trees he

could see the lighted oblongs of neighbours' windows, or hear stridulent

jazz records. Why were all others so cheerfully absorbed in the minutiae

of their lives, and he so painfully ill at ease? Sometimes, under the

warm clear darkness, the noises of field and earth swelled to a kind

of soft thunder: his quickened ears heard a thousand small outcries

contributing to the awful energy of the world--faint chimings and

whistlings in the grass, and endless flutter, rustle, and whirr. His own

body, on which hair and nails grew daily like vegetation, startled and

appalled him. Consciousness of self, that miserable ecstasy, was heavy

upon him.

He envied the children, who lay upstairs sprawled under their mosquito

nettings. Immersed in living, how happily unaware of being alive! He

saw, with tenderness, how naively they looked to him as the answer and

solution of their mimic problems. But where could he find someone to be

to him what he was to them? The truth apparently was that in his inward

mind he was desperately lonely. Reading the poets by fits and starts,

he suddenly realized that in their divine pages moved something of this

loneliness, this exquisite unhappiness. But these great hearts had had

the consolation of setting down their moods in beautiful words, words

that lived and spoke. His own strange fever burned inexpressibly inside

him. Was he the only one who felt the challenge offered by the maddening

fertility and foison of the hot sun-dazzled earth? Life, he realized,

was too amazing to be frittered out in this aimless sickness of heart.

There were truths and wonders to be grasped, if he could only throw off

this wistful vague desire. He felt like a clumsy strummer seated at a

dark shining grand piano, which he knows is capable of every glory of

rolling music, yet he can only elicit a few haphazard chords.

He had his moments of arrogance, too. Ah, he was very young! This

miracle of blue unblemished sky that had baffled all others since life

began--he, he would unriddle it! He was inclined to sneer at his friends

who took these things for granted, and did not perceive the infamous

insolubility of the whole scheme. Remembering the promises made at

the christening, he took the children to church; but alas, carefully

analyzing his mind, he admitted that his attention had been chiefly

occupied with keeping them orderly, and he had gone through the service

almost automatically. Only in singing hymns did he experience a tingle

of exalted feeling. But Mr. Poodle was proud of his well-trained choir,

and Gissing had a feeling that the congregation was not supposed to do

more than murmur the verses, for fear of spoiling the effect. In his

favourite hymns he had a tendency to forget himself and let go: his

vigorous tenor rang lustily. Then he realized that the backs of people's

heads looked surprised. The children could not be kept quiet unless

they stood up on the pews. Mr. Poodle preached rather a long sermon, and

Yelpers, toward twelve-thirty, remarked in a clear tone of interested

inquiry, “What time does God have dinner?”

Gissing had a painful feeling that he and Mr. Poodle did not thoroughly

understand each other. The curate, who was kindness itself, called one

evening, and they had a friendly chat. Gissing was pleased to find

that Mr. Poodle enjoyed a cigar, and after some hesitation ventured to

suggest that he still had something in the cellar. Mr. Poodle said that

he didn't care for anything, but his host could not help hearing the

curate's tail quite unconsciously thumping on the chair cushions. So he

excused himself and brought up one of his few remaining bottles of

White Horse. Mr. Poodle crossed his legs and they chatted about golf,

politics, the income tax, and some of the recent books; but when Gissing

turned the talk on religion, Mr. Poodle became diffident.. Gissing,

warmed and cheered by the vital Scotch, was perhaps too direct.

“What ought I to do to 'crucify the old man'?” he said.

Mr. Poodle was rather embarrassed.

“You must mortify the desires of the flesh,” he replied. “You must dig

up the old bone of sin that is buried in all our hearts.”

There were many more questions Gissing wanted to ask about this, but Mr.

Poodle said he really must be going, as he had a call to pay on Mr. and

Mrs. Chow.

Gissing walked down the path with him, and the curate did indeed set off

toward the Chows'. But Gissing wondered, for a little later he heard a

cheerful canticle upraised in the open fields.

He himself was far from gay. He longed to tear out this malady from his

breast. Poor dreamer, he did not know that to do so is to tear out God

Himself. “Mrs. Spaniel,” he said when the laundress next came up from

the village, “you are a widow, aren't you?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Poor Spaniel was killed by a truck, two years ago

April.” Her face was puzzled, but beneath her apron Gissing could see

her tail wagging.

“Don't misunderstand me,” he said quickly. “I've got to go away on

business. I want you to bring your children and move into this house

while I'm gone. I'll make arrangements at the bank about paying all the

bills. You can give up your outside washing and devote yourself entirely

to looking after this place.”

Mrs. Spaniel was so much surprised that she could not speak. In her

amazement a bright bubble dripped from the end of her curly tongue.

Hastily she caught it in her apron, and apologized.

“How long will you be away, sir?” she asked.

“I don't know. It may be quite a long time.”

“But all your beautiful things, furniture and everything,” said Mrs.

Spaniel. “I'm afraid my children are a bit rough. They're not used to

living in a house like this--”

“Well,” said Gissing, “you must do the best you can. There are some

things more important than furniture. It will be good for your children

to get accustomed to refined surroundings, and it'll be good for my

nephews to have someone to play with. Besides, I don't want them to grow

up spoiled mollycoddles. I think I've been fussing over them too much.

If they have good stuff in them, a little roughening won't do any

permanent harm.”

“Dear me,” cried Mrs. Spaniel, “what will the neighbours think?”

“They won't,” said Gissing. “I don't doubt they'll talk, but they won't

think. Thinking is very rare. I've got to do some myself, that's one

reason why I'm going. You know, Mrs. Spaniel, God is a horizon, not

someone sitting on a throne.” Mrs. Spaniel didn't understand this--in

fact, she didn't seem to hear it. Her mind was full of the idea that

she would simply have to have a new dress, preferably black silk, for

Sundays. Gissing, very sagacious, had already foreseen this point.

“Let's not have any argument,” he continued. “I have planned everything.

Here is some money for immediate needs. I'll speak to them at the

bank, and they will give you a weekly allowance. I leave you here as

caretaker. Later on I'll send you an address and you can write me how

things are going.”

Poor Mrs. Spaniel was bewildered. She came of very decent people, but

since Spaniel took to drink, and then left her with a family to support,

she had sunk in the world. She was wondering now how she could face it

out with Mrs. Chow and Mrs. Fox-Terrier and the other neighbours.

“Oh, dear,” she cried, “I don't know what to say, sir. Why, my boys are

so disreputable-looking, they haven't even a collar between them.”

“Get them collars and anything else they need,” said Gissing kindly.

“Don't worry, Mrs. Spaniel, it will be a fine thing for you. There will

be a little gossip, I dare say, but we'll have to chance that. Now

you had better go down to the village and make your arrangements. I'm

leaving tonight.”

Late that evening, after seeing Mrs. Spaniel and her brood safely

installed, Gissing walked to the station with his suitcase. He felt a

pang as he lifted the mosquito nettings and kissed the cool moist noses

of the sleeping trio. But he comforted himself by thinking that this was

no merely vulgar desertion. If he was to raise the family, he must earn

some money. His modest income would not suffice for this sudden increase

in expenses. Besides, he had never known what freedom meant until it

was curtailed. For the past three months he had lived in ceaseless

attendance; had even slept with one ear open for the children's cries.

Now he owed it to himself to make one great strike for peace. Wealth, he

could see, was the answer. With money, everything was attainable: books,

leisure for study, travel, prestige--in short, command over the physical

details of life. He would go in for Big Business. Already he thrilled

with a sense of power and prosperity.

The little house stood silent in the darkness as he went down the path.

The night was netted with the weaving sparkle of fireflies. He stood

for a moment, looking. Suddenly there came a frightened cry from the

nursery.

“Daddy, a keeto, a keeto!”

He nearly turned to run back, but checked himself. No, Mrs. Spaniel was

now in charge. It was up to her. Besides, he had only just enough time

to catch the last train to the city.

But he sat on the cinder-speckled plush of the smoker in a mood that was

hardly revelry. “By Jove,” he said to himself, “I got away just in time.

Another month and I couldn't have done it.”

It was midnight when he saw the lights of town, panelled in gold against

a peacock sky. Acres and acres of blue darkness lay close-pressing

upon the gaudy grids of light. Here one might really look at this great

miracle of shadow and see its texture. The dulcet air drifted lazily in

deep, silent crosstown streets. “Ah,” he said, “here is where the blue

begins.”

CHAPTER SIX

“For students of the troubled heart

Cities are perfect works of art.”

There is a city so tall that even the sky above her seems to have lifted

in a cautious remove, inconceivably far. There is a city so proud, so

mad, so beautiful and young, that even heaven has retreated, lest her

placid purity be too nearly tempted by that brave tragic spell. In the

city which is maddest of all, Gissing had come to search for sanity. In

the city so strangely beautiful that she has made even poets silent, he

had come to find a voice. In the city of glorious ostent and vanity, he

had come to look for humility and peace.

All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are

beautiful: but the beauty is grim. Who shall tell me the truth about

this one? Tragic? Even so, because wherever ambitions, vanities, and

follies are multiplied by millionfold contact, calamity is there. Noble

and beautiful? Aye, for even folly may have the majesty of magnitude.

Hasty, cruel, shallow? Agreed, but where in this terrene orb will you

find it otherwise? I know all that can be said against her; and yet in

her great library of streets, vast and various as Shakespeare, is beauty

enough for a lifetime. O poets, why have you been so faint? Because she

seems cynical and crass, she cries with trumpet-call to the mind of the

dreamer; because she is riant and mad, she speaks to the grave sanity of

the poet.

So, in a mood perhaps too consciously lofty, Gissing was meditating.

It was rather impudent of him to accuse the city of being mad, for he

himself, in his glee over freedom regained, was not conspicuously sane.

He scoured the town in high spirits, peering into shop-windows, riding

on top of busses, going to the Zoo, taking the rickety old steamer to

the Statue of Liberty, drinking afternoon tea at the Ritz, and all that

sort of thing. The first three nights in town he slept in one of the

little traffic-towers that perch on stilts up above Fifth Avenue. As

a matter of fact, it was that one near St. Patrick's Cathedral. He had

ridden up the Avenue in a taxi, intending to go to the Plaza (just for

a bit of splurge after his domestic confinement). As the cab went by, he

saw the traffic-tower, dark and empty, and thought what a pleasant place

to sleep. So he asked the driver to let him out at the Cathedral, and

after being sure that he was not observed, walked back to the little

turret, climbed up the ladder, and made himself at home. He liked it

so well that he returned there the two following nights; but he didn't

sleep much, for he could not resist the fun of startling night-hawk

taxis by suddenly flashing the red, green, and yellow lights at them,

and seeing them stop in bewilderment. But after three nights he

thought it best to leave. It would have been awkward if the police had

discovered him.

It was time to settle down and begin work. He had an uncle who was head

of an important business far down-town; but Gissing, with the quixotry

of youth, was determined to make his own start in the great world of

commerce. He found a room on the top floor of a quiet brownstone house

in the West Seventies. It was not large, and he had to go down a flight

for his bath; the gas burner over the bed whistled; the dust was rather

startling after the clean country; but it was cheap, and his sense of

adventure more than compensated. Mrs. Purp, the landlady, pleased him

greatly. She was very maternal, and urged him not to bolt his meals in

armchair lunches. She put an ashtray in his room.

Gissing sent Mrs. Spaniel a postcard with a picture of the Pennsylvania

Station. On it he wrote Arrived safely. Hard at work. Love to the

children. Then he went to look for a job.

His ideas about business were very vague. All he knew was that he wished

to be very wealthy and influential as soon as possible. He could have

had much sound advice from his uncle, who was a member of the Union

Kennel and quite a prominent dog-about-town. But Gissing had the

secretive pride of inexperience. Moreover, he did not quite know what

to say about his establishment in the country. That houseful of children

would need some explaining.

Those were days of brilliant heat; clear, golden, dry. The society

columns in the papers assured him that everyone was out of town; but the

Avenue seemed plentifully crowded with beautiful, superb creatures.

Far down the gentle slopes of that glimmering roadway he could see

the rolling stream of limousines, dazzles of sunlight caught on their

polished flanks. A faint blue haze of gasoline fumes hung low in the

bright warm air. This is the street where even the most passive are

pricked by the strange lure of carnal dominion. Nothing less than a job

on the Avenue itself would suit his mood, he felt.

Fortune and audacity united (as they always do) to concede his desire.

He was in the beautiful department store of Beagle and Company, one of

the most splendid of its kind, looking at some sand-coloured spats.

In an aisle near by he heard a commotion--nothing vulgar, but still an

evident stir, with repressed yelps and a genteel, horrified bustle. He

hastened to the spot, and through the crowd saw someone lying on the

floor. An extremely beautiful sales-damsel, charmingly clad in black

crepe de chien, was supporting the victim's head, vainly fanning him.

Wealthy dowagers were whining in distress. Then an ambulance clanged

up to a side door, and a stretcher was brought in. “What is it?” said

Gissing to a female at the silk-stocking counter.

“One of the floorwalkers--died of heat prostration,” she said, looking

very much upset.

“Poor fellow,” said Gissing. “You never know what will happen next, do

you?” He walked away, shaking his head.

He asked the elevator attendant to direct him to the offices of the

firm. On the seventh floor, down a quiet corridor behind the bedroom

suites, a rosewood fence barred his way. A secretary faced him

inquiringly.

“I wish to see Mr. Beagle.”

“Mr. Beagle senior or Mr. Beagle junior?”

Youth cleaves to youth, said Gissing to himself. “Mr. Beagle junior,” he

stated firmly.

“Have you an appointment?”

“Yes,” he said.

She took his ward, disappeared, and returned. “This way, please,” she

said.

Mr. Beagle senior must be very old indeed, he thought; for junior was

distinctly grizzled. In fact (so rapidly does the mind run), Mr. Beagle

senior must be near the age of retirement. Very likely (he said to

himself) that will soon occur; there will be a general stepping-up among

members of the firm, and that will be my chance. I wonder how much they

pay a junior partner?

He almost uttered this question, as Mr. Beagle junior looked at him so

inquiringly. But he caught himself in time.

“I beg your pardon for intruding,” said Gissing, “but I am the new

floorwalker.”

“You are very kind,” said Mr. Beagle junior, “but we do not need a new

floorwalker.”

“I beg your pardon again,” said Gissing, “but you are not au courant

with the affairs of the store. One has just died, right by the

silk-stocking counter. Very bad for business.”

At this moment the telephone rang, and Mr. Beagle seized it. He

listened, sharply examining his caller meanwhile.

“You are right,” he said, as he put down the receiver. “Well, sir, have

you had any experience?”

“Not exactly of that sort,” said Gissing; “but I think I understand the

requirements. The tone of the store--”

“I will ask you to be here at four-thirty this afternoon,” said Mr.

Beagle. “We have a particular routine in regard to candidates for

that position. You will readily perceive that it is a post of some

importance. The floorwalker is our point of social contact with

patrons.”

Gissing negligently dusted his shoes with a handkerchief.

“Pray do not apologize,” he said kindly. “I am willing to congratulate

with you on your good fortune. It was mere hazard that I was in the

store. To-day, of course, business will be poor. But to-morrow, I think

you will find--”

“At four-thirty,” said Mr. Beagle, a little puzzled.

That day Gissing went without lunch. First he explored the whole

building from top to bottom, until he knew the location of every

department, and had the store directory firmly memorized. With almost

proprietary tenderness he studied the shining goods and trinkets; noted

approvingly the clerks who seemed to him specially prompt and obliging

to customers; scowled a little at any sign of boredom or inattention.

He heard the soft sigh of the pneumatic tubes as they received money

and blew it to some distant coffer: this money, he thought, was already

partly his. That square-cut creature whom he presently discerned

following him was undoubtedly the store detective: he smiled to think

what a pleasant anecdote this would be when he was admitted to junior

partnership. Then he went, finally, to the special Masculine Shop on the

fifth floor, where he bought a silk hat, a cutaway coat and waistcoat,

and trousers of pearly stripe. He did not forget patent leather shoes,

nor white spats. He refused--the little white linen margins which the

clerk wished to affix to the V of his waistcoat. That, he felt, was the

ultra touch which would spoil all. The just less than perfection, how

perfect it is!

It was getting late. He hurried to Penn Station where he hired one of

those little dressing booths, and put on his regalia. His tweeds, in a

neat package, he checked at the parcel counter. Then he returned to the

store for the important interview.

He had expected a formal talk with the two Messrs. Beagle, perhaps

touching on such matters as duties, hours, salary, and so on. To his

surprise he was ushered by the secretary into a charming Louis XVI salon

farther down the private corridor. There were several ladies: one was

pouring tea. Mr. Beagle junior came forward. The vice-president (such

was Mr. Beagle junior's rank, Gissing had learned by the sign on his

door) still wore his business garb of the morning. Gissing immediately

felt himself to have the advantage. But what a pleasant idea, he

thought, for the members of the firm to have tea together every

afternoon. He handed his hat, gloves, and stick to the secretary.

“Very kind of you to come,” said Mr. Beagle. “Let me present you to my

wife.”

Mrs. Beagle, at the tea-urn, received him graciously.

“Cream or lemon?” she said. “Two lumps?”

This is really delightful, Gissing thought. Only on Fifth Avenue could

this kind of thing happen. He looked down the hostess from his superior

height, and smiled charmingly.

“Do you permit three?” he said. “A little weakness of mine.” As a matter

of fact, he hated tea so sweet; but he felt it was strategic to fix

himself in Mrs. Beagle's mind as a polished eccentric.

“You must have a meringue,” she said. “Ah, Mrs. Pomeranian has them.

Mrs. Pomeranian, let me present Mr. Gissing.”

Mrs. Pomeranian, small and plump and tightly corseted, offered the

meringues, while Mrs. Beagle pressed upon him a plate with a small

doily, embroidered with the arms of the store, and its motto je

maintiendrai--referring, no doubt, to its prices. Mr. Beagle then

introduced him to several more ladies in rapid succession. Gissing

passed along the line, bowing slightly but with courteous interest to

each. To each one he raised his eyebrows and permitted himself a small

significant smile, as though to convey that this was a moment he had

long been anticipating. How different, he thought, was this life of

enigmatic gaiety from the suburban drudgery of recent months. If only

Mrs. Spaniel could see him now! He was about to utilize a brief pause by

sipping his tea, when a white-headed patriarch suddenly appeared beside

him.

“Mr. Gissing,” said the vice-president, “this is my father, Mr. Beagle

senior.”

Gissing, by quick work, shuffled the teacup into his left paw, and the

meringue plate into the crook of his elbow, so he was ready for the old

gentleman's salutation. Mr. Beagle senior was indeed very old: his white

hair hung over his eyes, he spoke with growling severity. Gissing's

manner to the old merchant was one of respectful reassurance: he

attempted to make an impression that would console: to impart--of course

without saying so--the thought that though the head of the firm could

not last much longer, yet he would leave his great traffic in capable

care.

“Where will I find an aluminum cooking pot?” growled the elder Beagle

unexpectedly.

“In the Bargain Basement,” said Gissing promptly.

“He'll do!” cried the president.

To his surprise, on looking round, Gissing saw that all the ladies had

vanished. Beagle junior was grinning at him.

“You have the job, Mr. Gissing,” he said. “You will pardon the harmless

masquerade--we always try out a floorwalker in that way. My father

thinks that if he can handle a teacup and a meringue while being

introduced to ladies, he can manage anything on the main aisle

downstairs. Mrs. Pomeranian, our millinery buyer, said she had never

seen it better done, and she mixes with some of the swellest people in

Paris.”

“Nine to six, with half an hour off for lunch,” said the senior partner,

and left the room.

Gissing calmly swallowed his tea, and ate the meringue. He would have

enjoyed another, but the capable secretary had already removed them. He

poured himself a second cup of tea. Mr. Beagle junior showed signs of

eagerness to leave, but Gissing detained him.

“One moment,” he said suavely. “There is a little matter that we have

not discussed. The question of salary.”

Mr. Beagle looked thoughtfully out of the window.

“Thirty dollars a week,” he said.

After all, Gissing thought, it will only take four weeks to pay for what

I have spent on clothes.

CHAPTER SEVEN

There was some dramatic nerve in Gissing's nature that responded

eloquently to the floorwalking job. Never, in the history of Beagle and

Company, had there been a floorwalker who threw so much passion and zeal

into his task. The very hang of his coattails, even the erect carriage

of his back, the rubbery way in which his feet trod the aisles, showed

his sense of dignity and glamour. There seemed to be a great tradition

which enriched and upheld him. Mr. Beagle senior used to stand on

the little balcony at the rear of the main floor, transfixed with the

pleasure of seeing Gissing move among the crowded passages.

Alert, watchful, urbane, with just the ideal blend of courtesy and

condescension, he raised floorwalking to a social art. Female customers

asked him the way to departments they knew perfectly well, for the

pleasure of hearing him direct them. Business began to improve before he

had been there a week.

And how he enjoyed himself! The perfection of his bearing on the

floor was no careful pose: it was due to the brimming overplus of his

happiness. Happiness is surely the best teacher of good manners: only

the unhappy are churlish in deportment. He was young, remember; and

this was his first job. His precocious experience as a paterfamilias had

added to his mien just that suggestion of unconscious gravity which is

so appealing to ladies. He looked (they thought) as though he had been

touched--but Oh so lightly!--by poetic sorrow or strange experience: to

ask him the way to the notion counter was as much of an adventure as

to meet a reigning actor at a tea. The faint cloud of melancholy that

shadowed his brow may have been only due to the fact that his new boots

were pinching painfully; but they did not know that.

So, quite unconsciously, he began to “establish” himself in his role,

just as an actor does. At first he felt his way tentatively and with

tact. Every store has its own tone and atmosphere: in a day or so he

divined the characteristic cachet of the Beagle establishment. He saw

what kind of customers were typical, and what sort of conduct they

expected. And the secret of conquest being always to give people

a little more than they expect, he pursued that course. Since they

expected in a floorwalker the mechanical and servile gentility of a

hired puppet, he exhibited the easy, offhand simplicity of a fellow

club-member. With perfect naturalness he went out of his way to assist

in their shopping concerns: gave advice in the selection of dress

materials, acted as arbiter in the matching of frocks and stockings. His

taste being faultless, it often happened that the things he recommended

were not the most expensive: this again endeared him to customers.

When sales slips were brought to him by ladies who wished to make an

exchange, he affixed his O. K. with a magnificent flourish, and with

such evident pleasure, that patrons felt genuine elation, and plunged

into the tumult with new enthusiasm. It was not long before there were

always people waiting for his counsel; and husbands would appear at

the store to convey (a little irritably) some such message as: “Mrs.

Sealyham says, please choose her a scarf that will go nicely with that

brown moire dress of hers. She says you will remember the dress.”--This

popularity became even a bit perplexing, as for instance when old Mrs.

Dachshund, the store's biggest Charge Account, insisted on his leaving

his beat at a very busy time, to go up to the tenth floor to tell her

which piano he thought had the richer tone.

Of course all this was very entertaining, and an admirable opportunity

for studying his fellow-creatures; but it did not go very deep into

his mind. He lived for some time in a confused glamour and glitter;

surrounded by the fascinating specious life of the store, but drifting

merely superficially upon it. The great place, with its columns of

artificial marble and white censers of upward-shining electricity,

glimmered like a birch forest by moonlight. Silver and jewels and silks

and slippers flashed all about him. It was a marvellous education, for

he soon learned to estimate these things at their proper value; which is

low, for they have little to do with life itself. His work was tiring in

the extreme--merely having to remain upright on his hind legs for

such long hours WAS an ordeal--but it did not penetrate to the secret

observant self of which he was always aware. This was advantageous. If

you have no intellect, or only just enough to get along with, it does

not much matter what you do. But if you really have a mind--by which

is meant that rare and curious power of reason, of imagination, and

of emotion; very different from a mere fertility of conversation and

intelligent curiosity--it is better not to weary and wear it out over

trifles.

So, when he left the store in the evening, no matter how his legs ached,

his head was clear and untarnished. He did not hurry away at closing

time. Places where people work are particularly fascinating after

the bustle is over. He loved to linger in the long aisles, to see the

tumbled counters being swiftly brought to order, to hear the pungent

cynicisms of the weary shopgirls. To these, by the way, he was a bit of

a mystery. The punctilio of his manner, the extreme courtliness of his

remarks, embarrassed them a little. Behind his back they spoke of him as

“The Duke” and admired him hugely; little Miss Whippet, at the stocking

counter, said that he was an English noble of long pedigree, who had

been unjustly deprived of his estates.

Down in the basement of this palatial store was a little dressing

room and lavatory for the floorwalkers, where they doffed their formal

raiment and resumed street attire. His colleagues grumbled and hastened

to depart, but Gissing made himself entirely comfortable. In his locker

he kept a baby's bathtub, which he leisurely filled with hot water at

one of the basins. Then he sat serenely and bathed his feet; although it

was against the rules he often managed to smoke a pipe while doing so.

Then he hung up his store clothes neatly, and went off refreshed into

the summer evening.

A warm rosy light floods the city at that hour. At the foot of every

crosstown street is a bonfire of sunset. What a mood of secret smiling

beset him as he viewed the great territory of his enjoyment. “The

freedom of the city”--a phrase he had somewhere heard--echoed in his

mind. The freedom of the city! A magnificent saying, Electric signs,

first burning wanly in the pink air, then brightened and grew strong.

“Not light, but rather darkness visible,” in that magic hour that just

holds the balance between paling day and the spendthrift jewellery

of evening. Or, if it rained, to sit blithely on the roof of a bus,

revelling in the gust and whipping of the shower. Why had no one told

him of the glory of the city? She was pride, she was exultation, she

was madness. She was what he had obscurely craved. In every line of

her gallant profile he saw conquest, triumph, victory! Empty conquest,

futile triumph, doomed victory--but that was the essence of the drama.

In thunderclaps of dumb ecstasy he saw her whole gigantic fabric,

leaning and clamouring upward with terrible yearning. Burnt with

pitiless sunlight, drenched with purple explosions of summer storm, he

saw her cleansed and pure. Where were her recreant poets that they had

never made these things plain?

And then, after the senseless day, after its happy but meaningless

triviality, the throng and mixed perfumery and silly courteous gestures,

his blessed solitude! Oh solitude, that noble peace of the mind!

He loved the throng and multitude of the day: he loved people: but

sometimes he suspected that he loved them as God does--at a judicious

distance. From his rather haphazard religious training, strange words

came back to him. “For God so loved the world...” So loved the world

that--that what? That He sent someone else... Some day he must think

this out. But you can't think things out. They think themselves,

suddenly, amazingly. The city itself is God, he cried. Was not God's

ultimate promise something about a city--The City of God? Well, but that

was only symbolic language. The city--of course that was only a symbol

for the race--for all his kind. The entire species, the whole aspiration

and passion and struggle, that was God.

On the ferries, at night, after supper, was his favourite place for

meditation. Some undeniable instinct drew him ever and again out of

the deep and shut ravines of stone, to places where he could feed on

distance. That is one of the subtleties of this straight and narrow

city, that though her ways are cliffed in, they are a long thoroughfare

for the eye: there is always a far perspective. But best of all to go

down to her environing water, where spaces are wide: the openness that

keeps her sound and free. Ships had words for him: they had crossed many

horizons: fragments of that broken blue still shone on their cutting

bows. Ferries, the most poetical things in the city, were nearly empty

at night: he stood by the rail, saw the black outline of the town slide

by, saw the lower sky gilded with her merriment, and was busy thinking.

Now about a God (he said to himself)--instinct tells me that there is

one, for when I think about Him I find that I unconsciously wag my tail

a little. But I must not reason on that basis, which is too puppyish. I

like to think that there is, somewhere in this universe, an inscrutable

Being of infinite wisdom, harmony, and charity, by Whom all my desires

and needs would be understood; in association with Whom I would find

peace, satisfaction, a lightness of heart that exceed my present

understanding. Such a Being is to me quite inconceivable; yet I feel

that if I met Him, I would instantly understand. I do not mean that I

would understand Him: but I would understand my relationship to Him,

which would be perfect. Nor do I mean that it would be always

happy; merely that it would transcend anything in the way of social

significance that I now experience. But I must not conclude that there

is such a God, merely because it would be so pleasant if there were.

Then (he continued) is it necessary to conceive that this deity is

super-canine in essence? What I am getting at is this: in everyone

I have ever known--Fuji, Mr. Poodle, Mrs. Spaniel, those maddening

delightful puppies, Mrs. Purp, Mr. Beagle, even Mrs. Chow and Mrs.

Sealyham and little Miss Whippet--I have always been aware that there

was some mysterious point of union at which our minds could converge and

entirely understand one another. No matter what our difference of breed,

of training, of experience and education, provided we could meet and

exchange ideas honestly there would be some satisfying point of mental

fusion where we would feel our solidarity in the common mystery of life.

People complain that wars are caused by and fought over trivial things.

Why, of course! For it is only in trivial matters that people differ:

in the deep realities they must necessarily be at one. Now I have a

suspicion that in this secret sense of unity God may lurk. Is that what

we mean by God, the sum total of all these instinctive understandings?

But what is the origin of this sense of kinship? Is it not the

realization of our common subjection to laws and forces greater than

ourselves? Then, since nothing can be greater than God, He must BE these

superior mysteries. Yet He cannot be greater than our minds, for our

minds have imagined Him.

My mathematics is very rusty, he said to himself, but I seem to remember

something about a locus, which was a curve or a surface every point

on which satisfied some particular equation of relation among the

coordinates. It begins to look to me as though life might be a kind of

locus, whose commanding equation we call God. The points on that locus

cannot conceive of the equation, yet they are subject to it. They cannot

conceive of that equation, because of course it has no existence save

as a law of their being. It exists only for them; they, only by it. But

there it is--a perfect, potent, divine abstraction.

This carried him into a realm of disembodied thinking which his mind was

not sufficiently disciplined to summarize. It is quite plain, he said to

himself, that I must rub up my vanished mathematics. For certainly the

mathematician comes closer to God than any other, since his mind is

trained to conceive and formulate the magnificent phantoms of legality.

He smiled to think that any one should presume to become a parson

without having at least mastered analytical geometry.

The ferry had crossed and recrossed the river several times, but Gissing

had found no conclusion for these thoughts. As the boat drew toward

her slip, she passed astern of a great liner. Gissing saw the four tall

funnels loom up above the shed of the pier where she lay berthed.

What was it that made his heart so stir? The perfect rake of the

funnels--just that satisfying angle of slant--that, absurdly enough, was

the nobility of the sight. Why, then? Let's get at the heart of this, he

said. Just that little trick of the architect, useless in itself--what

was it but the touch of swagger, of bravado, of defiance--going out

into the vast, meaningless, unpitying sea with that dainty arrogance

of build; taking the trouble to mock the senseless elements, hurricane,

ice, and fog, with a 15-degree slope of masts and funnels: damn, what

was the analogy?

It was pride, it was pride! It was the same lusty impudence that he saw

in his perfect city, the city that cried out to the hearts of youth,

jutted her mocking pinnacles toward sky, her clumsy turrets verticalled

on gold! And God, the God of gales and gravity, loved His children to

dare and contradict Him, to rally Him with equations of their own.

“God, I defy you!” he cried.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Time is a flowing river. Happy those who allow themselves to be carried,

unresisting, with the current. They float through easy days. They live,

unquestioning, in the moment.

But Gissing was acutely conscious of Time. Though not subtle enough to

analyze the matter acutely, he had a troublesome feeling about it. He

kept checking off a series of Nows. “Now I am having my bath,” he would

say to himself in the morning. “Now I am dressing. Now I am on the

way to the store. Now I am in the jewellery aisle, being polite to

customers. Now I am having lunch.” After a period in which time ran by

unnoticed, he would suddenly realize a fresh Now, and feel uneasy at

the knowledge that it would shortly dissolve into another one. He tried,

vainly, to swim up-stream against the smooth impalpable fatal current.

He tried to dam up Time, to deepen the stream so that he could bathe in

it carelessly. Time, he said, is life; and life is God; time, then, is

little bits of God. Those who waste their time in vulgarity or folly are

the true atheists.

One of the things that struck him about the city was its heedlessness of

Time. On every side he saw people spending it without adequate return.

Perhaps he was young and doctrinaire: but he devised this theory for

himself--all time is wasted that does not give you some awareness of

beauty or wonder. In other words, “the days that make us happy make us

wise,” he said to himself, quoting Masefield's line. On that principle,

he asked, how much time is wasted in this city? Well, here are some six

million people. To simplify the problem (which is permitted to every

philosopher) let us (he said) assume that 2,350,000 of those people have

spent a day that could be called, on the whole, happy: a day in

which they have had glimpses of reality; a day in which they feel

satisfaction. (That was, he felt, a generous allowance. ) Very well,

then, that leaves 3,650,000 people whose day has been unfruitful: spent

in uncongenial work, or in sorrow, suffering, and talking nonsense. This

city, then, in one day, has wasted 10,000 years, or 100 centuries. One

hundred centuries squandered in a day! It made him feel quite ill, and

he tore up the scrap of paper on which he had been figuring.

This was a new, disconcerting way to think of the subject. We are

accustomed to consider Time only as it applies to ourselves, forgetting

that it is working upon everyone else simultaneously. Why, he thought

with a sudden shock, if only 36,500 people in this city have had a

thoroughly spendthrift and useless day, that means a net loss of a

century! If the War, he said to himself, lasted over 1,500 days and

involved more than 10,000,000 men, how many aeons--He used to think

about these things during quiet evenings in the top-floor room at Mrs.

Purp's. Occasionally he went home at night still wearing his store

clothes, because it pleased good Mrs. Purp so much. She felt that it

added glamour to her house to have him do so, and always called her

husband, a frightened silent creature with no collar and a humble air,

up from the basement to admire. Mr. Purp's time, Gissing suspected,

was irretrievably wasted--a good deal of it, to judge by his dusty

appearance, in rolling around in ashcans or in the company of the

neighbourhood bootlegger; but then, he reflected, in a charitable

seizure, you must not judge other people's time-spendings by a calculus

of your own.

Perhaps he himself was growing a little miserly in this matter.

Indulging in the rare, the sovereign luxury of thinking, he had suddenly

become aware of time's precious fluency, and wondered why everyone else

didn't think about it as passionately as he did. In the privacy of

his room, weary after the day afoot, he took off his cutaway coat and

trousers and enjoyed his old habit of stretching out on the floor for

a good rest. There he would lie, not asleep, but in a bliss of passive

meditation. He even grudged Mrs. Purp the little chats she loved--she

made a point of coming up with clean towels when she knew he was in his

room, because she cherished hearing him talk. When he heard her knock,

he had to scramble hastily to his feet, get on his clothes, and pretend

he had been sitting calmly in the rocking chair. It would never do

to let her find him sprawled on the floor. She had an almost painful

respect for him. Once, when prospective lodgers were bargaining for

rooms, and he happened to be wearing his Beagle and Company attire, she

had asked him to do her the favour of walking down the stairs, so that

the visitors might be impressed by the gentility of the establishment.

Of course he loved to waste time--but in his own way. He gloated on the

irresponsible vacancy of those evening hours, when there was nothing to

be done. He lay very still, hardly even thinking, just feeling life go

by. Through the open window came the lights and noises of the street.

Already his domestic life seemed dim and far away. The shrill appeals

of the puppies, their appalling innocent comments on existence, came

but faintly to memory. Here, where life beat so much more thickly and

closely, was the place to be. Though he had solved nothing, yet he

seemed closer to the heart of the mystery. Entranced, he felt time

flowing on toward him, endless in sweep and fulness. There is only one

success, he said to himself--to be able to spend your life in your own

way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it. Youth,

youth is the only wealth, for youth has Time in its purse!

In the store, however, philosophy was laid aside. A kind of intoxication

possessed him. Never before had old Mr. Beagle (watching delightedly

from the mezzanine balcony) seen such a floorwalker. Gissing moved to

and fro exulting in the great tide of shopping. He knew all the best

customers by name and had learned their peculiarities. If a shower came

up and Mrs. Mastiff was just leaving, he hastened to give her his arm as

far as her limousine, boosting her in so expeditiously that not a drop

of wetness fell upon her. He took care to find out the special plat du

jour of the store's lunch room, and seized occasion to whisper to Mrs.

Dachshund, whose weakness was food, that the filet of sole was very nice

to-day. Mrs. Pomeranian learned that giving Gissing a hint about some

new Parisian importations was more effective than a half page ad. in the

Sunday papers. Within a few hours, by a judicious word here and there,

he would have a score of ladies hastening to the millinery salon.

A pearl necklace of great value, which Mr. Beagle had rebuked the

jewellery buyer for getting, because it seemed more appropriate for a

dealer in precious stones than for a department store, was disposed of

almost at once. Gissing casually told Mrs. Mastiff that he had heard

Mrs. Sealyham intended to buy it. As for Mrs. Dachshund, who had had a

habit of lunching at Delmonico's, she now was to be seen taking tiffin

at Beagle's almost daily. There were many husbands who would have been

glad to shoot him at sight on the first of the month, had they known who

was the real cause of their woe.

Indeed, Gissing had raised floorwalking to a new level. He was more

prime minister than a mere patroller of aisles. With sparkling eye,

with unending curiosity, tact, and attention, he moved quietly among the

throng. He realized that shopping is the female paradise; that spending

money she has not earned is the only real fun an elderly and wealthy

lady can have; and if to this primitive shopping passion can be added

the delights of social amenity--flattery, courtesy, good-humoured

flirtation--the snare is complete.

But all this is not accomplished without rousing the jealousy of

rivals. Among the other floorwalkers, and particularly in the gorgeously

uniformed attendant at the front door (who was outraged by Gissing's

habit of escorting special customers to their motors) moved anger, envy,

and sneers. Gissing, completely absorbed in the fascination of his work,

was unaware of this hostility, as he was equally unaware of the amazed

satisfaction of his employer. He went his way with naive and unconscious

pleasure. It did not take long for his enemies to find a fulcrum for

their chagrin. One evening, after closing, when he sat in the dressing

room, with his feet in the usual tub of hot water, placidly reviewing

the day's excitements and smoking his pipe, the superintendent burst in.

“Hey!” he exclaimed. “Don't you know smoking's forbidden? What do you

want to do, get our fire insurance cancelled? Get out of here! You're

fired!”

It did not occur to Gissing to question or protest. He had known

perfectly well that smoking was not allowed. But he was like the

stage hand behind the scenes who concluded it was all right to light

a cigarette because the sign only said SMOKING FORBIDDEN, instead of

SMOKING STRICTLY FORBIDDEN. He had not troubled his mind about it, one

way or about it, one way or another.

He had drawn his salary that evening, and his first thought was, Well,

at any rate I've earned enough to pay for the clothes. He had been there

exactly four weeks. Quite calmly, he lifted his feet out of the tub and

began to towel them daintily. The meticulous way he dried between his

toes was infuriating to the superintendent.

“Have you any children?” Gissing asked, mildly.

“What's that to you?” snapped the other.

“I'll sell you this bathtub for a quarter. Take it home to them. They

probably need it.”

“You get out of here!” cried the angry official.

“You'd be surprised,” said Gissing, “how children thrive when they're

bathed regularly. Believe me, I know.”

He packed his formal clothes in a neat bundle, left the bathtub behind,

surrendered his locker key, and walked toward the employees' door,

escorted by his bristling superior. As they passed through the empty

aisles, scene of his brief triumph, he could not help gazing a little

sadly. True merchant to the last, a thought struck him. He scribbled a

note on the back of a sales slip and left it at Miss Whippet's post by

the stocking counter. It said:--

MISS WHIPPET: Show Mrs. Sealyham some of the bisque sports hose, Scotch

wool, size 9. She's coming to-morrow. Don't let her get size 8 1/2. They

shrink.

MR. GISSING.

At the door he paused, relit his pipe leisurely, raised his hat to the

superintendent, and strolled away.

In spite of this nonchalance, the situation was serious. His money was

at a low ebb. All his regular income was diverted to the support of

the large household in the country. He was too proud to appeal to his

wealthy uncle. He hated also to think of Mrs. Purp's mortification if

she learned that her star boarder was out of work. By a curious irony,

when he got home he found a letter from Mrs. Spaniel:--

MR. GISHING, dere friend, the pupeys are well, no insecks, and eat with

nives and forx Groups is the fattest but Yelpers is the lowdest they

send wags and lix and glad to here Daddy is doing so well in buisness

with respects from

MRS. SPANIEL.

He did not let Mrs. Purp know of the change in his condition, and every

morning left his lodging at the usual time. By some curious attraction

he felt drawn to that downtown region where his kinsman's office was.

This part of the city he had not properly explored.

It was a world wholly different from Fifth Avenue. There was none of

that sense of space and luxury he had known on the wide slopes of Murray

Hill. He wandered under terrific buildings, in a breezy shadow where

javelins of colourless sunlight pierced through thin slits, hot

brilliance fell in fans and cascades over the uneven terrace of roofs.

Here was where husbands worked to keep Fifth Avenue going: he wondered

vaguely whether Mrs. Sealyham had bought those stockings? One day he

saw his uncle hurrying along Wall Street with an intent face. Gissing

skipped into a doorway, fearing to be recognized. He knew that the old

fellow would insist on taking him to lunch at the Pedigree Club, would

talk endlessly, and ask family questions. But he was on the scent of

matters that talk could not pursue.

He perceived a sense of pressure, of prodigious poetry and beauty and

amazement. This was a strange jungle of life. Tall coasts of windows

stood up into the pure brilliant sky: against their feet beat a dark

surf of slums. In one foreign street, too deeply trenched for sunlight,

oranges were the only gold. The water, reaching round in two arms, came

close: there was a note of husky summons in the whistles of passing

craft. Almost everywhere, sharp above many smells of oils and spices,

the whiff of coffee tingled his busy nose. Above one huge precipice

stood a gilded statue--a boy with wings, burning in the noon. Brilliance

flamed between the vanes of his pinions: the intangible thrust of that

pouring light seemed about to hover him off into blue air.

The world of working husbands was more tender than that of shopping

wives: even in all their business, they had left space and quietness for

the dead. Sunken among the crags he found two graveyards. They were cups

of placid brightness. Here, looking upward, it was like being drowned

on the floor of an ocean of light. Husbands had built their offices

half-way to the sky rather than disturb these. Perhaps they appreciate

rest all the more, Gissing thought, because they get so little of it?

Somehow he could not quite imagine a graveyard left at peace in the

shopping district. It would be bad for trade, perhaps? Even the churches

on the Avenue, he had noticed, were huddled up and hemmed in so tightly

by the other buildings that they had scarcely room to kneel. If I ever

become a parson, he said (this was a fantastic dream of his), I will

insist that all churches must have a girdle of green about them, to set

them apart from the world.

The two little brown churches among the cliffs had been gifted with a

dignity far beyond the dream of their builders. Their pointing spires

were relieved against the enormous facades of business. What other

altars ever had such a reredos? Above the strepitant racket of the

streets, he heard the harsh chimes of Trinity at noonday--strong jags of

clangour hurled against the great sounding-boards of buildings; drifting

and dying away down side alleys. There was no soft music of appeal in

the bronze volleying: it was the hoarse monitory voice of rebuke. So

spoke the church of old, he thought: not asking, not appealing, but

imperatively, sternly, as one born to command. He thought with new

respect of Mr. Sealyham, Mr. Mastiff, Mr. Dachshund, all the others

who were powers in these fantastic flumes of stone. They were more than

merely husbands of charge accounts--they were poets. They sat at lunch

on the tops of their amazing edifices, and looked off at the blue.

Day after day went by, but with a serene fatalism Gissing did nothing

about hunting a job. He was willing to wait until the last dollar was

broken: in the meantime he was content. You never know the soul of a

city, he said, until you are down on your luck. Now, he felt, he had

been here long enough to understand her. She did not give her secrets to

the world of Fifth Avenue. Down here, where the deep crevice of Broadway

opened out into greenness, what was the first thing he saw? Out across

the harbour, turned toward open sea--Liberty! Liberty Enlightening the

World, he had heard, was her full name. Some had mocked her, he had also

heard. Well, what was the gist of her enlightenment? Why this, surely:

that Liberty could never be more than a statue: never a reality. Only a

fool would expect complete liberty. He himself, with all his latitude,

was not free. If he were, he would cook his meals in his room, and save

money--but Mrs. Purp was strict on that point. She had spoken scathingly

of two young females she ejected for just that reason. Nor was Mrs. Purp

free--she was ridden by the Gas Company. So it went.

It struck him, now he was down to about three dollars, that a generous

gesture toward Fortune might be valuable. When you are nearly out of

money, he reasoned, to toss coins to the gods--i. e., to buy something

quite unnecessary--may be propitiatory. It may start something moving

in your direction. It is the touch of bravado that God relishes. In a

sudden mood of tenderness, he bought two dollars' worth of toys and had

them sent to the children. He smiled to think how they would frolic over

the jumping rabbit. He sent Mrs. Spaniel a postcard of the Aquarium.

There is a good deal more to this business than I had realized, he said,

as he walked uptown through the East Side slums that hot night. The

audacity, the vitality, the magnificence, are plain enough. But I seem

to see squalor too, horror and pitiful dearth. I believe God is farther

off than I thought. Look here: if the more you know, the less you know

about God, doesn't that mean that God is really enjoyed only by the

completely simple--by faith, never by reason?

He gave twenty-five cents to a beggar, and said angrily: “I am not

interested in a God who is known only by faith.”

When he got uptown he was very tired and hungry. In spite of all Mrs.

Purp's rules, he smuggled in an egg, a box of biscuits, a small packet

of tea and sugar, and a tin of condensed milk. He emptied the milk into

his shaving mug, and used the tin to boil water in, holding it over the

gas jet. He was getting on finely when a sudden knock on the door made

him jump. He spilled the hot water on his leg, and uttered a wild yell.

Mrs. Purp burst in, but she was so excited that she did not notice the

egg seeping into the clean counterpane.

“Oh, Mr. Gissing,” she exclaimed, “I've been waiting all evening for

you to come in. Purp and I wondered if you'd seen this in the paper

to-night? Purp noticed it in the ads., but we couldn't understand what

it meant.”

She held out a page of classified advertising, in which he read with

amazement:

PERSONAL

If MR. GISSING, late floorwalker at Beagle and Company, will communicate

with Mr. Beagle Senior, he will hear matters greatly to his advantage.

CHAPTER NINE

There had been great excitement in the private offices of Beagle

and Company after Gissing's sudden disappearance. Old Mr. Beagle was

furious, and hotly scolded his son. In spite of his advanced age, Beagle

senior was still an autocrat and insisted on regulating the details

of the great business he had built up. “You numbskull!” he shouted to

Beagle junior, “that fellow was worth any dozen others in the place, and

you let him be fired by a mongrel superintendent.”

“But, Papa,” protested the vice-president, “the superintendent had to

obey the rules. You know how strict the underwriters are about smoking.

Of course he should have warned Gissing, instead of discharging him.”

“Rules!” interrupted old Beagle fiercely--“Rules don't apply in a case

like this. I tell you that fellow has a genius for storekeeping. Haven't

I watched him on the floor? I've never seen one like him. What's the

good of your newfangled methods, your card indexes and overhead charts,

when you haven't even got a record of his address?”

Growling and showing his teeth, the head of the firm plodded stiffly

downstairs and discharged the superintendent himself. Already he saw

signs of disorganization in the main aisle. Miss Whippet was tearful:

customers were waiting impatiently to have exchange slips O. K.'d: Mrs.

Dachshund was turning over some jewelled lorgnettes, but it was plain

that she was only “looking,” and had no intention to purchase.

So when, after many vain inquiries, the advertisement reached its

target, the old gentleman welcomed Gissing with genuine emotion. He

received him into his private office, locked the door, and produced a

decanter. Evidently beneath his irritable moods he had sensibilities of

his own.

“I have given my life to trade,” he said, “and I have grown weary of

watching the half-hearted simpletons who imagine they can rise to the

top by thinking more about themselves than they do about the business.

You, Mr. Gissing, have won my heart. You see storekeeping as I do--a

fine art, an absorbing passion, a beautiful, thrilling sport. It is an

art as lovely and subtle as the theatre, with the same skill in wooing

and charming the public.”

Gissing bowed, and drank Mr. Beagle's health, to cover his astonishment.

The aged merchant fixed him with a glittering eye.

“I can see that storekeeping is your genius in life. I can see that you

are naturally consecrated to it. My son is a good steady fellow, but he

lacks the divine gift. I am getting old. We need new fire, new brains,

in the conduct of this business. I ask you to forgive the unlucky

blunder we made lately, and devote yourself to us.”

Gissing was very much embarrassed. He wanted to say that if he was

going to consecrate himself to floorwalking, he would relish a raise

in salary; but old Beagle was so tremulous and kept blowing his nose so

loudly that Gissing doubted if he could make himself heard.

“I want you to take a position as General Manager,” said Mr. Beagle,

“with a salary of ten thousand a year.”

He rose and threw open a mahogany door that led out of his own sanctum.

“Here is your office,” he said.

The bewildered Gissing looked about the room--the mahogany flat-topped

desk with a great sheet of plate glass shining greenly at its thick

edges; an inkwell, pens and pencils, a little glass bowl full of bright

paper-clips; one of those rocking blotters that are so tempting; a water

cooler which just then uttered a seductive gulping bubble; an electric

fan, gently humming; wooden trays for letters and memoranda; on one

wall a great chart of names, lettered Organization of Personnel; a nice

domestic-looking hat-and-coat stand; a soft green rug--Ah, how alluring

it all was!

Mr. Beagle pointed to the outer door of the room, which had a frosted

pane. Through the glass the astounded floorwalker could read the words

REGANAM LARENEG GNISSIG.RM

What a delightful little room to meditate in. From the broad windows he

could see the whole shining tideway of Fifth Avenue, passing lazily in

the warm sunlight. He turned to Mr. Beagle, greatly moved.

The next day an advertisement appeared in the leading papers, to this

effect:--

________________________

BEAGLE AND COMPANY

take pleasure in announcing to

their patrons and friends that

MR. GISSING

has been admitted to the firm in

the status of General Manager

Je Maintiendrai

__________________________

Mrs. Purp's excitement at this is easier imagined than described. Her

only fear was that now she would lose her best lodger. She made Purp

go out and buy a new shirt and a collar; she told Gissing, rather

pathetically, that she intended to have the whole house repapered in the

fall. The big double suite downstairs, which could be used as bedroom

and sitting-room, she suggested as a comfortable change. But Gissing

preferred to remain where he was. He had grown fond of the top floor.

Certainly there was an exhilaration in his new importance and

prosperity. The store buzzed with the news. At his request, Miss Whippet

was promoted to the seventh floor to be his secretary. It was delightful

to make his morning tour of inspection through the vast building. Mr.

Hound, the store detective, loved to tell his cronies how suspiciously

he had followed “The Duke” that first day. As Gissing moved through the

busy departments he saw eyes following him, tails wagging. Customers

were more flattered than ever by his courteous attentions. One day

he even held a little luncheon party in the restaurant, at which Mrs.

Dachshund, Mrs. Mastiff, and Mrs. Sealyham were his guests. He invited

their husbands, but the latter were too busy to come. It would have been

more prudent of them to attend. That afternoon Mrs. Dachshund, carried

away by enthusiasm, bought a platinum wrist-watch. Mrs. Mastiff bought

a diamond dog-collar. Mrs. Sealyham, whose husband was temporarily

embarrassed in Wall Street, contented herself with a Sheraton

chifforobe.

But it began to be evident that his delightful little office was not

going to be a shrine for quiet meditation. His vanity had been pleased

by the large advertisement about him, but he suddenly realized the

poison that lies in printer's ink. Almost overnight, it seemed, he had

been added to ten thousand mailing lists. Little Miss Whippet, although

she was fast at typewriting, was hard put to it to keep up with his

correspondence. She quivered eagerly over her machine, her small

paws flying. New pink ribbons gleamed through her translucent summery

georgette blouse. They were her flag of exultation at her surprising

rise in life. She felt it was immensely important to get all these

letters answered promptly.

And so did Gissing. In his new zeal, and in his innocent satisfaction

at having entered the inner circle of Big Business, he insisted on

answering everything. He did not realize that dictating letters is the

quaint diversion of business men, and that most of them mean nothing. It

is simply the easiest way of assuring yourself that you are busy.

This job was no sinecure. Old Mr. Beagle had so much affectionate

confidence in Gissing that he referred almost everything to him

for decision. Mr. Beagle junior, perhaps a little annoyed at the

floorwalker's meteoric translation, spent the summer afternoons at

golf. The infinite details of a great business crowded upon him.

Inexperienced, he had not learned the ways in which seasoned

“executives” protect themselves against useless intrusion. His telephone

buzzed like a hornet. Not five minutes went by without callers or

interruptions of some sort.

Most amazing of all, he found, was the miscellaneous passion for

palaver displayed by Big Business. Immediately he was invited to join

innumerable clubs, societies, merchants' associations. Every day would

arrive letters, on heavily embossed paper--“The Sales Managers Club will

hold a round-table discussion on Friday at one o'clock. We would greatly

appreciate it if you would be with us and say a few words.”--“Will you

be our guest at the monthly dinner of the Fifth Avenue Guild, and give

us any preachment that is on your mind?”--“The Merchandising Uplift

Group of Murray Hill will meet at the Commodore for an informal

lunch. It has been suggested that you contribute to the discussion on

Underwriting Overhead.”--“The Executives Association plans a clambake

and barbecue at the Barking Rock Country Club. Around the bonfire a few

impromptu remarks on Business Cycles will be called for. May we count on

you?”--“Will you address the Convention of Knitted Bodygarment Buyers,

on whatever topic is nearest your heart?”--“Will you write for Bunion

and Callous, the trade organ of the Floorwalkers' Union, a thousand-word

review of your career?”--“Will you broadcast a twenty-minute talk on

Department Store Ethics, at the radio station in Newark? 250,000 radio

fans will be listening in.” New to the strange and high-spirited world

of “executives,” it was natural that Gissing did not realize that the

net importance of this kind of thing was absolute zero. It did strike

him as odd, perhaps, that merchants did not dare to go on a junket or

plan a congenial dinner without pretending to themselves that it had

some business significance. But, having been so amazingly lifted into

this atmosphere of great affairs, he felt it was his duty to the store

to play the game according to the established rules. He was borne

along on a roaring spate of conferences, telephone calls, appointments,

Rotarian lunches, Chamber of Commerce dinners, picnics to talk tariff,

house-parties to discuss demurrage, tennis tournaments to settle the

sales-tax, golf foursomes to regulate price-maintenance. Of all these

matters he knew nothing whatever; and he also saw that as far as the

business of Beagle and Company was concerned it would be better not

to waste his time on such side-issues. The way he could really be of

service was in the store itself, tactfully lubricating that complicated

engine of goods and personalities. But he learned to utter, when called

upon, a few suave generalities, barbed with a rollicking story. This

made him always welcome. He was of a studious disposition, and liked

to examine this queer territory of life with an unprejudiced eye. After

all, his inward secret purpose had nothing to do with the success or

failure of retail trade. He was still seeking a horizon that would stay

blue when he reached it.

More and more he was interested to perceive how transparent the mummery

of business was. He was interested to note how persistently men fled

from success, how carefully most of them avoided the obvious principles

of utility, honesty, prudence, and courtesy, which are inevitably

rewarded. These sagacious, humorous fellows who were amusing themselves

with twaddling trade apothegms and ridiculous banqueteering solemnities,

surely they were aware that this had no bearing upon their own jobs?

He suspected that it was all a feverish anodyne to still some inward

unease. Since they must (not being fools) be aware that these antics

were mere subtraction of time from their business, the obvious

conclusion was, they were not happy with business. There was some

strange wistfulness in the conduct of Big Business Dogs, he thought.

Under the pretence of transacting affairs, they were really trying to

discover something that had eluded them.

The same thing, strangely enough, seemed to be going on in a sphere of

which he knew nothing, the world of art. He gathered from the papers

that writers, painters, musicians, were holding shindies almost every

night, at which delightful rebels, too busy to occupy themselves with

actual creation, talked charmingly about their plans. Poets were reading

poems incessantly, forgetting to write any. Much of the newspaper

comment on literature made him shudder, for though this was a province

quite strange to him, he had sound instincts. He discerned fatal

ignorance and absurdity between the pompous lines. Yet, in its own way,

it seemed a bold and honest ignorance. Were these, too, like the wistful

executives, seeking where the blue begins?

But what was this strange agitation that forbade his fellow-creatures

from enjoying the one thing that makes achievement possible--Solitude?

He himself, so happy to be left alone--was no one else like that? And

yet this very solitude that he craved and revelled in was, by a sublime

paradox, haunted by mysterious loneliness. He felt sometimes as though

his heart had been broken off from some great whole, to which it yearned

to be reunited. It felt like a bone that had been buried, which God

would some day dig up. Sometimes, in his caninomorphic conception

of deity, he felt near him the thunder of those mighty paws. In rare

moments of silence he gazed from his office window upon the sun-gilded,

tempting city. Her madness was upon him--her splendid craze of haste,

ambition, pride. Yet he wondered. This God he needed, this liberating

horizon, was it after all in the cleverest of hiding-places--in himself?

Was it in his own undeluded heart?

Miss Whippet came scurrying in to say that the Display Manager begged

him to attend a conference. The question of apportioning window space

to the various departments was to be reconsidered. Also, the book

department had protested having rental charged against them for books

exhibited merely to add a finishing touch to a furniture display. Other

agenda: the Personnel Director wished an appointment to discuss

the ruling against salesbitches bobbing their hair. The Commissary

Department wished to present revised figures as to the economy that

would be effected by putting the employees' cafeteria on the same floor

as the store's restaurant. He must decide whether early closing on

Saturdays would continue until Labor Day.

As he went about these and a hundred other fascinating trivialities, he

had a painful sense of treachery to Mr. Beagle senior. The old gentleman

was so touchingly certain that he had found in him the ideal shoulders

on which to unload his honourable and crushing burden. With more than

paternal pride old Beagle saw Gissing, evidently urbane and competent,

cheerfully circulating here and there. The shy angel of doubt that lay

deep in Gissing's cider-coloured eye, the proprietor did not come near

enough to observe.

If there is tragedy in our story, alas here it is. Gissing, incorrigible

seceder from responsibilities that did not touch his soul, did not dare

tell his benefactor the horrid truth. But the worm was in his heart.

Late one night, in his room at Mrs. Purp's, he wrote a letter to Mr.

Poodle. After mailing it at a street-box, he had a sudden pang. To the

dreamer, decisions are fearful. Then he shook himself and ran lightly to

a little lunchroom on Amsterdam Avenue, where he enjoyed doughnuts and

iced tea. His mind was resolved. The doughnuts, by a simple symbolism,

made him think of Rotary Clubs, also of millstones. No, he must be

fugitive from honour, from wealth, from Chambers of Commerce. Fugitive

from all save his own instinct. Those who have bound themselves are only

too eager to see the chains on others. There was no use attempting to

explain to Mr. Beagle--the dear old creature would not understand.

The next day, after happily and busily discharging his duties, and

staying late to clean up his desk, Gissing left Beagle and Company

for good. The only thing that worried him, as he looked round his

comfortable office for the last time, was the thought of little Miss

Whippet's chagrin when she found her new promotion at an end. She had

taken such delight in their mutual dignity. On the filing cabinet beside

her typewriter desk was a pink geranium in a pot, which she watered

every morning. He could not resist pulling out a drawer of her desk, and

smiled gently to see the careful neatness of its compartments, with

all her odds and ends usefully arranged. The ink-eraser, with an absurd

little whisk attached to it for brushing away fragments of rubbed paper;

the fascicle of sharpened pencils held together by an elastic band; the

tiny phial of typewriter oil; a small box of peppermints; a crumpled

handkerchief; the stenographic notebook with a pencil inserted at the

blank page, so as to be ready for instant service the next day; the long

paper-cutter for slitting envelopes; her memorandum pad, on which was

written Remind Mr. G. of Window Display Luncheon--it seemed cruel to

deprive her of all these innocent amusements in which she delighted so

much. And yet he could not go on as a General Manager simply for the

happiness of Miss Whippet.

In the foliage of the geranium, where he knew she would find it the

first thing in the morning, he left a note:--

MISS WHIPPET: I am leaving the store to-night and will not be back.

Please notify Mr. Beagle. Explain to him that I shall never take a

position with one of his competitors; I am leaving not because I didn't

enjoy the job, but because if I stayed longer I might enjoy it too much.

Tell Mr. Beagle that I specially urge him to retain you as assistant

to the new Manager, whoever that may be. You are entirely competent to

attend to the routine, and the new Manager can spend all his time at

business lunches.

Please inform the Display Managers' Club that I can't speak at their

meeting to-morrow.

I wish you all possible good-fortune.

MR. GISSING.

As he passed through the dim and silent aisles of the store, he surveyed

them again with mixed emotions. Here he might, apparently, have been

king. But he had no very poignant regret. Another of his numerous

selves, he reflected, had committed suicide. That was the right idea:

to keep sloughing them off, throwing overboard the unreal and factitious

Gissings, paring them down until he discovered the genuine and

inalienable creature.

And so, for the second time, he made a stealthy exit from the employees'

door.

Four days later he read in the paper of old Mr. Beagle's death. There

can be no doubt about it. The merchant died of a broken heart.

CHAPTER TEN

Mr. Poodle's reply was disappointing. He said:--

St. Bernard's Rectory, September 1st.

MY DEAR MR. GISSING:

I regret that I cannot conscientiously see my way to writing to the

Bishop in your behalf. Any testimonial I could compose would be doubtful

at best, for I cannot agree with you that the Church is your true

vocation. I do not believe that one who has deserted his family, as

you have, and whose record (even on the most charitable interpretation)

cannot be described as other than eccentric, would be useful in Holy

Orders. You say that your life in the city has been a great purgation.

If so, I suggest that you return and take up the burdens laid upon you.

It has meant great mortification to me that one of my own parish has

been the cause of these painful rumours that have afflicted our quiet

community. Notwithstanding, I wish you well, and hope that chastening

experience may bring you peace.

Very truly yours,

J. ROVER POODLE.

Gissing meditated this letter in the silence of along evening in

his room. He brought to the problem his favourite aid to clear

thinking--strong coffee mixed with condensed milk. Mrs. Purp had made

concession to his peculiarities when he had risen so high in the world:

better to break any rules, she thought, than lose so notable a tenant.

She had even installed a small gas-plate for him, so that he could brew

his morning and evening coffee.

So he took counsel with his percolator, whose bubbling was a sound he

found both soothing and stimulating. He regarded it as a kind of private

oracle, with a calm voice of its own. He listened attentively as

he waited for the liquid to darken. Appeal--to--the--Bishop,

Appeal--to-the--Bishop, seemed to be the speech of the jetting

gurgitation under the glass lid.

He determined to act upon this, and lay his case before Bishop Borzoi

even without the introduction he had hoped for. Fortunately he still had

some sheets of Beagle and Company notepaper, with the engraved lettering

and Office of the General Manager embossed thereon. He was in some doubt

as to the proper formality and style of address in communicating with a

Bishop: was it “Very Reverend,” or “Right Reverend”? and which of these

indicated a superior grade of reverendability? But he decided that a

masculine frankness would not be amiss. He wrote:--

VERY RIGHT REVEREND BISHOP BORZOI,

Dear Bishop:--

May one of the least of your admirers solicit an interview with your

very right reverence, to discuss matters pertaining to religion,

theology, and a possible vacancy in the Church? If there are any sees

outstanding, it would be a favour. This is very urgent. I enclose a

stamped addressed envelope.

Respectfully yours,

MR. GISSING.

A prompt reply from the Bishop's secretary granted him an appointment.

Scrupulously attired in his tail-coat and silk hat, Gissing proceeded

toward the rendezvous. To tell the truth, he was nervous: his mind

flitted uneasily among possible embarrassments. Suppose Mr. Poodle had

written to the Bishop to prejudice his application? Another, but more

absurd, idea troubled him. One of the problems in visiting the houses

of the Great (he had learned in his brief career in Big Business) is

to find the door-bell. It is usually mysteriously concealed. Suppose he

should have to peer hopelessly about the vestibule, in a shameful and

suspicious manner, until some flunky came out to chide? In the sunny

park below the Cathedral he saw nurses sitting by their puppy-carriages;

for an instant he almost envied their gross tranquillity. THEY have not

got (he said to himself) to call on a Bishop!

He was early, so he strolled for a few minutes in the park that lies

underneath that rocky scarp. On the summit, clear-surging against the

blue, the great church rode like a ship on a long ridge of sea. The

angel with a trumpet on the jut of the roof was like a valiant seaman in

the crow's nest. His agitation was calmed by this noble sight. Yes, he

said, the Church is a ship behind whose bulwarks I will find rest. She

sails an unworldly sea: her crew are exempt from earthly ambition and

fallacy.

He ran nimbly up the long steps that scale the cliff, and approached

the episcopal residence. The bell was plainly visible. He rang, and

presently came a tidy little housemaid. He had meditated a form of

words. It would be absurd to say “Is the Bishop in?” for he knew the

Bishop WAS in. So he said “This is Mr. Gissing. I think the Bishop is

expecting me.”

Bishop Borzoi was an impressive figure--immensely tall and slender,

with long, narrow ascetic face and curly white hair. He was surprisingly

cordial.

“Ah, Mr. Gissing?” he said. “Sit down, sir. I know Beagle and Company

very well. Too well, in fact-Mrs. Borzoi has an account there.”

Gissing, feeling rather aghast and tentative, had no comment ready. He

was still worrying a little as to the proper mode of address.

“It is very pleasant to find you Influential Merchants interested in the

Church,” continued the Bishop. “I often thought of approaching the late

Mr. Beagle on the subject of a small contribution to the cathedral.

Indeed, I have spent so much in your store that it would be only a fair

return. Mr. Collie, of Greyhound, Collie and Company, has been very

handsome with us: he has just provided for repaving the choir.”

Gissing began to fear that the object of his visit had perhaps been

misunderstood, but the prelate's eyes were bright with benignant

enthusiasm and he dared not interrupt.

“You inquired most kindly in your letter as to a possible vacancy in the

Church. Indeed there is a niche in the transept that I should be happy

to see filled. It is intended for some kind of memorial statue, and

perhaps, in honour of the late Mr. Beagle--”

“I must explain, Sir Bishop,” said Gissing, very much disturbed, “that

I have left Beagle and Company. The contribution I wish to make to the

Church is not a decorative one, I fear. It is myself.”

“Yourself?” queried the Bishop, politely puzzled.

“Yes,” stammered Gissing, “I--in fact, I am hoping to--to enter the

ministry.”

The Bishop was plainly amazed, and his long, aristocratic nose seemed

longer than ever as he gazed keenly at his caller.

“But have you had any formal training in theology?”

“None, right reverend Bishop,” said Gissing, “But it's this way,” and,

incoherently at first, but with increasing energy and copious eloquence,

he poured out the story of his mental struggles.

“This is singularly interesting,” said the Bishop at length. “I can

see that you are wholly lacking in the rudiments of divinity. Of modern

exegesis and criticism you are quite innocent. But you evidently have

something which is much rarer--what the Quakers call a CONCERN. Of

course you should really go to the theological seminary and establish

this naif intuitive mysticism upon a disciplined basis. You will realize

that we churchmen can only meet modern rationalism by a rationalism of

our own--by a philosophical scholarship which is unshakable. I do not

suppose that you can even harmonize the Gospels?”

Gissing ruefully admitted his ignorance.

“Well, at least I must make sure of a few fundamentals,” said the

Bishop. “Of course a symbological latitude is permissible, but there are

some essentials of dogma and creed that may not be foregone.”

He subjected the candidate to a rapid catechism. Gissing, in a state of

mind curiously mingled of excitement and awe, found himself assenting to

much that, in a calmer moment, he would hardly have admitted; but

having plunged so deep into the affair he felt it would be the height of

discourtesy to give negative answers to any of the Bishop's queries.

By dint of hasty mental adjustments and symbolic interpretations, he

satisfied his conscience.

“It is very irregular,” the Bishop admitted, “but I must confess

that your case interests me greatly. Of course I cannot admit you

to ordination until you have passed through the regular theological

curriculum. Yet I find you singularly apt for one without proper

training.”

He brooded a while, fixing the candidate with a clear darkly burning

eye.

“It struck me that you were a trifle vague upon some of the Articles of

Religion, and the Table of Kindred and Affinity. You must remember that

these articles are not to be subjected to your own sense or comment, but

must be taken in the literal and grammatical meaning. However, you

show outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace. It so

happens that I know of a small chapel, in the country, that has been

closed for lack of a minister. I can put you in charge there as lay

reader.”

Gissing's face showed his elation.

“And wear a cassock?” he cried.

“Certainly not,” said the Bishop sternly. “Not even a surplice. You must

remember you have not been ordained. If you are serious in your zeal,

you must work your way up gradually, beginning at the bottom.”

“I have seen some of your cloth with a little purple dickey which looks

very well in the aperture of the waistcoat,” said Gissing humbly. “How

long would it take me to work up to that?”

Bishop Borzoi, who had a sense of humour, laughed genially.

“Look here,” he said. “It's a fine afternoon: I'll order my car and

we'll drive out to Dalmatian Heights. I'll show you your chapel, and

tell you exactly what your duties will be.”

Gissing was startled. Dalmatian Heights was only a few miles from the

Canine Estates. If the news should reach Mr. Poodle...

“Sir Bishop,” he said nervously, “I begin to fear that perhaps after all

I am unworthy. Now about those Articles of Religion: I may perhaps have

given some of them a conjectural and commentating assent. Possibly I

have presumed too far--”

The Bishop was already looking forward to a ride into the country with

his unusual novice.

“Not at all, not at all,” he said cheerily. “In a mere lay reader, a

slight laxity is allowable. You understand, of course, that you are

expressly restricted from the pulpit. You will have to read the lessons,

conduct the service, and may address the congregation upon matters not

homiletic nor doctrinal; preaching and actual entry into the pulpit are

defended. But I see excellent possibility in you. Perform the duties

punctually in this very lowly office, and high ranks of service in the

church militant will be open.”

He put on a very fine shovel-hat, and led the way to his large touring

car.

It was a very uncomfortable ride for Gissing. A silk hat is the least

stable apparel for swift motoring, and the chauffeur drove at high

speed. The Bishop, leaning back in the open tonneau, crossed one

delicately slender shank over another, gazed in a kind of ecstasy at the

countryside, and talked gaily about his days as a young curate. Gissing

sat holding his hat on. He saw only too well that, by the humiliating

oddity of chance, they were going to take the road that led exactly

past his own house. He could only hope that Mrs. Spaniel and the

various children would not be visible, for explanations would be too

complicated. Desperately he praised the view to be obtained on another

road, but Bishop Borzoi was too interested in his own topic to pay much

attention.

“By the way,” said the latter, as they drew near the familiar region, “I

must introduce you to Miss Airedale. She lives in the big place on the

hill over there. Her family always used to attend what I will now call

YOUR chapel; she is a very ardent churchgoer, and it was a sincere grief

to her when the place had to be closed. You will find her a great aid

and comfort; not only that, she is--what one does not always find in the

devouter members of her sex--young and beautiful. I think I understood

you to say you are a bachelor?”

They were approaching the last turning at which it was still possible to

avoid the fatal road, and Gissing's attention was divided.

“Yes, after a fashion,” he replied. “Bishop, do you know that road down

into the valley? The view is really superb--Yes, that road--Oh, no, I am

a bachelor--”

It was too late. The chauffeur, unconscious of this private crisis, was

spinning along the homeward way. With a tender emotion Gissing saw

the spires of the poplar trees, the hemlocks down beyond the pond, the

fringe of woods that concealed the house until you were quite upon it--

The car swerved suddenly and the driver only saved it by a quick and

canny manoeuvre from going down the bank. He came to a stop, and almost

from underneath the rear wheels appeared a scuffling dusty group of

youngsters who had been playing in the road. There they were--Bunks,

Groups, and Yelpers (inordinately grown!) and two of the Spaniels. Their

clothes were deplorable, their faces grimed, their legs covered with

burrs, their whole demeanour was ragamuffin and wild: yet Gissing felt

a pang of pride to see his godchildren's keen, independent bearing

contrasted with the rowdier, disreputable look of the young Spaniels.

Quickly he averted his head to escape recognition. But the urchins were

all gaping at the Bishop's shovel hat.

“Hot dog!” cried Yelpers “Some hat!”

To his horror, Gissing now saw Mrs. Spaniel, hastening in alarm

down from the house, spilling potatoes from her apron as she ran. He

hurriedly urged the driver to proceed.

“What terrible looking children,” observed the Bishop, who seemed

fascinated by their stare. “Really, my good sister,” he said to Mrs.

Spaniel, who was now panting by the running board; “you must keep them

off the road or someone will get hurt.”

Gissing was looking for an imaginary object on the floor of the car. To

his great relief he heard the roar of the motor as they started again.

But he sat up a little too soon. A simultaneous roar of “Daddy!” burst

from the trio.

“What was that they were shouting at us?” inquired the Bishop, looking

back.

Gissing shook his head. He was too overcome to speak.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The little chapel at Dalmatian Heights sat upon a hill, among a grove

of pines, the most romantic of all trees. Life, a powerful but clumsy

dramatist, does not reject the most claptrap “situations,” which a

sophisticated playwright would discard as too obvious. For this sandy

plateau, strewn with satiny pine-needles, was the very horizon that had

looked so blue and beckoning from the little house by the pond. Not far

away was the great Airedale estate, which Gissing had known only at an

admiring distance--and now he was living there as an honoured guest.

The Bishop had taken him to call upon the Airedales; and they, delighted

that the chapel was to be re-opened, had insisted upon his staying with

them. The chapel, in fact, was a special interest with Mr. Airedale, who

had been a leading contributor toward its erection. Gissing was finding

that life seemed to be continually putting him into false positions;

and now he discovered, somewhat to his chagrin, that the lovely little

shrine of St. Spitz, whose stained windows glowed like rubies in its

cloister of dark trees, was rather a fashionable hobby among the wealthy

landowners of Dalmatian Hills. It had been closed all summer, and they

had missed it. The Bishop, in his airy and indefinite way, had not made

it quite plain that Gissing was only a lay reader; and in spite of his

embarrassed disclaimers, he found himself introduced by Mr. Airedale to

the country-house clique as the new “vicar.”

But at any rate it was lucky that the Airedales had insisted on taking

him in as a guest; for he had learned from the Bishop (just as the

latter was leaving) that there was no stipend attached to the office of

lay reader. Fortunately he still had much of the money he had saved from

his salary as General Manager. And whatever sense of anomaly he felt

was quickly assuaged by the extraordinary comfort and novelty of his

environment. In the great Airedale mansion he experienced for the first

time that ultimate triumph of civilization--a cup of tea served in bed

before breakfast, with slices of bread-and-butter of tenuous and amazing

fragile thinness. He was pleased, too, with the deference paid him as a

representative of the cloth, even though it compelled him to a

solemnity he did not inwardly feel. But most of all, undoubtedly, he was

captivated by the loveliness and warmth of Miss Airedale.

The Bishop had not erred. Admiring the aristocratic Roman trend of

her brow and nose; the proud, inquisitive carriage of her somewhat

rectangular head, her admirable, vigorous figure and clear topaz

eyes, Gissing was aware of something he had not experienced before--a

disturbance both urgent and agreeable, in which the intellect seemed to

play little part. He was startled by the strength of her attractiveness,

amazed to learn how pleasing it was to be in her company. She was very

young and brisk: wore clothes of a smart sporting cut, and was

(he thought) quite divine in her riding breeches. But she was also

completely devoted to the chapel, where she played the music on Sundays.

She was a volatile creature, full of mischievous surprise: at their

first music practice, after playing over some hymns on the pipe-organ,

she burst into jazz, filling the quiet grove with the clamorous syncope

of Paddy-Paws, a favourite song that summer.

So into the brilliant social life of the Airedales and their friends

he found himself suddenly pitchforked. In spite of the oddity of the

situation, and of occasional anxiety when he considered the possibility

of Mr. Poodle finding him out, he was very happy. This was not quite

what he had expected, but he was always adaptable. Miss Airedale was an

enchanting companion. In the privacy of his bedroom he measured himself

for a pair of riding breeches and wrote to his tailor in town to have

them made as soon as possible. He served the little chapel assiduously,

though he felt it better to conceal from the Airedales the fact that he

went there every day. He suspected they would think him slightly mad if

they knew, so he used to pretend that he had business in town. Then he

would slip away to the balsam-scented hilltop and be perfectly happy

sweeping the chapel floor, dusting the pews, polishing the brasswork,

rearranging the hymnals in the racks. He arranged with the milkman to

leave a bottle of milk and some cinnamon buns at the chapel gate

every morning, so he had a cheerful and stealthy little lunch in

the vestry-room, though always a trifle nervous lest some of his

parishioners should discover him.

He practiced reading the lessons aloud at the brass lectern, and

discovered how easy is dramatic elocution when you are alone. He wished

it were possible to hold a service daily. For the first time he was able

to sing hymns as loud as he liked. Miss Airedale played the organ with

emphatic fervour, and the congregation, after a little hesitation,

enjoyed the lusty sincerity of a hymn well trolled. Some of his flock,

who had previously relished taking part in the general routine of the

service, were disappointed by his zeal, for Gissing insisted on doing

everything himself. He rang the bell, ushered the congregation to their

seats, read the service, recited the Quadrupeds' Creed, led the

choir, gave out as many announcements as he could devise, took up the

collection, and at the close skipped out through the vestry and was

ready and beaming in the porch before the nimblest worshipper had

reached the door. On his first Sunday, indeed, he carried enthusiasm

rather too far: in an innocent eagerness to prolong the service as much

as possible, and being too excited to realize quite what he was doing,

he went through the complete list of supplications for all possible

occasions. The congregation were startled to find themselves praying

simultaneously both for rain and for fair weather.

In a cupboard in the vestry-room he had found an old surplice hanging;

he took it down, tried it on before the mirror, and wistfully put it

back. To this symbolic vestment his mind returned as he sat solitary

under the pine-trees, looking down upon the valley of home. It was the

season of goldenrod and aster on the hillsides: a hot swooning silence

lay upon the late afternoon. The weight and closeness of the air had

struck even the insects dumb. Under the pines, generally so murmurous,

there was something almost gruesome in the blank stillness: a suspension

so absolute that the ears felt dull and sealed. He tried, involuntarily,

to listen more clearly, to know if this uncanny hush were really so.

There was a sense of being imprisoned, but only most delicately, in a

spell, which some sudden cracking might disrupt.

The surplice tempted him strongly, for it suggested the sermon he felt

impelled to deliver, against the Bishop's orders. For the beautiful

chapel in the piny glade was, somehow, false: or, at any rate, false for

him. The architect had made it a dainty poem in stone and polished wood,

but somehow God had evaded the neat little trap. Moreover, the God

his well-bred congregation worshipped, the old traditionally imagined

snow-white St. Bernard with radiant jowls of tenderness, shining dewlaps

of love; paternal, omnipotent, calm--this deity, though sublime in its

way, was too plainly an extension of their own desires. His prominent

parishioners--Mr. Dobermann-Pinscher, Mrs. Griffon, Mrs. Retriever;

even the delightful Mr. Airedale himself--was it not likely that they

esteemed a deity everlastingly forgiving because they themselves felt

need of forgiveness? He had been deeply shocked by the docility with

which they followed the codes of the service: even when he had committed

his blunder of the contradictory prayers, they had murmured the words

automatically, without protest. To the terrific solemnities of the

Litany they had made the responses with prompt gabbling precision, and

with a rapidity that frankly implied impatience to take the strain off

their knees.

Somehow he felt that to account for a world of unutterable strangeness

they had invented a God far too cheaply simple. His mood was certainly

not one of ribald easy scoff. It was they (he assured himself) whose

theology was essentially cynical; not he. He was a little weary of

this just, charitable, consoling, hebdomadal God; this God who might be

sufficiently honoured by a decorously memorized ritual. Yet was he

too shallow? Was it not seemly that his fellows, bound on this dark,

desperate venture of living, should console themselves with decent

self-hypnosis?

No, he thought. No, it was not entirely seemly. If they pretended that

their God was the highest thing knowable, then they must bring to

His worship the highest possible powers of the mind. He had a strange

yearning for a God less lazily conceived: a God perhaps inclement,

awful, master of inscrutable principles. Yet was it desirable to shake

his congregation's belief in their traditional divinity? He thought of

them--so amiable, amusing, spirited and generous, but utterly untrained

for abstract imaginative thought on any subject whatever. His own

strange surmisings about deity would only shock and horrify them And

after all, was it not exactly their simplicity that made them lovable?

The great laws of truth would work their own destinies without

assistance from him! Even if these pleasant creatures did not genuinely

believe the rites they so politely observed (he knew they did not, for

BELIEF is an intellectual process of extraordinary range and depth), was

it not socially useful that they should pretend to do so?

And yet--with another painful swing of the mind--was it necessary

that Truth should be worshipped with the aid of such astonishingly

transparent formalisms, hoaxes, and mummeries? Alas, it seemed that this

was an old, old struggle that must be troublesomely fought out, again

and again down the generations. Prophets were twice stoned--first in

anger; then, after their death, with a handsome slab in the graveyard.

But words uttered in sincerity (he thought) never fail of some response.

Though he saw his fellows leashed with a heavy chain of ignorance,

stupidity, passion, and weakness, yet he divined in life some

inscrutable principle of honour and justice; some unreckonable essence

of virtue too intimate to understand; some fumbling aspiration toward

decency, some brave generosity of spirit, some cheerful fidelity to

Beauty. He could not see how, in a world so obviously vast and uncouth

beyond computation, they could find a puny, tidy, assumptive, scheduled

worship so satisfying. But perhaps, since all Beauty was so staggering,

it was better they should cherish it in small formal minims. Perhaps

in this whole matter there was some lovely symbolism that he did not

understand.

The soft brightness was already lifting into upper air, a mingled tissue

of shadows lay along the valley. In the magical clarity of the evening

light he suddenly felt (as one often does, by unaccountable planetary

instinct) that there was a new moon. Turning, he saw it, a silver

snipping daintily afloat; and not far away, an early star. He had found

no creed in the prayer-book that accounted for the stars. Here at

the bottom of an ocean of sky, we look aloft and see them

thick-speckled--mere barnacles, perhaps, on the keel of some greater

ship of space. He remembered how at home there had been a certain

burning twinkle that peeped through the screen of the dogwood tree.

As he moved on his porch, it seemed to flit to and fro, appearing and

vanishing. He was often uncertain whether it was a firefly a few yards

away, or a star the other side of Time. Possibly Truth was like that.

There was a light swift rustle behind him, and Miss Airedale appeared.

“Hullo!” she said. “I wondered where you were. Is this how you spend

your afternoons, all alone?”

Stars, creeds, cosmologies, promptly receded into remote perspective

and had to shift for themselves. It was true that Gissing had somewhat

avoided her lately, for he feared her fascination. He wished nothing

else to interfere with his search for what he had not yet found.

Postpone the female problem to the last, was his theory: not because

it was insoluble, but because the solution might prove to be less

interesting than the problem itself. But side by side with her, she was

irresistible. A skittish brightness shone in her eyes.

“Great news!” she exclaimed. “I've persuaded Papa to take us all down to

Atlantic City for a couple of days.”

“Wonderful!” cried Gissing. “Do you know, I've never been to the

seashore.”

“Don't worry,” she replied. “I won't let you see much of the ocean.

We'll go to the Traymore, and spend the whole time dancing in the

Submarine Grill.”

“But I must be back in time for the service on Sunday,” he said.

“We're going to leave first thing in the morning. We'll go in the car,

and I'll drive. Will you sit with me in the front seat?”

“Watch me!” replied Gissing gallantly.

“Come on then, or you'll be late for dinner. I'll race you home!” And

she was off like a flash.

But in spite of Miss Airedale's threat, at Atlantic City they both fell

into a kind of dreamy reverie. The wine-like tingle of that salty air

was a quiet drug. The apparently inexhaustible sunshine was sharpened

with a faint sting of coming autumn. Gissing suddenly remembered that it

was ages since he had simply let his mind run slack and allowed life to

go by unstudied. Mr. and Mrs. Airedale occupied a suite high up in the

terraced mass of the huge hotel; they wrapped themselves in rugs and

basked on their private balcony. Gissing and the daughter were left

to their own amusements. They bathed in the warm September surf; they

strolled the Boardwalk up beyond the old Absecon light, where the green

glimmer of water runs in under the promenade. They sat on the deck

of the hotel--or rather Miss Airedale sat, while Gissing, courteously

attentive, leaned over her steamer-chair. He stood so for hours,

apparently in devoted chat; but in fact he was half in dream. The smooth

flow of the little rolling shays just below had a soothing hypnotic

erect. But it was the glorious polished blue of the sea-horizon that

bounded all his thoughts. Even while Miss Airedale gazed archly up at

him, and he was busy with cheerful conversation, he was conscious of

that broad band of perfect colour, monotonous, comforting, thrilling.

For the first time he realized the great rondure of the world. His mind

went back to the section of the prayer-book that had always touched him

most pointedly--the “Forms of Prayer to be Used at Sea.” In them he had

found a note of sincere terror and humility. And now he viewed the sea

for the first time in this setting of notable irony. The open dazzle of

placid elements, obedient only to some cosmic calculus, lay as a serene

curtain against which the quaint flamboyance of the Boardwalk was all

the more amusing. The clear rim of sea curving off into space drew him

with painful curiosity. Here at last was what he had needed. The proud

waters went over his soul. Here indeed the blue began.

He looked down at Miss Airedale, who had gone to sleep while waiting for

him to say something. He tiptoed away and went to his room to write down

some ideas. Against the wide challenge of that blue hemisphere, where

half the world lay open and free to the eye, the Bishop's prohibition

lost weight. He was resolved to preach a sermon.

At dusk he met Miss Airedale on the high balcony that runs around the

reading-room of the hotel. They were quite alone up there. Along the

Boardwalk, in the pale sentimental twilight, the translucent electric

globes shone like a long string of pearls. She was very tempting in

a gay evening frock, and reproached him for having neglected her. She

shivered a little in the cool wind coming off the darkening water. The

weakness of the hour was upon him. He put his arm tenderly round her as

they leaned over the parapet.

“See those darling children down on the sand,” she said. “I do adore

puppies, don't you?”

He remembered Groups, Bunks, and Yelpers. Nothing is so potent as the

love of children when you are away from them. She gazed languishing

at him; he responded with a generous pressure. But his alarmed soul

thrilled with panic.

“You must excuse me a moment, while I dress for dinner,” he said. He was

strangely terrified by the look of secret understanding in her beautiful

eyes. It seemed to imply some subtle, inexpressible pact. As a matter of

truth, she was unconscious of it: it was only the old demiurge speaking

in her; the old demiurge which was pursuing him just as ardently as he

was trailing the dissolving blue of his dream. But he was much agitated

as he went down in the elevator.

“Heavens,” he said to himself; “are we all only toys in the power of

these terrific instincts?”

For the first time he was informed of the infinite feminine capacity for

being wooed.

That night they danced in the Submarine Grill. She floated in his

embrace with triumphant lightness. Her eyes, utilized as temporary lamps

by a lighting-circuit of which she was quite unaware, beamed with happy

lustre. The lay reader, always docile to the necessities of occasion,

murmured delightful trifles. But his private thoughts were as aloof

and shining and evasive as the goldfish that twinkled in the glass pool

overhead. He picked up her scarf and her handkerchief when she dropped

them. He smiled vaguely when she suggested that she thought she could

persuade Mr. Airedale to stay in Atlantic City over the week-end, and

why worry about the service on Sunday? But when she and the yawning Mrs.

Airedale had retired, he hastened to his chamber and packed his bag.

Stealthily he went to the desk and explained that he was leaving

unexpectedly on business, and that the bill should go to Mr. Airedale,

whose guest he had been. He slipped away out of the side door, and

caught the late train. Mrs. Airedale chafed her daughter that night for

whining in her sleep.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The chapel of St. Spitz was crowded that fine Sunday morning, and the

clang and thud of its bells came merrily through the thin quick air to

worshippers arriving in their luxurious motors. The amiable oddity of

the lay reader's demeanour as priest had added a zest to churchgoing.

The congregation were particularly pleased, on this occasion, to see

Gissing appear in surplice and stole. They had felt that his attire on

the previous Sundays had been a little too informal. And when, at the

time usually allotted to the sermon, Gissing climbed the pulpit steps,

unfurled a sheaf of manuscript, and gazed solemnly about, they settled

back into the pew cushions in a comfortable, receptive mood. They had a

subconscious feeling that if their souls were to be saved, it was better

to have it done with all the proper formalities. They did not notice

that he was rather pale, and that his nose twitched nervously.

“My friends,” he said, “in this beautiful little chapel, on this airy

hilltop, one might, if anywhere, speak with complete honesty. For you

who gather here for worship are, in the main, people of great

affairs; accustomed to looking at life with high spirit and with quick

imagination. I will ask you then to be patient with me while I exhort

you to carry into your religion the same enterprising and ambitious

gusto that has made your worldly careers a success. You are accustomed

to deal with great affairs. Let me talk to you about the Great Affairs

of God.”

Gissing had been far too agitated to be able to recognize any particular

members of his audience. All the faces were fused into a common blur.

Miss Airedale, he knew, was in the organ loft, but he had not seen

her since his flight from Atlantic City, for he had removed from the

Airedale mansion before her return, and had made himself a bed in the

corner of the vestry-room. He feared she was angry: there had been a

vigorous growling note in some of the bass pipes of the organ as she

played the opening hymn. He had not seen a tall white-haired figure who

came into the chapel rather late, after the service had begun, and took

a seat at the back. Bishop Borzoi had seized the opportunity to drive

out to Dalmatian Heights this morning to see how his protege was getting

on. When the Bishop saw his lay reader appear in surplice and scarlet

hood, he was startled. But when the amateur parson actually ascended the

pulpit, the Bishop's face was a study. The hair on the back of his neck

bristled slightly.

“It is so easy,” Gissing continued, “to let life go by us in its swift

amusing course, that sometimes it hardly seems worth while to attempt

any bold strokes for truth. Truth, of course, does not need our

assistance; it can afford to ignore our errors. But in this quiet place,

among the whisper of the trees, I seem to have heard a disconcerting

sound. I have heard laughter, and I think it is the laughter of God.”

The congregation stirred a little, with polite uneasiness. This was not

quite the sort of thing to which they were accustomed.

“Why should God laugh? I think it is because He sees that very often,

when we pretend to be worshipping Him, we are really worshipping and

gratifying ourselves. I used the phrase 'Great Affairs.' The point I

want to make is that God deals with far greater affairs than we have

realized. We have imagined Him on too petty a scale. If God is so great,

we must approach Him in a spirit of greatness. He is not interested in

trivialities--trivialities of ritual, of creed, of ceremony. We have

imagined a vain thing--a God of our own species; merely adding to the

conception, to gild and consecrate, a futile fuzbuz of supernaturalism.

My friends, the God I imagine is something more than a formula on

Sundays and an oath during the week.”

Those sitting in the rear of the Chapel were startled to hear a low

rumbling sound proceeding from the diaphragm of the Bishop, who half

rose from his seat and then, by a great effort of will, contained

himself. But Gissing, rapt in his honourable speculations, continued

with growing happiness.

“I ask you, though probably in vain, to lay aside for the moment your

inherited timidities and conventions. I ask you to lay aside pride,

which is the devil itself and the cause of most unhappiness. I ask

you to rise to the height of a great conception. To 'magnify' God is

a common phrase in our observances. Then let us truly magnify Him--not

minify, as the theologians do. If God is anything more than a social

fetich, then He must be so much more that He includes and explains

everything. It may sound inconceivable to you, it may sound

sacrilegious, but I suggest to you that it is even possible God may be a

biped--”

The Bishop could restrain himself no longer. He rose with flaming

eyes and stood in the aisle. Mr. Airedale, Mr. Dobermann-Pinscher, and

several other prominent members of the Church burst into threatening

growls. A wild bark and clamour broke from Mr. Towser, the Sunday School

superintendent, and his pupils, who sat in the little gallery over the

door. And then, to Gissing's horror and amazement, Mr. Poodle appeared

from behind a pillar where he had been chafing unseen. In a fierce tenor

voice shaken with indignation he cried:

“Heretic and hypocrite! Pay no attention to his abominable nonsense! He

deserted his family to lead a life of pleasure!”

“Seize him!” cried the Bishop in a voice of thunder.

The church was now in an uproar. A shrill yapping sounded among the

choir. Mrs. Airedale swooned; the Bishop's progress up the aisle was

impeded by a number of ladies hastening for an exit. Old Mr. Dingo, the

sexton, seized the bell-rope in the porch and set up a furious pealing.

Cries of rage mingled with hysterical howls from the ladies. Gissing,

trembling with horror, surveyed the atrocious hubbub. But it was

high time to move, or his retreat would be cut off. He abandoned his

manuscript and bounded down the pulpit stairs.

“Unfrock him!” yelled Mr. Poodle.

“He's never been frocked!” roared the Bishop.

“Impostor!” cried Mr. Airedale.

“Excommunicate him!” screamed Mr. Towser.

“Take him before the consistory!” shouted Mr. Poodle.

Gissing started toward the vestry door, but was delayed by the mass of

scuffling choir-puppies who had seized this uncomprehended diversion as

a chance to settle some scores of their own. The clamour was maddening.

The Bishop leapt the chancel rail and was about to seize him when Miss

Airedale, loyal to the last, interposed. She flung herself upon the

Bishop.

“Run, run!” she cried. “They'll kill you!”

Gissing profited by this assistance. He pushed over the lectern upon Mr.

Poodle, who was clutching at his surplice. He checked Mr. Airedale by

hurling little Tommy Bull, one of the choir, bodily at him. Tommy's

teeth fastened automatically upon Mr. Airedale's ear. The surplice,

which Mr. Poodle was still holding, parted with a rip, and Gissing

was free. With a yell of defiance he tore through the vestry and round

behind the chapel.

He could not help pausing a moment to scan the amazing scene, which had

been all Sabbath calm a few moments before. From the long line of motor

cars parked outside the chapel incredible chauffeurs were leaping,

hurrying to see what had happened. The shady grove shook with the

hideous clamour of the bell, still wildly tolled by the frantic sexton.

The sudden excitement had liberated private quarrels long decently

repressed: in the porch Mrs. Retriever and Mrs. Dobermann-Pinscher were

locked in combat. With a splintering crash one of the choir-pups

came sailing through a stained-glass window, evidently thrown by some

infuriated adult. He recognized the voice of Mr. Towser, raised in

vigorous lamentation. To judge by the sound, Mr. Towser's pupils had

turned upon him and were giving him a bad time. Above all he could

hear the clear war-cry of Miss Airedale and the embittered yells of Mr.

Poodle. Then from the quaking edifice burst Bishop Borzoi, foaming

with wrath, his clothes much tattered, and followed by Mr. Poodle, Mr.

Airedale, and several others. They cast about for a moment, and then the

Bishop saw him. With a joint halloo they launched toward him.

There was no time to lose. He fled down the shady path between the

trees, but with a hopeless horror in his heart. He could not long

outdistance such a runner as the Bishop, whose tremendous strides would

surely overhaul him in the end. If only he had known how to drive a car,

he might have commandeered one of the long row waiting by the gate. But

he was no motorist. Miss Airedale could have saved him, in her racing

roadster, but she had not emerged from the melee in the chapel. Perhaps

the Bishop had bitten her. His blood warmed with anger.

It happened that they had been mending the county highways, and a large

steam roller stood a few hundred feet down the road, drawn up beside the

ditch. Gissing knew that it was customary to leave these engines with

the fire banked and a gentle pressure of steam simmering in the boiler.

It was his only chance, and he seized it. But to his dismay, when he

reached the machine, which lay just round a bend in the road, he found

it shrouded with a huge tarpaulin. However, this suggested a desperate

chance. He whipped nimbly inside the covering and hid in the coal-box.

Lying there, he heard the chase go panting by.

As soon as he dared, he climbed out, stripped off the canvas, and

gazed at the bulky engine. It was one of those very tall and impressive

rollers with a canopy over the top. The machinery was not complicated,

and the ingenuity of desperation spurred him on. Hurriedly he opened the

draughts in the fire-box, shook up the coals, and saw the needle begin

to quiver on the pressure-gauge. He experimented with one or two levers

and handles. The first one he touched let off a loud scream from the

whistle. Then he discovered the throttle. He opened it a few notches,

cautiously. The ponderous machine, with a horrible clanking and

grinding, began to move forward.

A steam roller may seem the least helpful of all vehicles in which to

conduct an urgent flight; but Gissing's reasoning was sound. In the

first place, no one would expect to find a hunted fugitive in this

lumbering, sluggish behemoth of the road. Secondly, sitting perched high

up in the driving saddle, right under the canopy, he was not easily

seen by the casual passer-by. And thirdly, if the pursuit came to

close grips, he was still in a strategic position. For this, the most

versatile of all land-machines except the military tank, can move across

fields, crash through underbrush, and travel in a hundred places

that would stall a motor car. He rumbled off down the road somewhat

exhilarated. He found the scarlet stole twisted round his neck, and tied

it to one of the stanchions of the canopy as a flag of defiance. It was

not long before he saw the posse of pursuit returning along the road,

very hot and angry. He crunched along solemnly, busying himself to get

up a strong head of steam. There they were, the Bishop, Mr. Poodle, Mr.

Airedale, Mr. Dobermann-Pinscher, and Mr. Towser. Mr. Poodle was talking

excitedly: the Bishop's tongue ran in and out over his gleaming teeth.

He was not saying much, but his manner was full of deadly wrath. They

paid no attention to the roller, and were about to pass it without even

looking up, when Gissing, in a sudden fit of indignation, gave the wheel

a quick twirl and turned his clumsy engine upon them. They escaped

only by a hair's breadth from being flattened out like pastry. Then the

Bishop, looking up, recognized the renegade. With a cry of anger they

all leaped at the roller.

But he was so high above them, they had no chance. He seized the

coal-scoop and whanged Mr. Poodle across the skull. The Bishop came

dangerously near reaching him, but Gissing released a jet of scalding

steam from an exhaust-cock, which gave the impetuous prelate much cause

for grief. A lump of coal, accurately thrown, discouraged Mr. Airedale.

Mr. Towser, attacking on the other side of the engine, managed to

scramble up so high that he carried away the embroidered stole, but

otherwise the fugitive had all the best of it. Mr. Dobermann-Pinscher

burned his feet trying to climb up the side of the boiler. From the

summit of his uncouth vehicle Gissing looked down undismayed.

“Miserable freethinker!” said Borzoi. “You shall be tried by the

assembly of bishops.”

“In a mere lay reader,” quoted Gissing, “a slight laxity is allowable.

You had better go back and calm down the congregation, or they'll tear

the chapel to bits. This kind of thing will have a very bad influence on

church discipline.”

They shouted additional menace, but Gissing had already started his

deafening machinery and could not hear what was said. He left them

bickering by the roadside.

For fear of further pursuit, he turned off the highway a little beyond,

and rumbled noisily down a rustic lane between high banks and hedges

where sumac was turning red. Strangely enough, there was something very

comforting about his enormous crawling contraption. It was docile and

reliable, like an elephant. The crashing clangour of its movement was

soon forgotten--became, in fact, an actual stimulus to thought. For the

mere pleasure of novelty, he steered through a copse, and took joy in

seeing the monster thrash its way through thickets and brambles, and

then across a field of crackling stubble. Steering toward the lonelier

regions of that farming country, presently he halted in a dingle of

birches beside a small pond. He spent some time very happily, carefully

studying the machinery. He found some waste and an oilcan in the

tool-chest, and polished until the metal shone. The water looked rather

low in the gauge, and he replenished it from the pool.

It was while grooming the roller that it struck him his own appearance

was unusual for a highway mechanic. He was still wearing the famous

floorwalker suit, which he had punctiliously donned every Sunday for

chapel. But he had had to flee without a hat--even without his luggage,

which was neatly packed in a bag in the vestry. That, he felt sure, Mr.

Poodle had already burst open for evidences of heresy and schism. The

pearly trousers were stained with oil and coal-dust; the neat cutaway

coat bore smears of engine-grease. As long as he stuck to the roller

and the telltale garments, pursuit and identification would of course be

easy enough. But he had taken a fancy to the machine: he decided not to

abandon it yet.

Obviously it was better to keep to the roads, where the engine would at

any rate be less surprisingly conspicuous, and where it would leave no

trail. So he made a long circuit across meadows and pastures, carrying

a devilish clamour into the quiet Sunday afternoon. Regaining a macadam

surface, he set oil at random, causing considerable annoyance to

the motoring public. Finding that his cutaway coat caused jeers and

merriment, he removed it; and when any one showed a disposition to

inquire, he explained that he was doing penance for an ill-judged wager.

His oscillating perch above the boiler was extraordinarily warm, and he

bought a gallon jug of cider from a farmer by the way. Cheering himself

with this, and reviewing in his mind the queer experiences of the past

months, he went thundering mildly on.

At first he had feared a furious pursuit on the part of the Bishop, or

even a whole college of bishops, quickly mobilized for the event. He

had imagined them speeding after him in a huge motor-bus, and himself

keeping them at bay with lumps of coal. But gradually he realized that

the Bishop would not further jeopardize his dignity, or run the risk of

making himself ridiculous. Mr. Poodle would undoubtedly set the township

road commissioner on his trail, and he would be liable to seizure for

the theft of a steam roller. But that could hardly happen so quickly. In

the meantime, a plan had been forming in his mind, but it would require

darkness for its execution.

Darkness did not delay in coming. As he jolted cheerfully from road

to road, holding up long strings of motors at every corner while he

jovially held out his arm as a sign that he was going to turn, dark

purple clouds were massing and piling up. Foreseeing a storm, he bought

some provisions at a roadhouse, and turned into a field, where he

camped in the lee of a forest of birches. He cooked himself an excellent

supper, toasting bread and frankfurters in the firebox of the roller.

With boiling water from a steam-cock he brewed a panikin of tea; and sat

placidly admiring the fawn-pink light on wide pampas of bronze grasses,

tawny as a panther's hide. A strong wind began to draw from the

southeast. He lit the lantern at the rear of the machine and by the time

the rain came hissing upon the hot boiler, he was ready. Luckily he had

saved the tarpaulin. He spread this on the ground underneath the roller,

and curled up in it. The glow from the firebox kept him warm and dry.

“Summer is over,” he said to himself, as he heard the clash and spouting

of rain all about him. He lay for some time, not sleepy, thinking

theology, and enjoying the close tumult of wind and weather.

People who have had an arm or a leg amputated, he reflected, say they

can still feel pains in the absent member. Well, there's an analogy in

that. Modern skepticism has amputated God from the heart; but there is

still a twinge where the arteries were sewn up.

He slept peacefully until about two in the morning, except when a

red-hot coal, slipping through the grate-bars, burned a lamentable hole

in his trousers. When he woke, the night still dripped, but was clear

aloft. He started the engine and drove cautiously, along black slippery

roads, to Mr. Poodle's house. In spite of the unavoidable racket, no one

stirred: he surmised that the curate slept soundly after the crises

of the day. He left the engine by the doorstep, pinning a note to the

steering-wheel. It said:

TO REV. J. ROVER POODLE

this useful steam-roller

as a symbol of the theological mind

MR. GISSING

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The steamship Pomerania, which had sailed at noon, was a few hours out

of port on a calm gray sea. The passengers, after the bustle of lunch

and arranging their staterooms; had settled into their deck chairs and

were telling each other how much they loved the ocean. Captain Scottie

had taken his afternoon constitutional on his private strip of starboard

deck just aft the bridge, and was sitting in his comfortable cabin

expecting a cup of tea. He was a fine old sea-dog: squat, grizzled,

severe, with wiry eyebrows, a short coarse beard, and watchful quick

eyes. A characteristic Scot, beneath his reticent conscientious dignity

there was abundant humour and affection. He would have been recognized

anywhere as a sailor: those short solid legs were perfectly adapted for

balancing on a rolling deck. He stood by habit as though he were leaning

into a stiff gale. His mouth always held a pipe, which he smoked in

short, brisk whiffs, as though expecting to be interrupted at any moment

by an iceberg.

The steward brought in the tea-tray, and Captain Scottie settled into

his large armchair to enjoy it. His eye glanced automatically at the

barometer.

“A little wind to-night,” he said, his nose wrinkling unconsciously as

the cover was lifted from the dish of hot anchovy toast.

“Yes, sir,” said the steward, but lingered, apparently anxious to speak

further.

“Well, Shepherd?”

“Beg pardon, sir, but the Chief Steward wanted me to say they've found

someone stowed away in the linen locker, sir. Queer kind of fellow,

sir, talks a bit like a padre. 'E must've come aboard by the engine-room

gangway, sir, and climbed into that locker near the barber shop.”

The problem of stowaways is familiar enough to shipmasters. “Send him up

to me,” said the Captain.

A few minutes later Gissing appeared, escorted by a burly quartermaster.

Even the experienced Captain admitted to himself that this was something

new in the category of stowaways. Never before had he seen one in a

braided cutaway coat and wedding trousers. It was true that the

garments were in grievous condition, but they were worn with an air.

The stowaway's face showed some embarrassment, but not at all the usual

hangdog mien of such wastrels. Involuntarily his tongue moistened when

he saw the tray of tea (for he had not eaten since his supper on the

steam roller the night before), but he kept his eyes politely averted

from the food. They rose to a white-painted girder that ran athwart the

cabin ceiling. CERTIFIED TO ACCOMMODATE THE MASTER he read there, in

letters deeply incised into the thick paint. “A good Christian ship,”

he said to himself. “It sounds like the Y. M. C. A.” He was pleased

to think that his suspicion was already confirmed: ships were more

religious than anything on land.

The Captain dismissed the quartermaster, and addressed himself sternly

to the culprit.

“Well, what have you to say for yourself?”

“Please, Captain,” said Gissing politely, “do not allow your tea to get

cold. I can talk while you eat.” Behind his grim demeanour the Captain

was very near to smiling at this naivete. No Briton is wholly implacable

at tea-time, and he felt a genuine curiosity about this unusual

offender.

“What was your idea in coming aboard?” he said. “Do you know that I can

put you in irons until we get across, and then have you sent home for

punishment? I suppose it's the old story: you want to go sight-seeing on

the other side?”

“No, Captain,” said Gissing. “I have come to sea to study theology.”

In spite of himself the Captain was touched by this amazing statement.

He was a Scot, as we have said. He poured a cup of tea to conceal his

astonishment.

“Theology!” he exclaimed. “The theology of hard work is what you will

find most of aboard ship. Carry on and do your duty; keep a sharp

lookout, all gear shipshape, salute the bridge when going on watch,

that is the whole duty of a good officer. That's plenty theology for a

seaman.” But the skipper's eye turned brightly toward his bookshelves,

where he had several volumes of sermons, mostly of a Calvinist sort.

“I am not afraid of work,” said Gissing. “But I'm looking for horizons.

In my work ashore I never could find any.”

“Your horizon is likely to be peeling potatoes in the galley,” remarked

the Captain. “I understand they are short-handed there. Or sweeping out

bunks in the steerage. Ethics of the dust! What would you say to that?”

“Sir,” replied Gissing, “I shall be grateful for any task, however

menial, that permits me to meditate. I understand your point of view. By

coming aboard your ship I have broken the law, I have committed a

crime; but not a sin. Crime and sin, every theologian admits, are not

coextensive.”

The Captain sailed head-on into argument.

“What?” he cried. “Are you aware of the doctrine of Moral Inability in a

Fallen State? Sit down, sit down, and have a cup of tea. We must discuss

this.”

He rang for the steward and ordered an extra cup and a fresh supply of

toast. At that moment Gissing heard two quick strokes of a bell, rung

somewhere forward, a clear, musical, melancholy tone, echoed promptly

in other parts of the ship. “What is that, Captain?” he asked anxiously.

“An accident?”

“Two bells in the first dog-watch,” said the Captain. “I fear you are as

much a lubber at sea as you are in theology.”

The next two hours passed like a flash. Gissing found the skipper, in

spite of his occasional moods of austerity, a delicious companion. They

discussed Theosophy, Spiritualism, and Christian Science, all of which

the Captain, with sturdy but rather troubled vehemence, linked with

Primitive Magic. Gissing, seeing that his only hope of establishing

himself in the sailor's regard was to disagree and keep the argument

going, plunged into psycho-analysis and the philosophy of the

unconscious. Rather unwarily he ventured to introduce a nautical

illustration into the talk.

“Your compass needle,” he said, “points to the North Pole, and although

it has never been to the Pole, and cannot even conceive of it, yet it

testifies irresistibly to the existence of such a place.”

“I trust you navigate your soul more skilfully than you would navigate

this vessel,” retorted the Captain. “In the first place, the needle

does not point to the North Pole at all, but to the magnetic pole.

Furthermore, it has to be adjusted by magnets to counteract deviation.

Mr. Gissing, you may be a sincere student of theology, but you have not

allowed for your own temperamental deviation. Why, even the gyro compass

has to be adjusted for latitude error. You landsmen think that a ship is

simply a floating hotel. I should like to have the Bishop you spoke of

study a little navigation. That would put into him a healthy respect for

the marvels of science. On board ship, sir, the binnacle is kept locked

and the key is on the watch-chain of the master. It should be so in all

intellectual matters. Confide them to those capable of understanding.”

Gissing saw that the Captain greatly relished his sense of superiority,

so he made a remark of intentional simplicity.

“The binnacle?” he said. “I thought that was the little shellfish that

clings to the bottom of the boat?”

“Don't you dare call my ship a BOAT!” said the Captain. “At sea, a boat

means only a lifeboat or some other small vagabond craft. Come out on

the bridge and I'll show you a thing or two.”

The evening had closed in hazy, and the Pomerania swung steadily in a

long plunging roll. At the weather wing of the bridge, gazing sharply

over the canvas dodger, was Mr. Pointer, the vigilant Chief Officer,

peering off rigidly, as though mesmerized, but saying nothing. He gave

the Captain a courteous salute, but kept silence. At the large mahogany

wheel, gently steadying it to the quarterly roll of the sea, stood Dane,

a tall, solemn quartermaster. In spite of a little uneasiness, due to

the unfamiliar motion, Gissing was greatly elated by the wheelhouse,

which seemed even more thrillingly romantic than any pulpit.

Uncomprehendingly, but with admiration, he examined the binnacle, the

engine-room telegraphs, the telephones, the rack of signal-flags, the

buttons for closing the bulkheads, and the rotating clear-view screen

for lookout in thick weather. Aloft he could see the masthead light,

gently soaring in slow arcs.

“I'll show you my particular pride,” said the Captain, evidently pleased

by his visitor's delighted enthusiasm.

Gissing wondered what ingenious device of science this might be.

Captain Scottie stepped to the weather gunwale of the bridge. He pointed

to the smoke, which was rolling rapidly from the funnels.

“You see,” he said, “there's quite a strong breeze blowing. But look

here.”

He lit a match and held it unshielded above the canvas screen which was

lashed along the front of the bridge. To Gissing's surprise it burned

steadily, without blowing out.

“I've invented a convex wind-shield which splits the air just forward

of the bridge. I can stand here and light my pipe in the stiffest gale,

without any trouble.”

On the decks below Gissing heard a bugle blowing gaily, a bright,

persuasive sound.

“Six bells,” the Captain said. “I must dress for dinner. Before I start

you potato-peeling, I should like to clear up that little discussion of

ours about Free Will. One or two things you said interested me.”

He paced the bridge for a minute, thinking hard.

“I'll test your sincerity,” he said. “To-night you can bunk in the

chart-room. I'll have some dinner sent up to you. I wish you would write

me an essay of, say, two thousand words on the subject of Necessity.”

For a moment Gissing pondered whether it would not be better to be put

in irons and rationed with bread and water. The wind was freshening, and

the Pomerania's sharp bow slid heavily into broad hills of sea, crashing

them into crumbling rollers of suds which fell outward and hissed

along her steep sides. The silent Mr. Pointer escorted him into

the chart-room, a bare, businesslike place with a large table, a

map-cabinet, and a settee. Here, presently, a steward appeared with

excellent viands, and a pen, ink, and notepaper. After a cautious meal,

Gissing felt more comfortable. There is something about a wet, windy

evening at sea that turns the mind naturally toward metaphysics. He

pushed away the dishes and began to write.

Later in the evening the Captain reappeared. He looked pleased when he

saw a number of sheets already covered with script.

“Rum lot of passengers this trip,” he said. “I don't seem to see any who

look interesting. All Big Business and that sort of thing. I must say

it's nice to have someone who can talk about books, and so on, once in a

while.”

Gissing realized that sometimes a shipmaster's life must be a lonely

one. The weight of responsibility is always upon him; etiquette prevents

his becoming familiar with his officers; small wonder if he pines

occasionally for a little congenial talk to relieve his mind.

“Big Business, did you say?” Gissing remarked. “Ah, I could write you

quite an essay about that. I used to be General Manager of Beagle and

Company.”

“Come into my cabin and have a liqueur,” said the skipper. “Let the

essay go until to-morrow.”

The Captain turned on the electric stove in his cabin, for the night

was cold. It was a snug sanctum: at the portholes were little chintz

curtains; over the bunk was a convenient reading lamp. On the wall a

brass pendulum swung slowly, registering the roll of the ship. The ruddy

shine of the stove lit up the orderly desk and the photographs of the

Captain's family.

“Yours?” said Gissing, looking at a group of three puppies with droll

Scottish faces. “Aye,” said the Captain.

“I've three of my own,” said Gissing, with a private pang of

homesickness. The skipper's cosy quarters were the most truly domestic

he had seen since the evening he first fled from responsibility.

Captain Scottie was surprised. Certainly this eccentric stranger in the

badly damaged wedding garments had not given the impression of a family

head. Just then the steward entered with a decanter of Benedictine and

small glasses.

“Brew days and bonny!” said the Captain, raising his crystal.

“Secure amidst perils!” replied Gissing courteously. It was the phrase

engraved upon the ship's notepaper, on which he had been writing, and it

had impressed itself on his mind.

“You said you had been a General Manager.”

Gissing told, with some vivacity, of his experiences in the world of

trade. The Captain poured another small liqueur.

“They're fine halesome liquor,” he said.

“Sincerely yours,” said Gissing, nodding over the glass. He was

beginning to feel quite at home in the navigating quarters of the ship,

and hoped the potato-peeling might be postponed as long as possible.

“How far had you got in your essay?” asked the Captain.

“Not very far, I fear. I was beginning by laying down a few

psychological fundamentals.”

“Excellent! Will you read it to me?”

Gissing went to get his manuscript, and read it aloud. The Captain

listened attentively, puffing clouds of smoke.

“I am sorry this is such a short voyage,” he said when Gissing finished.

“You have approached the matter from an entirely naif and instinctive

standpoint, and it will take some time to show you your errors. Before

I demolish your arguments I should like to turn them over in my mind. I

will reduce my ideas to writing and then read them to you.”

“I should like nothing better,” said Gissing. “And I can think over the

subject more carefully while I peel the potatoes.”

“Nonsense,” said the Captain. “I do not often get a chance to discuss

theology. I will tell you my idea. You spoke of your experience as

General Manager, when you had charge of a thousand employees. One of

the things we need on this ship is a staff-captain, to take over

the management of the personnel. That would permit me to concentrate

entirely on navigation. In a vessel of this size it is wrong that the

master should have to carry the entire responsibility.”

He rang for the steward.

“My compliments to Mr. Pointer, and tell him to come here.”

Mr. Pointer appeared shortly in oilskins, saluted, and gazed fixedly at

his superior, with one foot raised upon the brass door-sill.

“Mr. Pointer,” said Captain Scottie, “I have appointed Captain Gissing

staff-captain. Take orders from him as you would from me. He will have

complete charge of the ship's discipline.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Mr. Pointer, stood a moment intently to see if

there were further orders, saluted again, and withdrew.

“Now you had better turn in,” said the skipper. “Of course you must wear

uniform. I'll send the tailor up to you at once. He can remodel one of

my suits overnight. The trousers will have to be lengthened.”

On the chart-room sofa, Gissing dozed and waked and dozed again. On the

bridge near by he heard the steady tread of feet, the mysterious words

of the officer on watch passing the course to his relief. Bells rang

with sharp double clang. Through the open port he could hear the

alternate boom and hiss of the sea under the bows. With the stately lift

and lean of the ship there mingled a faint driving vibration.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The first morning in any new environment is always the most exciting.

Gissing was already awake, and watching the novel sight of a patch of

sunshine sliding to and fro on the deck of the chart-room, when there

was a gentle tap at the door. The Captain's steward entered, carrying a

handsome uniform.

“Six bells, sir,” he said. “Your bath is laid on.”

Gissing was not very sure just what time it was, but the steward

held out a dressing gown for him to slip on, so he took the hint, and

followed him to the Captain's private bathroom where he plunged gaily

into warm salt water. He was hardly dressed before breakfast was

laid for him in the chart-room. It was a breakfast greatly to his

liking--porridge, scrambled eggs, grilled kidneys and bacon, coffee,

toast, and marmalade. Evidently the hardships of sea life had been

greatly exaggerated by fiction writers.

He was a trifle bashful about appearing on the bridge in his blue and

brass formality, and waited a while thinking Captain Scottie might come.

But no one disturbed him, so by and bye he went out. It was a brisk

morning with a fresh breeze and plenty of whitecaps. Dancing rainbows

hovered about the bow when an occasional explosion of spray burst up

into sunlight. Mr. Pointer was on the bridge, still gazing steadily into

the distance. He saluted Gissing, but said nothing. The quartermaster at

the wheel also saluted in silence. A seaman wiping down the paintwork

on the deckhouse saluted. Gissing returned these gestures punctiliously,

and began to pace the bridge from side to side. He soon grew accustomed

to the varying slant of the deck, and felt that his footing showed a

nautical assurance.

Now for the first time he enjoyed an untrammelled horizon on all sides.

The sea, he observed, was not really blue--not at any rate the blue he

had supposed. Where it seethed flatly along the hull, laced with swirls

of milky foam, it was almost black. Farther away, it was green, or

darkly violet. A ladder led to the top of the charthouse, and from this

commanding height the whole body of the ship lay below him. How alive

she seemed, how full of personality! The strong funnels, the tall masts

that moved so delicately against the pale open sky, the distant stern

that now dipped low in a comfortable hollow, and now soared and threshed

onward with a swimming thrust, the whole vital organism spoke to the eye

and the imagination. In the centre of this vast circle she moved, royal

and serene. She was more beautiful than the element she rode on, for

perhaps there was something meaningless in that pure vacant round of

sea and sky. Once its immense azure was grasped and noted, it brought

nothing to the mind. Reason was indignant to conceive it, sloping

endlessly away.

The placid, beautifully planned routine of shipboard passed on its

accustomed course, and he began to suspect that his staff-captaincy was

a sinecure. Down below he could see the passengers briskly promenading,

or drowsing under their rugs. On the hurricane deck, aft, a sailor was

chalking a shuffleboard court. It occurred to him that all this might

become monotonous unless he found some actual part in it. Just then

Captain Scottie appeared on the bridge, took a quick look round, and

joined him on top of the charthouse.

“Good morning!” he said. “You won't think me rude if you don't see much

of me? Thinking about those ideas of yours, I have come upon some rather

puzzling stuff. I must work the whole thing out more clearly. Your

suggestion that Conscience points the way to an integration of

personality into a higher type of divinity, seems to me off the track;

but I haven't quite downed it yet. I'm going to shut myself up to-day

and consider the matter. I leave you in charge.”

“I shall be perfectly happy,” said Gissing. “Please don't worry about

me.”

“You suggest that all the conditions of life at sea, our mastery of the

forces of Nature, and so on, seem to show that we have perfect freedom

of will, and adapt everything to our desires. I believe just the

contrary. The forces of Nature compel us to approach them in their own

way, otherwise we are shipwrecked. It is in the conditions of Nature

that this ship should reach port in eight days, otherwise we should get

nowhere. We do it because it is our destiny.”

“I am not so sure of that,” said Gissing. But the Captain had already

departed with a clouded brow.

On the chart-room roof Gissing had discovered an alluring instrument,

the exact use of which he did not know. It seemed to be some kind of

steering control. The dial was lettered, from left to right, as follows

HARD A PORT, PORT, STEADY, COURSE, STEADY, STARBD, HARD A STARBD. At

present the handle stood upon the section marked COURSE. After a careful

study of the whole seascape, it seemed to Gissing that off to the south

the ocean looked more blue and more interesting. After some hesitation

he moved the handle to the PORT mark, and waited to see what would

happen. To his delight he saw the bow swing slowly round, and the

Pomerania's gleaming wake spread behind her in a whitened curve. He

descended to the bridge, a little nervous as to what Mr. Pointer might

say, but he found the Mate gazing across the water with the same fierce

and unwearying attention.

“I have changed the course,” he said.

Mr. Pointer saluted, but said nothing.

Having succeeded so far, Gissing ventured upon another innovation.

He had been greatly tempted by the wheel, and envied the stolid

quartermaster who was steering. So, assuming an air of calm certainty,

he entered the wheelhouse.

“I'll take her for a while,” he said.

“Aye, aye, sir,” said the quartermaster, and surrendered the wheel to

him.

“You might string out a few flags,” Gissing said. He had been noticing

the bright signal buntings in the rack, and thought it a pity not to use

them.

“I like to see a ship well dressed,” he added.

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Dane. “Any choice, sir?”

Gissing picked out a string of flags which were particularly lively in

colour-scheme, and had them hoisted. Then he gave his attention to the

wheel. He found it quite an art, and was surprised to learn that a big

ship requires so much helm. But it was very pleasant. He took care to

steer toward patches of sea that looked interesting, and to cut into any

particular waves that took his fancy. After an hour or so, he sighted a

fishing schooner, and gave chase. He found it so much fun to run close

beside her (taking care to pass to leeward, so as not to cut off her

wind) that a mile farther on he turned and steered a neat circle

about the bewildered craft. The Pomerania's passengers were greatly

interested, and lined the rails trying to make out what the fishermen

were shouting. The captain of the schooner seemed particularly agitated,

kept waving at the signal flags and barking through a megaphone. During

these manoeuvres Mr. Pointer gazed so hard at the horizon that Gissing

felt a bit embarrassed.

“I thought it wise to find out exactly what our turning-circle is,” he

said.

Mr. Pointer saluted. He was a well-trained officer.

Late in the afternoon the Captain reappeared, looking more cheerful.

Gissing was still at the helm, which he found so fascinating he would

not relinquish it. He had ordered his tea served on a little stand

beside the wheel so that he could drink it while he steered. “Hullo!”

said the Captain. “I see you've changed the course.”

“It seemed best to do so,” said Gissing firmly. He felt that to show any

weakness at this point would be fatal.

“Oh, well, probably it doesn't matter. I'm coming round to some of your

ideas.”

Gissing saw that this would never do. Unless he could keep the master

disturbed by philosophic doubts, Scottie would expect to resume command

of the ship.

“Well,” he said, “I've been thinking about it, too. I believe I went

a bit too far. But what do you think about this? Do you believe that

Conscience is inherited or acquired? You sea how important that is. If

Conscience is a kind of automatic oracle, infallible and perfect, what

becomes of free will? And if, on the other hand, Conscience is only a

laboriously trained perception of moral and social utilities, where does

your deity come in?”

Gissing was aware that this dilemma would not hold water very long, and

was painfully impromptu; but it hit the Captain amidships.

“By Jove,” he said, “that's terrible, isn't it? It's no use trying to

carry on until I've got that under the hatch. Look here, would you

mind, just as a favour, keep things going while I wrestle with that

question?--I know it's asking a lot, but perhaps--”

“It's quite all right,” Gissing replied. “Naturally you want to work

these things out.”

The Captain started to leave the bridge, but by old seafaring habit he

cast a keen glance at the sky. He saw the bright string of code flags

fluttering. He seemed startled.

“Are you signalling any one?” he asked.

“No one in particular. I thought it looked better to have a few flags

about.”

“I daresay you're right. But better take them down if you speak a ship.

They're rather confusing.”

“Confusing? I thought they were just to brighten things up.”

“You have two different signals up. They read, Bubonic plague, give me a

wide berth. Am coming to your assistance.”

Toward dinner time, when Gissing had left the wheel and was humming a

tune as he walked the bridge, the steward came to him.

“The Captain's compliments, sir, and would you take his place in the

saloon to-night? He says he's very busy writing, sir, and would take it

as a favour.”

Gissing was always obliging. There was just a hint of conscious

sternness in his manner as he entered the Pomerania's beautiful dining

saloon, for he wished the passengers to realize that their lives

depended upon his prudence and sea-lore. Twice during the meal he

instructed the steward to bring him the latest barometer reading; and

after the dessert he scribbled a note on the back of a menu-card and had

it sent to the Chief Engineer. It said:--

Dear Chief: Please keep up a good head of steam to-night. I am expecting

dirty weather.

MR. GISSING,

(Staff-Captain)

What the Chief said when he received the message is not included in the

story.

But the same social aplomb that had made Gissing successful as a

floorwalker now came to his rescue as mariner. The passengers at the

Captain's table were amazed at his genial charm. His anecdotes of sea

life were heartily applauded. After dinner he circulated gracefully in

the ladies' lounge, and took coffee there surrounded by a chattering

bevy. He organized a little impromptu concert in the music room, and

when that was well started, slipped away to the smoke-room. Here he

found a pool being organized as to the exact day and hour when the

Pomerania would reach port. Appealed to for his opinion, he advised

caution. On all sides he was in demand, for dancing, for bridge, for

a recitation. At length he slipped away, pleading that he must keep

himself fit in case of fog. The passengers were loud in his praise,

asserting that they had never met so agreeable a sea-captain. One

elderly lady said she remembered crossing with him in the old Caninia,

years ago, and that he was just the same then.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

And so the voyage went on. Gissing was quite content to do a two-hour

trick at the wheel both morning and afternoon, and worked out some new

principles of steering which gave him pleasure. In the first place, he

noticed that the shuffle-board and quoit players, on the boat deck aft,

were occasionally annoyed by cinders from the stacks, so he made it

a general plan to steer so that the smoke blew at right angles to the

ship's course. As the wind was prevailingly west, this meant that his

general trend was southerly. Whenever he saw another vessel, a mass of

floating sea-weed, a porpoise, or even a sea-gull, he steered directly

for it, and passed as close as possible, to have a good look at it. Even

Mr. Pointer admitted (in the mates' mess) that he had never experienced

so eventful a voyage. To keep the quartermasters from being idle,

Gissing had them knit him a rope hammock to be slung in the chart-room.

He felt that this would be more nautical than a plush settee.

There was a marvellous sense of power in standing at the wheel and

feeling the great hull reply to his touch. Occasionally Captain Scottie

would emerge from his cabin, look round with a faint surprise, and

come to the bridge to see what was happening. Mr. Pointer would salute

mutely, and continue to study the skyline with indignant absorption.

The Captain would approach the wheel, where Gissing was deep in thought.

Rubbing his hands, the Captain would say heartily, “Well, I think I've

got it all clear now.”

Gissing sighed.

“What is it?” the Captain inquired anxiously.

“I'm bothered about the subconscious. They tell us nowadays that

it's the subconscious mind that is really important. The more mental

operations we can turn over to the subconscious realm, the happier we

will be, and the more efficient. Morality, theology, and everything

really worth while, as I understand it, spring from the subconscious.”

The Captain's look of cheer would vanish.

“Maybe there's something in that.”

“If so,” Gissing continued, “then perhaps consciousness is entirely

spurious. It seems to me that before we can get anywhere at all, we've

got to draw the line between the conscious and the subconscious.

What bothers me is, am I conscious of having a subconscious, or not?

Sometimes I think I am, and then again I'm doubtful. But if I'm aware

of my subconscious, then it isn't a genuine subconscious, and the whole

thing's just another delusion--”

The Captain would knit his weather-beaten brow and again retire

anxiously to his quarters, after begging Gissing to be generous and

carry on a while longer. Occasionally, pacing the starboard bridge-deck,

sacred to captains, Gissing would glance through the port and see the

metaphysical commander bent over sheets of foolscap and thickly wreathed

in pipe-smoke.

He himself had fallen into a kind of tranced felicity, in which these

questions no longer had other than an ingenious interest. His heart was

drowned in the engulfing blue. As they made their southing, wind

and weather seemed to fall astern, the sun poured with a more golden

candour. He stood at the wheel in a tranquil reverie, blithely steering

toward some bright belly of cloud that had caught his fancy. Mr. Pointer

shook his head when he glanced surreptitiously at the steering recorder,

a device that noted graphically every movement of the rudder with a view

to promoting economical helmsmanship. Indeed Gissing's course, as logged

on the chart, surprised even himself, so that he forbade the officers

taking their noon observations. When Mr. Pointer said something about

isobars, the staff-captain replied serenely that he did not expect to

find any polar bears in these latitudes.

He had hoped privately for an occasional pirate, and scanned the sea-rim

sharply for suspicious topsails. But the ocean, as he remarked, is

not crowded. They proceeded, day after day, in a solitary wideness of

unblemished colour. The ship, travelling always in the centre of this

infinite disk, seemed strangely identified with his own itinerant

spirit, watchful at the gist of things, alert at the point which was

necessarily, for him, the nub of all existence. He wandered about the

Pomerania's sagely ordered passages and found her more and more magical.

She went on and on, with some strange urgent vitality of her own.

Through the fiddleys on the boat deck came a hot oily breath and the

steady drumming of her burning heart. From outer to hawse-hole, from

shaft-tunnel to crow's-nest, he explored and loved her. In the whole of

her proud, faithful, obedient fabric he divined honour and exultation.

Poised upon uncertainty, she was sure. The camber of her white-scrubbed

decks, the long, clean sheer of her hull, the concave flare of her

bows--what was the amazing joy and rightness of these things? And yet

the grotesque passengers regarded her only as a vehicle, to carry them

sedatively to some clamouring dock. Fools! She was more lovely than

anything they would ever see again! He yearned to drive her endlessly

toward that unreachable perimeter of sky.

On land there had been definite horizons, even if disappointing when

reached and examined; but here there was no horizon at all. Every hour

it slid and slid over the dark orb of sea. He lost count of time. The

tremulous cradling of the Pomerania, steadily climbing the long leagues;

her noble forecastle solemnly lifting against heaven, then descending

with grave beauty into a spread of foaming beryl and snowdrift, seemed

one with the rhythm of his pulse and heart. Perhaps there had been more

than mere ingenuity in his last riddle for the theological skipper.

Truly the subconscious had usurped him. Here he was almost happy, for he

was almost unaware of life. It was all blue vacancy and suspension. The

sea is the great answer and consoler, for it means either nothing or

everything, and so need not tease the brain.

But the passengers, though unobservant, began to murmur; especially

those who had wagered that the Pomerania would dock on the eighth day.

The world itself, they complained, was created in seven days, and why

should so fine a ship take longer to cross a comparatively small ocean?

Urbanely, over coffee and petite fours, Gissing argued with them. They

were well on their way, he protested; and then, as a hypothetical case,

he asked why one destination was more worth visiting than another? He

even quoted Shakespeare on this point--something about “ports and happy

havens”--and succeeded in turning the tide of conversation for a while.

The mention of Shakespeare suggested to some of the ladies that it

would be pleasant, now they all knew each other so well, to put on some

amateur theatricals. They compromised by playing charades in the saloon.

Another evening Gissing kept them amused by fireworks, which were very

lovely against the dark sky. For this purpose he used the emergency

rockets, star-shells and coloured flares, much to the distress of Dane,

the quartermaster, who had charge of these supplies.

Little by little, however, the querulous protests of the passengers

began to weary him. Also, he had been receiving terse memoranda from

the Chief Engineer that the coal was getting low in the bunkers and that

something must be queer in the navigating department. This seemed very

unreasonable. The fixed gaze of Mr. Pointer, perpetually examining the

horizon as though he wanted to make sure he would recognize it if they

met again, was trying. Even Captain Scottie complained one day that

the supply of fresh meat had given out and that the steward had been

bringing him tinned beef. Gissing determined upon resolute measures.

He had notice served that on account of possible danger from pirates

there would be a general boat drill on the following day--not merely for

the crew, but for everyone. He gave a little talk about it in the saloon

after dinner, and worked his audience up to quite a pitch of enthusiasm.

This would be better than any amateur theatricals, he insisted. Everyone

was to act exactly as though in a sudden calamity. They might make

up the boat-parties on the basis of congeniality if they wished; five

minutes would be given for reaching the stations, without panic or

disorder. They should prepare themselves as though they were actually

going to leave a sinking ship.

The passengers were delighted with the idea of this novel entertainment.

Every soul on board--with the exception of Captain Scottie, who had

locked himself in and refused to be disturbed--was properly advertised

of the event.

The following day, fortunately, was clear and calm. At noon Gissing

blew the syren, fired a rocket from the bridge, and swung the engine

telegraph to STOP. The ship's orchestra, by his orders, struck up a

rollicking air. Quickly and without confusion, amid cries of Women and

children first! the passengers filed to their allotted places. The crew

and officers were all at their stations.

Gissing knocked at Captain Scottie's cabin.

“We are taking to the boats,” he said.

“Goad!” cried the skipper. “Wull it be a colleesion?”

“All's clear and the davits are outboard,” said Gissing. He had been

studying the manual of boat handling in one of the nautical volumes in

the chart-room.

“Auld Hornie!” ejaculated the skipper. “We'll no can salve the specie!

Make note of her poseetion, Mr. Gissing!” He hastened to gather his

papers, the log, a chronometer, and a large canister of tobacco.

“The Deil's intil't,” he said as he hastened to his boat. “I had yon

pragmateesm of yours on a lee shore. Two-three hours, I'd have careened

ye.”

Gissing was ready with his megaphone. From the wing of the bridge he

gave the orders.

“Lower away!” and the boats dropped to the passenger rail.

“Avast lowering!” Each boat took in her roster of passengers, who were

in high spirits at this unusual excitement.

“Mind your painters! Lower handsomely!”

The boats took the water in orderly fashion, and were cast off.

Remaining members of the crew swarmed down the falls. The bandsmen had a

boat to themselves, and resumed their tune as soon as they were settled.

Gissing, left alone on the ship, waved for silence.

“Look sharp, man!” cried Captain Scottie. “Honour's satisfied! Take your

place in the boat!”

The passengers applauded, and there was quite a clatter of camera

shutters as they snapped the Pomerania looming grandly above them.

“Boats are all provisioned and equipped,” shouted Gissing. “I've

broadcasted your position by radio. The barometer's at Fixed Fair. Pull

off now, and 'ware the screw.”

He moved the telegraph handle to DEAD SLOW, and the Pomerania began to

slip forward gently. The boats dropped aft amid a loud miscellaneous

outcry. Mr. Pointer was already examining the horizon. Captain Scottie,

awakened to the situation, was uttering the language of theology but not

the purport.

“Don't stand up in the boats,” megaphoned Gissing. “You're quite all

right, there's a ship on the way already. I wirelessed last night.”

He slid the telegraph to slow, half, and then full. Once more the ship

creamed through the lifting purple swells. The little flock of boats was

soon out of sight.

Alone at the wheel, he realized that a great weight was off his mind.

The responsibility of his position had burdened him more than he knew.

Now a strange eagerness and joy possessed him. His bubbling wake cut

straight and milky across the glittering afternoon. In a ruddy sunset

glow, the sea darkened through all tints of violet, amethyst, indigo.

The horizon line sharpened so clearly that he could distinguish the

tossing profile of waves wetting the sky. “A red sky at night is the

sailor's delight,” he said to himself. He switched on the port and

starboard lights and the masthead lanterns, then lashed the wheel while

he went below for supper. He did not know exactly where he was, for he

seemed to have steamed clean off the chart; but as he conned the helm

that evening, and leaned over the lighted binnacle, he had a feeling

that he was not far from some destiny. With cheerful assurance he lashed

the wheel again, and turned in. He woke once in the night, and leaped

from the hammock with a start. He thought he had heard a sound of

barking.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The next morning he sighted land. Coming out on the bridge, the whole

face of things was changed. The sea-colour had lightened to a tawny

green; gulls dipped and hovered; away on the horizon lay a soft blue

contour. “Land Ho!” he shouted superbly, and wondered what new country

he had discovered. He ran up a hoist of red and yellow signal flags, and

steered gaily toward the shore.

It had grown suddenly cold: he had to fetch Captain Scottie's pea-jacket

to wear at the wheel. On the long spilling crests, that crumbled and

spread running layers of froth in their hurry shoreward, the Pomerania

rode home. She knew her landfall and seemed to quicken. Steadily

swinging on the jade-green surges, she buried her nose almost to the

hawse-pipes, then lifted until her streaming forefoot gleamed out of a

frilled ruffle of foam.

Gissing, too, was eager. A tingling buoyancy and impatience took hold

of him: he fidgeted with sheer eagerness for life. Land, the beloved

stability of our dear and only earth, drew and charmed him. Behind was

the senseless, heartbreaking sea. Now he could discern hills rising in

a gilded opaline light. In the volatile thin air was a quick sense of

strangeness. A new world was close about him: a world that he could see,

and feel, and inhale, and yet knew nothing of.

Suddenly a great humility possessed him. He had been froward and silly

and vain. He had shouted arrogantly at Beauty, like a noisy tourist in

a canyon; and the only answer, after long waiting, had been the paltry

diminished echo of his own voice. He thought shamefully of his follies.

What matter how you name God or in what words you praise Him? In this

new foreign land he would quietly accept things as he found them. The

laughter of God was too strange to understand.

No, there was no answer. He was doubly damned, for he had made truth a

mere sport of intellectual riddling. The mind, like a spinning flywheel

of fatigued steel, was gradually racked to bursting by the conflict

of stresses. And yet: every equilibrium was an opposure of forces.

Rotation, if swift enough, creates amazing stability: he had seen how

the gyroscope can balance at apparently impossible angles. Perhaps it

was so of the mind. If it twirls at high speed it can lean right out

over the abyss without collapse. But the stationary mind--he thought

of Bishop Borzoi--must keep away from the edge. Try to force it to

the edge, it raves in panic. Every mind, very likely, knows its own

frailties, and does well to safeguard them. At any rate, that was the

most generous interpretation. Most minds, undoubtedly, were uneasy in

high places. They doubted their ability to refrain from jumping off.

How many bones of fine intellects lay whitening at the foot of the

theological cliff--It seemed to be a lonely coast, and wintry.

Patches of snow lay upon the hills, the woods were bare and brown. A

bottle-necked harbour opened out before him. He reduced the engines to

Dead Slow and glided gaily through the strait. He had been anxious lest

his navigation might not be equal to the occasion: he did not want to

disgrace himself at this final test. But all seemed to arrange itself

with enchanted ease. A steep ledge of ground offered a natural pier,

with tree-stumps for bollards. He let her come gently beyond the spot;

reversed the propellers just at the right time, and backed neatly

alongside. He moved the telegraph handle to FINISHED WITH ENGINES; ran

out the gangplank smartly, and stepped ashore. He moored the vessel fore

and aft, and hung out fenders to prevent chafing.

The first thing to do, he said to himself, is to get the lie of the

land, and find out whether it is inhabited.

A hillside rising above the water promised a clear view. The stubble

grass was dry and frosty, after the warm days at sea the chill was

nipping; but what an elixir of air! If this is a desert island, he

thought, it will be a glorious discovery. His heart was jocund with

anticipation. A curious foreign look in the landscape, he thought; quite

unlike anything--Suddenly, where the hill arched against pearly sky, he

saw narrow thread of smoke rising. He halted in alarm. Who might this

be, friend or foe? But eager agitation pushed him on. Burning to know,

he hurried up to the brow of the hill.

The smoke mounted from a small bonfire of sticks in a sheltered thicket,

where a miraculous being--who was, as a matter of fact, a rather ragged

and dingy vagabond--was cooking a tin of stew over the blaze.

Gissing stood, quivering with emotion. Joy such as he had never known

darted through all the cords of his body. He ran, shouting, in mirth and

terror. In fear, in a passion of love and knowledge and understanding,

he abased himself and yearned before this marvel. Impossible to have

conceived, yet, once seen, utterly satisfying and the fulfilment of all

needs. He laughed and leaped and worshipped. When the first transport

was over, he laid his head against this being's knee, he nestled there

and was content. This was the inscrutable perfect answer.

“Cripes!” said the puzzled tramp, as he caressed the nuzzling head. “The

purp's loco. Maybe he's been lost. You might think he'd never seen a man

before.”

He was right.

And Gissing sat quietly, his throat resting upon the soiled knee of a

very old and spicy trouser.

“I have found God,” he said.

Presently he thought of the ship. It would not do to leave her so

insecurely moored. Reluctantly, with many a backward glance and a heart

full of glory, he left the Presence. He ran to the edge of the hill to

look down upon the harbour.

The outlook was puzzlingly altered. He gazed in astonishment. What were

those poplars, rising naked into the bright air?--there was something

familiar about them. And that little house beyond... he stared

bewildered.

The great shining breadth of the ocean had shrunk to the roundness of

a tiny pond. And the Pomerania? He leaned over, shaken with questions.

There, beside the bank, was a little plank of wood, a child's plaything,

roughly fashioned shipshape: two chips for funnels; red and yellow

frosted leaves for flags; a withered dogwood blossom for propeller. He

leaned closer, with whirling mind. In the clear cool surface of the

pond he could see the sky mirrored, deeper than any ocean, pellucid,

infinite, blue.

He ran up the path to the house. The scuffled ragged garden lay naked

and hard. At the windows, he saw with surprise, were holly wreaths tied

with broad red ribbon. On the porch, some battered toys. He opened the

door.

A fluttering rosy light filled the room. By the fireplace the

puppies--how big they were!--were sitting with Mrs. Spaniel. Joyous

uproar greeted him: they flung themselves upon him. Shouts of “Daddy!

Daddy!” filled the house, while the young Spaniels stood by more

bashfully.

Good Mrs. Spaniel was gratefully moved. Her moist eyes shone brightly in

the firelight.

“I knew you'd be home for Christmas, Mr. Gissing,” she said. “I've been

telling them so all afternoon. Now, children, be still a moment and let

me speak. I've been telling you your Daddy would be home in time for a

Christmas Eve story. I've got to go and fix that plum pudding.”

In her excitement a clear bubble dripped from the tip of her tongue. She

caught it in her apron, and hurried to the kitchen.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The children insisted on leading him all through the house to show how

nicely they had taken care of things. And in every room Gissing saw

the marks of riot and wreckage. There were tooth-scars on all

furniture-legs; the fringes of rugs were chewed off; there were prints

of mud, ink, paints, and whatnot, on curtains and wallpapers and

coverlets. Poor Mrs. Spaniel kept running anxiously from the kitchen to

renew apologies.

“I DID try to keep 'em in order,” she said, “but they seem to bash

things when you're not looking.”

But Gissing was too happy to stew about such trifles. When the

inspection was over, they all sat down by the chimney and he piled on

more logs.

“Well, chilluns,” he said, “what do you want Santa Claus to bring you

for Christmas?”

“An aunbile!” exclaimed Groups

“An elphunt!” exclaimed Bunks

“A little train with hammers!” exclaimed Yelpers

“A little train with hammers?” asked Gissing. “What does he mean?”

“Oh,” said Groups and Bunks, with condescending pity, “he means a

typewriter. He calls it a little train because it moves on a track when

you hit it.”

A painful apprehension seized him, and he went hastily to his study. He

had not noticed the typewriter, which Mrs. Spaniel had--too late--put

out of reach. Half the keys were sticking upright, jammed together and

tangled in a whirl of ribbon; the carriage was strangely dislocated. And

yet even this mischance, which would once have horrified him, left him

unperturbed. It's my own fault, he thought: I shouldn't have left it

where they could play with it. Perhaps God thinks the same when His

creatures make a mess of the dangerous laws of life.

“A Christmas story!” the children were clamouring.

Can it really be Christmas Eve? Gissing thought. Christmas seems to have

come very suddenly this year, I haven't really adjusted my mind to it

yet.

“All right,” he said. “Now sit still and keep quiet. Bunks, give Yelpers

a little more room. If there's any bickering Santa Claus might hear it.”

He sat in the big chair by the fire, and the three looked upward

expectantly from the hearthrug.

“Once upon a time there were three little puppies, who lived in a house

in the country in the Canine Estates. And their names were Groups,

Bunks, and Yelpers.”

The three tails thumped in turn as the names were mentioned, but the

children were too excitedly absorbed to interrupt.

“And one year, just before Christmas, they heard a dreadful rumour.”

“What's a rumour?” cried Yelpers, alarmed.

This was rather difficult to explain, so Gissing did not attempt it. He

began again.

“They heard that Santa Claus might not be able to come because he was

so behind with his housework. You see, Santa Claus is a great big

Newfoundland dog with a white beard, and he lives in a frosty kennel at

the North Pole, all shining with icicles round the roof and windows. But

it's so far away from everywhere that poor Santa couldn't get a servant.

All the maids who went there refused to stay because it was so cold

and lonely, and so far from the movies. Santa Claus was busy in his

workshop, making toys; he was busy taking care of the reindeer in their

snow-stables; and he didn't have time to wash his dishes. So all summer

he just let them pile up and pile up in the kitchen. And when Christmas

came near, there was his lovely house in a dreadful state of untidiness.

He couldn't go away and leave it like that. And so, if he didn't get his

dishes washed and the house cleaned up for Christmas, all the puppies

all over the world would have to go without toys. When Groups and Bunks

and Yelpers heard this, they were very much worried.”

“How did they hear it?” asked Bunks, who was the analytical member of

the trio.

“A very sensible question,” said Gissing, approvingly. “They heard it

from the chipmunk who lives in the wood behind the house. The chipmunk

heard it underground.”

“In his chipmonastery?” cried Groups. It was a family joke to call

the chipmunk's burrow by that name, and though the puppies did not

understand the pun they relished the long word.

“Yes,” continued Gissing. “The reindeer in Santa Claus's stable were

so unhappy about the dishes not being washed, and the chance of missing

their Christmas frolic, that they broadcasted a radio message. Their

horns are very fine for sending radio, and the chipmunk, sitting at his

little wireless outfit, with the receivers over his ears, heard it. And

Chippy told Groups and Bunks and Yelpers.

“So these puppies decided to help Santa Claus. They didn't know exactly

where to find him, but the chipmunk told them the direction, and off

they went. They travelled and travelled, and when they came to the ocean

they begged a ride from the seagulls, and each one sat on a seagull's

back just as though he was on a little airplane. They flew and flew,

and at last they came to Santa Claus's house. Through the stable-walls,

which were made of clear ice, they could see the reindeer stamping in

their stalls. In the big workshop, where Santa Claus was busy making

toys, they could hear a lively sound of hammering. The big red sleigh

was standing outside the stables, all ready to be hitched up to the

reindeer.

“They slipped into Santa Claus's house quickly and quietly, so no one

would see or hear them. The house was in a terrible state, but they set

to work to clean up. Groups found the vacuum cleaner and sucked up all

the crumbs from the dining-room rug. Bunks ran upstairs and made Santa

Claus's bed for him and swept the floors and put clean towels in the

bathroom. And Yelpers hurried into the kitchen and washed the dishes,

and scrubbed the pots, and polished the egg-stains off the silver

spoons, and emptied the ice-box pan. All working hard, they got through

very soon, and made Santa Claus's house as clean as any house could be.

They fixed the window-shades so that they would all hang level, not

just anyhow, as poor Santa had them. Then, when everything was spick and

span, they ran outdoors again and beckoned the seagulls. They climbed on

the gulls' backs, and away they flew homeward.”

“Was Santa Claus pleased?” asked Bunks.

“Indeed he was, when he came back from his workshop, very tired after

making toys all day.”

“What kind of toys did he make?” exclaimed Yelpers anxiously. “Did he

make a typewriter?”

“He made every kind of toy. And when he saw how his house had been

cleaned up, he thought the fairies must have done it. He lit his pipe,

and filled a thermos bottle with hot cocoa to keep him warm on his long

journey. Then he put on his red coat, and his long boots, and his fur

cap, and went out to harness the reindeer. That very night he drove off

with his sleigh packed full of toys for all the puppies in the world. In

fact, he was so pleased that he loaded his big bag with more toys than

he had ever carried before. And that was how a queer thing happened.”

They waited in eager suspense.

“You know, Santa Claus always drives into the Canine Estates by the

little back road through the woods, where the chipmunk lives. You know

the gateway, at the bend in the lane: well, it's rather narrow, and

Santa Claus's sleigh is very wide. And this time, because his bag had

so many toys in it, the bag bulged over the edge of the sleigh, and one

corner of the bag caught on the gatepost as he drove by. Three toys fell

out, and what do you suppose they were?”

“An aunbile!”

“An elphunt!”

“A typewriter!”

“Yes, that's quite right. And it happened that the chipmunk was out

that night, digging up some nuts for his Christmas dinner, a little sad

because he had no presents to give his children; and he found the

three toys. He took them home to the little chipmunks, and they were

tremendously pleased. That was only fair, because if it hadn't been

for the chipmunk and his radio set, no one would have had any toys that

Christmas.”

“Did Santa Claus have any more typewriters in his bag?” asked Yelpers

gravely.

“Oh, yes, he had plenty more of everything. And when he got to the house

where Groups and Bunks and Yelpers lived, he slid down the chimney and

took a look round. He didn't see any crumbs on the floor, or any toys

lying about not put away, so he filled the stockings with all kinds of

lovely things, and an aunbile and an elphunt and a typewriter.”

“What did the puppies say?” they inquired.

“They were sound asleep upstairs, and didn't know anything about it

until Christmas morning. Come on now, it's time for bed.”

“We can undress ourselves now,” said Groups.

“Will you tuck me in?” said Bunks.

“You're sure he had another typewriter in his bag?” said Yelpers.

They scrambled upstairs.

Later, when the house was quiet, Gissing went out to the kitchen to see

Mrs. Spaniel. She was diligently rolling pastry, and her nose was white

with flour.

“Oh, sir, I'm glad you got home in time for Christmas,” she said. “The

children were counting on it. Did you have a successful trip, sir?”

“Every trip is successful when you get home again,” said Gissing. “I

suppose the shops will be open late to-night, won't they? I'm going to

run down to the village to get some toys.”

Before leaving the house, he went down to the cellar to see if the

furnace was all right. He was amazed to see how naturally and cheerfully

he had slipped back into the old sense of responsibility. Where was the

illusory freedom he had dreamed of? Even the epiphany on the hilltop now

seemed a distant miracle. That fearful happiness might never come again.

And yet here, among the familiar difficult minutiae of home, what a

lightness he felt. A great phrase from the prayer-book came to his

mind--“Whose service is perfect freedom.”

Ah, he said to himself, it is all very well to wear a crown of thorns,

and indeed every sensitive creature carries one in secret. But there are

times when it ought to be worn cocked over one ear.

He opened the furnace door. A bright glow filled the fire-box: he could

hear a stir and singing in the boiler, and the rustle of warm pipes that

chuckled quietly through winter nights of storm. Over the coals hovered

a magic evasive flicker, the very soul of fire. It was a Pentecostal

flame, perfect and heavenly in tint, the essence of pure colour, a clear

immortal blue.

THE END

End of 's Where the Blue Begins, by Christopher Morley