that year, nineteen-nineteen, threw up to the surface, because of the storm and disorder of its successive tidal waves, many strange fish; and of all that i encountered, the strangest, most attractive, and, i venture to think, the most typical of our times and their uncertainties, was my friend bombastes furioso—otherwise benedick jones.
i should certainly never have met him had it not been for peter westcott. westcott, somewhere in the spring of nineteen-nineteen, took for a time the very handsome rooms of robsart, the novelist, at hortons in duke street, st. james's. it was strange to see peter in those over-grand, over-lavish rooms. i had known him first in the old days when his reuben hallard and stone house had taken london by storm, and when everything seemed "set fair" for his future. then everything crumbled: his child died, his wife ran away with his best friend, and his books failed. i didn't hear of him again until nineteen-fifteen, when somebody saw him in france. his name was mentioned on several occasions through the terrible years, but nobody seemed to know him well. he kept away, apparently, from everybody. then on the very day that the armistice was signed, i met him in the crowd about whitehall,[pg 253] looking just the same as in the old days—a little older, a little stouter, stocky and resolved and aloof and observant, in a world, as it had always seemed, to which he only half belonged, a sailor on leave in a country strange, dangerous, and interesting.
but this story is not about westcott. to cut this prologue short, then, he asked me to come and see him, and i went to the magnificent horton rooms, not once, not twice, but many times. i had loved peter in the old days. i loved him much more now. the story of those years of his life that immediately followed the war is a wonderful story. i hope that one day he will give it to the world; whether he does or no, i saw in those summer months the beginning of the events that were to lead him back to life again, to give him happiness and self-confidence and optimism once more, to make him the man he now is.
in the story of that recovery, benedick jones has his share; but, i must repeat, this is benedick jones's story and not westcott's.
the first day that i saw jones was one lovely evening in april when peter's (or rather, robsart's) sitting-room was lit with a saffron-purple glow, and the clouds beyond the window were like crimson waves rolling right down upon us across the pale, glassy sky. in the middle of this splendour jones stood, a whisky-and-soda in one hand, and a large meerschaum pipe in the other. he was, of course, orating about something. the first thing that struck me was his size. it was not only that he was well over six feet and broad in proportion, but there seemed to be in his large mouth, his[pg 254] great head with its untidy mop of yellow hair, his big, red hands, a spiritual size as well. he gave one always the impression of having more fire within his soul than he could possibly manage....
he was fat, but not unpleasantly so. his clothes were comfortably loose, but not disorderly. his stomach was too prominent, but the breadth of his chest saved him from unsightliness. his face was a full moon, red, freckled, light yellow eyebrows, light yellow, rather ragged moustache. he was always laughing—sometimes when he was astonished or indignant.
he was forever in the middle of the room orating somebody or something, and his favourite attitude was to stand with his legs wide apart, a pipe or a glass or a book in his extended hand, his body swaying a little with the rhythm of his eager talk.
on this afternoon, i remember, he really seemed to fill the room—words were pouring from his mouth in a torrent, and i stood, stopped by this flood, at the door. westcott, lying back in a leather chair, smoking, listened, a smile on his generally grave face, something of the indulgent look in his eyes that one might give to a favoured and excited child.
"hullo, lester!" he cried, jumping up. "come along—this is captain jones. bomb, let me introduce you to mr. lester. i told you to read to paradise years ago in france, but of course you never have."
"no, i never have," cried jones, turning round upon me very suddenly, seizing my hand and shaking it up and down like the handle of a pump. "how do you do! how do you do! i'm just delighted to see you. i[pg 255] don't read much, you know. better for me if i read more. but i've got to take exercise. i'm getting fat." then he wheeled round again. "but, peter," he went on, suddenly taking a great draught from his glass, "it was the most extraordinary thing—i swear it was just as i'm telling you—the girl gave the man a look, spat at him, and ran for her life. there were three men after her then, one a vicious-looking little devil——"
i sat down in the chair nearest to me and listened. i heard a most astonishing story. i'm afraid that i cannot remember at this distance of time all the details of it: it had murder in it, and rape and arson and every sort of miraculous escape, and apparently, so far as i could make it out, jones had been a spectator of all that he described. there were discrepancies in his narrative, i remember, about which i should have liked to question him, but the words came out so fast, and the narrator's own personal conviction in the reality of his story was so absolute, that questions seemed an impertinence. he stopped at last, wiped his brow, collapsed upon a chair, finished his whisky with a great sucking smack of approval, dug his fingers into the bowl of his pipe, struck matches that were, one by one, ineffective, and lay scattered about him on the floor, and then smiled at me with a beaming countenance.
"that's a very good story, bomb," said peter.
"story!" cried captain jones, contemptuously. "that ain't no story. that's god's own truth—every word of it." he looked at me smiling all over his face.
"i've had some very remarkable experiences," he said.
[pg 256]
"you must have had," i answered.
he did not, i think, on this occasion, stay very long.
when he had departed i looked at westcott interrogatively.
"that's a prince of a man," said peter enthusiastically. "i don't know where i'd have been without him in france. everyone loved him there, and they were right."
"what an experience he must have had there," i said, a little breathless.
"oh, that!" said peter laughing. "that was all lies from beginning to end."
"lies!" i exclaimed.
"yes," said westcott. "he's known among his friends as bombastes furioso. that's an unfair name, really, to give him, because he's gentle as any suckling dove, and all his wonderful stories are about somebody else's great deeds, never about his own. young harper was saying the other day that if only he would tell of some of his stories about himself, his lies wouldn't be so tremendous, but his natural modesty prevents him. he's a dear fellow, and the biggest liar in europe."
"well, of course," i said, rather doubtfully, "if he always tells lies it isn't so bad. you know that you need never believe him. it's the half-and-half liars that are so tiresome——"
"no," peter interrupted. "that isn't quite fair. lies isn't the true word. he's all imagination—far more imagination than either you or i will ever have, lester. he simply can't write it down. if he could he would be the greatest novelist of our time. i used[pg 257] to tell him to try, but i've given that up now. he can't string three sentences together. he can't write an ordinary letter without misspelling every other word. he never reads anything—that's why his imagination is so untrammelled. and it isn't all untrue either. he has been all the world over—south seas, africa, china, south america, russia, anywhere you like. all sorts of wonderful things have happened to him, but it isn't the real things he cares to tell of."
"does he know he's lying?" i asked.
"not the least in the world," peter answered, laughing. "and i fancy he'd be most indignant if you accused him of it. and the really strange thing is that no one ever does accuse him. i can't remember that a single man in france ever challenged his stories, and they'd pull anyone else up in a moment. you see, he never does any harm. he's the most generous soul alive, thinks the best of everybody, and all his stories go to prove that people are better than they ever possibly could be. i confess, lester, i have him here deliberately because he feeds my imagination. i'm beginning to feel that i may get back to writing again, and if i do it will be bomb that will be responsible."
"how did he do in france?" i asked.
"very well," peter said. "but he never got the jobs that he ought to have had. fellows distrusted him for responsible duty. they needn't have: he is as efficient as he can be. his inventive fancy only works over ground that he's never covered. in his own job he's an absolute realist."
"is he married?" i asked.
[pg 258]
"no. i don't think that women have much use for him. he doesn't appeal to them. they like to have the story-telling field to themselves. he's a man's man absolutely. he had a pal in france to whom he was entirely devoted, and when the boy was killed i think something cracked in him that's not been mended since. he's a colossal sentimentalist: cynicism and irony make him sick. he thinks i'm a desperate cynic—so i am, perhaps...."
well, i saw a lot of bomb jones. he loved westcott more than i did, and admired him frantically. he knew, too, something about westcott's many troubles, and the maternal spirit that is in every englishman and scotchman came out beautifully in his attitude to him. his stories soon became part of the pattern of one's life, and by no means the least interesting part. i quickly understood why it was that his friends allowed him to pursue his wild, untrammelled way without rudely pulling him up. in the first place, truth and fiction were curiously mingled. he had lived in san francisco for a number of years, and many of his tales were drawn from that romantic city. he had obviously known well such men as frank norris and jack london, and he had been in the place during the earthquake and fire. his picture of caruso running out of his hotel in his night-shirt was a masterly one. he knew russia well, had had tea with witte, in the old days, and had once dined with rasputin. he had shared in the boxer rising, run for his life in constantinople, and helped a revolution in guatemala; and so on, and so on....
[pg 259]
but as i have said, about his actual experiences he had very little to say. it was his fairy stories, his fantastic, fabricated romances, that gave him his remarkable quality—and it was about london that these were mostly invented. i say invented—but were they invented or no?
there will, i think, be more men and women than anyone now supposes who will look back to that year nineteen-nineteen in london as a strangely fantastic one. you might say with some justice that the years during the war, with their air-raids and alarms and excursions, newspaper rumours, and train-loads of wounded and dying at charing cross station, must have been infinitely more moving—i think not. in those years, at any rate the stage was set for a play in which we must all, as we knew, act our parts. that year that followed the armistice was uncanny, uncertain, unaccountable. many reports there were about cities during war time—none at all, so far as we knew, about cities just after war. london, contrary to all prophesy, was just twice as full after the war as it had been before it; there was nowhere to live, little place even for sleeping. everyone who had had money had lost it—many who had been notoriously penniless now were rich. london was moving uncertainly into some new life whose forlorn form no one could foretell, and we were all conscious of this, and all, perhaps, frightened of it.
it was just this upon which bomb jones unwittingly seized. i say "unwittingly," because he was the least self-conscious of men, and the things that came to him[pg 260] arrived without any deliberate agency on his part—his stories and anecdotes rising to his lips as naturally and inevitably as the sun rises above the hill. he did not, i think, care for me very greatly: i was dried up, desiccated with a humour that he could only find morbid and cynical.
he had too fine and open a nature to suffer greatly from jealousy, but i fancy that he very much preferred to be alone with peter, and sighed a little when i made an appearance.
he very soon found himself most happily at home with all the staff of hortons. even mr. nix, the sacred and rubicund head of the establishment, liked him, and listened, wide-eyed, to his stories. mr. nix had met so many strange characters in london and seen so many odd sights that a story less or more did not affect him very deeply.
certainly captain jones flung his net with greater success than was the general rule; never a day passed but he returned with some strange prize.
it was amusing to see them together in the green hall downstairs, with the grandfather clock ticking away at them sarcastically. the little man, round as a ball, neat and dapper, efficient, his bowler hat a little on one side of his head; jones, his great legs apart, his red face ablaze with excitement, his large hands gesticulating. they were great friends.
in spite of his withdrawal from me, he continued to tell me his stories. i began to find it an amusing game to divide the true from the false. this was a difficult task, because he had a great love of circumstantial detail.[pg 261] he would begin—"lester, what do you think of this? an hour ago i was going down john street, adelphi. you know the place behind the strand there where the little theatre used to be. you know there's an alley there cutting up into the strand. they sell fruit there. well, i was just climbing the steps when i heard a woman's voice cry out for help. i looked back; there was not a soul there—the street was as empty as your hand. i heard the cry again, and there was a woman's face at the open window. as i looked she vanished. i ran back to the door of the house——"
now this may appear somewhat commonplace. how many stories in how many magazines have begun with just such an incident? this, you would say, is the cheapest invention. not quite. jones had always some unexpected circumstantial detail that clamped his tale down as his own. i think that he was, in reality, on certain occasions involved in fights and quarrels that were actual enough. i have seen him with a black eye, and again with a long scratch down his cheek, and once with a torn hand. but what he did was to create behind him a completely new vision of the london scene. one could not listen to his stories for long without seeing london coloured, blazing with light, sinister with calculated darkness, ringed about with gigantic buildings that capped the clouds, inhabited by beings half human, half magical, half angel, half beast.
i remember when i was young and credulous, getting something of this impression from the new arabian nights, but for me, at any rate, stevenson never quite joined the flats. i was never finally taken in by his[pg 262] invention, but felt to the last that he was having a game with me. bomb jones's eloquence had the advantage over the written word of being direct and personal. although you might be sure that what he was telling you was not true, nevertheless you felt that behind his stories some facts must be lying. i know that soon i began to discover that london was changing under my eyes. my own drab and dull flat in kensington took a romantic glow. i would look from my window down the long street to the far distance filled by the solemn blocks of the museum, and would imagine that the figures that crossed the grey spaces were busied on errands about which fates of empires might hang—ludicrous for a man of my age who might be said to have experienced all the disillusionment of life. well, ludicrous or no, i walked the streets with a new observation, a new expectation, a new pleasure, and to bomb jones i owed it.
however, it is not of his effect on myself that i want to speak. i was too far gone for any very permanent revival. it was jones's effect on peter that was the important thing. i saw that a new life, a new interest, a new eagerness was coming into peter's life. he laughed at jones, but he liked him and listened to him. gradually, slowly, as stealthily as, after the rains, the water creeps back over the dry bed of the sun-baked river, so did peter's desire for life come back to him.
"i know that bomb's stories are all nonsense," he said to me. "a hundred times a day i'm tempted to break out and ask him how he dares to put such stuff over on us, but, after all, there may be something in it.[pg 263] do you know, lester, i can't go through leicester square without wondering whether a murderer isn't coming out of the turkish baths, an eastern prince out of 'thurston's,' or the queen of the genii peeping at me from a window of the alhambra! i've tried several times to get back into things here. i tried the vers librists, and i tried the drunkards down in adelphi, and i've tried the solemn ones up in hampstead, and the good commonplace ones in kensington, and it was all no use until bomb came along. i hope to heaven he won't stop his stories for another month or two. there's a book beginning to move in my head—again, after ten years! just think of it, lester! dead for ten years—i never thought it would come back, and now bomb and his stories——"
"it's all right," i said. "he'll never stop till he dies."
but i'd reckoned without one thing—something that had never entered my poor brain, and, as always happens in life, it was the one thing that occurred—bomb fell in love.
it is, of course, a commonplace that you can never discover the reasons that drive human beings towards one another—even the good old law of the universal attraction of opposite for opposite does not always hold good, but i may say that both peter and i had the surprise of our lives when we discovered that bomb jones cared for helen cather. helen was a friend of bobby galleon's, who was a friend of peter's. alice galleon, bobby's wife, had been with her on some war committee, and the orderliness of her mind, her quiet when[pg 264] the other women were pushing and quarrelling, her clean serenity upon which nothing, however violent, seemed to make the slightest stain, appealed to alice. she took helen home to dinner, and discovered that she was a very well-read, politically-minded, balanced woman. "too blamed balanced for me," said bobby, who believed in spontaneity and rash mistakes and good red blood. he thought, however, that she would be good for peter, so he took her to see him. helen and peter made friends, and this in itself was odd, because helen at once asserted that all peter's ideas about modern literature were wrong. she said that peter was a romantic, and that to be a romantic in these days was worse than being dead. she talked in her calm, incisive, clear-cut way about the novel, and said that the only thing for any novelist to do to-day was to tell the truth; and when peter asked her whether invention and imagination were to go for nothing, she said that they went for very little, because we'd got past them and grown too old for them; and peter said thank god he hadn't and never would, and he talked about stevenson and dumas until helen was sick.
she dug up peter's poor old novels, and disembowelled their corpses and praised miss somebody or other smith's who wrote only about what it felt like to be out of a job on a wet day when you had only enough money in your pocket to eat a boiled egg in an a.b.c. shop.
"you're sentimental, westcott," she said, "and you're sloppy and worst of all, you're sprightly. you've no artistic conscience at all."
[pg 265]
peter laughed at her and liked her, and she liked him. i don't think that i was at all taken with my first view of her. she was thin and pale, with pince-nez and a very faint moustache on her upper lip. her best feature was her eyes, which were good, grey, steady, kindly, and even at times they twinkled. she was neatness and tidiness itself, and she sat in her chair, quite still, her hands folded on her lap, and her neat little shoes crossed obstinately in front of her.
i shall never, of course, forget the day when she first met bomb. it was one evening in peter's flat. a number of people sat about talking, smoking and drinking. the galleons were there, maradick, large and red-faced, an old friend of peter's, robin trojan and his wife, and so on. bomb was late. he burst into the room, large, untidy and, as usual, excited.
"i say," he began at once. "i've just come from penter's. there's been a fellow there who's the most remarkable man i've ever seen. he's going round england with a circus, and three of his elephants escaped this afternoon and were found examining cleopatra's needle half an hour ago and being fed with buns by a lot of street boys. this chap wasn't a bit alarmed, and said they'd be sure to turn up at howarton or somewhere where he's got his circus, if he gave them time. he says that one of the elephants is the most intelligent——"
now this story happened, as we discovered in the morning, to be quite, or almost, true, but you can fancy how helen cather was struck with it.
"elephants!" she said, turning round upon him.
[pg 266]
"oh, you don't know one another," said peter, hastily. "bomb, this is miss cather. miss cather—captain jones."
bomb has since declared that he fell in love with his helen at first sight. why? i can't conceive. there was nothing romantic about her. she certainly looked upon him on that first occasion with eyes of extreme disapproval. everything about him must have seemed dreadful to her. "a red-hot liar," she described him to alice galleon afterwards. i remember on that very evening wishing that he had stopped for a moment before he came into the room and tidied himself up a little. his hair wasn't brushed, his face was hot and perspiring, his waistcoat was minus a button, and his boots were soiled. he didn't care, of course, but sat down quite close to miss cather, smiled upon her, and poured into her ears all that evening a remarkable series of narratives, each one more tremendous than the last.
peter was amused. next day he said: "wasn't it fun seeing helen cather and bomb together? fire and water. she thought he'd drunk too much, i presume. she can look chilly when she likes, too."
it was not more than three days after this eventful meeting that the great surprise was sprung upon me.
i had been given two tickets for the first night of arnold bennett's judith. we arrived late, and it was not until the first interval that peter could deliver to me his astounding news.
"what do you think has happened?" he cried. "i[pg 267] give you three guesses, but you may as well resign at once. if i gave you a hundred, you'd never guess."
"what is it?" i asked.
"bomb is in love with helen cather."
i was, of course, incredulous.
"but that's absurd," i answered; "that's worse than any of bomb's best stories."
"it's true, all the same," he assured me. "he came in this afternoon. he can think of nothing else. his stories have for the moment all deserted him. he told me that he's been awake three nights thinking of her. he says that he loved her the first moment he saw her. he says that he's never loved a woman before, which is, i expect, true enough, and that he's going to marry her."
"well, that last isn't true, anyway," i answered. "miss cather hated him at first sight."
my impression that night was that this was simply one of bomb's exuberant, romantic fancies, and that it would pass away from his heart and brain as quickly as many of his stories had done. i was, of course, completely wrong.
he said very little about it to me, because he didn't like me, and was less naturally himself with me, i think, than with anyone. but he talked to everyone else, and to peter he never ceased pouring out his soul.
a week later he proposed to her. she refused him, of course. he was not in the least disturbed. he would propose to her again very shortly, and then again and again to the end of time....
[pg 268]
i fancied, however, that that first refusal would he the end of it.
he would see in a little how absurd his pursuit was, and would abandon it. i must confess that i looked forward to that abandonment. this sudden passion had not from my point of view, improved him. it made him a little absurd, and it had checked absolutely for the moment the flow of his stories. i was surprised to find how seriously i missed them.
then one morning my telephone rang, and, answering it, i recognised miss cather's voice.
"may i come and have tea with you this afternoon?" she asked.
"why, of course," i answered. "i'll be delighted. whom shall i invite?"
"nobody," she answered. "i want to talk to you."
i was flattered and pleased. any widower of over fifty is pleased when any woman wants to come and have tea with him alone. besides, i liked miss cather—liked her surprisingly. in the first place, she liked me, found my mind "truly realistic" and my brain well balanced. but in reality i liked her, i think, because i was beginning to discover in her a certain freshness and childishness and even na?veté of soul which i had certainly not expected at first. but seriousness and balance and austerity of manner did not go nearly as deep as it pretended. she knew not nearly as much about life as she herself fancied.
when she came she had some difficulty in beginning. at last it was out. captain jones had proposed to her. of course, it was quite absurd, and of course, she had[pg 269] refused him. he didn't know her at all, and she knew quite enough about him to be sure that they would never get on. nevertheless—nevertheless—what did i—did i know?—at least, what she meant was that she liked captain jones, had liked him from the beginning, but there were certain things about him that puzzled her—now i knew him well. would i tell her?
"i don't know him well," i interrupted her. "that's a mistake—we're not intimate at all, but i do know him well enough to be sure that he's a good man. he's a splendid man!" i ended with perhaps a little more enthusiasm than i had myself expected.
she talked a little more, and then i challenged her.
"the fact of the matter is, miss cather," i said, "that you're in love with him and intend to marry him."
at this she shook her head indignantly. no, that was not true at all. she did not love him—of course she did not. but there was something about him—difficult for her to describe—his childishness, his simplicity—he needed looking after—oh, he did need looking after!
as she said that the whole of the sweetness that was in her nature shone in her eyes and made her austere, unyielding, almost plain as she was, for the moment divine.
"of course you're going to marry him," i repeated. she shook her head, but this time less surely.
then, looking me full in the face, and speaking with great solemnity as though she were uttering a profound and supremely important truth, she remarked:
[pg 270]
"any woman who did marry him would have to stop that lying."
"lying!" i repeated feebly.
"yes, lying—the stories he tells."
"but they aren't lies," i said. "at least, not exactly."
she emptied then all the vials of her wrath upon my head. not lies? and what were they then? what were those romances if they were not lies? was i trying to defend lies in general or only captain jones's lies in particular? did i not realise the harm that he did with his stories? what had we all been about that we had not pulled him up long ago?
"can't you conceive it as possible, miss cather," i asked her, "that lies should occasionally do good rather than harm? i don't mean really bad lies, of course—lies told to hurt people—but gorgeous lies, magnificent lies; lies that keep your sense of fantasy, your imagination alive; lies that paint your house a fairy palace and your wife a goddess?"
"i don't know what you're talking about, mr. lester," she answered me. "i must confess i'm disappointed in you, but i suppose one never knows with a novelist—but never mind—thank you for your tea—i can only assure you that any woman who marries captain jones will have to reform him first. good-night."
even after this i did not realise the situation that was upon us. i saw now what i had not seen before, that she did, in truth, care for bomb jones—that that same affection would affect all our lives i had not yet[pg 271] perceived. then, two days later, came the next development.
i was sitting in peter's flat waiting for his return, when bomb burst in. he was a creature transfigured, whether by triumph or rage i could not immediately tell. he stood there, out of breath, swelling out his chest, struggling for words, panting. at last they came.
"where's peter? oh, where's peter? not back. but he must be back. it's always his time to be here just now. he must be here! lester, i'm dumbfounded. i've no strength left in me. i'm finished. what do you think? oh, but you'll never guess—you couldn't——"
"miss cather's accepted you," i interrupted.
"how did you know? how the devil——" he stared at me as though his eyes were struggling with an unaccustomed light—"well, she has, if you want to know, and that's remarkable enough, but that's not the only thing—she—she——"
he paused, then flung it at me with the strangest burst of mingled rage, incredulity, bewilderment, and wonder—"she says i'm a liar!"
he looked at me, waiting.
"a liar?" i feebly repeated.
"a liar! she says she'll only marry me on one condition—that i stop my lying. when she first said it i thought she was laughing at me, then i suddenly saw that she was in the deadliest earnest. i asked her what she meant. she said that she couldn't conceive that i didn't know, that i must know, how wicked it was to[pg 272] tell the untruthful stories that i did, the harm that they worked and so on. i! a liar! i!—why, you might say it about some fellows, but about me!... why, lester, she simply didn't believe that i'd had any of the fun, been to any of the places, seen anything.... of course, i see what it is. she's never been anywhere, seen anything herself. everything's strange to her. but to say that everyone knew i was a liar.... lester, tell me. you've been about. you know i'm not a liar, don't you?"
his astonishment was the most genuine thing i'd ever faced. i admit that i was staggered by it. i had not, of course, supposed that he had deliberately said to himself: "now to-day i'm going to tell a lie so as to astonish those fellows," but i had imagined that he knew quite well it had not all been true.
but here, in the face of his most ingenuous astonishment, what was i to say?
"no, jones, of course not—lies is the wrong word altogether, but i do think that sometimes you've exaggerated."
he stared at me.
"do they all think that?"
"well, yes, they do——"
he resembled then nothing so much as a balloon from which the air has suddenly been withdrawn. he sat down.
"my god," he said, suddenly dropping his head between his great red hands. "it's true then."
it was at that moment that i saw the catastrophe that was upon us. i saw what bomb would be without[pg 273] his tales: he would be dull, ordinary, colourless—nothing. the salient thing, the life, the salt, the savour would be withdrawn from him. and not only bomb, but all of us—myself, peter, young gale, alice galleon, even maradick. i saw, by my own experience, how we should suffer. i saw slipping away from under my very nose the whole of that magical world that bomb had created; and above all, that magical london, the fairy palaces, the streets paved with gold, the walls of amethyst; the dark, shuttered windows opened for an instant to betray the gleaming, anxious eyes; the bearded foreigner conveying his sacred charge through the traffic of trafalgar square; the secrets and mysteries of the bond street jewellers.... i saw all that and more. but, after all, that was not the heart of the matter. we could get on without our entertainment; even peter had been brought to life again whether bomb went on with him or no. the tragedy was in bomb's own soul; helen cather was slaying him as surely as though she stuck a dagger into his heart. and she did not know it—she did not know that she was probably marrying him for that very energy of imagination that she was bent upon destroying. only, months after she had married him, she would discover, with a heavy and lifeless bomb upon her hands, what it was that she had done.
"look here, jones," i said. "don't take it too seriously. miss cather didn't know what she was saying. don't you promise her anything. she'll forget——"
"don't promise her!" he looked up at me wildly. "i have promised her! of course i have—don't i love her? didn't i love her the first moment that i saw[pg 274] her? i'm never going to tell anyone about anything again."
well, all my worst anticipations were at once fulfilled. you may think that this story is about a very small affair, but i ask you to take some friend of yours and be aware that he is in process, before your eyes, of dying from some slow poison skilfully administered by someone. you may not in the beginning have cared very greatly for the man, but the poignancy of the drama is such that before long you are drawn into the very heart of it; it is like a familiar nightmare; you are held there paralysed, longing to rush in and prevent the murder and unable to move.
in no time at all i had developed quite an affection for jones, so pathetic a figure was he.
beneath the stern gaze of his beloved helen ("not quite of troy," as someone said of her) he became a commonplace, dull, negligible creature, duller, save for the pathos of his position, than human. very quickly we lost any sense of chagrin or disappointment at our own penalties in the absorption of "longing to do something for bomb." again and again we discussed the affair. bomb's soul must be saved; but how? before our eyes a tragedy was developing. in another month they would be married; helen cather would marry the greatest bore in europe, and about six months after marriage would discover that she had done so.
bomb was already miserable, sitting there silent and morose, his tongue-tied, adoring helen, but saying nothing to her lest he should be accused of "romancing."
at last peter insisted that i should speak to her—she[pg 275] liked me better than she did the others—she would listen to me. needless to say, she did not. not only did she not listen, but turned on me ferociously.
"i'm proud of benedick!" she cried. "i've cured him of the only fault he had. if you think i'm going to turn him back into a liar again, mr. lester, just for the entertainment of yourself and your friends, you're greatly mistaken. you have a strange notion of morality."
she was proud, but she was uneasy. she realised that he was not happy, that, in one way or another, the spring had gone out of him—yes, thank god, she was uneasy.
well, there was the situation. there was apparently nothing to be done, no way out. this is simply the story, after all, of our blindness. just as we had not seen the influence that was to check our bomb, so we did not see the influence that would make his fancy flow again. it's a wonderful world, thank god!
about a week before the wedding peter westcott said to me:
"lester, don't you think that bomb's reviving a little again?" i fancied i had seen something. bomb was a little brighter, a little less heavy ... yes, i had noticed.
"his fancy is being fed again somewhere," said peter again. "where? he tells us no stories."
no, he certainly did not. his determination to achieve perfect accuracy was painful. it was a case of——
"where have you been, bomb?"
[pg 276]
"oh, just down to the bank to cash a cheque. the joint stock branch in wigmore street. i took a bus up regent street and got off at the circus——" and so on, and so on.
nevertheless, he was reviving. the old man was being blown back into him just as surely as one prick of helen cather's determination had let it out. where was he feeding his imagination? how had he got round his helen's autocracy without her knowing it? because she did not know. she was completely satisfied—she was even more than satisfied, she was—— i watched her. something was happening to her, too. she was dressing differently. her austerity was dropping from her. she did her hair in a new way, no longer pulling it back, harsh and austere, from her forehead, but letting it have freedom and colour. she had very pretty hair....
she was wearing bright colours and pretty hats....
what was happening?
the day came when the problem was solved. bomb's old mother came up to town, a dear old lady of nearly eighty, who adored bomb and thought him perfection. she came up for the wedding. she was to see helen for the first time. it was agreed that the meeting should be at hortons, a nice, central spot. we were gathered there waiting—old mrs. jones with her lace cap and bright pink cheeks, peter, bomb, and myself. helen was late.
"you know, benedick," said the old lady in a voice like a withering canary, "you've told me very little about helen. i've no real idea of her at all."
[pg 277]
a moment's pause, and bomb had sprung to his feet. peter and i, spiritually, so to speak, rushed towards one another. this was the old attitude. we had not seen bomb stand like this, his legs spread apart, his chest out, his eyes flashing, for weeks. the old attitude, the old voice, the old bomb.
"helen, mother!" he cried, and he was off.
the picture that he drew! it was about as much like the real helen cather as the venus de milo is like miss mary pickford in the pictures; but it was a glorious picture, the portrait of a goddess, a genius, a sappho. the phrases tumbled from his lips in the good old way—it was all the old times come back again. and how his imagination worked! how magnificently he flung his colours about, with what abandon he splashed and sprawled! for a breathless ten minutes we listened.
"dear me," said old mrs. jones, "i do hope she's a good girl as well."
for myself i sat there entranced. the old bomb was not lost. he had found, or fate had found him, a safe outlet after all. he could see helen as before he had seen the whole world, and it would do for him as well. his soul was saved.
the one question that now remained was how would helen take this glorification of herself? would she not resent it as deeply as she had resented the earlier "lies"?
on the answer to that question hung the whole of the future of their married life.
i was soon to have my answer. helen came in. i[pg 278] did not perceive that old mrs. jones felt very deeply the contrast between reality and her son's picture. her son was all that she saw.
he took her home. i walked away with helen. before we parted she turned to me. happiness was burning in her face.
"mr. lester," she said, "you've been a good friend to both of us. you were all wrong about benedick, but i know that you meant it well." she hesitated a little. "i'm terribly happy, almost too happy to be safe. of course, i know that benedick is a little absurd about me, has rather an exaggerated idea of me. but that's good for me, really it is. nobody ever has before, you know, and it's only benedick who's seen what i really am. i knew that i had all sorts of things in me that ought to come out, but no one encouraged them. everyone laughed at them. but benedick has seen them, and i'm going to be what he sees me. i feel free! free for the first time in my life! you don't know how wonderful that is!"
she pulled the bright purple scarf more closely over her shoulders.
"we've done something for one another, he and i, really, haven't we? he's freed me, and i—well, i've stopped those terrible untruths of his in spite of you all. i don't believe he'll ever tell a lie again! good-night. we'll see lots of you after we're married, won't we? oh, we're going to be so happy——"
"yes—now i believe you are," i answered.
"what do you mean, now?" she asked. "didn't you always think so?"
[pg 279]
"there was a moment when i wasn't sure," i said. "but i was wrong. you're going to be splendidly happy."
and so they are....
