CHAPTER XIII.
THE MAN OF SOLITUDE.
I.
In a large room overlooking St. James's Square a man sat writing. In the shaded light his face showed haggard, and his eyes gleamed with the brilliancy of one whose blood is lit with a fever.
The clocks had just struck nine when he paused in his work, and crossing to the French windows, which opened on a little terrace, looked out at the darkened square. The restless music of London's life played on his tired pulses. He heard the purring of limousines gliding into Pall Mall, and the vibrato of taxi-cabs whipped into action by the piercing blast of club-porters' whistles. The noise of horses' hoofs on the pavement echoed among the roof-tops of the houses, and beneath those outstanding sounds was the quiet staccato of endless passing feet, losing itself in the murmur of the November wind as it searched among the dead leaves lying in the little park.
He had remained there only a few minutes, when, as though he had lost too much time already, the writer returned to the table and resumed his pen.
There was a knock at the door, and he looked up with a start. 'Come in,' he said; and a man-servant entered.
'Will you be wanting anything, Mr. Selwyn?'
'No, Smith.'
'You haven't been out to dinner, sir.'
'I am not hungry.'
'Better let me make you a cup of tea with some toast, and perhaps boil an egg.'
'N—no, thanks, Smith. Well, perhaps you might make some coffee, with a little buttered toast, and just leave them here.'
'Very good, sir.'
Although less than a year had elapsed since Austin Selwyn had first dined at Lady Durwent's home, experience, which is more cruel than time, had marked him as a decade of ordinary life could not have done. His mind had been subjected to a burning ordeal since summer, and his drawn features and shadowed eyes showed the signs of inward conflict.
As he had said of himself, all his previous experiences and education were but a novitiate in preparation for the great moment when truth challenged his consciousness and illuminated a path for him to follow. From an intellectual dilettante, a connoisseur of the many fruits which grace life's highway, he had become a single-purposed man aflame with burning idealism. From the sources of heredity the spirit of the Netherlands fighting against the yoke of Spain, and the instinct of revolt which lies in every Celtic breast, flowed and mingled with his own newly awakened passion for world-freedom.
He had left Roselawn with a formal good-bye taken of the whole family together. He had avoided the eyes of Elise, and she had made no attempt to alter the impersonal nature of the parting. Reaching London, he had been offered these rooms in St. James's Square by an American, resident in London, whose business compelled him to go to New York for an indefinite period. As Selwyn felt the need for absolute aloofness, he had gladly accepted.
Hardly waiting to unpack his 'grips,' he at once began his battle of the written word, his crusade against the origin and the fruits of Ignorance as shown by the war.
Always a writer of sure technique and facile vocabulary, he let the intensity of his spirit focus on the subject. He knew that to make his voice heard above the clamour of war his language must have the transcendent quality of inspiration. No composer searching for the motif of a great moving theme ever approached his instrument with deeper emotional artistry than Selwyn brought to bear on the language which was to ring out his message.
He felt that words were potential jewels which, when once the rays of his mind had played upon them, would be lit with the fire of magic. Words of destiny like blood-hued rubies; words fraught with ominous opal warning; words that glittered with the biting brilliance of diamonds—they were his to link together with thought: he was their master. The necromancy of language was his to conjure with.
Day after day, and into the long hours of the night, he wrote, destroying pages as he read them, refining, changing, rewriting, always striving for results which would show no signs of construction, but only breathe with life. When fatigue sounded its warnings he disregarded them, and spurred himself on with the thought of the thousands dying daily at the front. He saw no one. His former London acquaintances were engrossed in affairs of war, and made no attempt to seek him out. It was his custom to have breakfast and luncheon in his rooms; at dinner-time he would traverse the streets until he found some little-used restaurant, and then, selecting a deserted corner, would eat his meal alone. The walk there and back to his rooms was the only exercise he permitted himself, except occasionally, when, late at night, cramped fingers and bloodshot eyes would no longer obey the lashing of the will, and he would venture out for an hour's stroll through night-shrouded London.
Prowling about from square to square, through deserted alleys, and by slumbering parks, he would feel the cumulative destinies of the millions of sleeping souls bearing on his consciousness. Solitude in a metropolis, unlike that of the country, which merely lulls or tends to the purifying of thought, intensifies the moods of a man like strong liquor. He who lives alone among millions courts all the mad fancies that his brain is heir to. Insanity, perversion, incoherent idealism, fanaticism—these are the offspring of unnatural detachment from one's fellows, and in turn give birth to the black moods of revolt against each and every thing that is.
Living as he did in a sort of ecstasy by reason of his suddenly realised world-citizenship, Selwyn's incipient feeling of godlikeness developed still further under the spell of isolation. The fact that he trod the realm of thought, while all around him men and women grappled with the problems of war, only accentuated this condition of mind.
He suffered—that was true. He missed the companionship of kindred spirits, and sometimes his memory would play truant, recalling the pleasant glitter of sterling silver and conversational electroplate which accompanied his former London dinner-parties. He did not dare to think of Elise at all. She was the intoxicating climax of his past life. She was the blending of his life's melodies into a brief, tender nocturne of love that his heart would never hear again.
In place of all that, he had the spiritual vanity of martyrdom. Few voyagers but have felt the exultation of mid-ocean: that desire of the soul to leap the distance to the skies and claim its kinship to the stars. It comes to men on the Canadian prairies; it throbs in one's blood when the summit of a mountain is reached; it is borne on the wings of the twilight harmonies in a lonely forest.
Unknown to himself, perhaps, that was Selwyn's compensation. From his hermit's seclusion in the great metropolis he felt the thrill of one who challenges the gods.
II.
His man-servant had hardly left the room when the bell in the front hall rang, and Smith reappeared to announce a visitor.
'Who is it?' asked Selwyn.
'A Mr. Watson, sir.'
'I wonder if it can be Doug Watson of Cambridge. Bring him right up.'
A moment later a young man entered the cosily shaded room, and they met with the hearty hand-clasp and the sincere good-feeling which come when a man who is abroad meets a friend who is a fellow-countryman. The new-comer was younger than Selwyn, and though of lighter complexion and hair, was unmistakably American in appearance. Like the author, he was clean-shaven, but there was more repose in the features. His face was broad, and in the poise of his head and thick neck there was the clear impression of great physical and mental driving-power. Although still a student, the mark of the engineer was strongly stamped on him. He was of the type that spans a great river with a bridge; that glories in the overcoming of obstacles by sheer domination of will.
'Well, Doug,' said Selwyn as they drew their chairs up to the fire, 'when did you leave Cambridge?'
'Last week,' said the other. 'I couldn't stand it any longer with every one gone. I don't think that one of the bunch I played around with is there now.'
'That was a bully week-end I had with you at the university.'
'We sure had a good time, didn't we?'
'But how did you know I was here?'
'Jarvis sent me a note that he and his wife were running hack to New
York, and that you were taking his rooms. Damn fine place, isn't it?
There's a woman's touch all over here. But you're looking precious
seedy.'
'I feel all right.'
'You don't look it.'
'I have been very busy, Doug.'
'Glad to hear it. Putting over a killing in the literature game?'
'The biggest thing yet,' said Selwyn, opening a drawer and searching for the cigars. 'I am making a sincere attempt to write something which will sway people. Have one of these?'
'Thanks. I guess I'd better smoke one while I have the chance. It might get the sergeant-major's goat if he found a buck private smoking half-crown cigars.'
'You haven't joined the army?'
'Not yet; but I shall to-morrow. You can do it by graft, old boy. For three weeks I've courted a colonel's daughter so as to get next to the old man, and to-morrow I receive my reward. I am to become a full-fledged Tommy Atkins.'
'And the daughter?'
The younger man grinned and cut off the end of his cigar with a pocket-knife. 'Can you see the colonel's daughter "walking out" with a Tommy? My dear Austin, patriotism excuses much, but the social code must be maintained. I'd render that in Latin if I wasn't so rusty on languages. What are the chances of your coming along with me tomorrow?'
Selwyn reached for an ash-tray and matches.
'America is neutral,' he said quietly.
'America is not neutral,' replied Watson with a decisiveness that one would hardly have suspected to lie beneath the calm exterior and the veneer of good-breeding polished by Cambridge associations—a veneer that made his occasional lapses into crudity of language seem oddly out of place. 'The German-Americans, the Irish-Americans, the Jewish-Americans, the God-knows-who-else-Americans may be neutral, but the America of Washington and Lincoln, the America of Lee and Grant, isn't neutral. Not by a long sight.'
'Doug,' said Selwyn reproachfully, 'you are the last man I thought would be caught by this flag-waving, drum-beating stuff.'
The younger man's brows puckered as he looked through the haze of tobacco-smoke at his host. 'Austin,' he said abruptly, 'you've changed.'
'Yes,' said Selwyn thoughtfully. He was going to say more, but, changing his mind, remained silent.
'I thought you looked different,' went on Watson. 'What's up?'
Selwyn's eyes narrowed and his lips and jaw stiffened resolutely. 'I am writing,' he said, enunciating each word distinctly, 'in the hope of arousing the slumbering conscience of the world against this war.'
'Canute the Second,' commented Watson dryly.
'Doug,' said the other, frowning, 'I deserve better than sarcasm from you.'
'I'm sorry,' said Watson with a laugh, 'but I can't just get this new Austin Selwyn right off the bat. Of course war is wrong—any boob knows that—but what can you hope to do with writing about it?'
Selwyn rose to his feet, and thrusting his hands in his pockets, strode up and down the room. 'What can I hope to do?' he said. 'Remove the scales from the eyes of the blind; recall to life the spirit of universal brotherhood; destroy ignorance instead of destroying life.'
'Some platform!' said Watson, making rings of tobacco-smoke.
'Take yourself, for example,' said Selwyn vehemently, pausing in his walk and pointing towards the younger man. 'You are a man of international experience and university education. On the surface you have the attributes of a man of thought. You are one that the world has a right to expect will take the correct stand on great human questions. Yet the moment the barriers are down and jingoism floods the earth you give up without a struggle and join the great mass of the world's driftwood.'
'H'm,' mused Watson, 'so that's your tack, eh?'
'I tell you, Doug, you have no right to fight in this war.'
'Thanks.'
'You should have the courage to keep out of it. Even assuming that Germany is wholly in the wrong and Britain completely in the right, can't you see that when the Kaiser and his advisers said, "Let there be war," you and I and the millions of men in every country who believe in justice and Christianity should have risen up and answered, "You shall not have war"?'
Watson rose to his feet, and crossing to the fireplace, flicked the ash from his cigar, and leaned lazily against the stone shelf. 'You're a member of the Royal Automobile Club, aren't you?' he drawled.
Selwyn nodded and resumed his nervous walk.
'Take my advice, Austin. Every time you feel that kind of dope mounting to your head, trot across the road to the club and have a swim in their tank. You'd be surprised how it would bring you down to earth.'
'You talk like a child,' said Selwyn angrily.
'Well,' retorted the other, 'that's better than talking like an old woman.'
With an impatient movement of his shoulders the younger man left the fireplace, and walking over to the piano, picked up a Hawaiian ukulele which had been left there by Mrs. Jarvis. Getting the pitch from the piano, while Selwyn continued his restless march up and down the room, he studiously occupied himself with tuning the instrument, then strummed a few chords with his fingers.
'Sorry not to fit in with your peace-brother-peace stuff,' said Watson amiably, strumming a recent rag-time melody with a certain amount of dexterity, 'but I always played you for a real white man at college.'
'Doug,' said Selwyn, stopping his walk and sitting on the arm of a big easy-chair, 'if there is a coward in this room, it's you.'
The haunting music of the ukulele was the only response.
'Here you are at Cambridge—an American,' went on Selwyn. 'Just because the set you know enlists with an accompaniment of tub-thumping'——
'That isn't the way the English do things,' said Watson without pausing in his playing.
'My dear fellow,' said Selwyn, 'don't let the pose of modesty fool you over here. They profess to hold up their hands in horror when we get hold of megaphones and roar about "The Star-Spangled Banner," but what of the phrases, "The Empire on which the sun never sets," "What we have we'll hold," "Mistress of the Seas"? Is there so much difference between the Kaiser's "Ich und Gott" and the Englishman's "God of our far-flung battle-line"? Jingoism! We're amateurs in America compared with the British—and you're caught by it all.'
'Nothing of the sort,' said Watson, putting down the ukulele. 'All I know is that Germany runs amuck and gives a mighty good imitation of hell let loose. I am not discounting the wonderful bravery of France and Belgium, but you know that the hope of everything lies right in this country here. Well, that's good enough for me. I'm a hundred per cent. American, but right now I'm willing to throw over my citizenship in the United States and join this Empire that's got the guts to go to war.'
'Listen, Doug,' said Selwyn, moving over to the younger man and placing his hands on his shoulders; 'can't you see that Germany is not the menace? She is only a symptom of it. War, not Germany, is the real enemy. I admire your pluck: my regret is that you are so blind. The whole world is turning murder loose; it is prostituting Christian civilisation to the war-lust—and you imagine that by slaughter Right may prevail. The tragic fallacy of the ages has been that men, instead of destroying evil, have destroyed each other. If every criminal in the world were executed, would crime end? Then, do you think the annihilation of this or that army will abolish war?'
'I haven't your gift of plausible argument,' said Watson, 'and I suppose that theoretically you are sound in everything you say. Yet, instinctively, I know that I am doing the right thing.'
'A woman's reasoning, Doug.' Selwyn relit his cigar, which had gone out. 'For a few days after the outbreak of war I will admit that I doubted, myself, and wondered if, after all, there was a universal heart-beat. Then came the news of the silent march of those thousands of women down Fifth Avenue, marching to the beat of muffled drums as a protest against war—not against Germany—higher than that. It was a symbol that the cry of Rachel for her children still rings through the centuries. It was the heart of America's women calling to the mothers of France, Germany, and Britain against this butchery of their sons.'
Selwyn sank into a chair, and a look of weariness succeeded the momentary flush of excitement.
'That ended my last doubt,' he went on quietly. 'I knew then that if I could summon the necessary language to express the vision I saw, my message would sound clear above the guns. I completed three articles—"A Fool There Was," "When Hell Laughed," and "Gods of Jingoism." I gave them to my London agent, but you would have thought they held germs of disease. He brought them back to me, and said that no one would dare to publish them in England. In other words, the English couldn't stand the truth. I sent them on to New York. This is my agent's reply.'
He took a letter from a file on the table and handed it to his guest.
'Read it,' he said.
With an inscrutable smile the Cambridge-American looked at the paper and read:
'NEW YORK, 10th October 1914.
DEAR MR. SELWYN,—You will be pleased to know that I have succeeded in placing your articles "When Hell Laughed," "A Fool There Was," and "Gods of Jingoism" with a prominent newspaper syndicate. The price paid was $800 each, and I herewith remit my cheque for $2160, having deducted the usual commission. I have every reason to believe that any further articles you send will meet with a ready market, especially if they follow along the same lines of exposing the utter futility of war. As a matter of fact, this syndicate is prepared to pay even a higher price if these articles, which will be published all over the United States, meet with the approval they confidently expect.
'Assuring you of my desire to be of service to you, I remain, yours very sincerely,
'S. T. LYONS.'
'Very nice, too,' murmured Watson at the conclusion of the letter.
'Who says that high ideals don't pay?'
'What do you mean?' said Selwyn sternly. The younger man got up from his chair and looked at his watch. 'Don't get shirty,' he said. 'I was only thinking that 800 per is a fairly healthy figure for that dope.'
'I don't give a damn for the money,' said Selwyn hotly, 'except that it shows there is a demand in America for the truth. Britain has always been afraid to face facts. Thank God, America isn't.'
'Well,' said Watson with a slight yawn, 'it's quite obvious that we're as far apart as the poles on that question, so I think I'll cut along.'
'Stay and have a cup of coffee. There's some being made; it will be here in a minute.'
'No, thanks. To be brutally frank, Austin, the ozone around here is a little too rarefied for me. I'm going out to a cab-stand somewhere to have a sandwich and a cup of tea with any Cockney who hasn't joined the Citizenship of the World.'
With the shadows under his eyes more pronounced than before, but with the unchanging look of determination, Selwyn helped the younger man on with his coat, and handed him his hat and stick. 'I am sorry you won't stay,' he said calmly, 'for your abuse and sarcasm are nothing to me. When I took this step I foresaw the consequences, and, believe me, I have suffered so much already that the loss of another friend means very little.'
The powerfully built young American twirled his hat uncomfortably between his fingers. 'Look here, Austin,' he said vehemently, 'why in blazes can't you get all that hot air out of your system? Come on—meet me to-morrow, and we'll join up together. It'll be all kinds of experience, you'll get wagon-loads of copy, and when it's all over you'll feel like a man instead of a sissy.'
With a tired, patient smile Selwyn put out his hand. 'Good-night,
Doug,' he said. 'I hope you come through all right.'
When he heard the door close downstairs as Watson went out, Selwyn re-entered the room. The light of the electric lamp glaring on his manuscript pained his eyes, and he turned it out, leaving the room in the dim light of the fire. The man-servant entered with a tray.
'Will you have the light on, sir?'
'No, thanks, Smith. Just leave the things on the table.'
'Thank you, sir. Good-night, sir.'
'Good-night, Smith.'
The room was strangely, awesomely quiet. There was no sound from the deserted square; only the windows shook a little in the breeze. He reached for the ukulele, and staring dreamily into the fire, picked softly at the strings until he found four notes that blended harmoniously.
The fire slowly faded from his gaze, and in its place, by memory's alchemy, came the vision of her face—a changing vision, one moment mocking as when he first met her, turning to a look of pain as when she spoke of Dick, and then resolving into the wistful tenderness that had crept into her eyes that evening by the trout-stream—a tenderness that vanished before the expression of scorn she had shown that fateful August night.
The night stole wearily on, but still Selwyn sat in the shadowy darkness, occasionally strumming the one chord on the strings, like a worshipper keeping vigil at some heathen shrine and offering the incense of soft music.