V
On the Embankment Wynne apologized to God very sincerely for having debased his art. It was rather a pretty little prayer which he put up, and had a gentler tenor than his wonted expression. After it was finished he felt easier in mind, and comforted. But when he returned to his rooms the oppression of a great loneliness took command of his soul. Of late this feeling had dominated his thoughts not a little. He desired some one to whom he might confess his thoughts and fears, some one of the sympathetic intellect, who could smooth out the harsher creases of life’s cloak, and give companionable warmth to the solitary hours.
No such friendships had come his way, and when he turned his thoughts more closely to the subject he could not imagine that he would be likely to happen upon such a one. Beyond the intermittent flashes of Uncle Clem’s society there had been no one with whom he could discuss his real feelings and emotions. Pride, and desire to excel, had kept him from seeking Uncle Clem when the mood of loneliness was upon him. He, as it were, saved up that friendship for the great days ahead. The few occasions when he had sought to quicken intimacy from acquaintance had invariably led to nothing. Once a young actor asked him to share an idle hour or two, and before they arrived at the end of the street stopped at the door of a public-house and invited him to enter.
“Let’s get primed—what do you say?”
And Wynne said, “Need we? I don’t drink for a hobby.”
“Care for a game of pills?”
“Not very much.”
“Well, what do you care about?”
The suggestion that in order to be entertained one must either drink or play billiards made Wynne laugh, and since no man cares to have his more serious pleasures ridiculed, the young actor snorted, and left him to spend the rest of the evening alone.
Possibly it was loneliness which directed Wynne once more to seek employment upon the stage. In the play in which he appeared he was given the part of a hot-potato man who was on the stage for only a few moments.
To perfect the detail for this rôle he made the acquaintance of a real example of this calling, and spent many midnight hours talking with the old fellow and warming himself before the pleasant coke fire.
Wynne discovered that there was a deal of philosophy to be gleaned in this manner. Thereafter he became well known to many of the strange, quiet men who feed the hungry in queer, out-of-the-way corners of the sleeping city.
On Sundays he would go to Petticoat Lane, or pry into the private lives of the outcasts of Norfolk House. The East End fascinated him, with its mixture of old customs and new—its spice of adventure and savour of Orientalism. Many of the folk with whom he conversed were strangely illuminating. After an initial period of distrust and suspicion they would open out and disgorge some startling views on life and matters in general. They spoke of anarchy and crime and confinements as their more civilized brothers of the West spoke of the brand of cigarettes they preferred. The elemental side of these men’s natures, being so totally dissimilar from his own, made a profound impression upon Wynne. Their attitude toward women amazed and perplexed him. The phrase, “my woman,” with its solid, possessive, animal note, was original to the ears. It suggested an entirely different attitude from the one he had observed in France, the one so alive with thrill and volatile desire.
“My woman!” he repeated it over to himself as he plodded homeward through the dark streets. He said it experimentally with the same inflection that had been used—and yet to him it was only an inflection. He could not conceive a circumstance in which he would naturally stress the “my,” or would actually feel the possessive impulse to make it inevitable.
“She’s my woman,” the man had said, when telling his story—“my woman, d’y’hear?” Followed an oathy description of a chair and table fight, a beer bottle broken across a bedrail and used as a dagger—something, that was once a man, carried in the arms of a trustworthy few and hidden in a murky doorway a couple of streets distant.
It was hard to imagine such a coming about at the dictates of a convention of sex. If a woman inclined to sin with another man, let her—what did it matter? Fidelity was of very little consequence. Common reason proved it to be a myth. Yet men committed murder that fidelity—physical fidelity—might be preserved. That’s what it amounted to. But did it? That possessive “my” argued a greater and more masterful motive—something beyond mere moral adherences.
“My woman!” Very perplexing!
“But I suppose I would fight to the death for my ideals—whatever they may be.”
With sudden force it struck Wynne that he should define his ideals, and know precisely at what he aimed. It was good for a man to be certain of those things for which he would be prepared to lay down his life.
He set himself the task of writing down what his ideals actually were, and in so doing failed horribly. What he wrote was inconclusive and embryonic. To a reader it would have conveyed little or nothing. There was a hint of some ambition, but nothing more. It showed the target of his hopes in the pupal stage. The grammatical perfection with which he wrote only added melancholy to the failure.
“My God!” exclaimed Wynne, “I can’t even write a specification of what I want to do.”