Most lovers, Gumbril reflected, picture to themselves, in their mistresses, a secret reality, beyond and different from what they see every day. They are in love with somebody else—their own invention. And sometimes there is a secret reality; and sometimes reality and appearance are the same. The discovery, in either case, is likely to cause a shock. “I don’t know,” he said. “How should I know? You must find out for yourself.”
“But you knew her, you know her well,” said Shearwater, almost with anxiety in his voice.
“Not so well as all that.”
Shearwater sighed profoundly, like a whale in the night. He felt restless, incapable of concentrating. His mind was full of a horrible confusion. A violent eruptive bubbling up from below had shaken its calm clarity to pieces. All this absurd business of passion—he had always thought it nonsense, unnecessary. With a little strength of will one could shut it out. Women—only for half an hour out of the twenty-four. But she had laughed, and his quiet, his security had vanished. “I can imagine,” he had said to her yesterday, “I can imagine myself giving up everything, work and all, to go running round after you.” “And do you suppose I should enjoy that?” Mrs. Viveash had asked. “It would be ridiculous,” he said, “it would be almost shameful.” And she had thanked him for the compliment. “And at the same time,” he went on, “I feel that it might be worth it. It might be the only thing.” His mind was confused, full of new thoughts. “It’s difficult,” he said after a pause, “arranging things. Very difficult. I thought I had arranged them so well....”
“I never arrange anything,” said Gumbril, very much the practical philosopher. “I take things as they come.” And as he spoke the words, suddenly he became rather disgusted with himself. He shook himself; he climbed up out of his own morass. “It would be better, perhaps, if I arranged things more,” he added.
“Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s,” said Shearwater, as though to himself; “and to God, and to sex, and to work.... There must be a working arrangement.” He sighed again. “Everything in proportion. In proportion,” he repeated, as though the word were magical and had power. “In proportion.”
“Who’s talking about proportion?” They turned round. In the doorway Gumbril Senior was standing, smoothing his ruffled hair and tugging at his beard. His eyes twinkled cheerfully behind his spectacles. “Poaching on my architectural ground?” he said.
“This is Shearwater,” Gumbril Junior put in, and explained who he was.
The old gentleman sat down. “Proportion,” he said—“I was just thinking about it, now, as I was walking back. You can’t help thinking about it in these London streets, where it doesn’t exist. You can’t help pining for it. There are some streets ... oh, my God!” And Gumbril Senior threw up his hands in horror. “It’s like listening to a symphony of cats to walk along them. Senseless discords and a horrible disorder all the way. And the one street that was really like a symphony by Mozart—how busily and gleefully they’re pulling it down now! Another year and there’ll be nothing left of Regent Street. There’ll only be a jumble of huge, hideous buildings at three-quarters of a million apiece. A concert of Brobdingnagian cats. Order has been turned into a disgusting chaos. We need no barbarians from outside; they’re on the premises, all the time.”
The old man paused and pulled his beard meditatively. Gumbril Junior sat in silence, smoking; and in silence Shearwater revolved within the walls of his great round head his agonizing thoughts of Mrs. Viveash.