But on their sofa in the alcove they were immediately joined by Arnold Englehart who stood before them deferentially, yet like a threat; equally oblivious of Hayle-Vernon’s deep-seated indifference to socialism and of the sacredness of sitting-out couples, pouring out his newest plan to bring about socialism in a fortnight.
Englehart was real, and his plans burned as enthusiastically as upon his bent head his hair, lit from behind and standing out like a bush above his unseeing face. Hayle-Vernon was alight in pursuance of his hobby of pulling a thread of thought through shapeless assertions. But in every word he spoke sounded his central unbelief. Prominent Lycurgans. Good men. Keeping an eye on injustices. Trying, from whatever motive, to reform the world. One chasing an abstraction called humanity, and the other an abstraction called intelligence.
It seemed that the air grew icy about them. It was a relief to catch sight of Densley, beaming with social happiness. Through the rising tide of Englehart’s talk she watched him afar. Tall and lean and swiftly graceful in all his movements. Yet padded. A lean tall firmly-padded baby. The slight rotundity of his slenderness, like his bantering man-of-the-world society talk, was the radiation of his substantially nourished mind. His mind spoke from his broad unconscious brow. Serene and attentive between his frivolous words and friendly curling hair. A Harley Street brow. Calm where all these Lycurgans were irritable. And in his shapely nose, slightly blunted, like so many professional noses, was the cause, or the explanation, of his interest in philosophy. Flirtatious interest, in the intervals of listening for the ever-changing gossip of science and accepting, because they bore out his own kindly experience, the statements of evangelistic religion.
“Multiple shops, proliferating—” she glanced in time to catch Hayle-Vernon’s flicker of amusement—“like a cancerous growth.” But Englehart’s adoration of Wells was a charming décor, taking nothing from his individuality. He had so much intensity that it blazed, like paraffin, a little wildly, but never with the wind. That was the great thing about the Lycurgans. That they thought. They were not impressionists further than everyone, by being merely alive and not sure of the whence and the whither, must be helplessly impressionist.
The accumulations of two years of attention to Lycurgan thought, the images fashioned by their more articulate intelligentsia to express their sense of the destruction of modern civilisation by disorderly forces grown out of that civilisation were again uppermost as she returned to the thought of Densley and his indiscriminate social happiness. His friendship, for instance, with little Mr. Taunton. Perhaps that was inevitable. Poor little Taunton, shocked into worldly wisdom by his experience at the hands of Eleanor, flying, from his refuge under the tiles with his Plato, into marriage, must now have visitors. And doctors and clergy and lawyers must hang together. And their wives support the fabric. “A charming little woman,” said Densley, “she listened while her man and I discussed the sacraments.” Meaning that Densley and Taunton putting their heads together about religion were swimming in waters beyond her depth; that she being not only a woman, but charming, that is to say an apparently uncritical listener, sat respectfully by and earned in due course the indulgent lowering of the conversation to matters she could understand. But would they have talked so busily, kept on their amicable duel, without an audience? And would they have been so serene if they had seen into her thoughts, seen her read them as she watched their play?
Conversation of this type, comfortably fed and armchaired men discussing in the presence of deferential wives, was the recreation of his less frivolous leisure. And for the rest, fashionable dinner-parties, opinions about the latest plays and the latest novels, scandals, the comparing of notes about foreign travel, hotels and so on—always the same world, always shut in however far away, with the same assumptions, not about life, for these people never thought about the fact of life, only about the details of living, and about behaviour. His world was ready-made, and clearly now as she watched him for the first time from afar and socially surrounded, she saw that if she went into that world she would fail him; fail just where a rising doctor’s wife must be a tower of strength.
The sadness of farewell, bringing with it in equal companionship a humiliating annoyance, was shallow; farewell to a selfish coveting, doomed all along by its heartlessness. Yet even as she saw him cut off, going his own bright way, it stirred within her, asserting a depth she had not guessed; prompting to recklessness, reminding her with a long backward glance how clearly, through all the years she had known him, “fate” had been at work throwing them together in solitude, carefully not revealing him in association with grouped humanity until now. To draw back now was to reduce their common past from the moment of his coming, bounding lightly at midnight into Eleanor Dear’s garret, an abrupt tired man, prescribing a sleeping draught and thankful to get away as soon as he knew there was someone prepared to stay all night and not afraid to go out and ring up a chemist, to waste of time.
Waste of time in an alcove—a comfortable alcove inviting waste of time by being there and being unable to protest. Waste of time; except for the gathered knowledge of his goodness? Perhaps Hayle-Vernon, whose elegant sophistries had at last broken the tide of Englehart’s talk and left him standing, still eager, aware that his ardour had miscarried, and though not actually looking about him, yet already on the lookout for another listener, had gathered, in the time Englehart had wasted with him, a knowledge of Englehart’s unconscious goodness?
Wilkins the author, gesticulating greetings, came up and hooked Englehart away by the arm.
With Englehart gone, Hayle-Vernon was left in a void, statuesque, draped only with his manner of a prominent Lycurgan. He had joined the society for the sake of self-realisation, consciously contributing his proud talent for straightening out the statements of those who in so far as they were driven by feelings that were clearer than their thoughts, were careless about language? Separated from passionate conviction he was inoperative. Perhaps, identifying me with the new group of young Lycurgans, he credits me with passionate convictions? And here I sit—while from far away in the cold centre where he formulates his criticisms, facing cessation, he is coming back to make suitable remarks—equally stranded, in a perfect equality of inoperativeness.