Tono-Bungay

HURST APPR

land towns in being largely built of stone. I found something very agreeable and picturesque in its clean cobbled streets, its odd turnings and abrupt corners; and in the pleasant park that crowds up one side of the town. The whole place is under the Eastry dominion and it was the Eastry influence and dignity that kept its railway station a mile and three-quarters away. Eastry House is so close that it dominates the whole; one goes across the marketplace (with its old lock-up and stocks), past the great pre-reformation church, a fine grey shell, like so

a breach as a confirmation. But my uncle had no respect for Bladesover and Eastry-none whatever. He did not believe in them. He wa

om his open doorway in the dignified stillne

patent medicine

g Americans loose into it," s

Shipton's Sleeping Syrup. We

dled with the piled dummy boxes of fancy soap and scent and so forth that adorned the end of the counter, then turned about petulant

mething. And shov

George. What would you think of me writing a pl

stog-igs

at meditative w

t!-dead and stiff! And I'm buried in it up to the arm pits. Nothing ever happens, nobody wants things to happen 'scep

stry's pockets for rent-men are up there...." He indicated London as remotely over the top of the dispensing

things do they

dred say, and buy ten thousand pounds worth. See? That's a cover of one per cent. Things go up one, you sell, realise cent per cent; down, whiff, it's gone! Try agai

ig things, aren't

d your liver on it, so to speak. Take a drug-take ipecac, for example. Take a lot of ipecac. Take all there is! See? There you are! There aren't unlimited supplies of ipecacuanha-can't be!-and it's

suffering babes yowling for it. Eucalyptus again-cascara-witch hazel-menthol

ce to the doctor

orge. You're in the mountains there! Think of having all the quinine in the world, and some millionaire's pampered wife gone ill with malaria, eh? That's a squeeze, Georg

scaped such fragments as: "Fifty per cent

out of reach, and then to haggle yourself wealthy. You buy up land upon which people will presently want to build houses, you secure rights that will bar vitally important developments, and so on, and so on. Of course the naive intelligence of a boy does not grasp the subtler developments of human inadequacy. He begins life with a disposition to believe in the wisdom of grown-up people, he does not realise how casual and disingenuous has been the

nd drawers for a while, dreaming of corners in this a

on when these things a

chance 'ud be a loss to him. He wants everything to burble along and burble along and go on as it's going for the next ten thousand years, Eastry after Eastry, one parson down another come, one grocer dead, get another! Any one with any ideas better go away. They HAVE gone away! Look at all these blessed

ey get a cloc

e. Something people want.... Strike out.... You can't think, George, of anything everybody wants and hasn't got? I mean some

ittle fat, restless, fretful, garrulous, putting in my fermenting

hemistry, in mathematics and machine drawing, and I took up these subjects with considerable avidity. Exercise I got chiefly in the form of walks. There was some cricket in the summer and football in the winter sustained by young men's clubs that levied a parasitic blackmail of the big people and the sitting member, but I was never very keen at these games. I didn't find any very close compani

panions that disgusted me. It's hard to define. Heaven knows that at that cockney boarding-school at Goudhurst we were coarse enough; the Wimblehurst youngsters had neither words nor courage for the sort of thing we used to do-for our bad language, for example; but, on the other hand, they displayed a sort of sluggish, real lewdness, lewdness is the word-a baseness of attitude. Whatever we exiled urbans did at Goudhurst was touched with something, however coarse, of romantic imagination. We had read the Boys of England, and told each other stories. In the English c

s, always told in undertones, poor dirty worm! his shrewd, elaborate maneuvers for some petty advantage, a drink to the good or such-like deal. There rises before my eyes as I write, young Hopley Dodd, the son of the Wimblehurst auctioneer, the pride of Wimblehurst, its finest flower, with his fur waistcoat and his bulldog pipe, his riding breeches-he had no horse-an

I didn't play so badly, I thought. I'm not so sure now; that was my opinion at the time. But young Dodd's scepticism and the

love-love as yet came to me only in my dreams. I only kissed these girls once or twice. They rather disconcerted than developed those dreams. They were so clearly not "it." I shall have much to say of love in this story, but I may break it to the reader now that it is my role to be a rather ineffectual lover. Desire I knew well enough-indeed, too well; but love I have been shy of. In all my early enterprises in the war of the sexes, I was torn between the urgency of the body and a habit of romantic fantasy that wanted every phase of the adventure to be generous and beaut

liness that was only half maternal-she petted my books, she knew about my certificates, she m

into Latin quotation that roused Ewart to parody. There was something about me in those days more than a little priggish. But it was, to do myself justice, something more than the petty pride of learning. I had a very grave sense of discipline and preparation that I am not ashamed at all to remember. I was serious. More serious than I am at the present time. More serious, indeed, than any adult seems to be. I was capable then of efforts-of nobilities.... They are beyond me now. I don't see why, at forty, I shouldn't confess I respect my own youth. I had dropped being a boy quite abruptly. I thought I was presently to go out into a larger and quite important world

ns, of the immortality of the soul and the peculiar actions of drugs; but predominantly and constantly he talked of getting on, of enterprises, of inventions and great fortunes, of Rothschilds, si

le I surveyed him from behind the counter, or he leant against the little drawers behind the counter, and I hovered dusting in front. The thought of those early days brings back to my nostrils the faint smell of scent that was always in the air, marbled now with streaks of this drug and now of that, and to my eyes the rows of jejune glass bottles with gold labels, mirror-

to him round the middle like his bottles are, with Ol Pondo on it. That

" said my uncle, pro

st, and as the constraint of my presence at meals wore off, I became more and more aware of a filmy but extensive net of nonsense she had woven about her domestic relations until it had become the reality of her life. She affected a derisive att

the week, Susan?"

say, and add, "I got all my Old

outhful days, falling about anyhow and doubling up tightly, and whackings of the stomach, and tears and cries of anguish. I never in my life heard my uncle laugh to his maximum except at her; he was commonly too much in earnest for that, and he didn't laugh much at all, to my knowledge, after those early years. Also she threw things at him to an enormous extent in her resolve to keep things lively in spite of Wimblehurst; sponges out of stock she threw, cushions, balls of paper, clean washing, bread; and once up the yard when they thought that I and the errand boy and the diminutive maid of all work were safely out of the way, she smashed a boxful of eight-ounce bottle

ehurst is, to have us all laughing at a little thing like that! We weren

usbands met in various bar-parlours or in the billiard-room of the Eastry Arms. But my uncle, for the most part, spent his evenings at home. When first he arrived in Wimblehurst I think he had spread his effect of abounding ideas

rything, Mr. Pond'revo?" s

answer, disconcerted, and s

're talkin' of rebuildin' Wimblehurst all over again, I'm told. Anybody heard anything

ncle would mutter, to the infinite delight of every one

I

nk he got the idea from one use of curves in the graphic presentation of associated variations that he saw me plotting. He secured some of my squared paper and, having cast about for a time, decided to trace the rise and fall o

g over a month. Now next week, mark my words, they'll be down one whole point. We're getting near the steep part of the curve again.

usement that to find at last that he had taken

o me, over the hills towards Yare and ac

across that great open space, and paused against the sky.

y the sudden chance in his

n the narrow sandy rut of pat

n. It's bust me! I'm a

he

oo. I shall have t

d m

not the sort of man to be careless with trust funds, you can be sure. I kept that a

ou and

ticketed-lot a hundred and one. Ugh!... It's been a larky little house in some ways. The first we had. Furnishing-a spree in

and did not look round

ou see, George." I h

ad again he came alongside, and

r. I got to pick the proper time with Susan-else she'll get depre

sponsibility as my trustee. He gave a little sigh of relief at my note of assent, and was presently talking quite cheerfully of his plans.... But he

thers?"

hem!" s

hat ot

ly tradespeople: Ruck, the butcher, Marbel, the

d over the shop and me to his successor. For he had the good luck to sell his business, "lock, stock, and barrel"-in which

asion, Ruck, the butcher, stood in his doorway and

ncle. "You grinning hyaena"; and

in London, then?" said Mr.

and was mostly gone into the unexpected hollow that ought to have been a crest of the Union Pacific curve, and of the remainder he still gave no account. I was too young and inexperienced to insist on this or know how to get it, but the thought of it all made streaks of decidedly black anger in that scheme of interwoven feelings. And you know, I was also acutely sorry for him-almost as sorry as I wa

r apologetic to me; but he wasn't that. He kept reassuring me in a way I foun

he said, "try Character. Your

tative noise

ainfully evident to me in her eyes and swollen face-"w

of course. It's a bit like Adam and Eve, y

all before them,

est, and Provide

uide!... Well-thank goodness there's no i

't think that, George. I shall pay twenty shillings in the pound before I've done-you mark my words, George,-twenty-five to you.... I got this situation within twenty-four hours-others offered. It's an important firm-one of the bes

le round eyes behind his glasses res

revised and restated that encounter. Then he

orge, my boy," he would

at's all right," he would say; or, "Leave all that to me. I'LL look after them." And h

ndred to one, George, that I was right-a hundred to one. I worked it out afterwards. And here we are spiked on the off-chance.

ts took a

and about. I was thinking of it this morning while I shaved. It's not irreverent for me to say it, I hope-but God comes in on the off-chance, George. See? Don't you be too cocksure of anything, good or bad. That's what I make ou

ing when I was shaving, that that's where the good of it all comes in. At the bottom I'm a mystic in these affairs. You calculate you're going to do this or that, but at bottom who knows at all WHAT he's d

unutterable contempt, and now that I recall

t outrageous, "YOU were being Led to g

on, George, I can't. But you trust m

he end I

fuss that I saw, and only little signs in her complexion of the fits of weeping that must have taken her. She didn't cry at the end, though to me her face with its strain of self-possession was more pathetic than any weeping. "Well" she

a quiet little business so long as you run it on quiet lines-a nice quiet little business. There's nothing more? No? Well, if you want to know anything write to me. I'll always explain fully. Anything-business, place or people. You'll find Pil

the charms of a big doll's house and a little home of her very own. "Good-bye!" she said to it and to me. Our eyes met for a moment-perplexed. My uncle bustled out and gave a few totally unnecessary directions to the cabman and got in beside her. "Al

nderevo" with all the emphasis of its fascia, and then flopped back hastily out of sight of me into the recesses of the cab. Then it had gone from before me and I be

imblehurst not only a dull but a lonely place, and to miss my aunt Susan immensely. The advertisements of the summer terms for Cough Linctus were removed; the bottles of coloured water-red, green, and yellow-restored to their places; the horse announcing veterinary medicine, whic

Geology as a process of evolution from Eozoon to Eastry House, and Astronomy as a record of celestial movements of the most austere and invariable integrity. I learnt out of badly-written, condensed little text-books, and with the minimum of experiment, but still I learnt. Only thirty years ago it was, and I remember I learnt of the electric light as an exp

dates to sit for that until one and twenty, I was presently filling up my time and preventing my studies becoming too desultory by making an attack upon the London University degree of Bachelor of Science, which impressed me then as a very splendid but almost impossible achievement. The degree in mathematics and chemistry appealed to me as particularly congenial-albeit giddily inaccessible. I set to work. I had presently to arrange a holiday and go to London

here rose a great public house and here a Board School and there a gaunt factory; and away to the east there loomed for a time a queer, incongruous forest of masts and spars. The congestion of houses intensified and piled up presently into tenements; I marveled more and more at this boundless world of dingy people; whiffs of industrial smell, of leather, of brewing, drifted into the carriage; the sky darkened, I rumbled thunderously over bridges, van-crowded streets, peered down on and crossed the Thames with an abrupt eclat of s

ses in those days-seemed stupendous, its roar was stupendous; I wondered where the money came from to employ so many cabs, what industry could support the endless jostling stream of silk-hatted, frock-co

n was vast! it was endless! it seemed the whole world had changed into packed frontages and hoardings and street spaces. I got there at last and made inquiries, and I found my uncle behind th

hanged. He struck me as being rather shabby, and the silk hat he produced and put on, when, after mysterious negotiations in th

all THAT," he cried. "

n regrettable politeness, and waived the topic

suddenly; "we'll go somewhere. We

back streets to the left, and came at last to a blistered front door that responded to his latch-key, one of a long series of blistered front doors with fanlights and apartment cards above. We found ourselves in a drab-coloured passage that was not only narrow and dirty but d

n she had been, but her complexion was just as fresh

aid, didn't "ge

bitt?" she said when he appeared, and she still looked with a practised eye for the facetious side of

for a moment, a hand on each shoulder, and looked at me with a sort of glad

d, as she released me, and cont

My aunt did all the domestic work, though she could have afforded to pay for help if the build of the place had not rendered that inconvenient to the pitch of impossibility. There was no sort of help available except that of indoor servants, for whom she had no accommodation. The furniture was their own; it was partly secondhand, but on the whole it seemed cheerful to my eye, and my aunt's bias for cheap, gay-figured muslin had found ample score. In many ways I should think it must have been an extremely inconvenient and cr

iginally designed for prosperous-middle-class homes of the early Victorian type. There must have been a perfect fury of such building in the thirties, forties, and fifties. Street aft

requent callers were received. That was the vision at which those industrious builders aimed. Even while these houses were being run up, the threads upon the loom of fate were shaping to abolish altogether the type of household that would have fitted them. Means of transit were developing to carry the moderately prosperous middle-class families out of London, education and factory employment were whittling away at the supply of rough, hardworking, obedient girls who would stand the subterranean drudgery of these places, new classes of hard-up middle-class people such as my uncle, employees of various types, were coming into existence, fo

"see London" under my uncle's direction. She was the sub-letting occupier; she squeezed out a precarious living by taking the house whole and sub-letting it in detail and she made her food and got the

s by no means the social economy it seems, to use up old women, savings and inexperience in order to meet the landlord's demands. But any one who

ust be shown London, and out we three went as soon as my au

est town in the world, the biggest port, the greatest manufacturing town, the Imperial city-the centre of civilisation, the heart of the world! See those sandwich men down there! That third one's hat! Fair treat!

etimes we were walking, sometimes we were on the tops of great staggering horse omnibuses in a heaving jumble of traffic, and at one point we had tea in an Aerated Bread Shop. But I

find my aunt watching my face as if to chec

?" she asked suddenly, ov

, aunt,"

gesticulated with the remnant to

ne?" she said so soon as she could sp

ncle, taking breath afte

my part I think shall be satisfied

make ours-sudd

" She jerked her

eady. But it's coming. Going to ride in our carr

be glad of the garden," she said. "It's going to be a real big one

ht," said my uncle, wh

ink about when one's dull. And dinners in restaurants often and o

id my uncle, and h

money," she said, turning her eyes upon his profile with

e, "you bet! Zzzz!" and rapped wi

anyhow. That finger's past mending. Look! you Cabbage-you." And she h

r aunt's a bit impatient, George. She gets at me. It's only natural.... A woman doesn't understand how long it takes to build up a position. No.... In certain directions now-I am-quietly-building up a position. Now here.... I g

I said, "are

in a hurry. I turn over this one and that, and I don't talk-indiscre

hop. "I've told no one," he remarked, as

, he leant forward over t

n!" he

ist

d my uncle very sl

on't hear anything," I said reluctantly to his expectant face. He s

HAT!"

" sa

what

t to ask? What won't it be?" He dug me violently in what he supposed to be my

all I could

amber-a highly probable thing. Its utterance certainly did not seem to me at the time to mark any sort of epoch, and had I been told thi

pause, and with a chill sense of effort

could make all this business as clear to you as it is to

I

es, going to and fro on pavements that had always a thin veneer of greasy, slippery mud, under grey skies that showed no gleam of hope of anything for them but dinginess until they died. It seemed absolutely clear to me that my mother's little savings had been swallowed up and that my own prospect was all too certainly to drop into and b

ness that had elipped all my chance of independent study, and imprisoned her in those grey apartments. When I got back to Wimblehurst I allowed myself to write him a boyishly sarcastic and sincerely bitter letter. He never replied. Then, believing it to be the

nse effect upon me. It was for me an epoch-making disappointment. I had thought of London as

ill in things. I did not see that the dirt, the discouragement, the discomfort of London could be due simply to the fact that London was a witless old giantess of a town, too slack and stupid to keep herself cle

ittle creature, too silly to be silent, in a vast implacable condemnation. I was full of pity and a sort of te

terror of the grim underside of London in m

THE S

E OF TO