第16章

We are not concerned with the very poor.They are unthinkable,and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.This story deals with gentlefolk,or with those who are obliged to pretend that they are gentlefolk.

The boy,Leonard Bast,stood at the extreme verge of gentility.He was not in the abyss,but he could see it,and at times people whom he knew had dropped in,and counted no more.He knew that he was poor,and would admit it:he would have died sooner than confess any inferiority to the rich.This may be splendid of him.

But he was inferior to most rich people,there is not the least doubt of it.He was not as courteous as the average rich man,nor as intelligent,nor as healthy,nor as lovable.His mind and his body had been alike underfed,because he was poor,and because he was modern they were always craving better food.Had he lived some centuries ago,in the brightly coloured civilizations of the past,he would have had a definite status,his rank and his income would have corresponded.But in his day the angel of Democracy had arisen,enshadowing the classes with leathern wings,and proclaiming,"All men are equal--all men,that is to say,who possess umbrellas,"and so he was obliged to assert gentility,lest he slipped into the abyss where nothing counts,and the statements of Democracy are inaudible.

As he walked away from Wickham Place,his first care was to prove that he was as good as the Miss Schlegels.Obscurely wounded in his pride,he tried to wound them in return.They were probably not ladies.Would real ladies have asked him to tea?

They were certainly ill-natured and cold.At each step his feeling of superiority increased.Would a real lady have talked about stealing an umbrella?Perhaps they were thieves after all,and if he had gone into the house they could have clapped a chloroformed handkerchief over his face.He walked on complacently as far as the Houses of Parliament.

There an empty stomach asserted itself,and told him he was a fool.

"Evening,Mr.Bast."

"Evening,Mr.Dealtry."

"Nice evening."

"Evening."

Mr.Dealtry,a fellow clerk,passed on,and Leonard stood wondering whether he would take the tram as far as a penny would take him,or whether he would walk.He decided to walk--it is no good giving in,and he had spent money enough at Queen's Hall--and he walked over Westminster Bridge,in front of St.Thomas's Hospital,and through the immense tunnel that passes under the South-Western main line at Vauxhall.

In the tunnel he paused and listened to the roar of the trains.Asharp pain darted through his head,and he was conscious of the exact form of his eye sockets.He pushed on for another mile,and did not slacken speed until he stood at the entrance of a road called Camelia Road,which was at present his home.

Here he stopped again,and glanced suspiciously to right and left,like a rabbit that is going to bolt into its hole.

A block of flats,constructed with extreme cheapness,towered on either hand.Farther down the road two more blocks were being built,and beyond these an old house was being demolished to accommodate another pair.

It was the kind of scene that may be observed all over London,whatever the locality--bricks and mortar rising and falling with the restlessness of the water in a fountain,as the city receives more and more men upon her soil.Camelia Road would soon stand out like a fortress,and command,for a little,an extensive view.Only for a little.

Plans were out for the erection of flats in Magnolia Road also.And again a few years,and all the flats in either road might be pulled down,and new buildings,of a vastness at present unimaginable,might arise where they had fallen.

"Evening,Mr.Bast."

"Evening,Mr.Cunningham."

"Very serious thing this decline of the birth-rate in Manchester.""I beg your pardon?"

"Very serious thing this decline of the birth-rate in Manchester,"repeated Mr.Cunningham,tapping the Sunday paper,in which the calamity in question had just been announced to him.

"Ah,yes,"said Leonard,who was not going to let on that he had not bought a Sunday paper.

"If this kind of thing goes on the population of England will be stationary in 1960.""You don't say so."

"I call it a very serious thing,eh?"

"Good-evening,Mr.Cunningham."

"Good-evening,Mr.Bast."

Then Leonard entered Block B of the flats,and turned,not upstairs,but down,into what is known to house agents as a semi-basement,and to other men as a cellar.He opened the door,and cried "Hullo!"with the pseudo-geniality of the Cockney.There was no reply.

"Hullo!"he repeated.The sitting-room was empty,though the electric light had been left burning.A look of relief came over his face,and he flung himself into the armchair.

The sitting-room contained,besides the armchair,two other chairs,a piano,a three-legged table,and a cosy corner.

Of the walls,one was occupied by the window,the other by a draped mantelshelf bristling with Cupids.Opposite the window was the door,and beside the door a bookcase,while over the piano there extended one of the masterpieces of Maud Goodman.It was an amorous and not unpleasant little hole when the curtains were drawn,and the lights turned on,and the gas-stove unlit.But it struck that shallow makeshift note that is so often heard in the modem dwelling-place.It had been too easily gained,and could be relinquished too easily.