I.—THE TWO POETS OF SAFFRON PARK
THE suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as
red and ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick
throughout; its sky-line was fantastic, and even its ground plan was
wild. It had been the outburst of a speculative builder, faintly
tinged with art, who called its architecture sometimes Elizabethan
and sometimes Queen Anne, apparently under the impression that the
two sovereigns were identical. It was described with some justice as
an artistic colony, though it never in any definable way produced any
art. But although its pretensions to be an intellectual centre were a
little vague, its pretensions to be a pleasant place were quite
indisputable. The stranger who looked for the first time at the
quaint red houses could only think how very oddly shaped the people
must be who could fit in to them. Nor when he met the people was he
disappointed in this respect. The place was not only pleasant, but
perfect, if once he could regard it not as a deception but rather as
a dream. Even if the people were not "artists," the whole
was nevertheless artistic. That young man with the long, auburn hair
and the impudent face—that young man was not really a poet; but
surely he was a poem. That old gentleman with the wild, white beard
and the wild, white hat—that venerable humbug was not really a
philosopher; but at least he was the cause of philosophy in others.
That scientific gentleman with the bald, egg-like head and the bare,
bird-like neck had no real right to the airs of science that he
assumed. He had not discovered anything new in biology; but what
biological creature could he have discovered more singular than
himself? Thus, and thus only, the whole place had properly to be
regarded; it had to be considered not so much as a workshop for
artists, but as a frail but finished work of art. A man who stepped
into its social atmosphere felt as if he had stepped into a written
comedy.
More especially this attractive unreality fell upon it about
nightfall, when the extravagant roofs were dark against the afterglow
and the whole insane village seemed as separate as a drifting cloud.
This again was more strongly true of the many nights of local
festivity, when the little gardens were often illuminated, and the
big Chinese lanterns glowed in the dwarfish trees like some fierce
and monstrous fruit. And this was strongest of all on one particular
evening, still vaguely remembered in the locality, of which the
auburn-haired poet was the hero. It was not by any means the only
evening of which he was the hero. On many nights those passing by his
little back garden might hear his high, didactic voice laying down
the law to men and particularly to women. The attitude of women in
such cases was indeed one of the paradoxes of the place. Most of the
women were of the kind vaguely called emancipated, and professed some
protest against male supremacy. Yet these new women would always pay
to a man the extravagant compliment which no ordinary woman ever pays
to him, that of listening while he is talking. And Mr. Lucian
Gregory, the red-haired poet, was really (in some sense) a man worth
listening to, even if one only laughed at the end of it. He put the
old cant of the lawlessness of art and the art of lawlessness with a
certain impudent freshness which gave at least a momentary pleasure.
He was helped in some degree by the arresting oddity of his
appearance, which he worked, as the phrase goes, for all it was
worth. His dark red hair parted in the middle was literally like a
woman's, and curved into the slow curls of a virgin in a
pre-Raphaelite picture. From within this almost saintly oval,
however, his face projected suddenly broad and brutal, the chin
carried forward with a look of cockney contempt. This combination at
once tickled and terrified the nerves of a neurotic population. He
seemed like a walking blasphemy, a blend of the angel and the ape.
This particular evening, if it is remembered for nothing else,
will be remembered in that place for its strange sunset. It looked
like the end of the world. All the heaven seemed covered with a quite
vivid and palpable plumage; you could only say that the sky was full
of feathers, and of feathers that almost brushed the face. Across the
great part of the dome they were grey, with the strangest tints of
violet and mauve and an unnatural pink or pale green; but towards the
west the whole grew past description, transparent and passionate, and
the last red-hot plumes of it covered up the sun like something too
good to be seen. The whole was so close about the earth, as to
express nothing but a violent secrecy. The very empyrean seemed to be
a secret. It expressed that splendid smallness which is the soul of
local patriotism. The very sky seemed small.
I say that there are some inhabitants who may remember the evening
if only by that oppressive sky. There are others who may remember it
because it marked the first appearance in the place of the second
poet of Saffron Park. For a long time the red-haired revolutionary
had reigned without a rival; it was upon the night of the sunset that
his solitude suddenly ended. The new poet, who introduced himself by
the name of Gabriel Syme was a very mild-looking mortal, with a fair,
pointed beard and faint, yellow hair. But an impression grew that he
was less meek than he looked. He signalised his entrance by differing
with the established poet, Gregory, upon the whole nature of poetry.
He said that he (Syme) was poet of law, a poet of order; nay, he said
he was a poet of respectability. So all the Saffron Parkers looked at
him as if he had that moment fallen out of that impossible sky.
In fact, Mr. Lucian Gregory, the anarchic poet, connected the two
events.
"It may well be," he said, in his sudden lyrical manner,
"it may well be on such a night of clouds and cruel colours that
there is brought forth upon the earth such a portent as a respectable
poet. You say you are a poet of law; I say you are a contradiction in
terms. I only wonder there were not comets and earthquakes on the
night you appeared in this garden."
The man with the meek blue eyes and the pale, pointed beard
endured these thunders with a certain submissive solemnity. The third
party of the group, Gregory's sister Rosamond, who had her brother's
braids of red hair, but a kindlier face underneath them, laughed with
such mixture of admiration and disapproval as she gave commonly to
the family oracle.
Gregory resumed in high oratorical good humour.
"An artist is identical with an anarchist," he cried.
"You might transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an
artist. The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a
great moment to everything. He sees how much more valuable is one
burst of blazing light, one peal of perfect thunder, than the mere
common bodies of a few shapeless policemen. An artist disregards all
governments, abolishes all conventions. The poet delights in disorder
only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would
be the Underground Railway."
"So it is," said Mr. Syme.
"Nonsense!" said Gregory, who was very rational when
anyone else attempted paradox. "Why do all the clerks and
navvies in the railway trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and
tired? I will tell you. It is because they know that the train is
going right. It is because they know that whatever place they have
taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is because after
they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next station must
be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh,
their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next
station were unaccountably Baker Street!"
"It is you who are unpoetical," replied the poet Syme.
"If what you say of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic
as your poetry. The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the
gross, obvious thing is to miss it. We feel it is epical when man
with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it not also epical
when man with one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos is
dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker
Street or to Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in
this, that he does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria. No, take
your books of mere poetry and prose; let me read a time table, with
tears of pride. Take your Byron, who commemorates the defeats of man;
give me Bradshaw, who commemorates his victories. Give me Bradshaw, I
say!"
"Must you go?" inquired Gregory sarcastically.
"I tell you," went on Syme with passion, "that
every time a train comes in I feel that it has broken past batteries
of besiegers, and that man has won a battle against chaos. You say
contemptuously that when one has left Sloane Square one must come to
Victoria. I say that one might do a thousand things instead, and that
whenever I really come there I have the sense of hairbreadth escape.
And when I hear the guard shout out the word 'Victoria,' it is not an
unmeaning word. It is to me the cry of a herald announcing conquest.
It is to me indeed 'Victoria'; it is the victory of Adam."
Gregory wagged his heavy, red head with a slow and sad smile.
"And even then," he said, "we poets always ask the
question, 'And what is Victoria now that you have got there?' You
think Victoria is like the New Jerusalem. We know that the New
Jerusalem will only be like Victoria. Yes, the poet will be
discontented even in the streets of heaven. The poet is always in
revolt."
"There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there
poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is
poetical to be sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and
being rebellious may be the wholesome thing on certain desperate
occasions; but I'm hanged if I can see why they are poetical. Revolt
in the abstract is—revolting. It's mere vomiting."
The girl winced for a flash at the unpleasant word, but Syme was
too hot to heed her.
"It is things going right," he cried, "that is
poetical! Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently
right, that is the foundation of all poetry. Yes, the most poetical
thing, more poetical than the flowers, more poetical than the
stars—the most poetical thing in the world is not being sick."
"Really," said Gregory superciliously, "the
examples you choose—"
"I beg your pardon," said Syme grimly, "I forgot we
had abolished all conventions."
For the first time a red patch appeared on Gregory's forehead.
"You don't expect me," he said, "to revolutionise
society on this lawn?"
Syme looked straight into his eyes and smiled sweetly.
"No, I don't," he said; "but I suppose that if you
were serious about your anarchism, that is exactly what you would
do."
Gregory's big bull's eyes blinked suddenly like those of an angry
lion, and one could almost fancy that his red mane rose.
"Don't you think, then," he said in a dangerous voice,
"that I am serious about my anarchism?"
"I beg your pardon?" said Syme.
"Am I not serious about my anarchism?" cried Gregory,
with knotted fists.
"My dear fellow!" said Syme, and strolled away.
With surprise, but with a curious pleasure, he found Rosamond
Gregory still in his company.
"Mr. Syme," she said, "do the people who talk like
you and my brother often mean what they say? Do you mean what you say
now?"
Syme smiled.
"Do you?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" asked the girl, with grave eyes.
"My dear Miss Gregory," said Syme gently, "there
are many kinds of sincerity and insincerity. When you say 'thank you'
for the salt, do you mean what you say? No. When you say 'the world
is round,' do you mean what you say? No. It is true, but you don't
mean it. Now, sometimes a man like your brother really finds a thing
he does mean. It may be only a half-truth, quarter-truth,
tenth-truth; but then he says more than he means—from sheer force
of meaning it."
She was looking at him from under level brows; her face was grave
and open, and there had fallen upon it the shadow of that unreasoning
responsibility which is at the bottom of the most frivolous woman,
the maternal watch which is as old as the world.
"Is he really an anarchist, then?" she asked.
"Only in that sense I speak of," replied Syme; "or
if you prefer it, in that nonsense."
She drew her broad brows together and said abruptly—
"He wouldn't really use—bombs or that sort of thing?"
Syme broke into a great laugh, that seemed too large for his
slight and somewhat dandified figure.
"Good Lord, no!" he said, "that has to be done
anonymously."
And at that the corners of her own mouth broke into a smile, and
she thought with a simultaneous pleasure of Gregory's absurdity and
of his safety.
Syme strolled with her to a seat in the corner of the garden, and
continued to pour out his opinions. For he was a sincere man, and in
spite of his superficial airs and graces, at root a humble one. And
it is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches
himself too closely. He defended respectability with violence and
exaggeration. He grew passionate in his praise of tidiness and
propriety. All the time there was a smell of lilac all round him.
Once he heard very faintly in some distant street a barrel-organ
begin to play, and it seemed to him that his heroic words were moving
to a tiny tune from under or beyond the world.
He stared and talked at the girl's red hair and amused face for
what seemed to be a few minutes; and then, feeling that the groups in
such a place should mix, rose to his feet. To his astonishment, he
discovered the whole garden empty. Everyone had gone long ago, and he
went himself with a rather hurried apology. He left with a sense of
champagne in his head, which he could not afterwards explain. In the
wild events which were to follow this girl had no part at all; he
never saw her again until all his tale was over. And yet, in some
indescribable way, she kept recurring like a motive in music through
all his mad adventures afterwards, and the glory of her strange hair
ran like a red thread through those dark and ill-drawn tapestries of
the night. For what followed was so improbable, that it might well
have been a dream.
When Syme went out into the starlit street, he found it for the
moment empty. Then he realised (in some odd way) that the silence was
rather a living silence than a dead one. Directly outside the door
stood a street lamp, whose gleam gilded the leaves of the tree that
bent out over the fence behind him. About a foot from the lamp-post
stood a figure almost as rigid and motionless as the lamp-post
itself. The tall hat and long frock coat were black; the face, in an
abrupt shadow, was almost as dark. Only a fringe of fiery hair
against the light, and also something aggressive in the attitude,
proclaimed that it was the poet Gregory. He had something of the look
of a masked bravo waiting sword in hand for his foe.
He made a sort of doubtful salute, which Syme somewhat more
formally returned.
"I was waiting for you," said Gregory. "Might I
have a moment's conversation?"
"Certainly. About what?" asked Syme in a sort of weak
wonder.
Gregory struck out with his stick at the lamp-post, and then at
the tree. "About this and this," he cried; "about
order and anarchy. There is your precious order, that lean, iron
lamp, ugly and barren; and there is anarchy, rich, living,
reproducing itself—there is anarchy, splendid in green and gold."
"All the same," replied Syme patiently, "just at
present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when
you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree." Then
after a pause he said, "But may I ask if you have been standing
out here in the dark only to resume our little argument?"
"No," cried out Gregory, in a voice that rang down the
street, "I did not stand here to resume our argument, but to end
it for ever."
The silence fell again, and Syme, though he understood nothing,
listened instinctively for something serious. Gregory began in a
smooth voice and with a rather bewildering smile.
"Mr. Syme," he said, "this evening you succeeded in
doing something rather remarkable. You did something to me that no
man born of woman has ever succeeded in doing before."
"Indeed!"
"Now I remember," resumed Gregory reflectively, "one
other person succeeded in doing it. The captain of a penny steamer
(if I remember correctly) at Southend. You have irritated me."
"I am very sorry," replied Syme with gravity.
"I am afraid my fury and your insult are too shocking to be
wiped out even with an apology," said Gregory very calmly. "No
duel could wipe it out. If I struck you dead I could not wipe it out.
There is only one way by which that insult can be erased, and that
way I choose. I am going, at the possible sacrifice of my life and
honour, to prove to you that you were wrong in what you said."
"In what I said?"
"You said I was not serious about being an anarchist."
"There are degrees of seriousness," replied Syme. "I
have never doubted that you were perfectly sincere in this sense,
that you thought what you said well worth saying, that you thought a
paradox might wake men up to a neglected truth."
Gregory stared at him steadily and painfully.
"And in no other sense," he asked, "you think me
serious? You think me a flaneur who lets fall occasional truths. You
do not think that in a deeper, a more deadly sense, I am serious."
Syme struck his stick violently on the stones of the road.
"Serious!" he cried. "Good Lord! is this street
serious? Are these damned Chinese lanterns serious? Is the whole
caboodle serious? One comes here and talks a pack of bosh, and
perhaps some sense as well, but I should think very little of a man
who didn't keep something in the background of his life that was more
serious than all this talking—something more serious, whether it
was religion or only drink."
"Very well," said Gregory, his face darkening, "you
shall see something more serious than either drink or religion."
Syme stood waiting with his usual air of mildness until Gregory
again opened his lips.
"You spoke just now of having a religion. Is it really true
that you have one?"
"Oh," said Syme with a beaming smile, "we are all
Catholics now."
"Then may I ask you to swear by whatever gods or saints your
religion involves that you will not reveal what I am now going to
tell you to any son of Adam, and especially not to the police? Will
you swear that! If you will take upon yourself this awful abnegations
if you will consent to burden your soul with a vow that you should
never make and a knowledge you should never dream about, I will
promise you in return—"
"You will promise me in return?" inquired Syme, as the
other paused.
"I will promise you a very entertaining evening." Syme
suddenly took off his hat.
"Your offer," he said, "is far too idiotic to be
declined. You say that a poet is always an anarchist. I disagree; but
I hope at least that he is always a sportsman. Permit me, here and
now, to swear as a Christian, and promise as a good comrade and a
fellow-artist, that I will not report anything of this, whatever it
is, to the police. And now, in the name of Colney Hatch, what is it?"
"I think," said Gregory, with placid irrelevancy, "that
we will call a cab."
He gave two long whistles, and a hansom came rattling down the
road. The two got into it in silence. Gregory gave through the trap
the address of an obscure public-house on the Chiswick bank of the
river. The cab whisked itself away again, and in it these two
fantastics quitted their fantastic town.