Born in Exile (18 page)

Two days later came a note from Staple Inn, inviting him to meet
Malkin the next evening. By this time he had made a beginning of
his critical essay, and the exordium so far satisfied him that he
was tempted to take it for Earwaker's judgment. But no; better his
friend should see the thing when it was complete.

About eight o'clock he reached the journalist's chambers. Malkin
had not yet arrived. Peak amused himself with examining certain
tropical products which the traveller had recently cast pell-mell
into his friend's sitting-room. Then sounded a knock at the door,
but it was not such as would have heralded the expected man.

'A telegram,' observed Earwaker, and went to take it in.

He returned with hoarse sounds of mirth.

'Our friend excuses himself. Read this characteristic
despatch.'

Peak saw with surprise that the telegram far exceeded familiar
dimensions. 'Unspeakably grieved,' it began. 'Cannot possibly with
you. At moment's notice undertaken escort two poor girls Rouen. Not
even time look in apologise. Go via Dieppe and leave Victoria few
minutes. Hope be back Thursday. Express sincerest regret Mr. Peak.
Lament appearance discourtesy. Will apologise personally. Common
humanity constrains go Rouen. Will explain Thursday. No time add
another word. Rush tickets train.'

'There you have the man!' cried Earwaker. 'How do you class such
a mind as that? Ten to one this is some Quixotic obligation he has
laid upon himself, and probably he has gone without even a
handbag.'

'Vocally delivered,' said Peak, 'this would represent a certain
stage of drunkenness. I suppose it isn't open to such an
explanation?'

'Malkin never was intoxicated, save with his own vivacity.'

They discussed the singular being with good-natured mirth, then
turned by degrees to other topics.

'I have just come across a passage that will delight you,' said
Earwaker, taking up a book. 'Perhaps you know it.'

He read from Sir Thomas Brown's
Pscudodoxia Epidemica
.
'"Men's names should not only distinguish them. A man should be
something that all men are not, and individual in somewhat beside
his proper name. Thus, while it exceeds not the bound of reason and
modesty, we cannot condemn singularity.
Nos numerus sumus
is
the motto of the multitude, and for that reason are they
fools."'

Peak laughed his approval.

'It astonishes me,' he said, lighting his pipe, 'that you can go
on writing for this Sunday rag, when you have just as little
sympathy with its aims as I have. Do get into some less offensive
connection.'

'What paper would you recommend?' asked the other, with his
significant smile.

'Why need you journalise at all?'

'On the whole, I like it. And remember, to admit that the
multitude are fools is not the same thing as to deny the
possibility of progress.'

'Do you really believe yourself a democrat, Earwaker?'

'M—m—m! Well, yes, I believe the democratic spirit is stronger
in me than any other.'

Peak mused for a minute, then suddenly looked up.

'And what am I?'

'I am glad nothing much depends on my successfully defining
you.'

They laughed together.

'I suppose,' said Godwin, 'you can't call a man a democrat who
recognises in his heart and soul a true distinction of social
classes. Social, mark. The division I instinctively support is by
no means intellectual. The well-born fool is very often more sure
of my respect than the working man who struggles to a fair measure
of education.'

Earwaker would have liked to comment on this with remarks
personal to the speaker, but he feared to do so. His silence,
however, was eloquent to Peak, who resumed brusquely.

'I am not myself well-born,—though if my parents could have come
into wealth early in their lives, perhaps I might reasonably have
called myself so. All sorts of arguments can be brought against my
prejudice, but the prejudice is ineradicable. I respect hereditary
social standing, independently of the individual's qualities.
There's nothing of the flunkey in this, or I greatly deceive
myself. Birth in a sphere of refinement is desirable and
respectable; it saves one, absolutely, from many forms of
coarseness. The masses are not only fools, but very near the
brutes. Yes, they can send forth fine individuals—but remain base.
I don't deny the possibility of social advance; I only say that at
present the lower classes are always disagreeable, often repulsive,
sometimes hateful.'

'I could apply that to the classes above them.'

'Well, I can't. But I am quite ready to admit that there are all
sorts of inconsistencies in me. Now, the other day I was reading
Burns, and I couldn't describe what exaltation all at once
possessed me in the thought that a ploughman had so glorified a
servant-girl that together they shine in the highest heaven, far
above all the monarchs of earth. This came upon me with a rush—a
very rare emotion. Wasn't that democratic?'

He inquired dubiously, and Earwaker for a moment had no reply
but his familiar 'M—m—m!'

'No, it was not democratic,' the journalist decided at length;
'it was pride of intellect.'

'Think so? Then look here. If it happens that a whining wretch
stops me in the street to beg, what do you suppose is my feeling? I
am ashamed in the sense of my own prosperity. I can't look him in
the face. If I yielded to my natural impulse, I should cry out,
"Strike me! spit at me! show you hate me!—anything but that
terrible humiliation of yourself before me!" That's how I feel. The
abasement of which
he
isn't sensible affects
me
on
his behalf. I give money with what delicacy I can. If I am obliged
to refuse, I mutter apologies and hurry away with burning cheeks.
What does that mean?'

Earwaker regarded him curiously.

'That is mere fineness of humanity.'

'Perhaps moral weakness?'

'I don't care for the scalpel of the pessimist. Let us give it
the better name.'

Peak had never been so communicative. His progress in
composition these last evenings seemed to have raised his spirits
and spurred the activity of his mind. With a look of pleasure he
pursued his self-analysis.

'Special antipathies—sometimes explicable enough—influence me
very widely. Now, I by no means hate all orders of uneducated
people. A hedger, a fisherman, a country mason,—people of that kind
I rather like to talk with. I could live a good deal with them. But
the London vulgar I abominate, root and branch. The mere sound of
their voices nauseates me; their vilely grotesque accent and
pronunciation—bah! I could write a paper to show that they are
essentially the basest of English mortals. Unhappily, I know so
much about them. If I saw the probability of my dying in a London
lodging-house, I would go out into the sweet-scented fields and
there kill myself.'

Earwaker understood much by this avowal, and wondered whether
his friend desired him so to do.

'Well, I can't say that I have any affection for the race,' he
replied. 'I certainly believe that, socially and politically, there
is less hope of them than of the lower orders in any other part of
England.'

'They are damned by the beastly conditions of their life!' cried
Godwin, excitedly. 'I don't mean only the slum-denizens. All, all
Hammersmith as much as St. George's-in-the-East. I must write about
this; I must indeed.'

'Do by all means. Nothing would benefit you more than to get
your soul into print.'

Peak delayed a little, then:

'Well, I am doing something at last.'

And he gave an account of his projected essay. By this time his
hands trembled with nervous agitation, and occasionally a dryness
of the palate half choked his voice.

'This may do very well,' opined Earwaker. 'I suppose you will
try
The Critical
?'

'Yes. But have I any chance? Can a perfectly unknown man hope to
get in?'

They debated this aspect of the matter. Seeing Peak had laid
down his pipe, the journalist offered him tobacco.

'Thanks; I can't smoke just yet. It's my misfortune that I can't
talk earnestly without throwing my body into disorder.'

'How stolid I am in comparison!' said Earwaker.

'That book of M'Naughten's,' resumed the other, going back to
his subject. 'I suppose the clergy accept it?'

'Largely, I believe.'

Peak mused.

'Now, if I were a clergyman'—

But his eye met Earwaker's, and they broke into laughter.

'Why not?' pursued Godwin. 'Did I ever tell you that my people
originally wished to make a parson of me? Of course I resisted
tooth and nail, but it seems to me now that I was rather foolish in
doing so. I wish I
had
been a parson. In many ways the
position would have suited me very well.'

'M—m—m!'

'I am quite serious. Well, if I were so placed, I should preach
Church dogma, pure and simple. I would have nothing to do with
these reconciliations. I would stand firm as Jeremy Taylor; and in
consequence should have an immense and enthusiastic
congregation.'

'I daresay.'

'Depend upon it, let the dogmas do what they still can. There's
a vast police force in them, at all events. A man may very strongly
defend himself for preaching them.'

The pursuit of this argument led Earwaker to ask:

'What proportion of the clergy can still take that standing in
stolid conscientiousness?'

'What proportion are convinced that it is untenable?' returned
Peak.

'Many wilfully shut their eyes to the truth.'

'No, they don't shut their eyes!' cried Godwin. 'They merely
lower a nictitating membrane which permits them to gaze at light
without feeling its full impact.'

'I recommend you to bring that into your paper,' said the
journalist, with his deep chuckle.

An hour later they were conversing with no less animation, but
the talk was not so critical. Christian Moxey had come up as a
topic, and Earwaker was saying that he found it difficult to divine
the man's personality.

'You won't easily do that,' replied Peak, 'until you know more
of his story. I can't see that I am bound to secrecy—at all events
with you. Poor Moxey imagines that he is in love, and the fancy has
lasted about ten years.

'Ten years?'

'When I first knew him he was paying obvious attentions to a
rather plain cousin down at Twybridge. Why, I don't know, for he
certainly was devoted to a girl here in London. All he has
confessed to me is that he had given up hopes of her, but that a
letter of some sort or other revived them, and he hastened back to
town. He might as well have stayed away; the girl very soon married
another man. Less than a year later she had bitterly repented this,
and in some way or other she allowed Moxey to know it. Since then
they have been Platonic lovers—nothing more, I am convinced. They
see each other about once in six months, and presumably live on a
hope that the obnoxious husband may decease. I only know the woman
as "Constance"; never saw her.'

'So that's Moxey? I begin to understand better.'

'Admirable fellow, but deplorably weak. I have an affection for
him, and have had from our first meeting.'

'Women!' mused Earwaker, and shook his head.

'You despise them?'

'On the whole, I'm afraid so.'

'Yes, but
what
women?' cried the other with impatience.
'It would be just as reasonable to say that you despise men. Can't
you see that?'

'I doubt it.'

'Now look here; the stock objections to women are traditional.
They take no account of the vast change that is coming about.
Because women were once empty-headed, it is assumed they are all
still so
en masse
. The defect of the female mind? It is my
belief that this is nothing more nor less than the defect of the
uneducated human mind. I believe most men among the brutally
ignorant exhibit the very faults which are cried out upon as
exclusively feminine. A woman has hitherto been an ignorant human
being; that explains everything.'

'Not everything; something, perhaps. Remember your evolutionism.
The preservation of the race demands in women many kinds of
irrationality, of obstinate instinct, which enrage a reasoning man.
Don't suppose I speak theoretically. Four or five years ago I had
really made up my mind to marry; I wasted much valuable time among
women and girls, of anything but low social standing. But my
passions were choked by my logical faculty. I foresaw a terrible
possibility—that I might beat my wife. One thing I learned with
certainty was that the woman,
qua
woman, hates abstract
thought—hates it. Moreover (and of consequence) she despises every
ambition that has not a material end.'

He enlarged upon the subject, followed it into all its
ramifications, elaborated the inconsistencies with which it is
rife. Peak's reply was deliberate.

'Admitting that some of these faults are rooted in sex, I should
only find them intolerable when their expression took a vulgar
form. Between irrationality and coarseness of mind there is an
enormous distinction.'

'With coarse minds I have nothing to do.'

'Forgive me if I ask you a blunt question,' said Peak, after
hesitating. 'Have you ever associated with women of the highest
refinement?'

Earwaker laughed.

'I don't know what that phrase means. It sounds rather odd on
your lips.'

'Well, women of the highest class of commoners. With peeresses
we needn't concern ourselves.'

'You imagine that social precedence makes all that difference in
women?'

'Yes, I do. The daughter of a county family is a finer being
than any girl who can spring from the nomad orders.'

'Even supposing your nomads produce a Rachel or a Charlotte
Brontee?'