William—An Englishman

I

William Tully was a little over three-and-twenty when he emerged from the chrysalis stage of his clerkdom and became a Social Reformer. His life and doings until the age of twenty-three, had given small promise of the distinction of his future career; from a mild-mannered, pale-faced and undersized boy he had developed into a mild-mannered, pale-faced little adult standing five-foot-five in his boots. Educated at a small private school in the suburbs of London, his record for conduct was practically spotless and he once took a prize for Divinity; further, to the surprise and relief of his preceptors, he managed to scrape through the Senior Cambridge Local Examination before he was transferred to a desk in the office of a London insurance company. His preceptor-in-chief, in a neatly-written certificate, assured his future employers that they would find him painstaking and obedient—and William, for the first six years of his engagement, lived up to the character given him. His mother, a sharp-eyed, masterful woman, had brought him up to be painstaking and obedient; it might be said with truth that as long as she lived he did not know how to be otherwise. It is true he disliked his office superiors vaguely, for the restrictions they placed upon his wishes—just as, for the same reason, he vaguely disliked his mother; but his wishes being indeterminate and his ambition nonexistent, his vague dislike never stiffened into active resentment.

It would seem that the supreme effort of passing his Cambridge Local had left him mentally exhausted for a season; at any rate, from the conclusion of his schooldays till he made the acquaintance of Faraday, his reading was practically confined to romantic and humorous literature. He was a regular patron of the fiction department of the municipal lending library and did not disdain to spend modestly on periodicals of the type of Snappy Bits. He was unable to spend more than modestly because his earnings, with the exception of a small sum for fares and pocket-money, were annexed by his mother each Saturday as a matter of normal routine. The manner of her annexation made discussion singularly difficult; and if William ever felt stirrings of rebellion over the weekly cash delivery he was careful never to betray them.

With his colleagues of the office Tully was a negligible quantity. He was not unpopular—it was merely that he did not matter. His mother’s control of the family funds was no doubt in part accountable for his comrades’ neglect of his society; but his own habits and manners were still more largely to blame, since besides being painstaking and obedient he was unobtrusive and diffident. There was once a project on foot in the office to take him out and make him drunk—but nothing came of it because no one was sufficiently interested in William to give up an evening to the job.

The crisis in his hitherto well-ordered life came when his mother died suddenly. This was in October 1910. William had gone to the office as usual that morning, leaving his mother apparently in her usual health; he returned in the evening to blinds already drawn down. A neighbour (female) was in waiting in the sitting-room and broke the great news with a sense of its importance and her own; she took William’s hand, told him with sniffs that it was the will of the Lord, and entered into clinical details. William sat down rather suddenly when he realized that there would be no one in future to annex his weekly earnings; then, shocked by his lack of filial feeling, he endeavoured to produce an emotion more suited to the solemn occasion. Disconcerted by a want of success which he feared was apparent to his audience, he fidgeted, dry-eyed and awkward—and finally, all things considered, acted well and wisely by demanding to be left alone. To his relief the demand was accepted as reasonable and proper in the first moments of his grief; the sympathizer withdrew, wiping her eyes—unnecessarily—and hoping that God would support him. He locked the door stealthily and stared at his mother’s armchair; he was a little afraid of its emptiness, he was also shocked and excited. He knew instinctively that more was to happen, that life from now on would be something new and different. … The armchair was empty; the masterful little woman who had borne him, slapped him, managed him and cowed him—the masterful little woman was dead! There was no one now to whom he was accountable; no one of whom he was afraid. … He walked on tiptoe round the tiny room, feeling strangely and pleasantly alive.

The next day increased the sense of his newfound importance; his mother had died rich, as he and she understood riches. She had trusted her son in nothing, not even with the knowledge of her income, and after the stinting and scraping to which she had accustomed him he was amazed to find himself master of a hundred and fifty pounds a year, the interest on capital gradually and carefully invested. In his amazement—at first incredulous—he trod on air, while his mind wandered hazily over the glorious possibilities of opulent years to come; the only alloy in his otherwise supreme content being the necessity for preserving (at least until the funeral was over) a decent appearance of dejection. He felt, too, the need of a friend in whom to confide, someone of his own age and standing before whom it would not be needful to keep up the appearance of dejection and who would not be shocked at the babblings of his stirred and exultant soul; and it was this natural longing for a confidant which, on the day following his mother’s funeral, led to the beginning of his friendship with his fellow-clerk, Faraday.

The head of his department, meeting him in the passage, had said a few perfunctory and conventional words of condolence—whereto William had muttered a sheepish “Thank you, sir,” and escaped as soon as might be. The familiar office after his four days’ estrangement from it affected him curiously and unpleasantly; he felt his newly-acquired sense of importance slipping gradually away from him, felt himself becoming once again the underling and creature of routine—the William Tully, obedient and painstaking, who had earned from his childhood the favourable contempt of his superiors. It was borne in on him as the hours went by that it was not enough to accept good fortune—good fortune had to be made use of; and he began to make plans in an irregular, tentative fashion, biting the end of his pen and neglecting his work. Should he chuck the office? and if he chucked it, what then? … Here imagination failed him; his life had been so ordered, so bound down and directed by others, that even his desires were tamed to the wishes of others and left to himself he could not tell what he desired. The need for sympathy and guidance became imperative; driving him, when the other occupants of the room had departed for lunch, to unbosom himself to Faraday.

In his longing to talk he would have addressed himself almost to anyone; but on the whole, and in spite of an entire ignorance of his habits and character, he was glad it was Faraday who was left behind to hear him—a newcomer, recently transferred from another branch and, as William realized (if only half-consciously) like himself regarded by their fellow-clerks as a bit of an outsider. A sallow-faced young man, dark-haired and with large hazel eyes, he was neatly garbed as became an insurance clerk; but there was a suggestion of discomfort about his conventional neatness, just as there was a suggestion of effort about his personal cleanliness. He worked hard and steadily; taking no part in the interludes of blithesome chat wherewith his companions enlivened their hours of toil and appearing to be satisfied rather than annoyed by the knowledge of his own isolation. He had spoken to William but two or three times and always in the way of business—nor was his profile bent over a ledger particularly suggestive of sympathy; William’s emotions, however, had reached exploding-point, and the door had hardly closed behind the last of their fellows when he blurted out, “I say,” and Faraday raised his head.

“I say,” William blurted again, “did you know—my mother’s dead?”

“Ah—yes,” said Faraday uncomfortably; he believed he was being appealed to for sympathy, and fidgeted, clearing his throat; “I—I had heard it mentioned. I needn’t say I’m very sorry—extremely. … I suppose you were very much attached to her?”

William reflected for a moment and then answered honestly, “No.”

“Indeed!” Faraday returned, surprised as well as uncomfortable. Not knowing what further to say, his eyes went back to the ledger and the conversation languished. It was William who resumed it—wondering at the difficulty of expressing his bubbling emotions.

“I don’t mean to say,” he explained with a twinge of remorse, “that I had anything to complain of. My mother always did her duty by me. But we weren’t what you might call sympathetic.”

“Indeed!” Faraday repeated—still at sea as to the motive of the conversation.

“It was unfortunate,” William went on, “but it couldn’t be helped. I am sure she was a very good woman.” (He said this with the more confidence because, from his childhood up, he had always associated goodness with lack of amiability.) “But that wasn’t what I wanted to say. What I wanted to say was, she has left me a good deal of money.”

“Indeed?” said Faraday for the third time; adding something about “congratulation.” He hoped the episode was over—but William was only beginning.

“I’ve been wondering,” he said, “what I should do—now that I’m independent. I don’t want to go on like this. It’s a waste—when you’ve got money. But I don’t know how to set about things. … If someone would put me in the way!”

Faraday, raising his eyes from the ledger, met the wistful appeal in William’s and imagined himself enlightened.

“I see,” he said interrogatively; “then you haven’t got your living to earn—you are not tied here any longer? You can direct your own life and take up any line you choose?”

“Yes,” William assented, pleased with the phrase; “I can direct my own life—certainly.”

“Which,” Faraday suggested, “was difficult for you before?”

“Very,” said William emphatically.

“And,” the other went on, “now that you are your own man you wish to take the line that attracts you and be of some use?”

“Oh, certainly,” William assented again—perhaps a shade less emphatically. So far his ideas had run more upon pleasure than usefulness.

Faraday reflected with his chin resting on his hand.

“Why have you asked me?” he demanded suddenly—with the accent strongly on the “me.”

“I know so few people,” William explained humbly. “I mean, of course, people who could give me any ideas. … I thought you wouldn’t mind—at least I hoped you wouldn’t. … I know it’s unusual—but if you could help me in any way? … With suggestions, you know.”

Again Faraday reflected with his chin resting on his hand.

“I could put you,” he said at last, “in touch with people who might help you. I should be very pleased to do so. … Of course, I should like to know more of you first—what your views are—”

“Of course,” William agreed vaguely, puzzled partly by the words and partly by the enigmatic manner.

“If you’ve nothing else to do,” Faraday continued, “perhaps you’ll come round to my rooms tonight for a talk? Say at half-past eight. We could discuss things more comfortably there.”

William, still puzzled by the hint of mystery in his manner, murmured that he also should be very pleased, and Faraday gave him the address—returning forthwith to his ledger in sign that he considered the incident closed for the present. He had a distinctly authoritative way with him, and William, who would gladly have continued the subject, had perforce to be content with wondering what the night’s discussion and exchange of “views” would bring forth; an evening spent away from home was so rare an event in his life that the prospect of his visit to Faraday’s rooms afforded him food for an afternoon’s busy speculation. His own domicile being in the region of Camberwell, he did not return to it after office hours but whiled away the time by dinner at an Oxford Street Lyons—secretly glorying in the length of his bill and contrasting his power of spending what he liked with the old days of doled-out allowance. He rang down a sovereign at the pay-desk, gathered up his change and strolled out of the building with an air—and at half-past eight precisely found himself outside Faraday’s lodgings in a mournful side-street in Bloomsbury. A shabby maidservant ushered him upstairs to a shabby, paper-strewn room where Faraday, pipe in mouth, rose to greet him.

They were not long in finding out that the invitation had been given and accepted under a misapprehension on both sides. Faraday, as soon as he had settled his guest in a chair, came straight to the point with “Now tell me—how long have you been interested in social questions?”

“In social questions?” William repeated blankly. “I’m afraid I don’t—What sort of questions do you mean?”

It was Faraday’s turn to be taken aback, and, though he did not say it, his eyes looked. “Then what the devil—?” William’s fell before them nervously, and he shifted in his chair like a child detected in a blunder.

“I’m afraid I don’t—” he said again—and halted.

“Then you didn’t know,” his companion queried, “that I am ‘Vindex’ of The Torch?”

“I’m afraid not,” muttered William, who had heard neither of one nor the other.

“Vindex” of The Torch sighed inwardly. He was young, ambitious, fiercely in earnest and ever on the lookout for his Chance; and, the wish being father to the thought, he had momentarily mistaken William for an embodiment of his Chance and dreamed dreams since the morning—dreams of a comrade like-minded and willing to be led, whose newly-inherited riches might be used to endow a periodical that should preach a purer and more violent rebellion even than The Torch itself. With the aid of William’s three pounds a week—magnified many times over in the eyes of his eager mind—he had seen himself casting the hated insurance behind him and devoting himself heart and pen to the regeneration of the State and Race by means of the Class War. And lo!—as a couple more searching questions revealed to him—in place of a patron and comrade was a nervous little nincompoop, bewildered at finding himself for the first time out of leading-strings, to whom a hundred and fifty a year was wealth untold and who had never so much as heard of the Class War! For a moment he was more than half inclined to be angry with the nervous little nincompoop whose blundering, egoistic attempt at confidence had induced him to believe that the secret of his identity had been penetrated by an ardent sympathizer. (It was an open secret in “advanced” circles, though carefully guarded in the office.) Then, more justly, he softened, recognizing that the blunder was his own, the mistake of his own making—and, pitying William’s dropped jaw and open confusion, poured him out a whisky and endeavoured to set him at his ease.

That evening in the company of Faraday and his first whisky was the turning-point in the career of William Tully. Any man stronger than himself could at that juncture in his life have turned him to right or left; a push in the wrong direction would have made of him an idler and a wastrel, and fate was in a kindly mood when she placed him mentally and morally in charge of “Vindex” of The Torch. She might, as her reckless way is, have handed over his little soul to some flamboyant rogue or expert in small vices; instead, she laid it in the keeping of a man who was clean-living, charged with unselfish enthusiasm and never consciously dishonest. The product of a Board School Scholarship and a fiercely energetic process of self-education (prompted in part by the desire to excel those he despised) Faraday, when William made his acquaintance, was beginning to realize some of his cherished ambitions, beginning, in certain Labour and Socialist circles, to be treated as a man of mark. His pen was fluent as well as sarcastic, and if his numerous contributions to the “rebel” press had been paid for at ordinary rates he would have been a prosperous journalist.

It was somewhat of a shock to William to discover on the top of the whisky that his new acquaintance was a Socialist; but after the first and momentary shock he swallowed the fact as he had swallowed the alcohol—not because he liked it, but because it was something the narrow circle of his mother’s friends would have heartily and loudly disapproved of. This reactionary and undutiful attitude of mind was not deliberate or conscious; on the contrary, he would certainly have been horrified to learn that it was the dominant factor in his existence during the first few weeks of his emancipation from maternal supervision and control—urging him to drink deeply of Faraday’s brand of Socialism as it urged him to partake with unnecessary sumptuousness of the best that Lyons could provide.

He acquired the taste for Faraday’s political views more thoroughly and easily than the taste for Faraday’s whisky. The man’s authoritative and easy manner, the manner which stood him in good stead with his audiences, of assuming (quite honestly) that his statements were proven facts which no sane human being could dispute, would have made it impossible for William to combat his opinions even had his limited reading and thinking supplied him with material for the contest. He was impressed with Faraday’s erudition no less than with Faraday’s manner; and impressed still more when, later in the evening, a colleague of The Torch dropped in for a smoke and a chat. The pair talked Labour and International movements with the careless ease of connoisseurs and bandied the names of politicians contemptuously from mouth to mouth—William sitting by in a silence dazed and awed, drinking in a language that attracted by its wild incomprehensibility and suggestion. His mind was blank and virgin for the sowing of any seed; and under Faraday’s influence his dull, half-torpid resentment against the restrictions, physical and mental, of his hitherto narrow life became merged in a wider sympathy with the general discomfort, in an honest and fiery little passion for Justice, Right and Progress. That, of course, was not the affair of one evening’s talk; but even the one evening’s talk sowed the seeds. He went away from it uncomfortably conscious that as yet he had lived solely for himself, never troubling his head concerning the evils that men like Faraday were fighting to overcome. The manner of his future living was decided for him when he knocked at the door of Faraday’s Bloomsbury lodging.

His simple and awed admiration for his newfound friend and faith had in all probability more than a little to do with Faraday’s readiness to allow the acquaintance to continue—even a rebel prophet is not insensible to flattery. William became for a time his satellite and pupil, the admiring sharer of his schemes, of his hatreds and laudable ambitions; he read Faraday’s vehement articles and accepted each word and line. His very blankness of mind made him an apt pupil, and within a month of his mother’s death he was living, out of office hours, in a whirl of semipolitical agitation, attending meetings and cramming his head with pamphlets. In three months more all his hours were out-of-office hours; in his enthusiasm for his new creed and interests his neglect of his professional duties had become so marked that the manager, after one or two warnings, called him into his room for a solemn and last reprimand. As it happened, Faraday, the night before, had confided to William the news of his approaching appointment to the post of organizing secretary of the Independent Socialist Party, an appointment which would entail a speedy retirement from his hated desk in the City. The news, naturally, had not increased the attraction of the office for William, in whom the spirit of revolt had already fermented to some purpose; thus, to the infinite surprise of his superiors, who had known him hitherto as the meekest of meek little clerks, the threat of dismissal failing improvement was countered by a prompt resignation as truculent as William could make it. In fact, in the exhilaration of the moment, he treated the astonished representative of capitalism to something in the nature of a speech—culled principally from the writings of “Vindex.”

From that day onwards he devoted himself to what he termed public life—a ferment of protestation and grievance; sometimes genuine, sometimes manufactured or, at least, artificially heightened. He was an extremist, passionately well-intentioned and with all the extremist’s contempt for those who balance, see difficulties and strive to give the other side its due. He began by haunting meetings as a listener and a steward; Faraday’s meetings at first, then, as his circle of acquaintance and interest widened, any sort of demonstration that promised a sufficiency of excitement in the form of invective. The gentlest of creatures by nature and in private life, he grew to delight in denunciation, and under its ceaseless influence the world divided itself into two well-marked camps; the good and enlightened who agreed with him, and the fools and miscreants who did not. … In short, he became a politician.

As I have said, at the outset of his career he modestly confined his energies to stewarding—to the sale of what propagandist bodies insist on describing as “literature,” the taking of tickets, ushering to seats and the like; but in a short time ambition fired him and the fighting spirit thereby engendered led him to opposition meetings where, on Faraday’s advice, he tried heckling the enemy speakers. His first and flustered attempts were not over-successful, but, sustained by revolutionary enthusiasm, he refused to be crushed by failure and accompanying jeers and held doggedly on to his purpose. Repeated efforts brought their measure of success, and he began to be marked by his comrades as a willing and valuable member.

Within a year, he had found his feet and was a busy and full-blown speaker—of the species that can be relied on to turn on, at any moment, a glib, excited stream of partisan fact and sentiment. His services were in constant demand, since he spoke for anything and everything—provided only the promoters of the meeting were sufficiently violent in their efforts to upset the prevailing order. He had developed and was pleased with himself; Faraday, though still a great man in his eyes, was more of an equal than an idol. He was wonderfully happy in his new, unrestful existence; it was not only that he knew he was doing great good and that applause uplifted him and went to his head like wine; as a member of an organization and swayed by its collective passion, he attained to, and was conscious of, an emotional (and, as he thought, intellectual) activity of which as an individual he would have been entirely incapable. As a deceased statesman was intoxicated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, so William was intoxicated with the exuberance of his own emotions. There were moments when he looked back on his old life and could hardly believe he was the same William Tully who once, without thought of the Social Revolution, went daily from Camberwell to the City and back from the City to Camberwell. … As time went on, he was entrusted with “campaigns” and the stirring up of revolt; and it was a proud day for him when a Conservative evening paper, in connection with his share in a mining agitation, referred to him as a dangerous man. He wondered, with pity for her blindness, what his mother would have thought if anyone had told her in her lifetime that her son would turn out dangerous.

As a matter of course he was a supporter of votes for women; an adherent (equally as a matter of course) of the movement in its noisiest and most intolerant form. He signed petitions denouncing forcible feeding and attended meetings advocating civil war, where the civil warriors complained with bitterness that the other side had hit them back; and his contempt for the less virulent form of suffragist was as great as his contempt for the Home Secretary and the orthodox members of the Labour Party. It was at one of these meetings, in December 1913, that he met Griselda Watkins.

Griselda Watkins, then a little under twenty-five, was his exact counterpart in petticoats; a piece of blank-minded, suburban young-womanhood caught into the militant suffrage movement and enjoying herself therein. She was inclined to plumpness, had a fresh complexion, a mouth slightly ajar and suggestive of adenoids, and the satisfied expression which comes from a spirit at rest. Like William, she had found peace of mind and perennial interest in the hearty denunciation of those who did not agree with her.

On the night when William first saw her she wore, as a steward, a white dress, a sash with the colours of her association and a badge denoting that she had suffered for the Cause in Holloway. Her manner was eminently self-conscious and assured, but at the same time almost ostentatiously gracious and womanly; it was the policy of her particular branch of the suffrage movement to repress manifestations of the masculine type in its members and encourage fluffiness of garb and appeal of manner. Griselda, who had a natural weakness for cheap finery, was a warm adherent of the policy, went out window-smashing in a picture-hat and cultivated ladylike charm.

She introduced herself to William after the meeting with a compliment on his speech, which had been fiery enough even for her; they both considered the compliment graceful and for a few minutes exchanged sympathetic platitudes on martyrdom, civil war and the scoundrelly behaviour of the Government. Even in those first few minutes they were conscious of attraction for each other and pleased to discover, in the course of their talk, that they should meet again next week on another militant platform.

They met and re-met—at first only on platforms, afterwards more privately and pleasantly. William, when his own meetings did not claim him, took to following Griselda about to hers, that he might listen entranced to the words of enthusiastic abuse that flowed from her confident lips; he had heard them all before and from speakers as confident, but never before had they seemed so inspired and inspiring, never before had he desired with trembling to kiss the lips that uttered them. Griselda, touched as a woman and flattered as an orator by his persistent presence in her audience, invited him to tea at her aunt’s house in Balham; the visit was a success, and from that evening (in early March) the end was a foregone conclusion. Their friendship ripened so fast that one night at the beginning of April (1914) William, escorting her home from a meeting, proposed to her on the top of an otherwise empty bus, and was duly and sweetly accepted.

There were none of the customary obstacles in the way of the happy pair—on the contrary, all was plain sailing. William’s original income had for some years been augmented by his earnings as a speaker, and Griselda’s parents had left her modestly provided for. Her aunt, long since converted to the Movement (to the extent of being unable to talk of anything but forcible feeding), smiled blessings on so suitable a match and proceeded to consider the trousseau; and after a little persuasion on part the wedding was fixed for July.