This Is the End by Stella Benson
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Stella Benson >> This Is the End
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She put all that she could of her soliloquy into her notebook.
And then she noticed the face of a man, with its eyes upon her,
appearing stealthily over a breakwater. The face wore the grin that some
people wear when they are doing anything with great caution. This gave it
a very empty, bright expression, like the mask that represents comedy in
a theatre decoration. The face dropped down behind the breakwater, after
meeting Anonyma's surprised eye for a second or two.
Anonyma kept her head.
First she thought it was the face of a bather, the path to whose clothes
she was unwittingly barring.
Then she thought it was the face of a picnicker, resentful of her
intrusion.
Then she thought it was the face of a German spy.
The first two of these three thoughts she rejected because the weather
reduced their possibility to a minimum. The third she instinctively
adopted as a certainty. The face at once became obviously German in her
eyes. It was broader about the chin than about the forehead, it was pink,
the architecture of the nose was painfully un-English.
She scanned the sea for the periscope of a submarine.
Anonyma remembered that she had written in her notebook, a day or two
before, an intimate description of the coast as seen from the Ring. She
also remembered distinctly seeing in the bar of the inn a notice warning
her to the effect that walls--and probably breakwaters--have ears and
eyes in these days, and that the German Government has a persistent wish
to possess itself of private diaries and notebooks.
"I am having an adventure," said Mrs. Gustus. "I must keep cool."
She got up from her breakwater, holding her notebook very tightly, and
began to walk away. When she looked back, she saw the top of the man's
head moving behind the breakwater, in a parallel direction to her own
course. When he reached the point where the breakwater ended and denied
him cover, he wavered for a moment, and then, with an expression of
elaborate indifference, followed her.
"I must keep even cooler than this," thought Anonyma. "I must try and
catch the spy."
She walked across some waste land sown with memories of picnics, and
reached the main road. The man crossed the waste land behind her. He
tried in a futile way to look as if he were not doing so.
On the main road, Anonyma turned and waited for him. It seemed useless in
that empty landscape to sustain the pretence that they were unaware of
each other.
"Did you wish to speak to me?" she asked, as well as she could for the
great lump of excitement that beat in her throat. Before her eyes visions
of headlines danced: "LADY NOVELIST'S PLUCKY CAPTURE OF A SPY."
The man became dark red as she spoke. "Yes," he said. "I wanted to ask
you what you were writing in that notebook?"
Anonyma paused for a moment, as she decided what she ought to do. Then
she said in a hoarse voice: "I have detailed military information about
this coast for twenty miles round in my notebook, with accurate reports
as to the depth of the water. If you come to my lodgings in D----, I can
show you a map that I have made."
A tremor ran through the stranger.
"A map?" he repeated.
"Yes, a map," said Anonyma; and then, as he did not move, she added on
the spur of the moment, "Also a design for a new kind of bomb which I
bought from a man in London."
"A bomb?" he said.
Anonyma thought that he was evidently a foreigner, though his accent was
English. He seemed to find English rather difficult to understand.
"Why do you tell me all this?" he asked finally.
"Because I recognise your face as that of a sp--I mean a fellow-worker
in the great brotherhood of espionage," said Anonyma.
"Come on, then," said the man.
So they walked off together.
"Why did you take up this--calling?" asked the man presently. "Are you
a German?"
"Well, more or less," said Anonyma. "At least, I have never been a
Christian. I believe that one must take either War or Christianity
seriously. Hardly both."
It was a good opportunity for a monologue. Obviously the stranger was
not one who would resent a monopoly of the conversation.
"After all, men are only minor gods," said Anonyma, "and War is what gods
were born for. Germany knows that. That's why, under the present
circumstances, I'd rather take German money than English."
"Are we anywhere near D---- yet?"
Anonyma hoped that he still had no suspicions. His voice was distinctly
nervous. To reassure him, she said, "Why did you take up espionage
yourself?"
"Why, indeed?" said the stranger in an ardent voice. "Of course the pay
was enormous. Twenty thousand francs if I could get an exact chart of the
South Coast."
"Why francs?" asked Anonyma.
"Not francs. I find these various currencies so confusing, don't you? Of
course I mean pfennigs."
"Twenty thousand pfennigs?" said Anonyma. "Look here, are you trying to
be funny?"
"Far from it," said the man. "To tell you the truth, I am awfully
nervous."
"Of me?"
"Yes. No. I mean of discovery."
"You don't seem to be absolutely cut out for your job," said Anonyma.
They walked in silence for a while. Anonyma sought through her mind to
find something she could say in keeping with her part. She decided
finally on a rather ambiguous though imposing attitude.
"The Germans have discovered the truth that anything good is belligerent,
love included. You can't fight properly with any weapon but your life.
Death is not the only thing that passes by the peace-man. He remains
alive, but he also remains ignorant. All peace-men are really women in
disguise, and all women are utterly superfluous to-day. We only know men.
People who disapprove of War shall have no part in peace. The peace shall
be ours who suffered for it, and only we have earned it. The only decent
thing left for the Americans and Quakers to do now is to hold their
tongues when peace comes. They haven't earned the right to rejoice."
"I am a Quaker," said the stranger.
"I didn't know the Germans allowed Quakers at large."
"I am not a German," said the stranger.
"Then what has happened?" asked Anonyma, standing suddenly still at the
top of the main street of D----. "Why did you want my notebook?"
"Because I could plainly see you taking notes in it."
"You thought me a spy?"
"You don't leave me much room for doubt."
They guided each other to the gate of the police-station. There they
stopped again.
"This is where I was bringing you," said Anonyma, as their eyes fell
simultaneously on the label over the door: "Sussex County Police."
"It seems to me that honours are easy," she added after a pause. "Don't
you see what has happened?"
The stranger thought for a moment with a look of dawning relief on his
pink face. "But you couldn't have made up all those dreadful
opinions," he said.
"I didn't," said Anonyma. "I meant them all--as applied to England."
"Don't you think we'd better take each other in to make sure?" suggested
her companion. "The Inspector's quite a good sort. I know him well...."
"You may read my notebook if you like to make quite sure," said Anonyma.
"I'm almost sure the Inspector would have either too much or too little
sense of humour for the situation."
She was conscious of a certain disappointment. Her adventure had fallen
flat, she felt no pleasure in the idea of painting a vivid word-vignette
for the people at home. Even her notebook must never hear of this
morning's work.
"How foolish of you," she said irritably. "Do I look like a spy?"
"Do I?"
She felt impelled to be angry with him, and seized upon another pretext.
"You are a conscientious objector, I suppose. And what business has a
conscientious objector to be spy-hunting? Do I understand that you will
only help your country when you can do it vicariously, through the
police, with no risk to yourself? It isn't very dignified."
"A spy is outside every pale," said the stranger. "My conscience objects
to the shedding of blood. Yet it is an English conscience all the same."
"English?" said Anonyma. "If you won't die for England, England isn't
yours to love. You shall not have that honour."
"If dying for England is the test of a patriot," said the pink Quaker,
"what about you?"
"I would die for England. I work for England," said Anonyma.
(Four hours a week.)
She went on: "I have told you already that women--in either sex--are
superfluous to-day. But after all, real women were born to their burden,
women were born to put up with second bests. And also posterity is mostly
a woman's job. But you were born a man, with a great heritage of honour.
You have kicked that honour away. You have sold your birthright."
The Quaker was the sort of man in whose face and mind one could see
exactly what his mother was like. Some men are like that, and others,
one would say, could never have been so intimate with a woman as to be
born of her.
"My soul is greater than I am," said the stranger. "There is no command
that drowns the command of the soul. I cannot possibly be wrong."
"You could not possibly be right," said Anonyma. "Good-morning."
Anonyma, on her return to the inn, was very generous with
"word-vignettes" dealing with Nature. Her Family during supper was not
left in ignorance as to the Peace and Meaning of the Sea, and the
Parallel between Waves and Generations, and the Miracles of the Mist, and
the Tranquil Musing of the Beaches, and the Unseen Imminence of the
Downs. "It would make a wonderful background to a short story," said
Anonyma, and then she stopped rather abruptly. Her silence after that
might have struck the Family as strange, had it not coincided with the
arrival of the evening paper, which turned the listeners' thoughts to
less beautiful matters.
"Air raid," said Cousin Gustus. "I prophesied quite a long time ago that
we should have another raid, but nobody ever listens to what I say. Two
horses killed somewhere in the Eastern Counties."
"I thought Somewhere was a town in France, ha-ha," said Mrs. Russell.
"Was London attacked?" asked Mr. Russell. "I'm rather anxious about--St.
Paul's...."
Anonyma rose to the surface again. "I had such a wonderful talk with a
'bus-conductor once about his experiences during a raid. Such an
intelligent man. I dearly love 'bus conductors, such an interesting and
vivacious class. I should feel it an honour to be intimate with one. He
told me in the most vivid terms how a bomb fell in the street in front
of his 'bus, blowing the preceding 'bus to atoms. He told me how his
driver turned the 'bus in what he called 'The spice of 'arf a crown,'
and plunged into a side street. He said that he could see the Zeppelin
balanced on its searchlights like 'a sausage on stilts,' and when it was
directly above them, the top of his 'bus was suddenly cleared of people
as if by magic, except for one man who put up an umbrella and 'sat
tight.' I pitied the conductor, it must have been a terrible
experience, his eyes were starting from his head,--bulging like a
rabbit's,--he said he had a wife and baby up Leyton way, and that he was
so worried about them that he frequently called out his list of
destinations the wrong way round."
"Look here," said Mr. Russell, "I think I'd better go up and see
about--"
"Nonsense," said his wife. "I refuse to go to London until the moon is
there to protect me, as it were. So comic to look upon a heavenly body as
a practical protection. I will not allow you to run needlessly into
danger. Only this morning you were making plans to go to Cornwall,
naughty boy."
"No, but--"
"Darling, I insist," said Mrs. Russell. "Cornwall it is for the
present. If you say another word I shall smack you and put you in the
corner, ha-ha."
Cornwall it was.
The Family drew near to its destination on a misty day. The sun shone not
at all, but occasionally showed its bare pale outline through a veil of
cloud. The road in front of Christina was so dim that Mr. Russell could
people it for himself with imaginations. Now a knight in armour stood at
the next corner, now a phantom sea gleamed over the curve of the road,
now he saw great slim ghosts beckoning him on.
There were real sheep every few hundred yards, for a sheep fair was
taking place somewhere near by. The sheep came out of the mist like
armies of giants, and shrank as they grew clearer. The roads were rippled
with the footprints of many sheep. Even when there were no sheep in
sight, the mist filled their places with ghostly flocks.
Each sheep as it passed examined the wheels of Christina as long as the
dogs allowed it to do so. Each flock was followed by two men, and
sometimes a child in ill-fitting clothes on a pony, and sometimes a woman
with a shawl over her head.
Anonyma's notebook became very restless, and finally Mr. Russell was
obliged to drive the Family to the point whither the sheep were bound.
So they went to the little town, through which the excitement of the fair
thrilled like the blast from a trumpet. Bewildered sheep looked in at
its shop windows; farmers in dog-carts shouted affectionate remarks to
each other across its village green, and introduced dear friends at a
great distance to other dear friends with much formality. Dogs argued in
a professional way about the merits of their sheep. Mr. Russell's Hound,
who had never before heard the suggestion that dogs were intended for any
purpose but ornament, looked on breathless with surprise. His morals were
affected for life by the revolutionary sight of a dog biting the tail of
a disobedient sheep. "I'll try it in Kensington Gardens," thought Mr.
Russell's Hound, as he looked nervously at his master.
Christina, the motor-car, found her way to the centre of this activity.
There the sheep bleated in tight confinement, and to each pen was
attached the appropriate dog, looking very self-conscious. Dogs who had
come from great distances to buy sheep were anxiously sniffing up the
smell of their purchases, so that no mistake might be made on the way
home. Over the line of pens a two-plank viaduct ran, and it was bent
continually by the weight of large shepherds balancing their way along
to take a bird's-eye view of possible bargains. A facetious auctioneer
with the village policeman's arm round his neck was sitting on the wall
at the end of the field, addressing everybody very frequently as
"Gentlemen." Sheep arrived and sheep departed constantly.
"Isn't it terribly slavish, somehow?" said Anonyma. "The sheep
never being consulted at all. Bought and sold and smelt and spat
upon as if they had no heart beating beneath that wool. No 'Me,' as
Jay used to say."
Mr. Russell heard and remembered. There were few doubts left in him as to
the truth of his too-funny miracle.
He had a little tune, the scaffolding of a poem, in his head, and to the
sound of it he lived that day, although I don't expect he ever got the
poem into words.
If you start your idea along an uncertain course, you have to stop and
start afresh to get it straight. You can never finish it when once it has
a crooked swing. I gather that motor cyclists occasionally have much the
same experience with their machines.
But Mr. Russell, with a mind steering a tangled course, asked for
nothing better. He was very nearly sure of romance for the first time
in his life.
I hope that the feeling of making poetry is not confined to the people
who write it down. There is no luxury like it, and I hope we all share
it. I think perhaps the same thrill that goes through Mr. Russell and me
when the ghost of a completed thing begins to be seen, also delights the
khaki coster who writes his first--and very likely last--love-letter from
France; and the little old country mother who lies awake composing the In
Memoriam of her son for a local paper; and the burglar "down 'Oxton" who
takes off his cap as a child's funeral goes by. The feeling is: "This is
a thing out of my heart that I am showing. This is my best confession,
and nobody knew there was this within me." I am sure that that great
glory of poetry in one's heart does not wait on achievement. If it did,
what centuries would die unglorified. It is just perfection appearing, to
your equal pride and shame, a perfection that never taunts you with your
limitations.
Mr. Russell and Christina knew well their road through the mist that
afternoon. There was no difficulty in the world, and no need to see or to
think. The sign-posts all spoke the names of fated places. It was useless
for Anonyma to study the map, she found no mention there of the enchanted
way on which their course was set.
"We will not go through Launceston," said Anonyma. "There must be a
quicker way to the sea than that."
Mr. Russell cared not for her and cared not for Launceston. The spell was
cast upon Christina's wheels. There was no escaping the appointed way.
Launceston reached out its net and caught them. Almost as far as the post
office, Anonyma was protesting: "We will NOT go through Launceston."
"Launceston was determined to get us," laughed Mrs. Russell. "Ha-ha!
isn't it humorous the way things happen?"
The sun was setting as they first saw the Cornish sea. The sky was swept
suddenly clear of mist. The seagulls against the sky were like little
crucified angels.
The road ran to the shore.
The sun had little delicate clouds across its face, like the islands in
a Japanese painting. The wet rocks that lay in the sun's path were plated
with gold, and the tall waves with shadowed faces made of that path a
ladder. The fields of foam on the sea looked very blue in the pale light.
The sun was like an angel with a flaming sword. The angel dipped his feet
into the sea.
The sun was like a flaming stage for the comedies of gods. A ship passed
dramatically across it. One's dazzled eyes saw great phantom ships all
over the sea.
The sun was like a monster with horns of fire that pierced one's two
eyes. And gradually it sank.
The sun was like a word written between the sea and the sky, a word that
was swallowed up by the sea before any man had time to read it. There was
suddenly no sun. The little forsaken clouds were like flames for a
moment, and then they were blown out.
Mr. Russell waved his right hand towards great cliffs like the towers of
kings behind the village.
"This is the place," he said.
If I have dared to surrender some imitation of splendour,
Something I knew that was tender, something I loved that was brave,
If in my singing I shewed songs that I heard on my road,
Were they not debts that I owed rather than gifts that I gave?
If certain hours on their climb up the long ladder of time
Turned my confusion to rhyme, drove me to dare an attempt,
If by fair chance I might seem sometimes abreast of my theme,
Was I translating a dream? Was it a dream that you dreamt?
High and miraculous skies bless and astonish my eyes;
All my dead secrets arise, all my dead stories come true.
Here is the Gate to the Sea. Once you unlocked it for me;
Now, since you gave me the key, shall I unlock it for you?
Man ought to feel humble when he reflects upon the fact that he can
survive, and even thrive on, any distress except distress of the body.
God can wither his soul, and still he lives. Grief can swallow his heart,
and still he lives. But his stomach can kill him.
"All is apparently over between me and Peace," thought Jay. "But there
must be something to take the place of Peace."
There is only one thing that can adequately usurp the place of Peace. But
its name did not occur to Jay.
She did not know what had happened to her. She felt constantly a little
mad. Irresponsible wants clamoured in her breast from morning till night,
and all night the company of her Secret Friend was more glorious than
ever. She ran to her world as you perhaps run to church, yet even there
she felt expectant.
When a tall tough thundercloud bends across the sky I watch for the
first flash, and listen for the first roar, and in my heart stillness
seems impossible and at the same time imperative.
So Jay waited, feeling all the time that she could not wait
another minute.
You shall not hear whence comes my fear.
You shall not know the name of it.
But out of strife it came to life,
And only striving came of it.
Though for its sake my heart may break,
Yet worse would I endure for it.
This thing shall be a God to me,
I will not seek a cure for it.
She thought a good deal about Mr. Russell. I am sure that he would have
laughed painfully could he have seen the picture of himself that remained
with the 'bus-conductor. The picture made him thinner, and his eyes more
intelligent, and the line of his mouth happier, but it did not make him
look younger, because Jay liked him to be Older and Wiser. He never came
into the Secret World; several times she tried to drag him thither, but
always at the critical moment he got left outside. Yet I cannot say that
in her Secret World she missed him; the point of the bubble enchantment
is that there is nothing lacking in it.
'Bus-conducting is a profession that does not engross the mind unduly.
The eye and the ear and the hand work by themselves. Charing Cross
whispered in a conductor's ear at the Bank produces a white ticket from
her hand without any calculation on her part. She becomes a
penny-in-the-slot machine, with her human brain free for other matters.
She grows a great hatred for all fares above fourpence, because they need
special thought.
Jay filled her day with unsatisfactory thinking. She found to her
surprise that one may love life and yet also think lovingly of death. To
live is most interesting in an uneasy way, but to die is to forget at
once all these trivial turbulences, to forget equally the people you have
loved and the people you have hated, to forget everything you ever knew,
to be alone, and to be no longer disturbed by unceasing voices.
At this time I think Jay felt more hatred of everybody than love of any
one person. But then, of course, she had vowed to Chloris after the
affair with young William Morgan that she would never fall in love again.
She said, "I have been through love. It is not a sea, as people say. It
is only a river, and I have waded through it."
"Yet there is certainly something very remarkable about that man," she
thought. "I don't believe I like him much, I don't want to know him
better, though I should like him to know me. I believe he is my real next
of kin. I believe he has a Secret World too."
She was on her last homeward journey, and it was one of her early days.
The hours of a conductor move up and down the day. Sometimes Jay
punctured her first ticket at a time when you and I are asleep, and when
the coster-barrows, waving with ferns and fuchsias, move up the Strand
like Birnam Wood moving to Dunsinane. On those days she was due home at
half-past four or so. On other days she was able to have a late
breakfast and to darn her stockings after it, but that meant that she
did not get home till very late. Some 'buses, I gather, are called
"single 'buses," but in this case the word does not imply celibacy
alone. The single 'bus is occupied by one conductor all day Jong for a
fortnight. The "double 'bus" is shared by two conductors, one presiding
in the morning and the other in the afternoon. The double state also
lasts a fortnight; it is arranged as an opportunity for lady
'bus-conductors to recuperate after the rigours (the more remunerative
rigours) of service on a single 'bus. These statements of mine are open
to extensive correction. Jay's hours always struck me as so very
confusing that it is unlikely I should be able to retail the information
correctly. However, it doesn't matter very much.
This was one of the early days on a double 'bus, and Jay was on her last
journey, with several restless waking hours between her and possible
sleep. Her 'bus was full, but not pressed down and running over. For the
moment everybody in it was provided with a ticket. Jay was laboriously
thinking small thoughts because she was tired of thinking of Love and
Life and other things with capital letters.
She thought of the various indignities to which the public submits its
'bus-tickets. Some people use the ticket as a toothpick, some put
spectacles on and read it without understanding, some decorate
outstanding features of the 'bus with it. But I myself tear it gradually
into small strips, and grind the strips by means of massage into fine
powder. If the inspector comes, I am perfectly willing to pour the powder
into his hand, and yet he often seems annoyed.
Jay reviewed the perspective of faces that lined her 'bus. They were all
ugly, and not one of them was eager. The British public as a whole
considers a deaf, dumb, and blind expression the only decent one to wear
in a public conveyance. We roar through a wonderful and exciting world,
and all the while we sit with glazed eyes and cotton-wool in our ears,
and think about ourselves. They were mostly men in Jay's 'bus at that
moment; they were almost all alike, and all insignificant, but not one of
them knew it. Such a lot of men could never be loved by women, only found
expedient.
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