I Pose

There was once a gardener. Not only was, but in all probability is, for as far as I know you may meet him to this day. There are no death-bed scenes in this book. The gardener was not the sort of person to bring a novel to a graceful climax by dying finally in an atmosphere of elevated immorality. He was extremely thin, but not in the least unhealthy. He never with his own consent ran any risk of sudden death. Nobody would ever try to introduce him into a real book, for he was in no way suitable. He was not a philosopher. Not an adventurer. Not a gay dog. Not lively: but he lived, and that at least is a great merit.

In appearance the gardener was a fairly mediocre study in black and white. He had a white and wooden face, black hair as smooth as a wet seal’s back, thin arms and legs, and enormous hands and feet. He was not indispensable to any one, but he believed that he was a pillar supporting the world. It sometimes makes one nervous to reflect what very amateur pillars the world seems to employ.

He lived in a boarding-house in Penny Street, W. A boarding-house is a place full of talk, it has as many eyes as a peacock, and ears to correspond. It is lamentably little, and yet impossible to ignore. It is not a dignified foundation for a pillar.

The gardener was twenty-three. Twenty-three is said to be the prime of life by those who have reached so far and no farther. It shares this distinction with every age, from ten to three-score and ten.

On the first of June, in his twenty-fourth year, the gardener broke his boot-lace. The remains of the catastrophe dangled from his hand. String was out of the question; one cannot be decent dressed in string, he thought, with that touch of exaggeration common to victims of disasters. The world was a sordid and sardonic master, there was no heart in the breast of Fate. He was bereft even of his dignity, there is no dignity in the death of a boot-lace. The gardener’s twenty-three years were stripped from him like a cloak. He felt little and naked.

He was so busy with his emotions that he had forgotten that the door of his room was open.

It was rather like the girl Courtesy to stand on the landing boldly staring in at a man sitting on his bedroom floor crushed by circumstances. She had no idea of what was fitting. Any other woman would have recognised the presence of despair, and would have passed by with head averted.

But the girl Courtesy said, “Poor lamb, has it broken its boot-lace?”

The gardener continued in silence to watch the strangling of his vanity by the corpse of the boot-lace. His chief characteristic was a whole heart in all that he did.

A tear should have appeared in Courtesy’s eye at the sight of him. But it did not.

“Give me the boot,” she said, advancing into the room in the most unwomanly manner. And she knotted the boot-lace with a cleverness so unexpected—considering the sort of girl she was—that the difference in its length was negligible, and the knot was hidden beneath the other lace.

“Women have their uses,” thought the gardener. But the thought was short-lived, for Courtesy’s next remark was:

“There, boy, run along and keep smilin’. Somebody loves you.” And she patted him on the cheek.

Now it has been made clear that the gardener was a Man of Twenty-three. He turned his back violently on the woman, put on his boot, and walked downstairs bristling with dignity.

The girl Courtesy not only failed to be cut to the heart by the silent rebuke, but she failed to realise that she had offended. She was rather fat, and rather obtuse. She was half an inch taller than the gardener, and half a dozen years older.

The gardener’s indignation rode him downstairs. It spurred him to force his hat down on his head at a most unbecoming angle, it supplied the impetus for a passionate slamming of the door. But on the door-step it evaporated suddenly. It was replaced by a rosy and arresting thought.

“Poor soul, she loves me,” said the gardener. He adjusted his hat, and stepped out into London, a breaker of hearts, a Don Juan, unconscious of his charm yet conscious of his unconsciousness. “Poor thing, poor thing,” he thought, and remembered with regret that Courtesy had not lost her appetite. On the contrary, she had been looking even plumper of late. But then Courtesy never quite played the game.

“I begin to be appreciated,” reflected the gardener. “I always knew the world would find out some day....”

The gardener was a dreamer of dreams, and a weaver of many theories. His theories were not even tangible enough to make a philosophy, yet against them he measured his world. And any shortcomings he placed to the world’s account. He wrapped himself in theories to such an extent that facts were crowded from his view, he posed until he lost himself in a wilderness of poses. He was not the victim of consistency, that most ambiguous virtue. The dense and godly wear consistency as a flower, the imaginative fling it joyfully behind them.

Imagination seems to be a glory and a misery, a blessing and a curse. Adam, to his sorrow, lacked it. Eve, to her sorrow, possessed it. Had both been blessed—or cursed—with it, there would have been much keener competition for the apple.

The million eyes of female London pricked the gardener, or so he imagined, as he threaded the Strand. He felt as if a glance from his eye was a blessing, and he bestowed it generously. The full blaze of it fell upon one particular girl as she walked towards him. She seemed to the gardener to be almost worthy. Her yellow hair suffered from Marcelle spasms at careful intervals of an inch and a half, every possible tooth enjoyed publicity. The gardener recognised a kindred soul. A certain shade of yellow hair always at this period thatched a kindred soul for the gardener.

He followed the lady.

He followed her even into the gaping jaws of an underground station. There she bought cigarettes at a tobacco stall.

“She smokes,” thought the gardener. “This is life.”

He went close to her while she paid. She was not in the least miserly of a certain cheap smell of violets. The gardener was undaunted.

“Shall we take a taxi, Miss?” he suggested, his wide eager smile a trifle damped by self-consciousness. For this was his first attempt of the kind. “They say Kew is lovely just now.”

It was his theory that spoke. In practice he had but threepence in his pocket.

She replied, “Bless you, kid. Run ’ome to mammy, do.”

Her voice sounded like the scent she wore. It had a hard tone which somehow brought the solitary threepence to mind.

The gardener returned at great speed to Penny Street.

It was lunch-time at Number Twenty-one. The eternal hash approached its daily martyrdom. Hash is a worthy thing, but it reminds you that you are not at the Ritz. There is nothing worse calculated to make you forget a lonely threepenny bit in your pocket.

The gardener had a hundred a year. He was apparently the only person in London with a hundred a year, for wherever he went he always found himself the wealthiest person present. His friends gave his natural generosity a free rein. After various experiments in social economy, he found it cheapest to rid himself of the hundred a year immediately on its quarterly appearance, and live on his expectations for the rest of the time. There are drawbacks about this plan, as well as many advantages. But the gardener was a pillar, and he found it easier to support the world than to support himself.

It was on this occasion that his neighbour at luncheon, unaware of his pillar-hood, asked him what he was doing for a living.

“Living,” replied the gardener. He was not absolutely sure that it made sense, but it sounded epigrammatic. He was, in some lights, a shameless prig. But then one often is, if one thinks, at twenty-three.

“It’s all living,” he continued to his neighbour. “It’s all life. Being out of a job is life. Being kicked is life. Starving’s life. Dying’s life.”

The neighbour did not reply because he was busy eating. One had to keep one’s attention fixed on the food problem at 21 Penny Street. There was no time for epigrams. It was a case of the survival of the most silent. The gardener was very thin.

The girl Courtesy, however, was one who could do two things at once. She could support life and impart information at the same time.

“I do believe you talk for the sake of talking,” she said; and it was true. “How can dying be living?”

It is most annoying to have the cold light of feminine logic turned on to an impromptu epigram. The gardener pushed the parsnips towards her as a hint that she was talking too much. But Courtesy had the sort of eye that sees no subtlety in parsnips. Her understanding was of the black and white type.

“Death is the door to life,” remarked Miss Shakespeare, nailing down the golden opportunity with eagerness. 21 Penny Street very rarely gave Miss Shakespeare the satisfaction of such an opening. There was, however, a lamentable lack of response. The subject, which had been upheld contrary to the laws of gravitation, fell heavily to earth.