Guy Thorne

“ Gobion soon caught the note and was voted an acquisition. Although he was of a somewhat finer grain than most of these men, he recognized the type instantly. Cheap cynicism was the keynote of most of the conversation, and his lighter side revelled in it. Most complex of all men, he could suck pleasure from every shade of feeling. Lord Tennyson's beautiful line: "A glorious devil large in heart and brain," fitted him exactly. With his intellect he might have been a saint, instead of which he was sublime in nothing whatever. ”

“ When a few unconsidered trifles have been thrown out at score, to a middle-aged business man the world is a bundle of shares and bills receivable. To most young men it is a girl or several girls. For some girls it is a young man. For some other people it is a church, a bar, a coterie—for Yardly Gobion it was himself. Realizing this in every nerve, for the next few weeks he devoted himself to making acquaintances and impressions.
He did no writing beyond his weekly contribution to The Pilgrim, but went abroad and looked around, making himself a niche before he essayed anything further. ”

“ They went into a room much the same as Gobion's. A jug of steaming water stood on the table by a bottle of gin.
"My name is Belper," said the old gentleman, "the Reverend Peter Belper, though I no longer have a cure of souls. Will you have some Old Tom? I never work, but it makes me very thirsty."
Gobion drank; he was not in a state of mind to be surprised at anything. This leering old satyr seemed quite natural and in proper sequence.
"I won't ask you what you've done," he said to Gobion. "A gentleman doesn't live here for no reason." ”

“ He leered at the fire, shaking with drink—a shameless, dirty old man. "I was a pretty fellow in my time," he said, licking the chops of remotest memory. "I had a conscience, and wrote harvest festival hymns with it." [Pg 139]
Gobion filled his glass. "What do you do with yourself all day?"
"Drink and sleep, sleep and drink."
"Cheerful!"
"Yes, very; what else can I do? My mind is gone; if I think it's only blurred pain. I used to try and philosophise, but I can't think now. I don't believe in the nonsense people talk about the comforting powers of philosophy." ”

“ The train curved into the station and pulled up slowly. He made for the door of a first-class carriage where he saw Mr. Lovering getting out. The parson was a little man, all forehead and nose. When Gobion came up he was struggling with a bundle of rugs and umbrellas.
"Ah, dear boy, you have come then. So good of you. Get Marjorie out while I find our luggage."
Then Marjorie came down from the carriage, glowing with health and spirits, her dark eyes flashing when they saw Gobion. ”

“ He was a very high churchman, who on Sunday mornings might often be seen walking up the aisle of St. Barnabas carrying a richly-illuminated mass-book. "Sunday," he would say, "should be a day of rest." He defined himself as a psychological hedonist.
"Young Gobion is a very clever blackguard," said the Prophet.
"Yes, he is," said Sturtevant; "he looks so young and innocent, and he talks well." ”

“ It is very amusing. I wear a great mass of hair, and look at them with far-away eyes instinct with intellectual pain; and sometimes when we get very solemn, the tears rise slowly, and I talk in clear tones of effort, of will—the toil, the struggle, the Glorious Reward! They absolutely love me, and I live on them, borrow their allowances, drink their whiskey—in short, rook them largely all round."
"It is a good thing," said a Merton man, whom they called the Prophet, "that you have an ark of refuge, where there is no necessity to pose, and where you can freely behave like the scoundrel you are ”

“ Then came the reaction, and he staggered home, faint with hard work and the horror of what he had seen. He put on another suit, not feeling himself till he had roused his spirits with a copious brandy and soda.
This instinct of the journalist is a curious thing; while it lasts it is a hot fever, brutal almost in its [Pg 72] vehemence. A man possessed by it forgets everything but the fierce joy of his work, and a deep exaltation in the possession of exclusive news; but the reaction is bad for the nerves.
Sturtevant's chambers in the Temple were distinctly comfortable. ”

“ Gobion knew that he had been smart, perhaps smarter than usual, but he did not know what impression he had made. The stranger was a man outside his experience. Accustomed as Gobion was, in the light of Oxford experience, to feel that he was the cynic and man of the world, he was somewhat doubtful of a man who appeared to him to be a realization of what he might himself become. Cynicism, he thought, is now my plaything; it is this man's master, and he has lost the savours of life. I wonder if Father Gray was right. He often said that up to thirty a man might be happy with no moral sense ”

“ The costermongers' stalls, lit with flaring naphtha lamps, made the street nearly as bright as in the day-time. The pavement was greasy to walk on, and it was thronged by a vast crowd walking slowly up and down. The fog was settling over the houses, and the place smelt like a stale sponge.
He wandered slowly down towards the church, picking his way among the mob.
Coarse Jewish women with false hair shouted to one another. Girls with high cheek-bones, smeared with red and white, caught hold of his arm, whispering evil suggestions to him, and cursing him for a fool when he turned away. ”

“ Sometimes in [Pg 134] the long dull afternoons Lucy Ebbage, a girl of sixteen, used to come into his room and sit on his knee. He took a diseased pleasure in lowering himself to their level.
He was a man with a keen eye for beauty, a deep appreciation of the poetry of things, and yet for a week or two, with a strange morbid insensibility, he revelled in the manners of the vulgarest class in London. "Human nature is much of a muchness," he said to himself. "Why give myself airs? I should make Lucy a capital husband; we could keep a fried-fish shop and be happy." ”

“ Thank God that you are pure and don't drink. God bless you—go out and prosper, keep innocence; now good-bye, good-bye"; and he made the sign of the cross in the air.
Gobion got outside somehow, feeling rather unwell. He did not feel particularly pleased with his success at first, but the sun, and the crowd of people, and the wonderful irrepressible gaiety of the High just before lunch on a fine day cheered him up; and he cashed the second cheque, enjoying the look of surprise on the clerk's face, which was an unusual thing, because bank clerks, though always discourteous, are seldom surprised. ”

“ When Yardly Gobion, the youth who had been speaking, had gone, Sturtevant and the Prophet, whose real name was Condamine, drew up their chairs to the fire, lighting fresh cigarettes. They had been drinking all day, and were by this time in the stage that knows no reticence. It is the stage immediately preceding a pious fervour and resolve to start a new life. ”

“ No one was in the dining-room, [Pg 55] but through the half-open curtains, which separated the lounge from the dining-room, came snatches of conversation, the sound of soda-water corks, and the shrill laughter of a London barmaid, than which few things are more unpleasant.
The three journalists sat down at a table by the fire, and a waiter brought the menu.
Mr. Heath's rather impassive face lighted up, and he read the list eagerly. Eating and drinking were of tremendous importance to him.
The food was ordered, and Gobion asked them what they would drink. ”

“ Sturtevant had come up to Oxford with a brilliant scholarship from a public school which was growing in reputation every year, the Head-master being a high churchman who made a scientific study of advertising his own personality in the weekly press as an earnest ascetic, but who in reality was merely a Sybarite masquerading as a monk. Sturtevant was the show boy of Hailton, and soon made himself felt in his year at Oxford. ”

“ He put his arm on his shoulder, and Gobion drew nearer, shaking with emotion.
"I've been always thinking of you," said Scott. "It's been so lonely without you—so dull and lonely—we all miss you so. They said at Oxford that you'd been mixed up in some beastly newspaper scandal, but I knew of course that you'd rather die than do anything like that. I've been horribly afraid for you. You see, I couldn't find out where you'd got to or anything. You look terribly ill, old man; you must come out of this hole. ”

“ Just as Gobion was going, Sturtevant said, "What about typing? we can't send them in MSS."
"I think I can manage that," said Gobion; "a man called Wild, the sub-editor of The Pilgrim, is living with that girl Blanche Huntley, who was mixed up in the Wrampling case. She used to be a typewriter, and she has a machine still. [Pg 77] Moreover she'd be glad to earn a pound or two for pocket money; Wild isn't generous. I wonder, by the way, if any of the things we propose to write are true?"
"Possibly; nature is always committing a breach of promise against the journalist." ”

“ It was about four in the afternoon, and Gobion having done some work in the morning was now in the Temple, sitting in front of the fire, without any present interest. Restless and miserable, he tried to think of Scott, of Father Gray, of the people who cared for him, hoping for vague thrillings, little tender luxuries of regret, but it was of no use. A short time ago he could have induced the pleasing grief-bubble easily with a good fire and a little whiskey, and at its bursting, enjoy a music-hall with its lights and laughter ”

“ Don't you know you've always got me? Don't you remember how once for a joke in those Ship Street rooms you made me put my hands between yours and swear to be your man? Well, it wasn't a joke—to me. Don't you know how we all love you? Fancy your being here, you who used to lead us all. Damn it all, what gaudy nonsense I'm talking!" [Pg 144]
His rather commonplace face shone strangely. He seemed to change the mean aspect of the room, to annihilate its sordidness.
Late at night Scott went back to his hotel, promising to be round first thing in the morning to take Gobion away. ”

“ As far as he could see things were not so very bad; he could probably earn enough by journalism to keep him, and he had forty-five pounds in his pocket, while the pleasures of London awaited him.
He lay back in an armchair, taking deep draughts of hot cigarette smoke into his lungs, smiling at the idea of his morning's work, and wondering how he had done it—analyzing and dissecting his own fascination.
It is a curious thing that the more evil we are the more intensely we are absorbed in our own personality. The clever scoundrel is always an [Pg 34] egotist ”

“ Gobion had heard of Miss Huntley. "How [Pg 59] very nasty some men are in their tastes," he thought; "it's all rather horrid. I'll go to evensong somewhere." Not the better, but the finer side of him woke up, and he felt the necessity of a quieting and poetic influence to counteract the clever sordidness of the afternoon. He took a cab to Pimlico, where he knew churches were plentiful, and after a little search found what he wanted not far from Victoria Station.
The church was only lit by the candles on the high altar and a solitary corona over the stall of the clergyman. ”

“ I've seen his things in The Book Review and in The Pilgrim. I imagine too he makes a good deal out of the Church party."
"What on earth do you mean?"
"Why, he acts a fit of remorse and horror at the life he is leading, goes to Father Gray to confession, and then borrows ten pounds to start a new life."
Sturtevant laughed an evil little snigger and poured out some more whiskey.
They had blown out the lamp as the oil was low, and the room was only lighted by the dull glow of the dying fire. The air was heavy with cigarette smoke and the smell of spirits, and both men felt bored and sleepy. ”