Old Mole

“ Sometimes they explained their references to Old Mole, and then it was always “We”—Panoukian said: “We,” Matilda: “Arthur and I” . . . and beneath all their talk there seemed to be a game, but a game in all seriousness, of fitting their personalities together. Every now and then, when they were filled with a bubbling consciousness of their wealth, they would throw a scrap to Old Mole out of sheer lavishness and babyish generosity. ”

“ Old Mole hated the young man, for he was common and loose in manner and in no way worthy of the enchanted Matilda or of the marvelous organism, the theater, in which she seemed to live so easily and freely. ”

“ For a brief space after a storm of summer rain the world is a place of glowing color, of flowing, harmonious lines. So it was now with Old Mole, and he discovered the charm of things. His habitual life went on undisturbed, and he could find pleasure even in that. His love for Matilda reduced him to a sort of passiveness, so that he asked nothing of [Pg 278] her, gave her of himself only so much as she demanded, and was content to watch her, to be with her, to feel that he was in no way impeding her progress. ”

“ Both men rose. Old Mole reached the door first. With graceful generosity Panoukian bowed, yielded his claim, kissed Matilda’s hand, and took them to the door. Old Mole went first. Halfway down the stairs Matilda turned:
“Oh! Arthur,” she said, “the puppy’s a perfect darling.”
As coarse men take to drink, or philandering, or tobacco, to relieve the strain of existence, so Old Mole took to work. His “Out of Bounds” (Liebermann, pp. 453, 7s. 6d. net) is a long book, but it was written, revised, corrected in proof and published within six months. ”

“ It had turned against one of them at last; and I had no doubt but that old Farding had fired his pistol in a vain attempt to repel its attack. The mole, the old man called it—and a mole is a thing that works beneath the ground. Only a mole could see in such darkness as this.
I had hoped that my eyes might become accustomed to the darkness, to make the conflict more even; but this hope was dispelled at once. The darkness was of too heavy a nature to ever fade except by the actual admission of light. ”

“ If there be degradation in violence, it affects the kicker as well as the kicked. Old Mole found himself very near understanding Panoukian. Clearly he had come to the chambers on an impulse. Matilda had desired a dog, he had seen the very dog, and come racing with it. Encountering Old Mole for the first time since the eruption in their affairs, he had carried the scene through with an admirable candor. ”

“ Without genius the national drama was heavy and lumpish, stolidly clinging to unquestioned and untested values, looking for no higher rewards in life than riches and public esteem.
It was astonishing to Old Mole that he could be so deeply interested in these things. He had expected to be absorbed in his sorrow and the problem of handling it. Then he found that he was testing the two theaters, the Butcherish and the “intellectual,” by the passion that had flamed into his heart through his love for Matilda at the moment when it had been outraged. ”

“ He choked because he was angry.
"It's no use," he said gloomily to Mrs. Robin, as soon as he could speak. "It's no use trying to get Grandfather Mole to stop eating angleworms. In my opinion, he's too old to turn over a new leaf—the way I meant.
"You can't teach an old Mole new tricks," said Mr. Blackbird.
p. 61
XIV THE NEW SUNSHADE Grandfather Mole was resting in the shade of a toadstool. It was a stifling, sultry day. And having come up into the garden on some errand or other, Grandfather Mole had found the sunshine upon his back altogether too hot for his liking. ”

“ The old man bowed, and, turning a page in his book, he read:
“It is well with the world. Man frets his peace in his little hour on this earth, whereof he is and whereto he returns; but it is well with the world.”
The curtain fell. The little theater disappeared, and all that he had seen and heard in it buzzed in Old Mole’s head, and the colors whirled and a flood of emotion surged through his body, and the spell of it all was upon him. ”

“ For the first night Old Mole received, with Mr. Butcher’s compliments, a ticket for Box B. Panoukian and Robert came to dinner. Matilda wore her first evening dress and the opera cloak, a red ribbon in her hair, and graced the front of the box with the three men behind her.
There is a certain manner appropriate to a seat in the front of a box—a consciousness that is not quite self-consciousness, a certain setting back of the shoulders, a lifting of the head, a sort of shy brazenness, an acceptance of being part of the show, and, for all the pit knows, a duchess. ”

“ If you had, you would be persuaded by now that it is a masterpiece. That is how Harbottles are made: they attribute their flukes to their skill and insist on being given credit for them.”
“I often wonder,” said Old Mole, “what the man who wrote it thinks about it. He must surely know by now.”
“He must be dead.” Matilda swept him out of consideration with her needle. “I don’t believe any man would have let it go on so long and not come forward.” ”

“ And he broke away and wriggled like an eel into the crowd.
“God help us!” said Old Mole, “for we are making pitiable fools of ourselves. The vulgar snap and quarrel would be better than this. . . . No, it would not.”
It was painfully amusing to him to see Matilda’s face in the picture-postcard shops. The photographers had touched her up into a toothy popular beauty, blank, expressionless, fatuous. It was the woman’s face with the woman painted out: just a mask, signifying nothing, never a thought, never a feeling, never a desire, and not a spark of will. ”

“ Mole, I'm afraid they're in trouble. Little Portly is missing again; and you know what a lot his father thinks of him, though he never says much about it.'
'What, that child?' said the Mole lightly. 'Well, suppose he is; why worry about it? He's always straying off and getting lost, and turning up again; he's so adventurous. But no harm ever happens to him. Everybody here-abouts knows him and likes him, just as they do old Otter, and you may be sure some animal or other will come across him and bring him back again all right. ”

“ The little man lived in perpetual distrust of himself, admired his wife because he loved her, and submitted to her taste, regarding his own as a sort of unregenerate longing. Neither Old Mole nor Matilda were musical, but, when his wife was out to tea with the wife of the bank manager or the chemist, Watts would invite them to his parlor and play the piano—Bach, Beethoven, Chopin—until they could take in no more and his music was just a noise to them. ”

“ Then he thought of Panoukian as a man, and a savage anger burst in upon him, and he thought of Panoukian’s deed as the atmosphere of the club dictated he should think of it. Panoukian had acted dirtily and dishonorably: he should be hounded out, hounded out. Panoukian had wormed himself into his (Old Mole’s) affections and trust, to betray both. He had shown himself a cad, a blackguard, a breaker of the laws of hospitality and good society. ”

“ And Old Mole wished them well in the person of Panoukian.
That young man set himself to discover London. He was forever coming to Gray’s Inn with exciting tales of streets discovered down by the docks or in the great regions of the northern suburbs. He set himself to walk from end to end of it, from Ealing to West Ham, from Dulwich to Tottenham, and he vowed that there were men really living in it, and he began to think of the democracy as a real entity, to be exalted at the thought of its power. Old Mole demurred. The democracy had no power, since it knew not how to grasp it. ”

“ There was only a faint light, the curtain was up, and there were tiny women in the auditorium dropping white cloths from the galleries and shrouding all the seats. Never had Old Mole had such a sense of emptiness and desolation. A man’s voice came from far up above the stage, and it sounded like a thin ghostly mocking. There was a creaking and a rasping, and a great sheet of painted canvas descended, the wings were set in place, and a flight of stairs was wheeled up and clamped: the scene was set for the opening of the pantomime. ”

“ The sun shone in at the window upon the girl’s brown hair, and as she opened the book the church bells began to ring with such an insistent buzzing that it was impossible for her to read. As he lay in bed Old Mole thought of Heine lying in his mattress-grave, being visited by his Mouche, just such another charming creature as this, young and ardent, and by her very presence soothing; only he was no poet, but a man dulled by years of unquestioning service. He gazed at Matilda as he could not recollect ever having gazed at a woman, critically, but with warm interest. ”

“ She takes them in her stride. She can laugh with you, talk with you, understand what you mean better than you do yourself, give you just the little encouragement you need, and you can talk to her and forget that she is a woman. . . . You don’t know, sir, what an extraordinary difference it has made in my life since I have known you two.”
That would embarrass Old Mole, and he found it impossible to say anything without jarring Panoukian’s feelings. Therefore he would say nothing, and later he would look at Matilda, watch her, wait for her smile, and wonder. ”

“ At last he had learned where the young rabbits romped through the cornfield. He cared never a bit for his patient, but he did care for the fine feast he looked forward to having by himself. That is why he ordered Old Mole to bed. He wanted no interruptions in the marauding expeditions.
Early next morning, Old Mole went to see Doctor Mole, happy that his aches and pains had completely disappeared, and willing to pay whatever the dentist asked. When he entered the office, there sat Doctor Mole, his head bound in poultices and mufflers, his eyes red with pain, and his throat swollen and sore. ”

“ Arguing from his own case, Old Mole came to the conclusion that the whole whirligig had come about from a constant succession of decent ordinary mortals having been, like himself, the victims of an eruption of gold which had carried them, without sufficient struggle or testing of imagination or moral quality, to an eminence above their fellows, upon which, in their bewilderment, they were conscious of nothing but a dread of falling down. ”

“ Mole. Some folk ain’t particular. I am. And Mr. Copas is very careful about what happens in his theater. If it can’t be legitimate it can’t be and there’s nothing more to be said. . . . Now, Mr. Mole, what are you going to do?”
“My good woman! I haven’t the least idea what you are talking about. I have enjoyed my stay with you. I have found it very instructive and profitable and I propose to——”
“It’s Matilda, Mr. Mole. What’s done is done. We’re not saying anything about that. Some says it’s a curse and some says it’s the only thing worth living for. ”

“ Home is home, and there is no getting away from it. If a woman grows sick of her home it is her own fault and she must stick to it, dree her own weird, as the Scotch say. Destroy the home and society falls to the ground.”
And Old Mole, sharpened by argument, replied:
“Society is no more permanent than any other institution. Its existence depends entirely on its power to adapt itself to life. It is certainly independent of the innumerable sentimental ideas with which men endeavor to plaster up the cracks in its walls, among which I must count that of home.” ”

“ So he would go on, whirling from one topic to another—marriage, morals, democracy, the will to power,—thinking in sharp contrasts, sometimes hardly thinking, but feeling always. Vaguely, without objects, catching himself out in some detestable sentimentality, admitting it frankly and going back again over his whole argument to pluck it out. Panoukian was to himself a weedy field, and with bowed back and stiffened loins he was engrossed in stubbing it. It was exhausting to watch him at it, and when, as sometimes happened, Old Mole saw things through Panoukian’s eyes he was disquieted. ”

“ Copas, who got her own back with the loud sneer in Mr. Mole’s presence:
“There’s not many married women would wear tights and not many husbands would let ’em.”
Old Mole gasped, and looked forward with dread to the first performance of the pantomime. He was spared the indignity of tights, for the fifty women in the chorus were divided into “girls” and “boys,” in accordance with their size, and Matilda was a “girl.” She took her work very seriously, put far more energy into it than she had ever done into “Iphigenia” or “Josephine.” ”

“ They clung to their point, and the postman at last said triumphantly:
“But money isn’t a religion; Socialism is—the religion, the only religion of the working classes of this country. They’ve had enough of the next world; they want a bit o’ this for a change.”
“So do I,” returned Old Mole, “all of it. I say that money is an idea, perhaps the only practicable idea in the world at present. It isn’t a religious idea simply because men as a whole are not religious. ”

“ To a woman the same and, should the mole be of a pale colour, danger by water.
A mole at the nape of the neck indicates to either man or woman great danger of untimely death by water.
A mole in the midst of the throat—that is, on the gullet—shows to a man much danger of death by strangulation or hanging. To a woman peril in sickness and, if the mole should be black in colour, she dies.
A mole immediately under the right breast shows to a man that he will be lucky in agriculture. To a woman that she shall receive inheritance from the dead; if black, her father is killed by accident. ”

“ There were three points of view to be mastered: three lives knotted together in a tangle and the weakest strand would be broken.
He felt hopeful. There would be a fight for it, and to that he thrilled. He had the exaltation of one on the brink of great discovery.
He went to fetch her from the theater. The stagedoor lay at the back in an alley joining two great thoroughfares. As he entered the alley from one end he saw Matilda and Panoukian leave by the other, and he had his arm in hers. Old Mole turned, with the fluttering sense of an escape, glad not to have met them. ”