Not George Washington — an Autobiographical Novel

CHAPTER 1 JAMES ARRIVES

I am Margaret Goodwin. A week from today I shall be Mrs. James Orlebar Cloyster.

It is just three years since I first met James. We made each other's acquaintance at half-past seven on the morning of the 28th of July in the middle of Fermain Bay, about fifty yards from the shore.

Fermain Bay is in Guernsey. My home had been with my mother for many years at St. Martin's in that island. There we two lived our uneventful lives until fate brought one whom, when first I set my eyes on him, I knew I loved.

Perhaps it is indiscreet of me to write that down. But what does it matter? It is for no one's reading but my own. James, my fiancé, is not peeping slyly over my shoulder as I write. On the contrary, my door is locked, and James is, I believe, in the smoking-room of his hotel at St. Peter's Port.

At that time it had become my habit to begin my day by rising before breakfast and taking a swim in Fermain Bay, which lies across the road in front of our cottage. The practice—I have since abandoned it—was good for the complexion, and generally healthy. I had kept it up, moreover, because I had somehow cherished an unreasonable but persistent presentiment that some day Somebody (James, as it turned out) would cross the pathway of my maiden existence. I told myself that I must be ready for him. It would never do for him to arrive, and find no one to meet him.

On the 28th of July I started off as usual. I wore a short tweed skirt, brown stockings—my ankles were, and are, good—a calico blouse, and a red tam-o'-shanter. Ponto barked at my heels. In one hand I carried my blue twill bathing-gown. In the other a miniature alpenstock. The sun had risen sufficiently to scatter the slight mist of the summer morning, and a few flecked clouds were edged with a slender frame of red gold.

Leisurely, and with my presentiment strong upon me, I descended the steep cliffside to the cave on the left of the bay, where, guarded by the faithful Ponto, I was accustomed to disrobe; and soon afterwards I came out, my dark hair over my shoulders and blue twill over a portion of the rest of me, to climb out to the point of the projecting rocks, so that I might dive gracefully and safely into the still blue water.

I was a good swimmer. I reached the ridge on the opposite side of the bay without fatigue, not changing from a powerful breast-stroke. I then sat for a while at the water's edge to rest and to drink in the thrilling glory of what my heart persisted in telling me was the morning of my life.

And then I saw Him.

Not distinctly, for he was rowing a dinghy in my direction, and consequently had his back to me.

In the stress of my emotions and an aggravation of modesty, I dived again. With an intensity like that of a captured conger I yearned to be hidden by the water. I could watch him as I swam, for, strictly speaking, he was in my way, though a little farther out to sea than I intended to go. As I drew near, I noticed that he wore an odd garment like a dressing-gown. He had stopped rowing.

I turned upon my back for a moment's rest, and, as I did so, heard a cry. I resumed my former attitude, and brushed the salt water from my eyes.

The dinghy was wobbling unsteadily. The dressing-gown was in the bows; and he, my sea-god, was in the water. Only for a second I saw him. Then he sank.

How I blessed the muscular development of my arms.

I reached him as he came to the surface.

"That's twice," he remarked contemplatively, as I seized him by the shoulders.

"Be brave," I said excitedly; "I can save you."

"I should be most awfully obliged," he said.

"Do exactly as I tell you."

"I say," he remonstrated, "you're not going to drag me along by the roots of my hair, are you?"

The natural timidity of man is, I find, attractive.

I helped him to the boat, and he climbed in. I trod water, clinging with one hand to the stern.

"Allow me," he said, bending down.

"No, thank you," I replied.

"Not, really?"

"Thank you very much, but I think I will stay where I am."

"But you may get cramp. By the way—I'm really frightfully obliged to you for saving my life—I mean, a perfect stranger—I'm afraid it's quite spoiled your dip."

"Not at all," I said politely. "Did you get cramp?"

"A twinge. It was awfully kind of you."

"Not at all."

Then there was a rather awkward silence.

"Is this your first visit to Guernsey?" I asked.

"Yes; I arrived yesterday. It's a delightful place. Do you live here?"

"Yes; that white cottage you can just see through the trees."

"I suppose I couldn't give you a tow anywhere?"

"No; thank you very much. I will swim back."

Another constrained silence.

"Are you ever in London, Miss——?"

"Goodwin. Oh, yes; we generally go over in the winter, Mr.——"

"Cloyster. Really? How jolly. Do you go to the theatre much?"

"Oh, yes. We saw nearly everything last time we were over."

There was a third silence. I saw a remark about the weather trembling on his lip, and, as I was beginning to feel the chill of the water a little, I determined to put a temporary end to the conversation.

"I think I will be swimming back now," I said.

"You're quite sure I can't give you a tow?"

"Quite, thanks. Perhaps you would care to come to breakfast with us, Mr. Cloyster? I know my mother would be glad to see you."

"It is very kind of you. I should be delighted. Shall we meet on the beach?"

I swam off to my cave to dress.

Breakfast was a success, for my mother was a philosopher. She said very little, but what she did say was magnificent. In her youth she had moved in literary circles, and now found her daily pleasure in the works of Schopenhauer, Kant, and other Germans. Her lightest reading was Sartor Resartus, and occasionally she would drop into Ibsen and Maeterlinck, the asparagus of her philosophic banquet. Her chosen mode of thought, far from leaving her inhuman or intolerant, gave her a social distinction which I had inherited from her. I could, if I had wished it, have attended with success the tea-drinkings, the tennis-playings, and the éclair-and-lemonade dances to which I was frequently invited. But I always refused. Nature was my hostess. Nature, which provided me with balmy zephyrs that were more comforting than buttered toast; which set the race of the waves to the ridges of Fermain, where arose no shrill, heated voice crying, "Love—forty"; which decked foliage in more splendid sheen than anything the local costumier could achieve, and whose poplars swayed more rhythmically than the dancers of the Assembly Rooms.

The constraint which had been upon us during our former conversation vanished at breakfast. We were both hungry, and we had a common topic. We related our story of the sea in alternate sentences. We ate and we talked, turn and turn about. My mother listened. To her the affair, compared with the tremendous subjects to which she was accustomed to direct her mind, was broad farce. James took it with an air of restrained amusement. I, seriously.

Tentatively, I diverged from this subject towards other and wider fields. Impressions of Guernsey, which drew from him his address, at the St. Peter's Port Hotel. The horrors of the sea passage from Weymouth, which extorted a comment on the limitations of England. England. London. Kensington. South Kensington. The Gunton-Cresswells? Yes, yes! Extraordinary. Curious coincidence. Excursus on smallness of world. Queer old gentleman, Mr. Gunton-Cresswell. He is, indeed. Quite one of the old school. Oh, quite. Still wears that beaver hat? Does he really? Yes. Ha, ha! Yes.

Here the humanising influence of the Teutonic school of philosophic analysis was demonstrated by my mother's action. Mr. Cloyster, she said, must reconcile himself to exchanging his comfortable rooms at the St. Peter's Port—("I particularly dislike half-filled hotel life, Mrs. Goodwin")—for the shelter of our cottage. He accepted. He was then "warned" that I was chef at the cottage. Mother gave him "a chance to change his mind." Something was said about my saving life and destroying digestion. He went to collect his things in an ecstasy of merriment.

At this point I committed an indiscretion which can only be excused by the magnitude of the occasion.

My mother had retired to her favourite bow-window where, by a tour de force on the part of the carpenter, a system of low, adjustable bookcases had been craftily constructed in such a way that when she sat in her window-seat they jutted in a semicircle towards her hand.

James, whom I had escorted down the garden path, had left me at the little wooden gate and had gone swinging down the road. I, shielded from outside observation (if any) by a line of lilacs, gazed rapturously at his retreating form. The sun was high in the sky now. It was a perfect summer's day. Birds were singing. Their notes blended with the gentle murmur of the sea on the beach below. Every fibre of my body was thrilling with the magic of the morning.

Through the kindly branches of the lilac I watched him, and then, as though in obedience to the primaeval call of that July sunshine, I stood on tiptoe, and blew him a kiss.

I realised in an instant what I had done. Fool that I had been. The bow-window!

I was rigid with discomfiture. My mother's eyes were on the book she held. And yet a faint smile seemed to hover round her lips. I walked in silence to where she sat at the open window.

She looked up. Her smile was more pronounced.

"Margie," she said.

"Yes, mother?"

"The hedonism of Voltaire is the indictment of an honest bore."

"Yes, mother."

She then resumed her book.

CHAPTER 2 JAMES SETS OUT (Miss Margaret Goodwin's narrative continued)

Those August days! Have there been any like them before? I realise with difficulty that the future holds in store for me others as golden.

The island was crammed with trippers. They streamed in by every boat. But James and I were infinitely alone. I loved him from the first, from the moment when he had rowed out of the unknown into my life, clad in a dressing-gown. I like to think that he loved me from that moment, too. But, if he did, the knowledge that he did came to him only after a certain delay. It was my privilege to watch this knowledge steal gradually but surely upon him.

We were always together; and as the days passed by he spoke freely of himself and his affairs, obeying unconsciously the rudder of my tactful inquisitiveness. By the end of the first week I knew as much about him as he did himself.

It seemed that a guardian—an impersonal sort of business man with a small but impossible family—was the most commanding figure in his private life. As for his finances, five-and-forty sovereigns, the remnant of a larger sum which had paid for his education at Cambridge, stood between him and the necessity of offering for hire a sketchy acquaintance with general literature and a third class in the classical tripos.

He had come to Guernsey to learn by personal observation what chances tomato growing held out to a young man in a hurry to get rich.

"Tomato growing?" I echoed dubiously. And then, to hide a sense of bathos, "People have made it pay. Of course, they work very hard."

"M'yes," said James without much enthusiasm.

"But I fancy," I added, "the life is not at all unpleasant."

At this point embarrassment seemed to engulf James. He blushed, swallowed once or twice in a somewhat convulsive manner, and stammered.

Then he made his confession guiltily.

I was not to suppose that his aims ceased with the attainment of a tomato-farm. The nurture of a wholesome vegetable occupied neither the whole of his ambitions nor even the greater part of them. To write—the agony with which he throatily confessed it!—to be swept into the maelstrom of literary journalism, to be en rapport with the unslumbering forces of Fleet Street—those were the real objectives of James Orlebar Cloyster.

"Of course, I mean," he said, "I suppose it would be a bit of a struggle at first, if you see what I mean. What I mean to say is, rejected manuscripts, and so on. But still, after a bit, once get a footing, you know—I should like to have a dash at it. I mean, I think I could do something, you know."

"Of course you could," I said.

"I mean, lots of men have, don't you know."

"There's plenty of room at the top," I said.

He seemed struck with this remark. It encouraged him.

He had had his opportunity of talking thus of himself during our long rambles out of doors. They were a series of excursions which he was accustomed to describe as hunting expeditions for the stocking of our larder.

Thus James would announce at breakfast that prawns were the day's quarry, and the foreshore round Cobo Bay the hunting-ground. And to Cobo, accordingly, we would set out. This prawn-yielding area extends along the coast on the other side of St. Peter's Port, where two halts had to be made, one at Madame Garnier's, the confectioners, the other at the library, to get fiction, which I never read. Then came a journey on the top of the antediluvian horse-tram, a sort of diligence on rails; and then a whole summer's afternoon among the prawns. Cobo is an expanse of shingle, dotted with seaweed and rocks; and Guernsey is a place where one can take off one's shoes and stockings on the slightest pretext. We waded hither and thither with the warm brine lapping unchecked over our bare legs. We did not use our nets very industriously, it is true; but our tongues were seldom still. The slow walk home was a thing to be looked forward to. Ah! those memorable homecomings in the quiet solemnity of that hour, when a weary sun stoops, one can fancy with a sigh of pleasure, to sink into the bosom of the sea!

Prawn-hunting was agreeably varied by fish-snaring, mussel-stalking, and mushroom-trapping—sports which James, in his capacity of Head Forester, included in his venery.

For mushroom-trapping an early start had to be made—usually between six and seven. The chase took us inland, until, after walking through the fragrant, earthy lanes, we turned aside into dewy meadows, where each blade of grass sparkled with a gem of purest water. Again the necessity of going barefoot. Breakfast was late on these mornings, my mother whiling away the hours of waiting with a volume of Diogenes Laertius in the bow-window. She would generally open the meal with the remark that Anaximander held the primary cause of all things to be the Infinite, or that it was a favourite expression of Theophrastus that time was the most valuable thing a man could spend. When breakfast was announced, one of the covers concealed the mushrooms, which, under my superintendence, James had done his best to devil. A quiet day followed, devoted to sedentary recreation after the labours of the run.

The period which I have tried to sketch above may be called the period of good-fellowship. Whatever else love does for a woman, it makes her an actress. So we were merely excellent friends till James's eyes were opened. When that happened, he abruptly discarded good-fellowship. I, on the other hand, played it the more vigorously. The situation was mine.

Our day's run became the merest shadow of a formality. The office of Head Forester lapsed into an absolute sinecure. Love was with us—triumphant, and no longer to be skirted round by me; fresh, electric, glorious in James.

We talked—we must have talked. We moved. Our limbs performed their ordinary, daily movements. But a golden haze hangs over that second period. When, by the strongest effort of will, I can let my mind stand by those perfect moments, I seem to hear our voices, low and measured. And there are silences, fond in themselves and yet more fondly interrupted by unspoken messages from our eyes. What we really said, what we actually did, where precisely we two went, I do not know. We were together, and the blur of love was about us. Always the blur. It is not that memory cannot conjure up the scene again. It is not that the scene is clouded by the ill-proportion of a dream. No. It is because the dream is brought to me by will and not by sleep. The blur recurs because the blur was there. A love vast as ours is penalised, as it were, by this blur, which is the hall-mark of infinity.

In mighty distances, whether from earth to heaven, whether from 5245 Gerrard to 137 Glasgow, there is always that awful, that disintegrating blur.

A third period succeeded. I may call it the affectionately practical period. Instantly the blur vanishes. We were at our proper distance from the essence of things, and though infinity is something one yearns for passionately, one's normal condition has its meed of comfort. I remember once hearing a man in a Government office say that the pleasantest moment of his annual holiday was when his train rolled back into Paddington Station. And he was a man, too, of a naturally lazy disposition.

It was about the middle of this third period, during a mushroom-trapping ramble, that the idea occurred to us, first to me, then—after reflection—to James, that mother ought to be informed how matters stood between us.

We went into the house, hand-in-hand, and interviewed her.

She was in the bow-window, reading a translation of The Deipnosophists of Athenaeus.

"Good morning," she said, looking at her watch. "It is a little past our usual breakfast time, Margie, I think?"

"We have been looking for mushrooms, mother."

"Every investigation, says Athenaeus, which is guided by principles of Nature fixes its ultimate aim entirely on gratifying the stomach. Have you found any mushrooms?"

"Heaps, Mrs. Goodwin," said James.

"Mother," I said, "we want to tell you something."

"The fact is, Mrs. Goodwin——"

"We are engaged."

My mother liked James.

"Margie," she once said to me, "there is good in Mr. Cloyster. He is not for ever offering to pass me things." Time had not caused her to modify this opinion. She received our news calmly, and inquired into James's means and prospects. James had forty pounds and some odd silver. I had nothing.

The key-note of my mother's contribution to our conference was, "Wait."

"You are both young," she said.

She then kissed me, smiled contemplatively at James, and resumed her book.

When we were alone, "My darling," said James, "we must wait. Tomorrow I catch the boat for Weymouth. I shall go straight to London. My first manuscript shall be in an editor's hands on Wednesday morning. I will go, but I will come back."

I put my arms round his neck.

"My love," I said, "I trust you. Go. Always remember that I know you will succeed."

I kissed him.

"And when you have succeeded, come back."

CHAPTER 3 A HARMLESS DECEPTION (Miss Margaret Goodwin's narrative continued)

They say that everyone is capable of one novel. And, in my opinion, most people could write one play.

Whether I wrote mine in an inspiration of despair, I cannot say. I wrote it.

Three years had passed, and James was still haggling with those who buy men's brains. His earnings were enough just to keep his head above water, but not enough to make us two one.

Perhaps, because everything is clear and easy for us now, I am gradually losing a proper appreciation of his struggle. That should never be. He did not win. But he did not lose; which means nearly as much. For it is almost less difficult to win than not to lose, so my mother has told me, in modern journalistic London. And I know that he would have won. The fact that he continued the fight as he did was in itself a pledge of ultimate victory. What he went through while trying with his pen to make a living for himself and me I learned from his letters.

"London," he wrote, "is not paved with gold; but in literary fields there are nuggets to be had by the lightest scratching. And those nuggets are plays. A successful play gives you money and a name automatically. What the ordinary writer makes in a year the successful dramatist receives, without labour, in a fortnight." He went on to deplore his total lack of dramatic intuition. "Some men," he said, "have some of the qualifications while falling short of the others. They have a sense of situation without the necessary tricks of technique. Or they sacrifice plot to atmosphere, or atmosphere to plot. I, worse luck, have not one single qualification. The nursing of a climax, the tremendous omissions in the dialogue, the knack of stage characterisation—all these things are, in some inexplicable way, outside me."

It was this letter that set me thinking. Ever since James had left the island, I had been chafing at the helplessness of my position. While he toiled in London, what was I doing? Nothing. I suppose I helped him in a way. The thought of me would be with him always, spurring him on to work, that the time of our separation might be less. But it was not enough. I wanted to be doing something…. And it was during these restless weeks that I wrote my play.

I think nothing will ever erase from my mind the moment when the central idea of The Girl who Waited came to me. It was a boisterous October evening. The wind had been rising all day. Now the branches of the lilac were dancing in the rush of the storm, and far out in the bay one could see the white crests of the waves gleaming through the growing darkness. We had just finished tea. The lamp was lit in our little drawing-room, and on the sofa, so placed that the light fell over her left shoulder in the manner recommended by oculists, sat my mother with Schopenhauer's Art of Literature. Ponto slept on the rug.

Something in the unruffled peace of the scene tore at my nerves. I have seldom felt so restless. It may have been the storm that made me so. I think myself that it was James's letter. The boat had been late that morning, owing to the weather, and I had not received the letter till after lunch. I listened to the howl of the wind, and longed to be out in it.

My mother looked at me over her book.

"You are restless, Margie," she said. "There is a volume of Marcus Aurelius on the table beside you, if you care to read."

"No, thank you, mother," I said. "I think I shall go for a walk."

"Wrap up well, my dear," she replied.

She then resumed her book.

I went out of our little garden, and stood on the cliff. The wind flew at me like some wild thing. Spray stung my face. I was filled with a wild exhilaration.

And then the idea came to me. The simplest, most dramatic idea. Quaint, whimsical, with just that suggestion of pathos blended with it which makes the fortunes of a play. The central idea, to be brief, of The Girl who Waited.

Of my Maenad tramp along the cliff-top with my brain afire, and my return, draggled and dripping, an hour late for dinner; of my writing and re-writing, of my tears and black depression, of the pens I wore out and the quires of paper I spoiled, and finally of the ecstasy of the day when the piece began to move and the characters to live, I need not speak. Anyone who has ever written will know the sensations. James must have gone through a hundred times what I went through once. At last, at long last, the play was finished.

For two days I gloated alone over the great pile of manuscript.

Then I went to my mother.

My diffidence was exquisite. It was all I could do to tell her the nature of my request, when I spoke to her after lunch. At last she understood that I had written a play, and wished to read it to her. She took me to the bow-window with gentle solicitude, and waited for me to proceed.

At first she encouraged me, for I faltered over my opening words. But as I warmed to my work, and as my embarrassment left me, she no longer spoke. Her eyes were fixed intently upon the blue space beyond the lilac.

I read on and on, till at length my voice trailed over the last line, rose gallantly at the last fence, the single word Curtain, and abruptly broke. The strain had been too much for me.

Tenderly my mother drew me to the sofa; and quietly, with closed eyelids, I lay there until, in the soft cool of the evening, I asked for her verdict.

Seeing, as she did instantly, that it would be more dangerous to deny my request than to accede to it, she spoke.

"That there is an absence, my dear Margie, of any relationship with life, that not a single character is in any degree human, that passion and virtue and vice and real feeling are wanting—this surprises me more than I can tell you. I had expected to listen to a natural, ordinary, unactable episode arranged more or less in steichomuthics. There is no work so scholarly and engaging as the amateur's. But in your play I am amazed to find the touch of the professional and experienced playwright. Yes, my dear, you have proved that you happen to possess the quality—one that is most difficult to acquire—of surrounding a situation which is improbable enough to be convincing with that absurdly mechanical conversation which the theatre-going public demands. As your mother, I am disappointed. I had hoped for originality. As your literary well-wisher, I stifle my maternal feelings and congratulate you unreservedly."

I thanked my mother effusively. I think I cried a little.

She said affectionately that the hour had been one of great interest to her, and she added that she would be glad to be consulted with regard to the steps I contemplated taking in my literary future.

She then resumed her book.

I went to my room and re-read the last letter I had had from James.

The Barrel Club, Covent Garden, London.

MY DARLING MARGIE,—I am writing this line simply and solely for the selfish pleasure I gain from the act of writing to you. I know everything will come right some time or other, but at present I am suffering from a bad attack of the blues. I am like a general who has planned out a brilliant attack, and realises that he must fail for want of sufficient troops to carry a position, on the taking of which the whole success of the assault depends. Briefly, my position is like this. My name is pretty well known in a small sort of way among editors and the like as that of a man who can turn out fairly good stuff. Besides this, I have many influential friends. You see where this brings me? I am in the middle of my attacking movement, and I have not been beaten back; but the key to the enemy's position is still uncaptured. You know what this key is from my other letters. It's the stage. Ah, Margie, one acting play! Only one! It would mean everything. Apart from the actual triumph and the direct profits, it would bring so much with it. The enemy's flank would be turned, and the rest of the battle would become a mere rout. I should have an accepted position in the literary world which would convert all the other avenues to wealth on which I have my eye instantly into royal roads. Obstacles would vanish. The fact that I was a successful playwright would make the acceptance of the sort of work I am doing now inevitable, and I should get paid ten times as well for it. And it would mean—well, you know what it would mean, don't you? Darling Margie, tell me again that I have your love, that the waiting is not too hard, that you believe in me. Dearest, it will come right in the end. Nothing can prevent that. Love and the will of a man have always beaten Time and Fate. Write to me, dear.

Ever your devoted James.

How utterly free from thought of self! His magnificent loyalty forgot the dreadful tension of his own great battle, and pictured only the tedium of waiting which it was my part to endure.

I finished my letter to James very late that night. It was a very long and explanatory letter, and it enclosed my play.

The main point I aimed at was not to damp his spirits. He would, I knew well, see that the play was suitable for staging. He would, in short, see that I, an inexperienced girl, had done what he, a trained professional writer, had failed to do. Lest, therefore, his pique should kill admiration and pleasure when he received my work, I wrote as one begging a favour. "Here," I said, "we have the means to achieve all we want. Do not—oh, do not—criticise. I have written down the words. But the conception is yours. The play was inspired by you. But for you I should never have begun it. Take my play, James; take it as your own. For yours it is. Put your name to it, and produce it, if you love me, under your own signature. If this hurts your pride, I will word my request differently. You alone are able to manage the business side of the production. You know the right men to go to. To approach them on behalf of a stranger's work is far less likely to lead to success. I have assumed, you will see, that the play is certain to be produced. But that will only be so if you adopt it as your own. Claim the authorship, and all will be well."

Much more I wrote to James in the same strain; and my reward came next day in the shape of a telegram: "Accept thankfully.—Cloyster."

Of the play and its reception by the public there is no need to speak.

The criticisms were all favourable.

Neither the praise of the critics nor the applause of the public aroused any trace of jealousy in James. Their unanimous note of praise has been a source of pride to him. He is proud—ah, joy!—that I am to be his wife.

I have blotted the last page of this commonplace love-story of mine.

The moon has come out from behind a cloud, and the whole bay is one vast sheet of silver. I could sit here at my bedroom window and look at it all night. But then I should be sure to oversleep myself and be late for breakfast. I shall read what I have written once more, and then I shall go to bed.

I think I shall wear my white muslin tomorrow.

(End of Miss Margaret Goodwin's narrative.)