Certain Personal Matters. Герберт Уэллс
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But as the lank hours of that vast schooltime drawled on, Mr. Sandsome lost energy, drooped like a flower, – especially if the day was at all hot, – his sandy hair became dishevelled, justice became nerveless, hectic, and hasty. Finally came copybooks; and yawns and weird rumblings from Mr. Sandsome. And so the world aged to the dinner-hour.
When I had been home – it was a day school, for my aunt, who had an appetite for such things, knew that boarding-schools were sinks of iniquity – and returned, I had Mr. Sandsome at another phase. He had dined – for we were simple country folk. The figurative suggestions of that "phase" are irresistible – the lunar quality. May I say that Mr. Sandsome was at his full? We now stood up, thirty odd of us altogether, to read, reading out of books in a soothing monotone, and he sat with his reading-book before him, ruddy as the setting sun, and slowly, slowly settling down. But now and then he would jerk back suddenly into staring wakefulness as though he were fishing – with himself as bait – for schoolboy crimes in the waters of oblivion – and fancied a nibble. That was a dangerous time, full of anxiety. At last he went right under and slept, and the reading grew cheerful, full of quaint glosses and unexpected gaps, leaping playfully from boy to boy, instead of travelling round with a proper decorum. But it never ceased, and little Hurkley's silly little squeak of a voice never broke in upon its mellow flow. (It took a year for Hurkley's voice to break.) Any such interruption and Mr. Sandsome woke up and into his next phase forthwith – a disagreeable phase always, and one we made it our business to postpone as long as possible.
During that final period, the last quarter, Mr. Sandsome was distinctly malignant. It was hard to do right; harder still to do wrong. A feverish energy usually inspired our government. "Let us try to get some work done," Mr. Sandsome would say – and I have even known him teach things then. More frequently, with a needless bitterness, he set us upon impossible tasks, demanding a colossal tale of sums perhaps, scattering pens and paper and sowing the horrors of bookkeeping, or chastising us with the scorpions of parsing and translation. And even in wintry weather the little room grew hot and stuffy, and we terminated our schoolday, much exhausted, with minds lax, lounging attitudes, and red ears. What became of Mr. Sandsome after the giving-out of home-work, the concluding prayer, and the aftermath of impositions, I do not know. I stuffed my books, such as came to hand – very dirty they were inside, and very neat out with my Aunt Charlotte's chintz covers – into my green baize bag, and went forth from the mysteries of schooling into the great world, up the broad white road that went slanting over the Down.
I say "the mysteries of schooling" deliberately. I wondered then, I wonder still, what it was all for. Reading, almost my only art, I learnt from Aunt Charlotte; a certain facility in drawing I acquired at home and took to school, to my own undoing. "Undoing," again, is deliberate – it was no mere swish on the hand, gentle reader. But the things I learnt, more or less partially, at school, lie in my mind, like the "Sarsen" stones of Wiltshire – great, disconnected, time-worn chunks amidst the natural herbage of it. "The Rivers of the East Coast; the Tweed, the Tyne, the Wear, the Tees, the Humber" – why is that, for instance, sticking up among my ferns and wild flowers? It is not only useless but misleading, for the Humber is not another Tweed. I sometimes fancy the world may be mad – yet that seems egotistical. The fact remains that for the greater part of my young life Mr. Sandsome got an appetite upon us from nine till twelve, and digested his dinner, at first placidly and then with petulance, from two until five – and we thirty odd boys were sent by our twenty odd parents to act as a sort of chorus to his physiology. And he was fed (as I judge) more than sufficiently, clothed, sheltered, and esteemed on account of this relation. I think, after all, there must have been something in that schooling. I can't believe the world mad. And I have forgotten it – or as good as forgotten it – all! At times I feel a wild impulse to hunt up all those chintz-covered books, and brush up my dates and paradigms, before it is too late.
THE POET AND THE EMPORIUM
"I am beginning life," he said, with a sigh. "Great Heavens! I have spent a day —a day!– in a shop. Three bedroom suites and a sideboard are among the unanticipated pledges of our affection. Have you lithia? For a man of twelve limited editions this has been a terrible day."
I saw to his creature comforts. His tie was hanging outside his waistcoat, and his complexion was like white pasteboard that has got wet. "Courage," said I. "It will not occur again – "
"It will," said he. "We have to get there again tomorrow. We have – what is it? – carpets, curtains – "
He produced his tablets. I was amazed. Those receptacles of choice thoughts!
"The amber sunlight splashing through the leaky – leafy interlacing green," he read. "No! – that's not it. Ah, here! Curtains! Drawing-room – not to cost more than thirty shillings! And there's all the Kitchen Hardware! (Thanks.) Dining-room chairs – query – rush bottoms? What's this? G.L.I.S. – ah! "Glistering thro' deeps of glaucophane" – that's nothing. Mem. to see can we afford Indian needlework chairs – 57s. 6d.? It's dreadful, Bellows!"
He helped himself to a cigarette.
"Find the salesman pleasant?" said I.
"Delightful. Assumed I was a spendthrift millionaire at first. Produced in an off-hand way an eighty-guinea bedroom suite – we're trying to do the entire business, you know, on about two hundred pounds. Well – that's ten editions, you know. Came down, with evidently dwindling respect, to things that were still ruinously expensive. I told him we wanted an idyll – love in a cottage, and all that kind of thing. He brushed that on one side, said idols were upstairs in the Japanese Department, and that perhaps we might do with a servant's set of bedroom furniture. Do with a set! He was a gloomy man with (I should judge) some internal pain. I tried to tell him that there was quite a lot of middle-class people like myself in the country, people of limited or precarious means, whose existence he seemed to ignore; assured him some of them led quite beautiful lives. But he had no ideas beyond wardrobes. I quite forgot the business of shopping in an attempt to kindle a little human enthusiasm in his heart. We were in a great vast place full of wardrobes, with a remote glittering vista of brass bedsteads – skeleton beds, you know – and I tried to inspire him with some of the poetry of his emporium; tried to make him imagine these beds and things going east and west, north and south, to take sorrow, servitude, joy, worry, failing strength, restless ambition in their impartial embraces. He only turned round to Annie, and asked her if she thought she could do with 'enamelled.' But I was quite taken with my idea – Where is it? I left Annie to settle with this misanthrope, amidst his raw frameworks of the Homes of the Future."
He fumbled with his tablets. "Mats for hall – not to exceed 3s. 9d… Kerbs … inquire tiled hearth … Ah! Here we are: 'Ballade of the Bedroom Suite': —
"'Noble the oak you are now displaying,
Subtly the hazel's grainings go,
Walnut's charm there is no gainsaying,
Red as red wine is your rosewood's glow;
Brave and brilliant the ash you show,
Rich your mahogany's hepatite shine,
Cool and sweet your enamel: But oh!
Where are the wardrobes of Painted Pine?'
"They have 'em in the catalogue at five guineas, with a picture – quite as good they are as the more expensive ones. To judge by the picture."
"But that's scarcely the idea you started with," I began.
"Not; it went wrong – ballades often do. The preoccupation of the 'Painted Pine' was too much for me. What's this? 'N.B. – Sludge sells music stools at – ' No. Here we are (first half unwritten): —
"'White enamelled, like driven snow,
Picked with just one delicate line.
Price you were saying is? Fourteen! – No!
Where are the wardrobes of Painted Pine?'
"Comes round again, you see! Then L'Envoy: —
"'Salesman, sad is the truth I trow:
Winsome walnut can never be mine.
Poets