The Journal of a Disappointed Man Part 23

_May_ 10.

In a very cheerful mood. Pleased with myself and everybody till a seagull soared overhead in Kensington Gardens and aroused my vast capacities for envy--I wish I could fly.

_May_ 24.

In L---- with my brother, A----. The great man is in great form and very happy in his love for N----. He is a most delightful creature and I love him more than any one else in the wide world. There is an almost feminine tenderness in my love.

We spent a delightful day, talking and arguing and insulting one another.... At these seances we take delight in anaesthetising our hearts for the purposes of argument, and a third person would be bound to suppose we were in the throes of a bitter quarrel. We pile up one vindictive remark on another, ingeniously seeking out--and with malice--weak points in each other's armour, which previous exchange of confidences makes it easy to find. Neither of us hesitates to make use of such private confessions, yet our love is so strong that we can afford to take any liberty. There is, in fact, a fearful joy in testing the strength of our affection by searching for cutting rejoinders--to see the effect. We rig up one another's cherished ideals like Aunt Sallies and then knock them down, we wax sarcastic, satirical, contemptuous in turn, we wave our hands animatedly (hand-waving is a great trick with both of us), get flushed, point with our fingers, and thump the table to clinch some bit of repartee. Yet it's all smoke. Our love is una.s.sailable--it's like the law of gravitation, you cannot dispute it, it underlies our existence, it is the air we breathe.

N---- is charming, and thought we were quarrelling, and therefore intervened on his side!

_May_ 31.

R---- outlined an impression he had in Naples one day during a sirocco of the imminence of his own death. It was evidently an isolated experience and bored me a little as I could have said a lot myself about that. When he finished I drew from my pocket an envelope with my name and three addresses scribbled on it to help the police in case of syncope as I explained. I have carried this with me for several years and at one time a flask of brandy.

_June_ 3.

Went to see the Irish Players in _The Playboy_. Sitting in front of me was a charming little Irish girl accompanied by a male clod with red-rimmed eyes like a Bull-terrier's, a sandy, bristly moustache like a housemaid's broom, and a face like a gluteal ma.s.s, and a horrid voice that crepitated rather than spoke.

She was dark, with s.h.i.+ning blue eyes, and a delightful little nose of the utmost import to every male who should gaze upon her. Between the acts, the clod hearkened to her vivacious conversation--like an enchanted bullock. Her vivacity was such that the tip of her nose moved up and down for emphasis and by the end of the Third Act I was captured entirely. Lucky dog, that clod!

After the play this little Irish maiden caught my eye and it became a physical impossibility for me to check a smile--and oh! Heavens!--she gave me a smile in return. Precisely five seconds later, she looked again to see if I was still smiling--I was--and we then smiled broadly and openly on one another--her smile being the timorous ingenue's not the glad eye of a _femme de joie_. Later, on the railway platform whither I followed her, I caught her eye again (was ever so lucky a fellow?), and we got into the same carriage. But so did the clod--ah!

dear, was ever so unlucky a fellow? Forced to occupy a seat some way off, but she caught me trying to see her thro' a midnight forest of opera hats, lace ruffles, projecting ears and fat noses.

Curse! Left her at High Street Station and probably will never see her again. This is a second great opportunity. The first was the girl on Lundy Island. These two women I shall always regret. There must be so many delightful and interesting persons in London if only I could get at them.

_June_ 4.

Rushed off to tell R---- about my little Irish girl. Her face has been "shadowing" me all day.

_June_ 6.

A violent argument with R---- _re_ marriage. He says Love means appropriation, and is taking the most elaborate precautions to forfend pa.s.sion--just as if it were a militant suffragette. Every woman he meets he first puts into a long quarantine, lest perchance she carries the germ of the infectious disease. He quotes Hippolytus and talks like a mediaeval ascetic. Himself, I imagine, he regards as a valuable but brittle piece of Dresden china which must be saved from rough handling and left unmolested to pursue its high and dusty destiny--an old crock as I warned him. By refusing to plunge into life he will live long and be a well preserved man, but scarcely a living man--a mummy rather. I told him so amid much laughter.

"You're a reactionary," says he.

"Yes, but why should a reactionary be a naughty boy?"

_June_ 7.

My ironical fate lured me this evening into another discussion on marriage in which I had to take up a position exactly opposite to the one I defended yesterday against R----. In fact, I actually subverted to my own pressing requirements some of R----'s own arguments! The argument, of course, was with Her.

Marriage, I urged, was an economic trap for guileless young men, and for my part (to give myself some necessary stiffening) I did not intend to enter upon any such hazardous course, even if I had the chance. Miss Miss ---- said I was a funk--to me who the day before had been hammering into R---- my principle of "Plunge and d.a.m.n the consequences." I was informed I was an old woman afraid to go out without an umbrella, an old tabby cat afraid to leave the kitchen fire, etc., etc.

"Yes, I _am_ afraid to go out without an umbrella," I argued formally, "when it's raining cats and dogs. As long as I am dry, I shall keep dry.

As soon as I find myself caught in the rain or victimised by a pa.s.sion, I shan't be afraid of falling in love or getting wet. It would be a misadventure, but I am not going in search of one."

All the same the discussion was very galling, for I was acting a part.

... The truth is I have philandered abominably with her. I know it. And now I am jibbing at the idea of marriage.... I am such an egotist, I want, I believe, a Princess of the Blood Royal.

_June_ 9.

Some days ago sent a personal advertis.e.m.e.nt to the newspaper to try to find my little Irish girl who lives at Notting Hill Gate. To-day they return me the money and advert, no doubt mistaking me for a White Slave trafficker. And by this time, I'm thinking, my little Irish girl can go to blazes. Shall spend the P.O. on sweets or monkey nuts.

_June_ 10

_Lupus_

It is raining heavily. I have just finished dinner. In the street an itinerant musician is singing dolefully, "O Rest in the Lord." In my dirty little sitting room I begin to feel very restless, so put on my hat and cloak and walk down towards the Station for a paper to read. It is, all very dark and dismal, and I gaze with hungry eyes in thro' some of the windows disclosing happy comfortable interiors. At intervals thunder growls and lightning brightens up the deserted dirtiness of the Station Waiting Room. A few bits of desolate paper lie about on the floor, and up in one corner on a form a crossing-sweeper, motionless and abject, driven in from his pitch by the rain. His hands are deep in his trousers' pockets, and the poor devil lies with legs sprawling out and eyes closed: over the lower part of his face he wears a black mask to hide the ravages of lupus.... He seemed the last man on earth--after every one else had died of the plague. Not a soul in the station. Not a train. And this is June!

_June_ 15.

_Measuring Lice_

Spent the day measuring the legs and antennae of lice to two places of decimals!

To the lay mind how fantastic this must seem! Indeed, I hope it is fantastic. I do not mind being thought odd. It seems almost fitting that an incurable dilettante like myself should earn his livelihood by measuring the legs of lice. I like to believe that such a bizarre manner of life suits my incurable frivolousness.

I am a Magpie in a Bagdad bazaar, hopping about, useless, inquisitive, fascinated by a lot of astonis.h.i.+ng things: _e.g._, a book on the quadrature of the circle, the _gabbertushed fustilugs_ pa.s.sage in Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_, names like Mr. Portwine or Mr.

Hogsflesh, Tweezer's Alley or Pickle Herring Street, the excellent, conceitful sonnets of Henry Constable or Petticoat Lane on a Sunday morning.

Colossal things such as Art, Science, etc., frighten me. I am afraid I should develop a thirst that would make me wish to drink the sea dry. My mind is a disordered miscellany. The world is too distracting. I cannot apply myself for long. London bewilders me. At times it is a phantasmagoria, an opium dream out of De Quincey.

_June_ 17.

Prof. Geo. Saintsbury's book on Elizabethan literature amuses me.

_George_, there can be no doubt, is a very refined, cultivated fellow. I bet he don't eat periwinkles with a pin or bite his nails--and you should hear him refer to folk who can't read Homer in the original or who haven't been to Oxford--to Merton above all. He also says _non so che_ for _je ne sais quoi_.

_June_ 26.

... I placed the volume on the mantelpiece as if it were a bottle of physic straight from my Dispensary, and I began to expostulate and expound, as if she were a sick person and I the doctor.... She seemed a little nettled at my proselytising demeanour and gave herself out to be very preoccupied--or at any rate quite uninterested in my physic. I read the book last night at one sitting and was boiling over with it.

"I fear I have come at an inconvenient time," I said, with a sardonic smile and strummed on the piano.... "I must really be off. Please read it (which sounded like 'three times a day after meals') and tell me how you like it. (Facetiously.) Of course don't give up your present manual for it, that would be foolish and unnecessary." ... I rambled on--disposed to be very playful.

At last calmly and horribly, in a thoughtful voice she answered,--

"I think you are very rude; you play the piano after I asked you to stop and walk about just as if it were your own home."

I remained outwardly calm but inwardly was very surprised and full of tremors. I said after a pause,--

"Very well, if you think so.... Good-bye."

No answer; and I was too proud to apologise.

"Good-bye," I repeated.

She went on reading her novel in silence while I got as far as the door--very upset.