fi&KauwjFM9'simm*^j'jairm'if9tTiS-\ 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022343234 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PS 3505.O94B2 
 
 Babel 
 
 3 1924 022 343 234 
 
BABEL 
 
 
 ««r 
 
By the same author: 
 
 THE MASK 
 THE WALL 
 
B A B E E 
 
 John Cournos 
 
 BONI AND LiVERIGHT 
 
 Publishers New York 
 
Copyright, ISSS, by 
 Bom Axm Livebiost, lire. 
 
 FRIirTED IS THE VXHTZV STATES OF AXESICA 
 
CONTENTS 
 BOOK I: A MEDLEY 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. A Medley 
 
 Gombarov Wakes in an Old World . . 13 
 
 Universal Speech of Money ... 19 
 
 Universal Speech of Art .... 24 
 
 Universal Speech of Inanimate Objects 35 
 
 Universal Speech of Love . . . , 37 
 
 On Sponging for Art's Sake .... 67 
 
 Between a Sleep and a Sleep .... 71 
 
 "Lon-n-n — don-n-n-n — !" .... 74 
 
 Universal Speech of Hotel Attendants 76 
 Universal Speech of International 
 
 Politics 77 
 
 Universal Speech of Labour ... 78 
 
 BOOK II: PUBLICANS, SINNERS, SAINTS, 
 ARTISTS, PHILOSOPHERS, OUTCASTS 
 
 II. Variations on a Single Theme 
 
 Joy on a 'Bus 83 
 
 Joy on Foot .90 
 
 Joy of Bagpipes 94 
 
 Joy of Obsession 96 
 
 Joy in a Cup of Tea 99 
 
 7 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I'AGE 
 
 Joy of Winding Streets .... 100 
 
 A Joy Refused 103 
 
 Joy of Joys 106 
 
 III. The Soul of London 
 
 Elephant and Castle 106 
 
 Marble Arch 116 
 
 Hampstead Heath 125 
 
 Soho . 133 
 
 IV. Lettees, Steange Meetings, Ghosts 
 
 Enter Postman 153 
 
 Enter Acquaintance 162 
 
 Enter Friend 164 
 
 Enter Brother . , 177 
 
 y. Babel's Geeat Men 
 
 Breaker of Ikons 195 
 
 Maker of Masks 204 
 
 Genius as Merchant 214 
 
 Merchant as Genius 218 
 
 Back-to-Nature Advocate .... 222 
 
 Brain in the Fog . 225 
 
 Toad-in-the-Hole .232 
 
 VI. Thump! Thump! Thump! 
 
 Ghost-Seeker 236 
 
 A Pioneer 248 
 
 The Intuitionists 261 
 
 Demigods in Exile 266 
 
 League Against Age 269 
 
 Kings Without Kingdoms . ,. . . 263 
 8 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 VII. Witches' Cauldeon , 
 
 In Quest of Knowledge 266 
 
 A Woman's Way ...... 268 
 
 Fog 272 
 
 Flames ,279 
 
 VHI. Accepted by the Rejected 
 
 Reflections in Piccadilly ...... 288 
 
 MoUy . . ,.. ., ...... 291 
 
 Anita ........... 296 
 
 Kathleen , . ,. 299 
 
 Judith 304 
 
 IX. Lite's Chessboaed : A Yeau's Moves 
 The Queen Still There . . 
 A Respite from the Chessboard 
 Miserable Pawn, Off the Board ! 
 A Move to Hampstead . 
 Bishop Off the Board! . . 
 After the Bishop — the Knight ! 
 Castle Brought Into Play ,., 
 An Audacious Move . 
 Real King, or Alter Egof . 
 
 326 
 330 
 334) 
 337 
 340 
 341 
 343 
 352 
 
 BOOK III: BRAIN-STORM 
 X. Beain-Stokm 
 
 Quest of the Golden Fleece .... 369 
 
 End of the Quest 364 
 
 Jazz Drinks, Jazz Music, Jazz Dancing 370 
 
 New Lamps for Old! 374 
 
 Rift Within the Lute 377 
 
 City of Brotherly Love Again . . ,. 380 
 
 9 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 OHAPTEB PAGE 
 
 Thick, and Faster! 383 
 
 Brain Jazz! 385 
 
 Woman's Privilege 390 
 
 "It Is You, Oh Harlot City!" . . .396 
 
 BOOK IV: BEFORE THE FALL 
 XI. Love's Metamokphosis 
 
 "Damn Braces, Bless Relaxes" . . . 401 
 
 The Whirlpool 409 
 
 Fate at Her Old Tricks 415 
 
 XH. It Had to Be 
 
 The Reckoning 422 
 
 "On to Berlin!" , 427 
 
 lO 
 
BOOK I 
 
 A MEDLEY 
 
 To Olivia ShaJcespear 
 
BABEL 
 
 CHAPTER I: A MEDLEY 
 
 "And the whole earth was of one 
 language, and of one speech." 
 Genesis, xi: i. 
 
 GOMBAROV WAKES IN AN OLD WORLD 
 
 Once more Gombarov dreamt the old, ever recurring 
 corridor dream, which had come to him at irregular intervals 
 since childhood, always in a new variation. 
 
 There was no starting point, and he did not know how, when, 
 and where hei had gotten into a peculiar contrivance, which, if 
 it resembled anything, resembled the device known as the 
 "dumb-waiter." But he imdoubtedly felt the terrifying sensa- 
 tion of going down, down, down, with incredible and ever in- 
 creasing speed, until he reached the deep, nethermost cellar, at 
 the very foundations of what must have been an immensely tall 
 building. The whole house — for house it surely was — appeared 
 alive with ancient memories and portents of the future. It was 
 heaving with a restlessness as of gestating, shut-in thoughts 
 trying to break their cells, and it groaned with inexplicable, 
 strange noises, which aroused intense apprehension in the 
 heart of the visitor who groped his way through a labyrinth 
 of dimly-lit corridors and passed by innumerable closed doors, 
 each seeming to hide an alluring, ugly mystery. Every instant 
 he expected a door or doors to open, and a Thing or Things to 
 poimce upon him. At his side there glided rather than walked 
 
 13 
 
BABEL 
 
 a grey presence, a vague yet familiar human shape, as noiseless 
 and intense as a shadow he had once known intimately and 
 with hatred, and had forgotten. Fear possessed him, as it 
 can possess only in dreams: there was about the place an 
 atmosphere of something terrible impending which heavily 
 oppressed him, while, with great effort, he continued his way 
 through the imending maze of narrow, almost airless passages, 
 holding in one hand a truncheon, in the other his familiar 
 gold watch, which, oddly enough, had ceased exercising its 
 customary function, but, even as he walked, gave out in a 
 gramophonic voice a loud, screechy, disconcerting tune, a 
 peculiarly modem, raucous medley made up of threads and 
 snatches of songs he had heard simg at one time or another 
 by white men blackened to resemble negroes, to the accom- 
 paniment of banjo-strumming and clog-hopping. 
 
 The dream tune woke him. Terrified and perspiring, he 
 peered over the edge of his bed-cover and wondered where he 
 was. The room was alive with the slow movement of the 
 particles of the early grey light, and Gombarov's half-open 
 eyes strayed vaguely and reluctantly, with no volition of their 
 own, but wholly responsive to the hypnotic persuasions of 
 dawn. There was in them the bewilderment of an awakening 
 from a trance, then a strained effort to identify his position. 
 His glance, grown steady at last, fell on the engravinp on the 
 wall. These, however, were sufficiently cosmopolitan to reveal 
 no clue to his whereabouts. 
 
 With diligent scrutiny he studied the large picture directly 
 facing him on the dingy red waU. It was a familiar exan^jle 
 of what, through his association with artists, he had learnt to 
 know as a masterpiece of bad art, a favourite, needless to say, 
 with that great pubUc which, almost single-voiced, echoed the 
 familiar sentiment, "I may not know good art, but I know 
 
 14 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 what I like"; a sentiment which, if artistic wiseacres are to 
 be believed, is peculiar to our age, a by-product of democratic 
 institutions. The picture showed a wooded spot; in the fore- 
 ground two modish females of the furbelow and bustle period 
 stood facing one another; stripped to the waist, and poised in an 
 attitude of dud combatants, they flourished long foils. The 
 presence in the background of two equally modish seconds 
 testified to the affair being properly serious, altogether comme 
 U faut. The breasts of the facing figure seductively confronted 
 the spectator; the oth^ figiu-e fiaimted its hardly less alluring 
 back; the fluffy things of both hung down from the waist, not 
 unlike the skins of half -shorn lambs; in short, it was a produc- 
 tion imerringly calculated to tickle the fancy of a susceptible 
 bourgeois world, which surely knew its own mind. As the 
 wakened sleqper's eyes strayed leftward, they encountered 
 another picture, which answered the secret aspiration in human 
 beings to view forbidden fruit: it showed a yoimg naked girl 
 standing ankle-deep in the sea, shivering a little, perhaps con- 
 venioitly, to give her cause to stoop in a shy manner, her hands 
 on her knees, thus achieving the effect of a virgin suddenly 
 sitting a Peeping Tom and piquantly striving to hide what 
 strange eyes should not see. 
 
 He had seen the same pictures — and furniture, for that 
 matter — at the American hotels and at his own home in Phila- 
 delphia; so it was hardly astonishing that on waking, his first 
 mood should have been one sharply conscious of his position 
 nearly three months ago, when he was eking out a livelihood 
 for himsdf and the large irreqransible family — ^largely of his 
 stepfather's b^etting — ^by selling himself, soul and entrails, 
 to that popular organ of news and public opinion, the New 
 World. 
 
 15 
 
BABEL 
 
 "Blast it! It must be nearly time to go to work," he mut- 
 tered, and thought he heard his mother's footsteps. 
 
 His eyes strayed to the inscriptions under the pictiures: 
 L'A§aire d'Honneur and L'Aube de Septembre. That was 
 strange: the pictures at home were inscribed in English. 
 
 "What a funny mistake!" he laughed, as he grasped the 
 true state of affairs: that he was no longer in Philadelphia, 
 that he had not been there for nearly three months. He was 
 in Paris, having come by the way of Naples, Rome, Florence, 
 Venice, and Milan, now realised visions of beauty, which had 
 once seemed impossible. 
 
 What strange things dreams were, thus to destroy all sense 
 of time and space! He felt relieved at the thought that he need 
 not go, could not go if he had desired, to his accustomed place 
 at the New World, where he had misspent fifteen years, the 
 best of his life. There was comfort for him in the thought of 
 there being three thousand miles between himself and the place 
 he had come to regard as his prison. Yet now, as often before, 
 a panic, a kind of blind terror, seized him. Never before had 
 he been away from home for so long. He had been too near a 
 nervous breakdown to experience exultation at the prospect of 
 facing infinite horizons, endlessly stretching vistas of a large 
 world. Surely he had but lately left a prison, had been there 
 too long to become quickly accustomed to the dazzling light of 
 freedom. He still felt the clank of irons, the crushing weight 
 of his chains; these were yet with him, no longer at his ankles, 
 but in his heart. So heavily they sat there, that the joy and 
 blitheness he had suspected of being there seemed not to be 
 there; and his courage ebbing, he would wish himself, in such 
 a mood, back at his treadmill, which, at all events, afforded 
 him material security. Now, when once more this fear of life 
 was upon him, he cursed himself for his rashness in leaving his 
 
 l6 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 fleshpots behind him, or contrariwise, for his faint-heartedness 
 in turning from the Promised Land. Promised? Well, 
 hardly; unless one could say that the land which Columbus 
 set out to seek was promised. There was possibly some justifi- 
 cation for Gombarov's colleagues at the New World thinking 
 him a fool in leaving a comfortable position, good for life, and 
 going off on a wild goose chase. 
 
 What did he want? What was his object, without his seem- 
 ing to have an adventurous soul, to thus set out adventuring 
 at his age, in wide, uncertain seas, with a mutinous crew of 
 instincts ever urging him to turn back? What secret or mystic 
 force in him, or outside, impelled him forward, as by repeated 
 proddings, leaving him no choice but to obey? Precise knowl- 
 edge was withheld from him; his tragic past seemed to be 
 without reason, and he was vouchsafed no glimpse of the future. 
 There were no horizons spreading before him as he proceeded 
 on his journey; the walls of life merely appeared to recede a 
 little, as the sea mists recede, or appear to recede, before ships 
 advancing. He was without helm or rudder; a blind, uncon- 
 scious will guided him: he did not know whether toward some 
 blessed isle, where his tired body and soul might rest, or toward 
 some malignant torrent, fiercely forcing a path through the 
 cleft of some new ScyUa and Charybdis. A faint hope shone 
 in his heart; in his collected moments he knew that he was 
 not so much running to a place as nmning away from one. 
 Let worse come, so it be different! At other times he appeared 
 to be running from himself, which would seem to be as foolish 
 as a dog wildly turning to bite his own taU. But a dog does 
 wildly turn sometimes to bite his own tail; and he, Gombarov, 
 was nmning from himself. Himself? Well, not exactly. 
 From what the world and circumstance had made him. He 
 knew, this he really knew, that he was not what he appeared 
 
 17 
 
BABEL 
 
 to be. He was a natural, life-loving, gay man; a true man of 
 this earth, and loving the earth, and all that was made for 
 man on the earth. He felt himself to be like the Ancient 
 Mariner with the dead albatross himg around his neck. But 
 some one, surely not he, had killed the albatross, and hung it 
 round his neck. Why they had killed the albatross, and why 
 he, innocent of its killing, should have been chosen to bear the 
 ill-omened burden was quite beyond his knowledge. 
 
 His departure from the American city, where he had spent 
 twenty years of his life, was the second sharp break in his life; 
 the first had been when he had left his ten years of childhood 
 behind in the Russian woods. But for this decision to cut loose 
 from the City of Brotherly Love, a decision that saved the rem- 
 nants of his manhood, he surely would have put a bullet in his 
 head. That would appear to be a sufQcient reason for his imder- 
 taking; after all, he had but one head, while the supply of 
 bullets was in no danger of becoming exhausted. Bullets 
 failing, there was always the Thames, famous for its lethal 
 waters, which had consoled many, would console more. That 
 was the point: he had nothing to lose, nothing whatsoever. 
 There was plenty of time to jump from a bridge, or take a 
 bullet or a pill. One knew so little of the two most widdy 
 advertised countries. Theological Baedekers, while pointing 
 the ways — the one a straight, narrow path, the other a bee line, 
 permitting, however, short, even very short, cuts — ^were yet 
 strangely inadequate as to landmarks and particulars of life 
 in either place: they laid peculiar stress on the respective 
 climates, on which they dwelt with the eloquence and veri- 
 similitude of eye witnesses, and emphasised the advantages of 
 taking up one's permanent residence in a temperate, moderately 
 sunny country lying in the path of the celestial Gulf Stream 
 rather than living in an active, volcanic crater situated in the 
 
 l8 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 infernal supertropics, where — ^if the reports of eyewitnesses 
 be correct — ^the heat is sufficiently great to permit men to stew 
 in their own juice, such a performance being unique to those 
 r^ons and inconceivable elsewhere, certainly not on this earth, 
 which is the best possible sort of place, at all events for Vicar 
 and Devfl, recruiting sergeants for Heaven and Hell. 
 
 UNIVERSAL SPEECH OF MONEY 
 
 For the time being, Gombarov was content to take a page 
 out of the practical man's book: "See your own country 
 first." He did not take this too literally, in its provincial 
 sense, in the sense that a caterpillar accepts one head of cab- 
 bage, if a large one, as its complete and self-sufficient world, 
 but accepted the earth as a country distinct merely from the 
 aforesaid countries. It was as possible nowadays for a man to 
 circumnavigate the earth as it is for a caterpillar to make a 
 complete circuit roimd a cabbage. Through its fast railways, 
 liners, telegraphs, the world was one country, and as he had 
 learnt on his journey, it had one universal medium of speech: 
 money. One had but to flash a letter of credit, an American 
 Express cheque-book, a Bank of England note, a mark, krone 
 or rouble note, a green- or a yellow-back, and, best of all, a 
 gold sovereign, an eagle, or a double eagle. With it, one had 
 but to mention the name of a place one wished to go to, the 
 name of a favourite dish, of a favourite wine. Somehow, once 
 you showed people your money, you invariably got what you 
 wanted. Money talks, as the saying goes: and it talks to good 
 effect, one language, or all, as you choose. 
 
 By some inexplicable association of ideas, Gombarov's 
 strange dream seemed to have unlatched the doors behind 
 which reposed his newly gathered memories; and the thought 
 of money and of his own purse, whose too meagre contents 
 
 19 
 
BABEL 
 
 were all he coidd show after years of assiduous industry, 
 brought to his mind the strange individual he had met on 
 board the steamer on the way to Naples, a tall, lanky, energetic 
 American of about forty. He remembered speaking to the 
 man and bewailing the fact that he was going to Italy without 
 a knowledge of the language. The dry-witted man replied: 
 
 "You don't want to know the language. You don't want 
 to know any language. You want to show the colour of your 
 money. Why, you can go to Indo-China, and you bet you 
 won't find any of those Hindu-Chinks colour-blind. No, not 
 they. Nor those Espagnoles, Frenchies, or Dagoes, for that 
 matter. There's this about money. You can smell as well as 
 see it. You can hear it, too, so far as that goes. The right 
 kind of money makes the proper kind of noise. Nothing like 
 the clink of gold to make people sit up and take notice. You 
 can't hide it. Once you have it, you can be dressed in rags, 
 and people will steer towards you as steel towards a magnet. 
 In fact, it appeals to all the five senses, and the sixth, if there 
 is one. Other people can have Esperanto and Volapiik, which 
 won't buy you your car fare. .As for me, I am all for the 
 simoleons as an international lingo. Carry your lingo in your 
 purse, my boy, and you can't go wrong. Those Dagoes will 
 understand you, if you imitate the jabber of a monkey." 
 
 Gombarov, annoyed by the man's cocksure attitude, which 
 reminded him of the disturbing slimness of his own purse, 
 mildly remonstrated: 
 
 "I quite agree with you about Esperanto and Volapiik, 
 though for different reasons. A people's soul is in its language, 
 and a neutral language would kill that. All the same, aren't 
 you attaching too much importance to money?" 
 
 "You can't attach too much importance to money," the 
 other interrupted him. 
 
 20 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 "There's this to be said for the Esperantists," resumed 
 Gombarov, "they are trying to create an international language 
 so that men of various nations may exchange ideas, become 
 friendly and avoid war." It was not what was in his mind, 
 but the other's attitude had aroused his antagonism, and he 
 was prepared to defend even Esperanto, with which he was far 
 from sympathetic. 
 
 "Delighted that you've brought the matter up, my boy," 
 said the lanky man, rubbing his hands. "It's money again 
 that's going to put an end to all wars. It's the invention of 
 money that's repaired the original mistake of Babel. Why, 
 man! " he exclaimed, seizing Gombarov by the lapel of his coat, 
 "Eiu"ope hasn't had a real decent war for forty years, nothing 
 since the Franco-Prussian war. It's money that's done it. 
 International finance. International exchange. International 
 credits. Nothing can knock that tower down. The world's 
 one small country. Don't you see, my boy" — ^the speaker 
 enthusiastically tugged at Gombarov's coat — "don't you see? 
 It stands to reason that a world boimd together as one country 
 can't fight against itself. That's where international finance 
 comes in. You don't suppose that financiers with banks in all 
 countries would be such chumps as to cut their own throats? 
 When Kaiser Bill, or King George or the Tsar of Russia is 
 spoOing for a fight, there's always a King of Finance to whisper 
 the word in his ear, and instead of fighting, the royal duffer 
 goes into his garden and gets it out of his system by tramping 
 down the grass with his parade boots on. Besides, there's not 
 a country that can do without the other. One country has 
 all the coal, another the iron, another the wheat, another the 
 cotton, and so on. The way they depend on one another, they 
 might be, to all intents and purposes, one country. Yes, my 
 
 21 
 
BABEL 
 
 boy, money is a cement. There's nothing like it to hold 
 countries or men together." 
 
 "That's all very well," protested Gombarov, "but how can 
 you explain the building of battleships and the keeping up of 
 great armies?" 
 
 "Give me a harder one. That's to guarantee peace, of 
 course. These are used only against the niggers, savages and 
 the little brigand countries, Uie only disturbers of peace to-day. 
 War will cease as soon as the big coimtries have gobbled up 
 the little ones and given them the benefits of civilisation. 
 That's where money — big business — comes in. And building 
 battleships gives men work, keeps them out of mischief. It's 
 big business that holds the world together, and don't you 
 forget it!" 
 
 Gombarov involuntarily shuddered. He didn't like this talk 
 of big business. He was interested in big art. He knew that 
 big business and big art were not friends. 
 
 "Do you mind telling me what business you are in?" he 
 asked after a pause. 
 
 "Not at all," the other replied, drawing out a card, which 
 he handed to Gombarov, who read: 
 
 Mr. Hezekiah Wood, 
 
 Representative of the 
 INTERNATIONAL EMBALMING COMPANY 
 
 Head Office: New York. Bbanohes: Boston, 
 Chicago, San Francisco, Paris, Berlin, St. Peters- 
 burg, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc. 
 
 As Gombarov looked up somewhat puzzled, Hezekiah Wood 
 proceeded to explain: 
 
 22 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 "We've discovered a new process for preserving human 
 corpses, which beats the Egyptian process to a frazzle. We 
 are anxious to place its benefits before every man, woman and 
 child in the world. There's nothing like being dead properly. 
 And we give a guarantee for a thousand years at least." 
 
 "What, a thousand yearsl" exclaimed Gombarov, incredu- 
 lously, and scrutinised the man to see if he was sane. "What 
 proof can you give, if the process has only just been invented?" 
 
 "We've seen to that. You see, we've invented a decom- 
 posing machine, which accelerates the process of decomposition 
 — to be precise, it approximates a speed of five years to the 
 minute, — and we've tried it on ordinary corpses and on corpses 
 treated by our method, and it's stood the test. We give a 
 written guarantee, and the corpse's grandchildren or great 
 grandchildren are at liberty to sue the company and get their 
 money back at compound interest." 
 
 As if he had read a question in Gombarov's mind, he 
 exclaimed: 
 
 "Don't you worry! We expect to bring ancestry into good 
 repute again by advertising. And I dare say, we'll do a 
 thriving business in China, where they reverence their ancestors 
 properly. There are so many Chinks, tool It's a proper 
 shame, by the way," — the steamer was then passing the Rock 
 of Gibraltar — "it's a proper shame the way that rock is wasted. 
 We'd pay the British Government handsomely to let us deco- 
 rate that rock with our ad. At night we'd have blazing lights 
 in real Broadway and Forty-second Street style. We might 
 even have a dying figure calling for our process, and a suitable 
 text, 'In the midst of life we are in death,' a gentle reminder 
 to men on ships passing in the night, which they can put 
 into their noddle and remember as they pass on to three 
 continents." 
 
 23 
 
BABEL 
 
 Again Gombarov involuntarily shuddered, as he thought of 
 how only a few days before they had gotten a wireless message 
 on ship board, announcing the down-going of the Titanic, and 
 of the gloom it had cast upon the crew and the passengers, 
 whose self-sufficiency suffered from Nature's reminder that 
 Man had not conquered her. He looked again at his vis-a-vis, 
 and found an excuse to get away. It was quite clear that 
 Hezekiah Wood was not a madman, but a thoroughly practical 
 business man, with an eye on the main chance. 
 
 iraiVERSAL SPEECH OF AKT 
 
 Gombarov's mind, now more awake, went back to his dream. 
 And back again to Hezekiah Wood, the preserver of corpses. 
 Suddenly it occurred to him: there was something in the half 
 shadowy being who had walked beside him in the dream that 
 reminded him of the promoter of international embalming. 
 But, in an explicable way, it also reminded him of someone 
 else. Who? 
 
 Perhaps there had never been any Hezekiah Wood, and this 
 personage and the whole conversation was but a figmoit of 
 his fancy, a fantastic thread woven into the not less fantastic 
 texture of his dream. Gombarov stretched out a hand towards 
 the small table by his bed and picked up a copy book, his 
 Diary, in which he had set down the most significant episodes 
 that had occurred to him since he started on his pUgrimage. 
 He turned to a date in April, and found his conversation with 
 Hezekiah Wood recorded there. 
 
 One thing, then, was certain: Hezekiah— he, somehow, 
 thought of him just as Hezekiah, without the surname — this 
 Hezekiah was a real personage, real in spite of his having 
 appeared in the dream. And yet, that feeling of there having 
 been two persons, possibly a double entity in one, persisted. 
 
 24 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 Mechanically he turned the pages of his Diary, his eyes 
 pausing at a name here and there. Suddenly his eyes fixed 
 themselves on a recent entry made in Paris, and he exclaimed: 
 
 "Ah, I know. It's William Douglass!" 
 
 That was strange. It was incredible that two persons so 
 antithetic should mix themselves up, even in a dream. To 
 his mind, Douglass as surely represented Big Art as Hezekiah 
 Big Business. The strangest part was that there were essen- 
 tial points at which their arguments touched and even harmo- 
 nized. For both the world had shrunk, was no longer wide 
 and flat, but like a cabbage, or an orange, had become palpably 
 roimd, had gained and asserted its third, and possibly its 
 fourth, dimension. For both, the world in its contractedness 
 was moving towards a unity of speech, though for the one 
 the medium of international exchange was money, for the 
 other art. 
 
 It was to be a remembered evening in Gombarov's develop- 
 ment when he first called at Douglass's studio, in the company 
 of Mrs. Gwjmne and her daughter Winifred, that graceful, 
 Botticellian-limbed girl, with her high-poised smaU dark quat- 
 trocento head, who had beguiled him and made his life pendu- 
 late between heaven and hell. But the telling of how this 
 pair, having administered a double dose of wormwood to him 
 in the City of Brotherly Love and witnessed his crucifixion 
 there, had come into his life again in Paris, must take its turn 
 in the meanderings of Gombarov's brain that morning, in the 
 stream of recent memories which so curiously and ine^licably 
 had its source in his dream. 
 
 Douglass's studio was situated in a small street off the Boule- 
 vard Montpamasse. The door was opened to the visitors by 
 Miss Sylvia Brent, who lived amicably with Douglass without 
 the legal formality of marriage. She was an artist on her own, 
 
 25 
 
BABEL 
 
 had interests in common with him; and the chief difference 
 between their pictures, as Gombarov noted later, was that she 
 went in for curves, Douglass for angles. She was a large good- 
 natured creature, all curves herself, and through the dia- 
 phanous texture of her white blouse two broad, pink ribbons 
 were visible on the curves of her breasts, like dawns on moim- 
 tains. Over her shoulders she wore a thin, many-coloured 
 silken shawl, such as he had not seen since he had left Italy. 
 This passion for bright colour was even more evident once 
 you entered the studio. Spectral yellows, violent greens, flam- 
 ing reds, strident blues and violets, sprawled about in great 
 flaunting splashes on the canvases, on the draperies on the 
 walls and screens, on the cushions on the large divan and the 
 settees and chairs. On the table stood a bowl of vegetables 
 and fruits, such as bananas, pimentos, blood-red apples, toma- 
 toes, green figs, an egg-plant and a pomegranate slashed in 
 two — the whole apparently arranged for a still-life. Surely, 
 these people had captured the rainbow and had taken it apart 
 to decorate the studio with its components. 
 
 Douglass himself, a man of about thirty-five, greeted the 
 visitors simply and heartily. Oddly enough, he did not culti- 
 vate the artistic in his person. His medium, robust figure 
 flaimted no velvet jacket, his clean firm face no hirsute orna- 
 ments, his hard, well-shaped head no hair that a shrewish 
 wife might clutch at with any comfort. He wore an ordinary 
 drab suit, an ordinary collar and ordinary tie that was held 
 together with an ordinary pin; he was, at all events out- 
 wardly, an individual in no wise different from Hezekiah. He 
 looked strangely out of place in that large room with its 
 torrential blaze of colour. 
 
 "Can he be an artist?" thought Gombarov, as he made a 
 quick survey of his own artistic figure in the red-framed glass 
 
 26 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 opposite to which he happened to sit. He took a pride in his 
 long luxuriant hair that fell in natural ringlets over his fore- 
 head and in his large black wing tie made for him by Winifred's 
 fingers. Again he reflected: how infinitdy nicer than Miss 
 Brent his own slender Winifred looked in her home-made, 
 quaintly decorative costimie, fitting her sinuous virginal form 
 like water and suggesting faintly, yet with precision, the 
 delicate if firm modelling of her small, not too small, breasts: 
 a twin adornment which gives a woman her bearing, a poet 
 something on which to write couplets, and the fortimate man 
 a place to pillow his head. 
 
 He was lost in his reflections, as was his habit even in 
 company, until awakened out of them by Mrs. Gwynne's shrill 
 American voice. 
 
 "John, come and see Mr. Douglass's paintings." 
 
 Gombarov, Winifred and Miss Brent rose simultaneously 
 from their chairs and went to the other end of the large studio, 
 where Douglass was putting a picture on an easel. Mrs. 
 Gwynne was by no means a connoisseur of painting, but 
 Douglass, in spite of his somewhat austere face, was kind and, 
 above all, child-like, expecting others to xmderstand the play 
 of his mind and even to share in it. This, however, was not so 
 simple a matter for minds whose art appreciations had no 
 opportimity of developing beyond Impressionism. Even 
 Gombarov, who had mingled and kept abreast with the Amer- 
 ican "modems," was nonplussed on beholding the new art, 
 as practised by Douglass. 
 
 There was an audible silence lasting some minutes, while 
 the visitors studied the pictiu-e and its strange angular figures, 
 which half resembled human beings, half mechanical con- 
 trivances, painted in broad patterns, in almost primal greens, 
 yellows and reds. 
 
 27 
 
BABEL 
 
 Gombarov was afraid to look at the artist. Was the man 
 mad? He re-experienced the emotions he had had some weeks 
 before in the presence of Hezekiah; but at last, taking courage, 
 looked up. Douglass's face was simple and benign, without a 
 trace of the fanatic; the common sense iisually ascribed to the 
 Scot seemed to mark the hardy features as emphatically as it 
 had marked the face of the Yankee promoter. 
 
 "What's the subject of this picture?" he finally asked, 
 burning with a curiosity to get at the bottom of the mystery. 
 The intensity of his curiosity overcame his shyness; he was 
 keenly aware of the danger of committing a faux pas. 
 
 "In the exhibition catalogue I called it the 'Beginning of 
 the End,' " replied the artist, "though I had thought of calling 
 it 'The Hashish Eaters.' I had got the idea," he proceeded 
 to explain, "on a visit to an imderground cabaret at Mont- 
 martre. One of the tables in a little comer by itself was 
 occupied by a group of haggard looking figures, three men and 
 a woman, who were pointed out to me as hashish fiends in the 
 last stages of their ruin. I don't know whether you are 
 familiar with the effects of hashish. As I looked at them and 
 studied them, I tried to enter their skins, to reconstruct their 
 lives, as I saw them in my imagination. It first occurred to 
 me that they had lived fast, at an accelerated, one might say, 
 mechanical speed. With them a single step has been as a 
 mile, an instant as an eternity, a street lamp as the sun, a 
 two-story shack as a castle. Their sky was covered with so 
 many moons instead of stars. And as I watched them, it 
 seemed to me that now and then I detected a look of the 
 inevitable in their eyes, as if they saw a grave — ^not a mere 
 hole, but an abyss, opening before their eyes ... the con- 
 sciousness of the debris of their dream castles falling, or about 
 to fall, about their ears . . . their last illusions crumbling. I 
 
 28 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 have tried to set all this dovm in the picture, what their sensa- 
 tions must be in terms of my art." 
 
 Gombarov studied the picture more closely, keeping the 
 artist's explanation in mind as one does the programme notes 
 in listening to a piece of music. The effect was as elusive. 
 He was bafSed by this conglomeration of angles, steel-like 
 and mechanical in structure, riveted together to form a pat- 
 tern incomprehensible to him. He could not understand 
 why the figures had angular heads, angxilar mouths, angular 
 hands and feet, manipulated — ^it seemed — on hinges; why they 
 drank out of angular cups, and why the angular lamps from 
 above cast angular lights and shadows on their angular con- 
 tours; and all around them there appeared to be a chaos of 
 falling girders. 
 
 "The idea, as you tell it," ventured Gombarov, is a fine 
 one, but frankly, I cannot xmderstand your way of expressing 
 it. Do you mind explaining your method?" 
 
 "Not at all," said Douglass. "Not at all. I am, first of 
 all, a man of my own age. This is not an age of knights and 
 ladies. It is a scientific age, an age of engineering and 
 mechanics. The dominating factor is the machine. The 
 machine has given the world a unity it has not had before. 
 Through its fast ships, railways and telegraphs, its manufac- 
 tured products, the world has gained an amazing sameness. 
 It is fast killing nationality and local colour. To be in har- 
 mony with his own time, a modem artist's duty is to record 
 and egress the spirit that moves the modem world, and he 
 cannot do this otherwise than by adopting the principles of 
 science and becoming as universal and abstract as science itself. 
 The Impressionists began the revolution by adopting science's 
 siq>erficialities, the colours of the spectrum and the vibration 
 of li^t. We, artists of today, go further by showing the very 
 
 29 
 
BABEL 
 
 soul of science; that is, the soul of our age. The soul of the 
 machine, if you like." 
 
 "Has the machine a soul?" asked Gombarov. 
 
 "Good Lord, yes!" said Douglass, and added, smiling, "To 
 be sure, it's not the soul of a yoimg lady. It is a pitiless, 
 relentless, conquering soul." 
 
 Gombarov was seized with a momentary bitterness, as he 
 thought of Winifred and of how, though a yoimg lady, she 
 had been pitOess and relentless to him, and of how, with her 
 soft hands, she had conquered him. It was true, she was his 
 again, but his heart was full of misgiving for the future. 
 There was a silence. Then he heard Douglass's voice again: 
 
 "Yes, science has made the world one, and has given the 
 world one speech. Yes, even in the arts nationality is being 
 killed, and soon the paintings of one country will be like the 
 paintings of another country. Artists will be regarded with 
 the same universal detachment as scientists. The scientist 
 Mendeleyeff is a Russian, but there's no reason at all why he 
 should not be a Frenchman. Universal speech in the arts is 
 being accomplished at last." 
 
 Strange! That was precisely what Hezekiah had said of 
 money. Was there, then, some connection between the colour 
 of money and the coloiu- of a modem artist's paint? Possibly, 
 since Big Business and Big Art were apparently founded on 
 the same principle, that of the machine. Gombarov refrained 
 from speaking his thought. 
 
 The artist took down the picture from the easel and replaced 
 it with another, this time obviously a still-life, consisting of 
 some bananas, apples, a liqueur bottle and the heading of the 
 Petit Parisien in the background. The letters of the news- 
 paper heading sprawled across the picture and dominated it. 
 The fruit was such as he had never seen before. It might 
 
 30 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 have been manufactured at Sheffield. Its edges were angular, 
 hard and sharp. It looked indigestible. 
 
 "One may express the spirit of the world even in a still- 
 life," observed Douglass. "A banana or an apple is a world 
 in itself; in fact, every object is a microcosm, so far as the 
 artist is concerned. Take a banana. There is no reason why 
 an artist should not apply the problem of engineering to a 
 banana; none at all. It is a piece of construction, a geomet- 
 rical form like any other, a perfectly related shape, a piece 
 of mechanics that is as wonderful in its way as the Firth 
 Bridge or a New York skjrscraper." 
 
 "Where does human personality come in?" interrupted the 
 persistent Gombarov. 
 
 "I had expected you to ask that," said Douglass. "No one 
 asks that question about a piece of music by Bach. Yet no 
 art more than music, especially by Bach, is subject to such 
 hide-bound mathematical laws and geometric patterns. Now, 
 you wouldn't say that there is no himianity in that music or 
 that the composer's personality doesn't shine in every phrase 
 of his work? Take that banana again — " 
 
 "I'd rather not!" said Gombarov, with a laugh, in which 
 the rest joined. 
 
 "The fundamental geometries of that banana," went on 
 Douglass, "are its own, but the nuances of its shape and colour 
 and the play of light are all mine, and are the product of my 
 temperament in a certain mood vat a given time of day, all 
 scientifically inter-related. A thousand circumstances, how- 
 ever petty, which have a mathematical relation to one another, 
 but which would seem impossible to calculate mathematically, 
 may have gone to produce the banana as it is on the canvas. 
 But I can imagine that a different set of circumstances, equally 
 inter-related, would produce a different effect. Suppose, 
 
 31 
 
BABEL 
 
 instead of painting it in a calm mood, I had painted it in a 
 temper. Say, I had been to see a woman. She thwarted me. 
 Made me angry. I have come into my studio. I am seeing red, 
 I set to painting that banana. That banana is usually yellow, 
 but today I am seeing it red. I am not only painting it red, 
 but am adding geometrical nuances of light and form which 
 contain the psychology of my personal dynamics. But my 
 particular mood is never master, but is always controlled by 
 my geometries, my modern technique, which merely builds up 
 forms to contain my serenity, or my temper, or my exultation, 
 as the case may be. Now, Sylvia's art is quite different. ..." 
 
 "Yes, I am a reaction from William," said Miss Brent, 
 J^ughing, as she took up the cue. Like most yoxmg artists, 
 die wanted her own work to be talked about. 
 
 "Do show us your pictures," suggested Mrs. Gwyime, who 
 could always be expected to do the polite thing. 
 
 Then they all followed Miss Brent through a partition in 
 the draperies, which separated her half of the studio from 
 Douglass's. 
 
 "I mean," said Miss Brent, taking up the thread of her 
 thought, where she had left off, "I react from the scientific 
 spirit of the age. I believe we are too sophisticated; so I 
 go in for the primitive." And she began hunting among the 
 canvases piled up against the wall. 
 
 "Show them 'Victory!'" suggested Douglass. 
 
 "Here it is!" exclaimed Miss Brent, as she pulled out a 
 canvas and placed it on the easel. 
 
 It was to Gombarov an extraordinary picture. A huge fat 
 negress, who was as closely related to the hippopotami as to 
 the human species, was emerging with a stride from a jungle 
 of green, giant-leaved plants, which loomed upward in a series 
 of broad curves. The negress, ebony and shiny, had a tomtom 
 
 32 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 slung from her neck and covering her tight, rounded belly. 
 She was beating the tomtom wildly and clamorously. Her 
 elongated breasts hung down like two miniature tomtoms, 
 being of the exact shape. Her wild, wavy hair, flung back to 
 match the stride of her legs, only half revealed the curves of 
 the large ivoiy ear-rings. Another large white ring was in 
 her broad flat nose. No opportimity was lost to add another, 
 and still another curve. The meaning of the picture was plain 
 enough. 
 
 "A French critic has called it the modem 'Victory of 
 Samothrace,' " said Douglass. 
 
 "I have tried to show," explained Miss Brent, "that the 
 primitive instincts still rule the world, in spite of all science. 
 But one thing William and I have in common: we no longer 
 speak in local dialects. We are trjring to create a language 
 which the whole world wiU understand . . ." 
 
 And so on, and so on. 
 
 Gombarov argued the new ideas with his hosts at length, 
 and when he left he felt all wrought up over his latest experi- 
 ence. His mind was in a state of fierce conflict. He had 
 rather taken a liking to the two persons; he saw that they had 
 spoken with sincerity and conviction; he even recognised the 
 plausibility and logic of their theories; altogether they 
 appeared to be sensible, reasonable people. And yet there 
 were those terrible pictures! A phrase of Douglass's kept on 
 coming back to him: "Art's effort in the past has been to 
 seduce. Its aim today is to violate." That was it, thenl 
 That was why he had felt so wrought up, so unreasonably in 
 a temper. His own mind, long fostered on different concepts 
 of beauty, had suffered from attempted violation. Otherwise 
 he could not explain his feelings. But why should there be 
 
 33 
 
BABEL 
 
 this desire on the part of artists to violate? Time would tell, 
 perhaps. 
 
 He visited several art exhibitions and saw pictures even 
 more violent in colour and design than Douglass's or Miss 
 Brent's, whereupon his mind became a seething kettle of 
 questionings and doubts. He was discreet enough not to laugh 
 as he had seen others do. He knew that the Impressionists 
 had been also laughed at when they first appeared. But if 
 these men were really mad, it was surely no laughing matter. 
 One madman may be the butt of sane men, but there was no 
 laughing at a madhouse. If these men were mad, they were 
 so with a method. He had had time to learn that the maddest 
 of them could draw in a masterly normal manner, which they 
 had wilfully forsaken for this new art. 
 
 "Most strange of all," — ran a passage in his Diary — "after 
 visiting these modem exhibitions, you go to a public gallery 
 of old masters, and the feelings you experience are not the 
 same as before seeing the new pictures. Somehow, serene and 
 beautiful as always, they have grown more reticent, remote 
 and mysterious; as if they had suddenly made up their minds 
 to hide themselves behind their own shadows, or to shroud 
 themselves behind their centuries. Coming from a modem 
 exhibition to these, I feel as if I had come from a maddeningly 
 dazzling room into a room of twilight and dusk, a room of 
 beautiful dim masks with arrested expressions, of felicitous 
 moments out of the great past, caught and imprisoned in the 
 cage of eternity. Why, then, am I being helplessly drawn to 
 those other pictures produced by apparently maddened brains? 
 Has my mind been actually violated by these and is it now 
 being drawn to its violators; or is it that they do represent the 
 life of today, and that it is life itself, such as it is, that draws 
 me?" 
 
 34 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 UNIVERSAL SPEECH OF INANIMATE OBJECTS 
 
 What a strange three months these had been, since he had 
 left home! thought Gombarov. And once more his mind V7an- 
 dered back to the dream. How amusing that bit about the 
 watch giving out a gramophonic cacophony! Why was he 
 constantly returning to the dream? Why did diurnal reality 
 and nocturnal vision so intricably mix themselves up, so you 
 could not tell one from the other? He was possessed by an 
 intense quitq imaccountable feeling, a conviction wholly sensa- 
 tional, having no connection with the brain, that the dream he 
 had dreamt was a concentrated, as it were, a distilled essence, 
 of his experiences dming his brief wanderings. At last he was 
 in the Europe he had longed to see, with a native's longing; 
 and now Europe was such a strange mixture of the old and 
 the new, of the mellow reality of old dreams and of the 
 assertive blatancy of incoherent newness. 
 
 He looked round him again. He was obviously in a room 
 of an old house, once a family residence, now fitted up as a 
 hotel. An old oaken beam, cracked in places, supported the 
 low ceiling; and from this beam an electric light himg down 
 over the chest of drawers in front of the mirror. He was 
 lying in a huge iron, brass-knobbed bed, its legs on casters. 
 The usual wash-stand, with all the customary paraphernalia, 
 stood in the far comer of the room. A large upholstered cosy 
 chair, worse for use, stood half-tottering near-by; his clothes 
 lay on it in disarray. The windows were overhung with 
 familiar, frippery white lace curtains, parted in the middle; 
 reinforced by worn drab blinds, which, as they were in poor 
 working order, Gombarov did not take the trouble to draw 
 down. Once more his gaze fell upon the two pictures. And 
 he recalled that the lavatory arrangements bore the name of 
 
 35 
 
BABEL 
 
 an English firm, and that the steam-radiators in the hall had 
 been made in America. 
 
 The inanimate objects in the room spoke a imiversal lan- 
 guage, since, in the matter of usage, they were not peculiar 
 to any one country. He had seen them in Philadelphia, 
 Buffalo, Boston, Hoboken, Rome, and he did not doubt that 
 he would see them in Bloomsbury. 
 
 How many nationalities, how many international couples, 
 had lain in Uiat same bed, whose loosened springs now thrust 
 themselves through the worn international mattress into his 
 sides? 
 
 The house was French, and it was old; the objects it con- 
 tained came from many lands, and were new. It was hard to 
 tell whether the old house resented it, or whether an old bottle 
 resents a new wine; or again, whether a new wine resents an 
 old bottle. And all that he had thus far seen of Europe was 
 like that: an old bottle fermenting a new wine. Was not that 
 a symbol of Europe? 
 
 The people themselves who owned and used these things 
 seemed to be old, very old. The very dogs, reflecting their 
 masters, did not bark at one, and regarded strangers quietly 
 and sleepily. Life was restful after America. Only the new 
 inanimate objects were blatant; machines and products manu- 
 factured by machines obtruded themselves and dislodged the 
 old things, which were essentially national and characterised 
 by the quality called "local colour." Civilisation, it seemed 
 to him, was moving, all but in its architecture, towards a 
 standardisation of life. But architecture, the hallmark of any 
 civilisation, in a sense, did not exist at all. He remembered 
 how he had marvelled when he first looked upon old Florence 
 and noted its architectural unity; above all, the wonder that 
 filled him, when he saw for the first time the aspiring, harmo- 
 
 36 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 nious shapes of old cathedrals, and resdised that a whole people 
 had poiired its soul into these shapes of long making. What 
 he saw, however, of the new architecture struck him as being 
 a medley, not at all imlike the medley of tunes he had heard 
 in his dream. 
 
 Everywhere appeared to be this violation of the old by the 
 new. 
 
 tJNIVERSAI, SPEECH OF LOVE 
 
 Under the stress of his new experiences, his waking mind 
 was also becoming a medley of discordant tim^. One dear, 
 inviolate note, however, was radiantly audible amid the clatter 
 of this cacophony of crowding impressions; and to this slender 
 exquisite music, the integral part of him, as deg)-rooted as 
 the trees of the Russian forest in which he had lived his child- 
 hood, returned again and again, with a persistence that aston- 
 ished him. 
 
 It was his love of Winifred. 
 
 Love has always been, from the time that Adam knew Eve, 
 the most universal of languages. And not all the falling debris 
 of the tower of Babel has succeeded in sepsurating scattered, 
 fleeing lovers. 
 
 Hence, "all mankind loves a lover"; and a lover loves the 
 whole world. In onbracing his love, the world's equatorial 
 line contracts to the slendemess of his love's waist; while 
 the temperate zones are quite absent. There would seem to be 
 no apparent connection between science and love; yet their 
 creative processes and effects are not unlike. Science's girding 
 arm around the willingly or unwillingly yielding earth make 
 the world small; a man's virile arm around a willing woman's 
 waist reduces the world to a microcosm. The whole world is 
 where the woman is; is in the woman. So much has one 
 
 37 
 
BABEL 
 
 conquered, whether with science or with love. All of which 
 belongs to the metaphjrsics of conquest. 
 
 But suppose the earth did not yield, and angrily cast up 
 her eruptions and landslides, buried man's railwa}rs and canals, 
 and called upon her brother Ocean to sink ^ps and her 
 brother Wind to fling down telegraph wires; then the earth 
 has not been conquered. Suppose, again, a woman did not 
 yield, or yielded unwillingly, withheld her caresses, and cast 
 up hostile fire out of her unsubmitting heart, overwhelming 
 her lover; then the woman has not been conquered. 
 
 That was his trouble. He loved Winifred, and she was his 
 again. But he was not sure of her. He had loved for years, 
 he had loved her always, he had nearly gone mad for her, but 
 he was not sure of her. Not sure of her. 
 
 It was strange how she had come back to him. Come back 
 to him after forsaking him. He was not sure of her because 
 he had loved her so, and she had loved him so; and she had 
 forsaken him after loving him so. And she had now come 
 back to him. After handing him a cup of wormwood. After 
 her mother had handed him a cup of wormwood. He had 
 drunk both cups to the last dregs. Winifred's "Don't be 
 dramatic!" on their partmg at the railway station in Phila- 
 delphia; her mother's "Be a man!" at the same time, at the 
 same place. After they had loved him so. After he had loved 
 them so. 
 
 He had never expected to meet them again. Though he 
 had received letters from them. They had gone abroad before 
 him. They had gone before him, he after them. After them, 
 in the matter of time. That is, not after them. He would 
 have gone, anyhow. He had to go. Somewhere. He could 
 not live in that cul-de-sac any longer, after they had forsaken 
 him. He would have gone mad if he had stayed on there 
 
 38 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 But they wrote to him. Kept on writing to him. He had 
 received a letter in Naples, begging him to see them in Paris 
 on his way to London. He had given up hope of her, yet 
 entertained a secret hope deep down in his heart, a secret hope 
 with a stone round its neck, that all was not lost, that she 
 would write, that she would come back to him. And she did 
 come back to him; but, as she had forsaken him once, he was 
 not sure of her. 
 
 It was terrible not to be sure of a thing. Of a thing you 
 loved. Of someone who loved you. He wanted the eternal. 
 Love to him meant the eternal. If it was not eternal, then it 
 was not love. Was he, then, old-fashioned? But can one call 
 what is eternal, what is changeless, old-fashioned? An old 
 tune went on recurring in his mind, eternal and inviolate. 
 The eternal is inviolate. 
 
 But she — ^what of her? She was a medley of emotions, 
 many tunes in one, inter-violating. She was a thing of nuance, 
 a many-plimied bird, in which, above others, he loved one 
 plume. But every plume, every distinct tint of her, wanted, 
 cried for another lover, was likely to draw to her another 
 lover. A remark she had casually dropped gave him his first 
 inkling of it. 
 
 He remembered, how well he remembered, what she had 
 said, as they sat one evening together, at the Cafe de la Paix, 
 and watched the crowd pass by, like a dark sluggish water, 
 on and on, seeking to escape stagnation, little streams diverting 
 themselves into gayer side channels, here and there a live 
 ripple showing in the shape of a trds ckic courtesan, a bait in 
 her laughing eyes, a leinguage siny man could understand. 
 
 Winifred, intercepting one of these glances, thrown at a 
 male by a silk-stockinged, tight-skirted she-devil, stopped 
 sipping her cafe au lait and remarked: 
 
 39 
 
BABEL 
 
 "1 can understand a woman loving five or six men, but 1 
 can't understand her taking up with so many." 
 
 "You are wicked to say that," said her mother. 
 
 "No, I'm not!" said Winifred. 
 
 Gombarov said nothing. 
 
 beep down at the bottom of him a thought stirred, an 
 inarticulate emotion, a mingled feeling of anger, resentment 
 and sadness, against what underlay Winifred's remark. Its 
 implication was intelligible enough; it made him feel as if he 
 had but a fifth or sixth of her, not all of her. Paris, quickly, 
 too quicklyl was scratching her puritanic skin, made in 
 America, and revealing as yet lightly, imdemeath, the seven 
 suppressed devils of seven suppressed generations which had 
 chosen her as their habitation. But the whole truth of this 
 Gombarov had not surmised at the time, just as he no more 
 than dimly suspected the presence of the several devils which 
 lurked inside his own unscratched skin. Her remark carried 
 a poisoned barb that pierced deep; and the wound was such 
 as would have afflicted any man who had heard his goddess 
 blaspheme. 
 
 Though he wanted her, he had not asked her to come back. 
 She had come back to him of her own will. He hardly knew 
 why she had come back. Very likely, he thought, she had 
 missed him in the months of absence, since that sad, unseemly 
 parting in Philadelphia. Possibly, his virtues as a lover gained 
 in the perspective of time and space. Had not a former love 
 of his, the elfin Muriel, once confessed to him that she always 
 grew more desperately fond of him when he was away? Which 
 signified something or nothing, according to the light in which 
 one judged this delidously ironic double entendre. Neverthe- 
 less, it gave him a subtle pleasure: the thought that he had 
 
 40 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 not encouraged Winifred to come back to him, that she had 
 come back to him of her own accord. 
 
 On arriving in Paris, he had, on her invitation, called at 
 their little flat, and to keep his feelings from bursting their 
 flood-gates, he had, on this visit, brought along with him 
 Alfred Welsh, a young painter of cockney extraction whom 
 he had picked up at Naples, and who, by the time they 
 reached Paris, had become an intolerable nuisance. 
 
 "When did you arrive?" was Winifred's first question after 
 the greetings were over. 
 
 "The day before yesterday," replied Gombarov, who noted 
 a hurt gleam in her eyes. 
 
 She seemed genuinely glad to see him, but there was a 
 constraint on both sides. It was evident that the presence 
 of the stranger piqued her. More than an hour passed in 
 polite conversation, in which Mrs. Gwynne joined. And all 
 the while Gombarov and Winifred watched one another with 
 furtive looks, as if each wished to ferret out some secret in 
 the other's heart. Again that pathetic, child-like look in her 
 eyes, the look that first captivated him; and pity, still so 
 strong in him at that period of his life, responded to it with 
 a helpless attraction. But she had so determinedly and so 
 definitely forsaken him in the hour of his need, when he had 
 clung to her with his last oozing strength, with a faith which, 
 he had thought, would conquer her. He now thought he saw 
 indications of her wanting him. He would have given in; but 
 for the stranger he might have given in; but his pride pre- 
 vailed. With a stiffened back and erect neck, he arose deci- 
 sively, almost abruptly. With him rose the rest of the com- 
 pany. Mrs. Gwynne discreetly led Welsh into the vestibule. 
 
 Left alone to themselves, Gombarov and Winifred looked 
 
 41 
 
BABEL 
 
 intently into each other's eyes; but their manner was hesi- 
 tating, neither said a word. 
 
 "Well, good-by," said Gombarov with an effort, and 
 stretched out a hand, even while his pride and his desire were 
 in fierce conflict. He must either seize her in his arms, or 
 go at once. 
 
 Instead of taking his proferred hand, she put her own hand 
 on his arm, softly. He felt her hand tremble on his arm, and 
 his whole body responded to this tremor. He felt the iron 
 with which he had, with great effort, infused his back, oozing 
 out of him. He could resist much, but the touch of her hand 
 had always thus acted upon him. Nevertheless, he resisted 
 his desire, and controlling his voice as well as he could, said 
 at last: 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Aren't you coming to see us again?" 
 
 Her hand lingered on his arm, hesitant, trembling. 
 
 « 'Us?' " 
 
 "Me, then." 
 
 "Tomorrow?" 
 
 "Early, if you like." 
 
 "Is ten too early?" 
 
 "No, come at ten." 
 ""All right. At ten." 
 
 "I'll expect you." 
 
 "I'll come. At ten." 
 
 "At ten ..." 
 
 So much they could say in trembling voices. They could 
 have gone on reiterating the word "ten," as if ten were a 
 symbolic figure, a delicious figure tinkling like a joy-bell. 
 On the other side of the door, in the vestibule, Welsh's voice 
 
 42 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 was persuasivdy chanting to Mrs. GwjnMie of the glories of 
 Paris, of his expert knowledge of them. 
 
 It was indiscreet to linger. Winifred's fingers slid gently 
 down Gombarov's arm and released it, while he, moving 
 towards the door, looked back and repeated: 
 
 "At ten . . .» 
 
 And the inevitable response came back: 
 
 "At ten . . ." 
 
 He found his hat, shook hands with Mrs. Gwynne, and left 
 with his now thoroughly irritating shadow, who passed by 
 the name of Alfred Welsh, "Alf " for short, "Welsher" for long, 
 by which name, though Gombarov did not then know it, his 
 ardent companion, with good reasons, was known among his 
 London acquaintances. 
 
 Once in the street, he heard his companion's voice droning 
 alongside of him. He was thinking with the front of his head; 
 Welsh's remarks were coming in somewhere at the back of it. 
 He was thinking: 
 
 "At ten tomorrow . . . And now it's half past five; 
 to be precise, twenty past. That means, there's sixteen hours 
 and forty minutes to wait. It's a long time . . ." 
 
 Somewhere at the back of his head he was conscious of 
 Welsh's words effecting an entrance; these were stealthily 
 working their way through the back passages of the brain 
 towards the front ... It was a full two minutes before 
 he automatically felt impelled to echo Welsh's words. 
 
 "Yes, yes," he said, "a splendid girl ... a splendid 
 
 girl ... " 
 
 Now their thoughts had reversed positions: his own thoughts 
 at the back of his head went on reiterating with hammer-like 
 beats: "What's that to you? What's that to you? The 
 impudence of you!" But these thoughts remained unuttered. 
 
 43 
 
BABEL 
 
 "She doesn't know French," persisted Wekh, oblivious of 
 his companion's preoccupation. "Do you think Miss Gwynne 
 would like to take French lessons?" 
 
 "Do you mean by the Morgenstem method?" asked Gom- 
 barov, as he looked straight at Welsh. 
 
 Welsh's face flushed, and Gombarov knew that his question 
 went home. The allusion was to a little colloquy that had 
 passed between them at Naples, when his new acquaintance, 
 in a good-fellowish mood, had boastingly confessed of having 
 an Italian mistress. 
 
 "She is a pupil of mine. I am teaching her English. I 
 got her as my mistress by the Morgenstem method." 
 
 "The Morgenstem method? What do you mean?" 
 
 "Well, you are an iimocent!" Welsh laughed. "You see," 
 he proceeded, "this method teaches a language by means of 
 objects. I say to my pupil, 'This is a table.' 'This book is 
 on the table.' 'I walk to the table.' 1 touch the table,' and 
 so on, and so on. Then a day must come when you touch 
 upon the features of anatomy. You say, 'This is an arm.' 
 'This is a foot.' 'This is the head.' 'The hair is on the head.' 
 'You have two eyes.' 'The pretty nose is between two 
 blue eyes.' 'Here are the lips' . . . Now, do you get 
 me?" 
 
 Yes, Gombarov had understood him thoroughly. It had 
 been superfluous for Welsh to add: 
 
 "When you come to the lips, you come to the universal 
 language." 
 
 Welsh, wmcing under Gombarov's exposure of his intentions, 
 hastened to say: 
 
 "Miss Gwynne is a nice girl, and I merely wanted to be 
 useful to her." 
 
 44 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 "Oh, I know," retorted Gombarov, "but I assure you they 
 are poor, and haven't any money to spare for lessons." 
 
 "Who spoke of money?" said Welsh, flaring up. "You 
 needn't remind me of the money I owe you. 111 pay up." 
 
 "But you promised me some when you got to Paris." 
 
 "IVe forgotten to show you the wire I got from my brother 
 in London, today. Here it is," and he pulled out a cnunpled 
 telegram from his pocket. 
 
 Gombarov read: 
 
 "Borrow from friend. Will pay in London. William." 
 
 Gombarov plainly showed his chagrin, and said: 
 
 "Frankly, Alf, I haven't any more money to spare. I have 
 lent you six or seven poimds, and have stood for a good many 
 of your meals. That's a lot of money to me. I've been 
 putting my pomies by for yeais to come to Europe, and I 
 shall need every penny I've got if I'm to stay a while. It 
 wasn't right of you at Venice to buy a Venetian shawl and 
 other trinkets out of the money I lent you for your journey. 
 Because I bought the same things is no excuse. And now you 
 tell me that the money you expected from your brother is not 
 coming. Ill help you if you go to London at once. I can't 
 do more." 
 
 "Don't you worry. Ill pay jrou in London," said Welsh, 
 in a hurt way. 
 
 Meal time was approaching. He was contemplating the 
 vision of a sole fried in butter, an entrecote with mashed 
 potatoes and asparagus, pancakes, a bottle of wine, and a black 
 coffee and brandy liqueur to wind up with — and afterwards, 
 perhaps, a visit to a cafe, or even to a cabaret. 
 
 As for Gombarov, now lost in silence, he was t hinkin g of 
 Winifred and wondering what the hour of ten next morning 
 
 45 
 
BABEL 
 
 held for him. He would, of course, have to get rid, somehow, 
 of his dogging friend. 
 
 Gombarov did not sleep that night, but gave himself up to 
 wakeful dreaming. Idyllic visions of Winifred came to him, 
 draped and undraped visions of love, images serene and flutter- 
 ing. In his bed, at the other end of the room, Welsh snored. 
 Gombarov cursed those snores, though it was not these which 
 kept him awake. He cursed them, the loud, the ugly, for 
 breaking in upon the music that for the short while sang in his 
 soul, for violating the beautiful. And he asked himself the 
 question that he had asked before and would ask again: Why 
 was there seldom long peace for the beautiful, why must it be 
 broken by obtrusive ugliness, the eternally violative? Was 
 it that beauty, perfection, is nearly always frail, vulnerable; 
 the barbaric nearly always strong, aggressive; and there is 
 infinite attraction in brutish forces towards frailty? Yet he, 
 too, for all his pulsating sense of beauty, had, at times, the 
 barbarian awaking in him, when Winifred's frailty inspired 
 in him an intense desire for undisputed possession, that he 
 might crush her in his arms and destroy her utterly; a frequent 
 mood which flamed intenser since the day he had surrendered 
 to frailty's small white hands, which had hurt him so. 
 
 During these past months of his foresakenness, he had done 
 everything to smother this ravishing flame that had turned 
 upon him and was consuming him. In spite of much effort 
 he could not forget those first days of sharp ache which fiercely 
 played upon every nerve; then its subsidence into a monoto- 
 nous half -deadened pain, like a dulled, eternal toothache, never 
 quite stilled, ever throbbing at the roots, spasmodically break- 
 ing out in fiercer torments, louder crescendos of despair, 
 ceaseless in their calling for fresh balms, ointments of forget- 
 fulness. These pains awakened other, older pains, the bom 
 
 46 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 pains of the Semite, the acquired, accumulated pains of his 
 childhood on Russia's dreamy woodland, and the nightmare 
 pains forced upon him from his tenth year onward in an 
 American industrial city, the to him fantastic man-created 
 inferno, though it bore over its portals the ironic inscription. 
 The City of Brotherly Love, that had seduced the Gombarovs, 
 had seduced many. The practically parentless days at home; 
 the sleepless, comfortless nights as a newsboy; the dull, aching 
 weeks and months as a factory hand; the absurdly conde- 
 scending days and nights, stretching into months and years, 
 as an office boy; the dragging years of enduring while he rose 
 to the responsible position of sub-editor on the New World; 
 all the pains of those too long years had come to a head when 
 Winifred forsook him. Winifred, with her small, frail hands, 
 might have saved him, but she had forsaken him; and he, 
 urged by this last circumstance, bolted his prison, but to find 
 himself in the endless corridors of the world, now reflected in 
 his awakened maze-like mind. 
 
 Oddly enough, with it all, he was one of those child-like 
 persons, in whom hope blazes anew on the slightest provoca- 
 tion. Life may betray; but he went from betrayal to betrayal, 
 anticipating betrayal, yet hoping that at last he might alight 
 where there was no betrayal. His was a fatalism that did 
 not shut out hope, and his logic did not exclude faith. 
 
 Thus, with his descending and ascending thoughts, he spent 
 the long night, after his meeting with Winifred in Paris; and 
 in his pendulating between lugubrious memories and thoughts 
 of Winifred's returning, he did not take the latter assumption 
 for granted, but prayed, even while Welsh snored, that the 
 miracle he had repeatedly asked for might come to pass. At 
 eight o'clock he rose, quite hectic, hardly tired. 
 
 An hour afterward Welsh opened his eyes, and looked 
 
 47 
 
BABEL 
 
 wonderingly at Gombarov, now dressed in his best suit and 
 arranging his wing tie. 
 
 "What's up?" he asked, suspiciously. 
 
 "I'm going out to breakfast. I have an appointment at 
 ten." 
 
 "When will you be back?" 
 
 "I don't know . . . But if you are short of cash for 
 meals I can let you have a little." And Gombarov handed 
 Welsh a ten-franc note. 
 
 "I suppose it's that girl. . . ." said Welsh insinuatingly, 
 picking up the note. 
 
 "Well, what if it is?" 
 
 "Oh, I've just mentioned it. There's no harm in that, is 
 there?" 
 
 Gombarov made no reply. He hunted in his suit-case for 
 a handkerchief; then put his grey felt hat on and walked out. 
 
 He finished breakfast by half-past nine and spent twenty 
 minutes in strolling up and down the Boulevard Montparnasse, 
 counting the minutes as before he had counted the hours. The 
 last ten minutes he devoted to her street, waiting impatiently 
 for the church clock round the comer to strike. Again and 
 again he pulled out his watch, which went on ticking, steadily, 
 much too steadily, "Yes — no! Yes — ^nol Yes — no!" wholly 
 unresponsive to the eager, too eager, beats of his heart. Which 
 it was to be, he did not yet know. Only a Sicker in her 
 eyes, a slight momentary flicker, as she had laid her hand on 
 his arm, encouraged him to believe that she was wanting him. 
 
 At last the incredibly loud peals of the church clock came 
 down on his fluttering heart; swooped down with a flapping 
 as of broad wings, scattering the flocks of moments that had 
 beset him with their fretful clamour. He gathered courage, 
 and, his body all taut, entered the open door of the house 
 
 48 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 and walked up the narrow stairs. He stopped on the first 
 landing and struck hard with the antique brass knocker under 
 the figure 3. He heard the scurrying of light, slippered foot- 
 falls; and soon the door opened slightly. Winifred's small 
 dark head came half peering from behind it, like a veiled 
 Arabian girl's. 
 
 "Is that you, John?" came the familiar deep tones, which 
 played on his heart, as they had played when he first met 
 her, so long, long ago. "Come in!" 
 
 "Have you had breakfast?" asked Mrs. Gwynne. "I sup- 
 pose you have. We are just having ours. Have a coffee! " 
 
 Over coffee they exchanged notes of their journeys. 
 
 "When I was in Niirnberg. . . ." Mrs. Gwynne would 
 often begin, to be followed by Gombarov's "Now, when I was 
 in Florence. . . ." Winifred would burst out laughing each 
 time this was done, and tease them about it. 
 
 "The funniest thing on this side are the women," once 
 ventured Winifred, who spoke little. "In German trains it 
 was quite a common thing to see a woman put a hand on a 
 man's knee or shoulder, as if to assert her possession, while 
 the man as often as not sat stolidly, reading a newspaper, 
 or stuffing sandwiches or sausages into his mouth." 
 
 "I suppose there is a lot to shock American women on this 
 side," said Gombarov. "There is Naples, to mention an 
 instance. In Naples, the public conveniences for men are 
 very public, indeed. And there are similar annoying things. 
 In my pension at Rome I heard some American club women 
 and school teachers talking about it at the next table. They 
 all agreed that it would be a great thing to have Naples at 
 Hoboken, New Jersey, or at Reading, Pennsylvania, for just 
 one wee little week, so they could have the time of their lives 
 'cleaning it up'!" 
 
 49 
 
BABEL 
 
 "Mother, you see, he is sarcastic as ever." 
 
 "Yes, Winnie. That was a Gombarovian remark. Hell 
 never be cured." 
 
 They all laughed. He liked being teased by them, as he 
 had been of old, when they yet loved him. And he would 
 go out of his way to give them every chance. 
 
 "Have you been to the Louvre?" asked Winifred. 
 
 "Yes," repUed Gombarov, "and I heard a fat American 
 in front of Ingres' Le Bain Turc, say to his friend: 'A pretty 
 hot bunch, isn't it?' " 
 
 "Go on with your tales," laughed Winifred. "Mother, he 
 is being fuimy this morning." 
 
 "What picture is that?" asked Mrs. Gwynne, who could 
 not quite see the joke. 
 
 "Oh!" exclaimed Winifred. "It's that one showing a lot 
 of naked women — ^a couple of dozen or more — flying about 
 like a heap of serpents." 
 
 "Oh yes! I know the one!" and Mrs. Gwynne laughed. 
 
 "As you've already been to the Louvre, where would you 
 like to go this morning?" asked Winifred. "Have you been 
 to the Luxembourg, or to Notre Dame?" 
 
 "No, shall we take them in today?" 
 
 They decided to see the Luxembourg first, Notre Dame 
 afterward. Mrs. Gwynne smiled on them as they went out. 
 
 Winifred, never demonstrative in public, took his arm; 
 which augured well. On the way, they spoke about everything, 
 except that which was uppermost in their minds. At the 
 Luxembourg they spent an hour in seeing and discussing the 
 pictures. But, as when they first met, their eyes and their 
 intonations gave their most irrelevant remark a significance 
 beyond that of ordinary language. 
 
 50 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 Silence, tense and pregnant with emotion, has its own audi- 
 bleness, louder than any spoken speech, and grows more and 
 more audible the longer it remains untranslated into speech; 
 even as a gathering cloud goes on and on gathering, until it 
 bursts with its own pent-up gatheredness. Silence, again, is a 
 slow, patient music of one's soul, playing on harps and flutes, 
 and rising in a sudden crescendo in the wild beating of the 
 no longer controllable tympani. Talk may dissipate in talk; 
 silence, too long repressed, urges to action. 
 
 The inevitable happened at Notre Dame. They had climbed 
 up the innumerable stairs to the roof. They propped up 
 their elbows on the parapet, near the gargoyles, and together 
 with these leaning grotesques, looked down on that most seduc- 
 tive courtesan among cities, stretched out, supine, in all her 
 grace of natural and studied loveliness. Far in the distance, 
 the Sacre Coeur gleamed white; while below, the Seine 
 appeared like an arrested wind-flung scarf, alight with the 
 shimmering playfiilness of the sun. Paris needed no more 
 than this diaphanous garment of golden mist to clothe her 
 shining torso; her charm was intenser for her deshabUle, to 
 which the sun had brought her; the sun her lover, who un- 
 loosed her draperies, for whom she smiled. Her temperament 
 was frank, Gallic; her mystery concrete, precise. Who, 
 having seen a day in the spring, in Paris, could live to 
 
 forget it? 
 
 Gombarov lost himself in the contemplation of all this 
 beauty, and of the grotesque beauty of the sharply defined 
 gargoyles against the clear light, and of the ideal beauty of 
 Winifred's small dark bared head against the neighbouring 
 old beauty. She stood leaning over the parapet, in her white 
 dress, her hat in her hand. Her black hair was closely ser- 
 pented around her head in two circling coils, the ends of which, 
 
 51 
 
BABEL 
 
 with great art, were arranged shield-like over her ears. Again 
 he noted the half-childish, the half-womanish charm of her 
 profile; in his admiration he quite forgot the suffering she 
 had caused him. 
 
 "Isn't it beautiful?" she murmured. 
 
 "Yes, very beautiful," he replied. 
 
 "We can go still higher, if you like." 
 
 "Can we? Yes, let's go higher." 
 
 She rearranged her hat on her head, and went to the woman 
 attendant, who sat on a soap box; and said something to her 
 in hesitating French. 
 
 The woman, with keys dangling in her hand, went before 
 them, towards a little door, leading to the tower. This she 
 imlocked, and Gombarov, putting a silver coin in her hand, 
 entered in, and followed Winifred up a narrow, incredibly 
 dark stone staircase. 
 
 "Be careful!" Winifred called down to him. "It's pitch 
 dark here, the stairs are somewhat rickety; it's quite easy 
 to take a false step." 
 
 "Don't say that!" he called out laughingly from below, 
 as he felt his way along the wall. 
 
 He heard Winifred's contralto laugh, echoing down to him. 
 He increased his pace, in spite of the darkness, but she seemed 
 to be as far away from him as before. 
 
 "Be careful!" she flung down to him. 
 
 "I'm trying to keep close behind you," said Gombarov, "so 
 that in case you slip, you'll have something to fall on!" 
 
 "Youll have to do better than that," laughed Winifred, 
 double-edgedly. 
 
 "I am ready to do better than that!" he retorted, and 
 increased his pace just as the first ray of sunlight fell on a 
 slant, lighting up a part of the stone wall and stairs. His 
 
 52 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 head was now on a line with her ankles; when he saw her 
 «nerge in the light, it showed her slender l^s through the 
 flimsy material of her white dress. The sight caused his 
 pla5^ulness to flare up into passion. For it was a love playful- 
 ness, which is ever a prelude to love passion, even as in the 
 golden age when the satyr chased his nymph round and roimd 
 a tree. 
 
 He, too, emerged into the light, dazzling after that darkness. 
 They both laughed, panting with the exertion of the climb. 
 Notwithstanding this laughter, he noted a frightened look in 
 her ejres, and felt the same look creep into his. And imaccount- 
 able bonds held back his impassioned arms from her. She 
 took off her hat, rested her head on one side on the parapet; 
 while he stood by, leaning his head on his elbows, and looked 
 down on the city, furtively watching Winifred at the same 
 time. His hands twitched with desire. And yet he was as 
 helpless as if he had never loved before, as if he had just met 
 her and loved her for the first time. It was really worse, as 
 she had loved him before and had forsaken him. And now he 
 was not sure of her. Just a shade of pride crept into this 
 renewed love of his; this, too, held him in check, as he sud- 
 denly remembered her forsaking him. A medley of civilised 
 emotions played on him, and hindered him from acting on his 
 natural impulses. Could these, his heritage of the Russian 
 woods, have broken his bond, shattered this complex network 
 of inhibitions, his naturalness might have frightened her. He 
 had her. too, to think of; as she, even more than he, was 
 held by fast bonds, wrought by several generations, beginning 
 with her hard New England ancestors. He was hardly less 
 conscious of her bondage than of his own; that also hin- 
 dered him. 
 
 53 
 
BABEL 
 
 Just as he was preparing to act, just as he was painfully 
 raising an arm to encircle her waist, a soimd of laughter came 
 up from the staircase; and presently a young couple emerged 
 and joined them at the parapet. Gombarov's arm, partly 
 lifted, dropped back to where it had been. 
 
 Once more their voices struggled on in inconsequent conver- 
 sation; but in their hearts and minds deep streams of silence 
 ran, bearing their unspoken feelings and thoughts. Now these 
 streams had become rapids, and at last they beat down with 
 a pressure as of high water falling upon stones. Outwardly 
 their voices languidly rambled on: 
 
 "How beautiful!" 
 
 "Yes, beautiful!" 
 
 Then, some minutes later, their downgoing began, he leading, 
 she following. 
 
 They exchanged a few remarks in tremulous voices; then 
 were plunged into darkness and silence. Gombarov walked 
 slowly, with fast beating heart, while his hot hands felt along 
 the stone wall. 
 
 "John!" he heard his name called. 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 "Are you there?" 
 
 "Y'es, here is my hand." 
 
 She was two or three steps above him when their hands met. 
 As he held her hand and felt it burning in his, he waited 
 until she was on the same level with him. Then, at the very 
 instant that his arm encircled her waist and tightened into an 
 iron ring, he felt her bared arms clasp his neck, and her head 
 fall on his breast. He drank in the delicious scent of her hair; 
 then raised her head between his hands; their lips met and 
 flowed together, hotly, like molten metals. And their impas- 
 sioned limbs drew together, thigh to thigh, knee to knee, ankle 
 
 54 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 to ankle; until they reeled as one person towards the wall 
 of that dark blessed tower, whose medieval stones must before 
 this have sheltered many lovers from the outer glare, would 
 doubtless shelter more in time to come. 
 
 "If stones could speak " But no, these stones would 
 
 never speak; if they should give utterance at all, it would 
 be to sing: out of that tower noight issue a melody to over- 
 whelm the ejirth. Of lovers dead and living, of love undjring. 
 Was it this that overcame them in that tower: a sense of exac- 
 tion, perhaps, on the part of the imprisoned spirits of many 
 lovers, who, having exacted in the past, would go on exacting 
 their tribute from living lovers: ardent kisses, utter aban- 
 donment to passion, and deprivation of all shame? Shame- 
 lessly, in that tower, they dung to one another; shamelessly 
 Winifred drew his head deeper and deeper down; shamelessly 
 his lips seemed to be sinking deeper, deeper, into hers; with 
 a shameless frenzy, that came of long hunger, he clutched at 
 her with hungry hands; at her virgin breasts, which, small, 
 firm and roimd, of a living silken texture, seemed, imder his 
 hands, to be filling with a warm suffusing wine, until his 
 fingers flowed together with them in a delicious liquid warmth. 
 His hands were drunken by contact with her; while she panted 
 under the onslaught of their fused passions. 
 
 "I am so happy. . . ." she miumured. 
 
 "I love you, I love you. . . ." he went on reiterating. 
 
 "I hate clothes. . . ." she gasped at one moment. 
 
 "What a sweet nest for kisses!" said he, his hand in her 
 bosom. He tried to touch her breasts with his lips, while she 
 pressed his head closer to her. 
 
 Had the walls of the old dark tower closed roimd them, 
 then and there, it would have been a sad but beautiful thing, a 
 classic story, something to write a p)oem about. . . . Gom- 
 
 55 
 
BABEL 
 
 barov was curiously conscious of this, even in the midst of 
 his passion. It seemed to him tliat if he died then and there, 
 he would not have cared. The spiritual sense appeared to be 
 transcended together with the physical, was inseparable from 
 it. The coals of love kindled with a two-coloured flame, and 
 its fumes, as of some finely distilled incense, made his light- 
 ened head go round as in space, in ether. 
 
 But — and who doubts that our whole realistic life is founded, 
 precisely, on this "But"? — it was at such a moment of intense 
 living that they heard obtrusive voices and footsteps drawing 
 slowly nearer from below. A feminine voice, with a New York 
 twang, was saying: 
 
 "Can't they afford electric lights?" 
 
 A patient masculine voice replied: 
 
 "My dear, you know they are a little behind the times on 
 this side." 
 
 "I shouldn't call it exactly a Uttle," replied the woman. 
 "And who's going to pay you damages if you break your 
 neck?" 
 
 "Break your neck, damn you!" whispered Gombarov. "Ill 
 pay the ten centimes." 
 
 "Shh. . . ." whispered Winifred. "They might hear you." 
 And she put a hand over his mouth. 
 
 He filled the bowl of her hand with little staccato kisses. 
 
 "I say, Charlie," went on the shrewish voice from below, 
 "haven't you brought your electric flash? I guess not! Just 
 like you to forget to bring it the one time we need it." 
 
 "How did I know that we were going to strike this hole?" 
 said the man. "Wait a moment, and 111 find a match." 
 
 The pair paused on the stairs. The woman's voice ram- 
 bled on: 
 
 "What does the Baedeker say about this dark hole? Is 
 
 56 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 this one of those places where one of them fine queens met her 
 foolish lover, who later got a dose of lead for his pains? Has 
 anyone ever been strangled here?" 
 
 "I shouldn't be surprised, Mabel," replied the man good- 
 natiu-edly. "It's a lovely place for a murder, sure enough. 
 But hang it, I can't find a match! I guess we'll have to do 
 without it." 
 
 The pause gave Winifred an opportunity to put herself in 
 order, and she and Gombarov began to exchange common- 
 place remarks, to let the intruders know of their presence. 
 While the newcomers were brushing past him, Gombarov was 
 thinking of the irony of intrusions: last night Welsh's snores; 
 to-day this banal couple, who desired to violate the old tower 
 with electric lights. 
 
 Once lost, the world of ecstasy in which they had lived those 
 passionate moments was not to be regained, and so they went 
 down, hand in hand, mute. Now the silence was of another 
 kind; it was the silence after the worst of a cloud-burst, which 
 had not wholly spent itself. The light dazzled them; stirred 
 in them mingled feelings of joy and pain and shame, and their 
 thoughts were as dissipating clouds, suffused with sunlight, 
 spotted with black and gold, and mobile with patches of light 
 and shade. For some time neither could speak, or even look 
 at the other. The sense of shame, that came of a passion 
 unconsummated, held them; but neither was, perhaps, aware 
 of this, the true cause of their confusion; both had studied 
 in the school of self-control, an admirable institution for folk 
 of petty tempers and pett>- passions with little to control. 
 
 The days which followed on those aching months were for 
 Gombarov as beautiful lyrics, spoilt now and then by bad 
 lines. As a single bad line, or unsuited word in a poem can 
 pull one up with an unpleasant jerk, so a single unworthy 
 
 57 
 
BABEL 
 
 phrase, or unfitting word from the lips of his goddess could 
 spoil the effect of all the beauty and tenderness she lavished 
 on him. Unfortunate words had a way of sticking in his 
 memory imd of acting on his spirits and on the beauty she 
 appeared to impart to him like a corrosive chemical, which 
 disintegrated not only the gift but also him upon whom it was 
 conferred. 
 
 There was that occasion at the Cajc de la Paix, when she 
 expressed a comprehension of women who could maintain 
 relations with five or six lovers. Again, there was the evening 
 they spent at the Russian Ballet, when they went into an 
 ecstasy over Nijinsky in the "Spectre of a Rose" and 
 "Scheherazade," only to have the mood subjected to a cold 
 douche upon Winifred seeing the gorgeously dressed women 
 issuing out of the theatre after the performance and entering 
 the sumptuous cars which waited for them. A few moments 
 before she had been supremely happy, but now the three of 
 them — ^her mother was with them — gloomily fought their way 
 tlirough the waiting crowd of opulent if flimsily dressed 
 women, some of them gilt-shoed and gilt-stockinged, nearly 
 all low-corsaged, revealing from imder scarves rich patches 
 of white skin; splendid shoulders were here and indiscreet 
 breasts, and pleasant little valleys were visible between the 
 breasts; fat, bejewelled dowagers and matrons were also here, 
 in tight-fitting gowns, which outlined their unwieldy shapes 
 and rounded promontories, producing the effect of bodies 
 poured into the garments. White-shirted, monocled cavaliers, 
 in shining top hats and broad black cloaks, accompanied the 
 women, and followed them into the carriages, the doors of 
 which were opened and shut by smart flimkeys in livery and 
 business-like chauffeurs. One smelt money here; above all 
 the overpowering odour of sex. One's glance caught this and 
 
 58 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 that: a possessive man here; a possessed woman there; and 
 the possessed was not less proud than the possessor. Whither, 
 whither, rolled away that yellow, finely-rounded, palanquin- 
 like motor carriage, into which a middle-aged, monocled sat3rr 
 had conducted a red-stockinged, dark-haired, white-skinned 
 girl, his many-ringed hand resting on her waist? "A satyr, 
 if there ever was one!" thought Gombarov. "But a satyr 
 must be rich nowadays, if he is to " 
 
 He did not finish his thought, but with a sick heart watched 
 the shadow that crept into Winifred's face. He was too well 
 aware of the cause to ask her why it was there or to offer con- 
 solation. He was simply helpless. 
 
 "Damn!" broke from Winifred's lips. 
 
 "That's not nice of you, Winnie. . . ." began her mother. 
 
 "I don't care!" exclaimed Winifred. "It's all very well for 
 you and John to talk. But I like fine dresses, a motor car 
 to take me to a nice supper at some cabaret, then to a nicely 
 furnished flat, where I can have my own maid to help me 
 undress." 
 
 "The last is a service I should perform with great pleasure," 
 thought Gombarov, bitterly, without humour. He said aloud: 
 "How do you propose to get all this?" 
 
 "How? How do other women get these things? I suppose 
 I can also sell myself to some millionaire. You think me 
 pretty, don't you?" 
 
 'If John didn't know you," interrupted her mother, "he'd 
 fhintr I hadn't brought you up properly." 
 
 "Do you mean to say," asked Gombarov, "that you would 
 be willing to live with that roue who was with the girl in 
 the red stockings?" 
 
 "WTiy not?" retorted Winifred. "I thought him quite nice. 
 And he'd give me everything." 
 
 59 
 
BABEL 
 
 "Yes, and he would expect everything!" 
 
 "That's enough, children," exclaimed Mrs. Gwynne. "Let 
 her alone, John. She's just upset. She doesn't mean any- 
 thing she says." 
 
 "Yes, I do, mother!" 
 
 Gombarov felt far from reassiu'ed. It was not altogether 
 Winifred's attitude that upset him. This, to be sure, was 
 discouraging enough. But how was he to explain his own 
 thoughts and feelings? He was no better than she. At all 
 events, not in the mood he was in then. The after-theatre 
 scene had infected him also. When he saw the roue enter 
 the motor car with the exquisite creatiure in the red stockings, 
 he was seized with bitter envy, and his heart binned with 
 alternate sadness and fierceness; he had to confess to himself 
 that at that moment he would not have minded at all chang- 
 ing places, provided the woman was Winifred. 
 
 That "provided" was important. So sorely had his love 
 and constancy been tried that this appeared to be the one 
 remaining thread that held him to the world of his integral 
 self, woefully sinned against by that other world, into which 
 circumstance threw him. Well, it was more than a thread. 
 It was a rope, as strong and taut as a rope, upon which hLsI 
 integral self performed the arduous role of a rope walker. If 
 he fell! — ^but he did not fall, not yet! 
 
 Nevertheless, there was undoubtedly the danger to which 
 this integral self was exposed in the very act of balancing, by 
 the diversion of its eyes to the alluring appeal of worldly life; 
 of beautiful women, attired beautifully; of sensuous pleasures, 
 to be enjoyed bountifully. 
 
 "Integral self!" These were his own words; but what, 
 precisely, was this integral self? He defined it as that essen- 
 tial part of himself, which having lived the first ten formative 
 
 60 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 years in the Russian woods, still dung by its roots there; 
 that is to say, he was in his heart of hearts a simple natural 
 being having simple natural desires: to have a roof over his 
 head, a chance to pursue his chosen work, and a woman, 
 which is every man's inalienable right. 
 
 On second thought, he was bound to admit a deep dis- 
 satisfaction with his definition, which did not quite explain 
 those predilections of his for worldly things, especially for 
 femininity wrapt in the seductive entanglements of lace and 
 silk, necessitating unravelling, as of sacred mysteries. He 
 had suffered too much, too recently, to see dearly; his 
 draught of freedom had been short; he had not had time 
 to adjust himsdf, to think out his case. All he knew was that 
 he was at war with himself; that there was hardly a thought, 
 a mood, an emotion, which was not contradicted by another. 
 One day he had jotted down his case in the following wise 
 in his Diary: 
 
 "KNOW THYSELF" 
 
 I am a Jew, a Russian, an American. 
 
 My race, my native soil and the country of my adoption 
 strive in me for conciliation. 
 
 Strange: when I hear a famous mediaeval synagogue-chant 
 to words by Jehudah Halevi, I long inexplicably for Jerusalem. 
 When I listen to the Volga folk song, I am a Russian, and 
 wish mysdf back in Russia. When I read Walt Whitman and 
 think of the future, I fed myself an American, and take a 
 pride in it. 
 
 Yet God knows why all these years I have been aspiring 
 to London, which I have not even seen. Is it love of the word? 
 The universahty of Shakespeare? 
 
 I like to think a man's thoughts of a home, wife and children; 
 yet the audadous, the adventurous and thought of foreign 
 lands I have not seen attract me equally. And why should the 
 thought of living in tents, with a caravan, and, in intervals, 
 
 6i 
 
BABEL 
 
 this intense longing pursue me to ride a swift horse in the 
 desert, dressed as an Arab? 
 
 Women attract me, both kinds: the chaste, chastely outlined 
 women of Holbein; and the sinning, sinfuUy fleshly women of 
 Felicien Rops. "A woman is either a prostitute or a mother," 
 said a French writer. Oh, for a woman who is both in one! 
 
 There is a seductive sensual dignity in black and white, 
 and flaimting oriental colours take one by storm; and there 
 is pleasure in both. 
 
 How is one to reconcile the monk and roue in self? Is the 
 roue merely a degenerate satyr, once noble, now chasing his 
 nymph roimd a tree the leaves whereof must need be golden 
 dollars? It is a problem to reconcile the satyr part of one's 
 nature with an empty purse. 
 
 It is equally a problem to reconcile the desire to write books 
 with the desire to live the life that makes books. When Rim- 
 baud joined a caravan he stopped writing. 
 
 In the midst of passionate loving I stop to analyse, and 
 analysing, I go on loving; which is a contradiction. 
 
 Are all ^ese threads I, or is there one especial thread 
 among them that is my true self? If the latter, how is it to 
 be disentangled from tiie others? If the former, is it possible 
 to take all tiiese discordant threads and weave a single harmo- 
 nious pattern from them? 
 
 I do not know myself. 
 
 Was he no more than a confused medley of conflicting emo- 
 tions, a series of clashes as irreconcilable as fire and water? 
 These antithetical elements, thus curiously set out in his con- 
 fessional catalogue, by no means all: were these potentialities, 
 emanations of his integral self, hitherto repressed, or were 
 they no more than deep reflections of an outer world upon 
 his sensitive lake-like surfaces, in which the reflections gained 
 an intenser reality than the objects reflected? Or was he a 
 kind of gramophonic disk, which, sensitized by suffering and 
 experience, was capable of gathering onto itself and recording 
 the voices of its proximity, voices harmonioiis or querulous, 
 
 62 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 vulgar or full of refined nuance, as the case may be, now war- 
 ring among themselves? Apart from these possibilities, was 
 £inother: his intense, flaming curiosity about life, but he had 
 no walls of thick skin to protect him from its dangers: flaming 
 with his thousand desires, his whole being was burning, 
 though he knew it not, sacredly; and, like Moses' bush, he 
 was not consumed. There was torment in this, and much 
 endm-ing, and he had not the consolation of the knowledge 
 that came to him later, of the chemical processes of these 
 fierce unending flames, disintegrating and refining, melting 
 and fusing, finally reintegrating, conciliating all his conflicts 
 and discords, bringing a measurable peace and moidding his 
 face into a reasonably detached if undetachable mask, sig- 
 nificant in its expression of acceptance of life and all its divine 
 and diabolic adventure. 
 
 " 'Know thj-self! — That is the hardest thing in life," was 
 the further entry he had then made in his Diary, adding: 
 "But one can only suspect oneself." 
 
 His suspicions concerning himself, based on certain frag- 
 mentary particulars of his knowledge, made him conjecture 
 the causes of Winifred's discontent as quickly as his own. 
 To offset his waverings, there was his oak-like staunchness, 
 rooted, in spite of all temptations and discouragements, in his 
 unreasonable love for Winifred. It was true that at Florence, 
 before Winifred had come back to him, he had, in a moment 
 of despair, departed from the path of chastity. He was sick 
 at heart, because of his passionate longing for the love he 
 had lost. A little Florentine courtesan, who turned out to 
 be a Parisienne, had led him through the attractive winding 
 streets, and within the sight of the Giotto Tower took him to 
 a house kept by a German woman; where, in a bed manu- 
 factured at Lynn, Massachusetts, doubtless by Puritan hands, 
 
 63 
 
BABEL 
 
 he surrendered, not without qualms, his virginal flame. He 
 could speak neither French nor Italian; she neither English 
 nor Russian; yet they found no difficulty in understanding one 
 another. She simulated true love gracefully, was his long- 
 lost Francesca; while he played the part of a make-beUeve 
 Paolo, and departed, feeling a man for the first time in his 
 imhappy life, so full of deprivation. Afterwards, he yearned 
 more than ever for Winifred, and began to understand the 
 danger of stirring banked-up fires. Only when Winifred had 
 come back to him did he regret what he had done. 
 
 He was sorry for her when he saw her wanting the fine 
 things she had seen on other women, and full of pity for her, 
 and angry at his own helplessness. He resented those people; 
 their presence served to remind him of a truth, by no means 
 new to him; of money as a factor in happiness. If the noble 
 satyr came to earth again, to live his life he would have to 
 be a millionaire; and money degraded the satyr, deprived him 
 of his nobility and made him a mere roue. Why, if he had 
 their money, instead of going back to his lonely bed in that 
 wretched hotel, he'd now be. . . . and it was terrible to think 
 that money — ^bits of paper and gold — had this extraordinary 
 power over men's lives, his life. He walked along between 
 Winifred and her mother in a silent rage, and was several 
 times on the point of saying that he would give her up, as he 
 had not enough money to make her happy. But there was 
 that other thought: that he could not live without her. 
 
 The next day, in quiet submission, she laid a hand on his 
 arm, and said: 
 
 "Forgive me, dear. I was wicked last night to want those 
 things. I want only you, you alone. Those things do not 
 matter. We shall be happy without them, won't we?" 
 
 "It was I who was wicked," he replied. "There was 
 
 64 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 a moment last night when I wished I were that roue 
 with the monocle, and you the girl in that auto with me." 
 
 "But if you looked like that," she said, laughing, "I wouldn't 
 love you." The last remark of his, however, stuck in her 
 mind and led to the question: 
 
 "Have you ever been to another woman? . . . You know 
 what I mean." 
 
 "No!" he replied, and wondered whether she had marked 
 the slight tremor in his voice. 
 
 "When are you going to marry me?" she asked. 
 
 "As soon as I can earn enough to support you properly." 
 
 "When will that be, John? You are earning only a little 
 by your articles. You are going to a strange city, where you 
 will lead the precarious life of an author. I have no doubt 
 that some day you will do big things. But by the time you 
 can earn enough to support us both, we shall be old people, 
 you and I. You are thirty — or is it thirty-one? And I am 
 twenty-two. And things being as they are, I may be only 
 a drag on you. . . . Perhaps, we had better part, after 
 all. ... I shall never love anyone but you. And I must go 
 on with my art. I must do something to support mother. 
 She has supported me long enough by journalism, which she 
 hates." 
 
 This sort of thing paralyzed him. He might chuck it all, 
 or he might plead. He wanted to do "the right thing," the 
 strong thing. But he did not know whether to give it up or 
 wholly surrender to love was the stronger. Impulses cut 
 through, thoughts entangle. Experience alone can ultimately 
 decide for natiu-es possessing one and the other in equal 
 measiu'e. 
 
 Heart said to him: "Chuck it, yoimg man. Go! Havent 
 you had enough of this? She has forsaken you once, and 
 
 6S 
 
BABEL 
 
 you are no longer sure of her, never will be sure of her." 
 
 Mind said to him: "Stay, young man, plead with her. You 
 are a nice lover, to give up at the least sign of weakening on 
 the part of her you love. More than once you have been 
 accused of being cautious. Throw all caution to the wind. 
 Only in that way can you show that you are capable of love. 
 She will see how you can love! You will conquer her by the 
 greatness of your love. If you do not, you will, at all events, 
 satisfy yourself. You will have no regrets at having left a 
 stone imturned. Look at her! Is she not a nice thing to 
 hold in one's arms? A real prize, eh? Do you like the idea 
 of anyone else holding her in his arms? Maddening, isn't it, 
 the mere thought of it?" 
 
 He no longer knew which was speaking, mind or heart. 
 Mind and heart, each singing its song, had joined in a duet, 
 and at last found a voice on his tongue. 
 
 "Winnie," he pleaded, "you are not going to give me up 
 now, after all these years, just as I am going to London, not 
 icnowing a soul there? Think of it! I shall be one of seven 
 million there. I shall need you more than ever. The thought 
 of you will give me strength to make my way. I have only 
 you in this world, and if you forsake me, where shall I be?" 
 
 "You put a great responsibility on me!" 
 
 "That may be true. At the same time no man will ever 
 love you as I have loved you. Can you afford to cast away 
 great love? It never comes twice." 
 
 "You want to tie me down." 
 
 "But I tie myself down also. I don't ask from you what 
 I can't give myself. If we will love each other only strongly 
 enough, everything will come round all right. But if I am not 
 sure of you, nor you of me, then we may as well part now, 
 as you say," 
 
 66 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 The last sentence came from him ahnost involuntarily. He 
 had not intaided to say it; but there it was, it had come 
 from him, a decisive word, implying a decision, forcing 
 another. 
 
 "No, no!" exclaimed Winifred, putting a hand on his arm. 
 "I cannot afford to let you go. Why do you let me talk like 
 this? I have been wi(±ed. Why do you let me be wicked? 
 You have been very dear to me. . . ." 
 
 And they embraced one another in reconciliation. Matters 
 went very well with them for days, during the rest of his stay 
 in Paris. Nevertheless, the old feeling recmred at intervals: 
 the feeling awakened by that memory of her having forsaken 
 him once. He was not sure of her. 
 
 ON SPONGING FOR AST'S SAKE 
 
 Every new contact with his new life brought to Gombarov 
 a sense of adventure; every new experience brought exhilara- 
 tion; and he delved into the mysteries of the himian minds he 
 met on the journey, as other men delved into deep forests. In 
 spite of the circumstances of his life, limiting his activities, he 
 spent many happy days during that spring in Paris, snatched 
 them from Life as one snatches who is unaccustomed to either 
 freedom or happiness. 
 
 Luckily for him, his travelling companion, Welsh, withdrew 
 his presence. Two dajrs after his colloquy in the hotel bedroom 
 with Welsh, he came in to find Welsh packing. 
 
 "If you don't mind," Welsh explained, "111 be getting out. 
 I have found an old pal from London. He has a studio here 
 with a spare bed. I shall stay with him for a week, then we 
 are going on to London, where we will take a studio togetha." 
 
 "Of coiu-se, I don't mind." 
 
 "Let's have an evening together — ^you and Rugger and me," 
 
 67 
 
BABEL 
 
 suggested Welsh, "and have dinner somewhere, if you are not 
 otherwise engaged." He laid peculiar emphasis on the last 
 phrase. He added: "Rugger is an awfully nice chap. I've 
 told him about you, and he wants to meet you." 
 
 "Of course, with pleasure!" 
 
 The three of them met one evening at a restaurant. 
 
 Rugger appointed himself host and master of ceremonies. 
 "I say," he addressed Welsh, whom he foimd useful as inter- 
 preter, "tell Frenchie that we want a real Yankee cocktail to 
 start with; well have Russian caviare to follow; then some 
 Italian minestrone; a bit of French sole after that; then a 
 John Bull rump steak and chips; as for drinks, what would 
 you chaps rather have: Miinich beer, Chianti or a Burgundy, 
 or a white wine? And we can end up with a Scotch, a Strega 
 or a Benedictine." 
 
 After they had decided on their international menu, they 
 began to talk. Art, food, women, particularly Parisian womei^ 
 were the usual topics discussed between gulps and munchings; 
 and when they came to coffee and liqueurs. Rugger suddenly 
 turned to Gombarov: 
 
 "So you are going to London?" 
 
 Gombarov nodded. 
 
 "For a holiday?" 
 
 "Oh no! To try my hand as an author." 
 
 Rugger whistled. 
 
 "Any income? You don't mind my asking?" 
 
 "Only what I can earn by joiurnalism." 
 
 Again Rugger whistled. 
 
 "Any friends there?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 Once more Rugger whistled. 
 
 "Any introductions?" 
 
 68 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 "No." 
 
 For the fourth time Rugger whistled. 
 
 "I suppose you left a good job behind you?" 
 
 "Yes, it was good for life." 
 
 "And how old are you now?" 
 
 "Thirty-one." 
 
 Rugger whistled for the fifth time. 
 
 "Why do you whistle?" asked Gombarov. "Surely, there's 
 nothing astonishing in all that?" 
 
 "I am whistling, old man, because I can't sing," said Rugger, 
 in a friendly tone. "If I could, I'd sing a psan of praise to 
 you. Why, man, you've got the pluck of a war horse. I 
 wouldn't do what you are doing, not for all the expectations in 
 the world. If it weren't for the small allowance I get from 
 home, I'd. . . . But tell me, what made you pick on London 
 of all places? Why, man, London is " 
 
 Welsh interrupted: "I don't see that it's any more remark- 
 able than what I have done. After all, I've managed by my 
 own efforts to pull through two years at Naples." 
 
 'Yes," retorted Rugger, "but you went to an appointment 
 there at the Morgenstem school. In other words, you had a 
 job waiting for you to fall into." 
 
 •'But it didn't pay much," said Welsh, somewhat nettled. 
 
 "That may be true," went on Rugger, "but spaghetti is 
 cheap. And, according to your own accoimt you gave private 
 lessons, in which your knowledge of the method helped you 
 to get other things that man stands in need of." And Rugger 
 winked significantly. He added: "And it cost you nothing!" 
 
 Gombarov caught the wink, and understood the implication. 
 His face broadened into a smile. 
 
 "Oh that!" exclaimed Welsh. "I gave her some English 
 l^sons in exchange." 
 
 69 
 
BABEL 
 
 Rugger and Gombarov burst into a guffaw. 
 
 "Yes, I've often heard," went on Rugger, when the laughter 
 had subsided, "that sleeping with a book was the best way 
 of learning a language, but I have been always under the 
 impression that it was the other way 'round, that the man did 
 the learning, that the book was constantly in need of renewing 
 its expensive bindings, and that it was up to the man to pay 
 for them." 
 
 "It's all very well for you to talk, Ruggy," said Welsh. 
 "You have some sort of income, to start with. And thoi^ 
 you may be ^ort sometimes, yet you can go on working at 
 your painting without worrying that tomorrow, or the day 
 after, the chucker-out will come and throw your goods out into 
 the street. How'd you like that? I am an artist, and I have 
 not the means to go on with my art. I am a man, and I have 
 not the means to get me a woman in the ordinary way. In 
 the old days an artist had a patron; and once he had his 
 patron, he had his art and his model, and as often as not a 
 model served as a wife as well. The world owes the artist a 
 living, and since nowadays it do^n't give it to him, he must 
 take it where he can find it. He must live on his fellowmen, 
 and he must use cxmning to get himself a woman." 
 
 "On the whole, I am inclined to agree with you," said 
 Rugger. 
 
 "Well, I am not," said Gombarov. "It seems to me that 
 an artist and his life are one, and if he permits himself loose 
 principles in his life, they will get into his art also." 
 
 "Art and life have nothing to do with one another, in spite 
 of Tolstoy," exclaimed Welsh. "A man may ravish a woman, 
 then go home and write a poem on the beauties of 
 chastity." 
 
 "That is quite illogical!" argued Gombarov. 
 
 70 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 "On the contrary," said Wdsh, "nothing is more logical. 
 An artist applies the whole of his logic to his art. Nothing 
 Jifter aU, is more illogical than life, which doesnt give the 
 artist a chance to cany on his art Look at the 'nineties in 
 England, and the number of artists killed by life, because they 
 didn't have enough sense to live by their wits. Look at Villon, 
 burglar and cut-throat, who wrote fine poetry. Well, I intend 
 to keq) going by any means, fair or foul. I don't intend to 
 work in a factory, to keep someone else in luxury. I'd ratho- 
 go tramping the coimtry like Gore's heroes than submit to 
 a machine." 
 
 Gombarov was nonplussed. He had always believed that a 
 man and his art were one; he still believed that; yet his 
 sense of justice could not but admit that the facts upon which 
 Welsh had based his philosophy of life were incontrovertible. 
 This admission was disconcerting to his faith in his own moral 
 int^rity, as he realised that its possession was a doubtful asset 
 to an artist having to struggle for mere existence. For the 
 time being he lost pride in his possession, and a terrible fear 
 arose in his soul as to his fitness to aspire towards authorship 
 in a strange city, a place of peopled vastness, where one man 
 more or one man less was of no matter. There was thig new 
 dash to reconcile in himself; there was the need to reconcile 
 the a{^)arently irreconcilable: the artist in the man, the man 
 in the artist. 
 
 The responsibility he had assumed in going to London began 
 to weigh upon hi'Tn as he approached the dty of his seven-year 
 desire. 
 
 BETWEEN A SLEEP AND A SIXEP 
 
 After that strange dream, out of which seemed to come that 
 flow of memories, Gombarov at last tired himself out thinlring 
 
 71 
 
BABEL 
 
 of the extraordinary episodes of his three months' journey. 
 There was no disentangling the essential thread from among 
 them. Instead, his thoughts went on ceaselessly rolling out 
 as from a many-coloured skein and getting themselves hope- 
 lessly involved in a denser tangle of phantasmic images. With 
 his growing tiredness, these became more and more blurred, 
 and at last faded into nothingness. He was asleep. And he 
 had another dream. 
 
 With him, as always, to dream was to wake in another 
 world, a world not dissimilar from our own, yet essen- 
 tially a world of alert penetrations, of concentric lightnings, 
 which reveal starkly some islanded truth; while all else is 
 plunged in a sea of darkness, obliterated from consciousness. 
 Ever since Gombarov began his wanderings he had been sul>- 
 ject to such dreams, curiously symbolic in character, and, if 
 he did not go astray in his interpretations, hinting at some 
 undefined, latent force in him, hitherto sleeping and now 
 awakening. And, acting as with a mystic yet firm assurance, 
 these dreams gave encouragement in his struggle, urged him 
 on. They were, or were to become later, as Greek choruses, 
 commenting on his life, impelling him to his destiny. 
 
 He dreamt he was walking on hot sands by the sea, in a 
 lost, aimless way. It was an intensely arid, sunny day; and 
 as he walked he remembered having earlier in his life lived 
 through just such a day. There was nothing but the sand- 
 dunes and the marshes and the sea, and thae was no place 
 to take shelter from the hot sun. He was alone, and his 
 solitude was the intense solitude of dreams. And blinding as 
 the sunlight was the hopelessness of his soul, and it shrivelled 
 up in him all thoughts but one, all desires but one. That 
 which he thought and desired must be done. That had been 
 irrevocably decided; and he walked about as one already dead, 
 
 72 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 jret seeking death. And suddenly, there appeared at his side, 
 from he knew not where, a young man, an unhappy acquaint- 
 ance of his youth, who years ago, had striven to be an artist, 
 and been driven by circiunstances to take his own life; and 
 this man walked beside him as one already dead. Gombarov 
 walked beside this man trustingly, for the man was aware of 
 his desire and was there to help him consummate it. And 
 quite suddenly, still walking on the arid sands, they came 
 to an aqueduct of severed arches, and each arch was smaller 
 and lower than the other. Curiously enough, as one looked 
 through the openings, no light came from them; either the 
 arches were very deep, or else they were shut in at the other 
 end. "Here is a good place," Gombarov's companion seemed 
 to say, pointing to one of the smaller arches. "Just go in 
 there, and wait. Once the sea starts coming in . . ." Even 
 before the man could finish his sentence, the sandy beach had 
 ceased to ejrist, and Gombarov was projected forward with 
 the turbulent tide through the opening of the arch. He found 
 himself swimming in a heavy, rough, black water, in a kind of 
 twilight, under the arch, and his companion was at his side. 
 "I am lost," thought Gombarov, swimming hard, though he 
 had never swam in the sea before, and a great d^ire came 
 upon him to live. Great black waves carried him on and on, 
 and it was night, but the stone arch was no longer above his 
 head. At some distance in front of him, a curious little pier 
 jutted out, all lit up, a tiny island of light, which seemed to 
 have no connection with anything on earth. Would he ever 
 reach it? Stranger stUl, as he got nearer there appeared to 
 be a lit-up ofBce on the pier, and several young women were 
 sitting on a double row of high chairs, as if working over 
 figures. When he had scrambled up the pier and hands 
 reached out to pull him up, he suddenly felt the absence of 
 
 73 
 
BABEL 
 
 his companion. He stood up, firm on his feet, and realized 
 that he was full of sea water. One of the two young women 
 who had pulled him up attached a mechanical contrivance to 
 his mouth, and presently the water came pouring out, forming 
 a large pool on the plank floor. He tinned a smiling face 
 towards one of his savers, an attractive young woman, who, 
 he observed for the first time, was dressed in a white bathing- 
 suit edged with blue; she smiled at him, and, looking at the 
 pool of water, said: "Well, I've never seen anyone take in so 
 much water and live." Then everything turned to a red haze, 
 and he woke with a start, the loud clamour of a bell ringing 
 in his ears. 
 
 lON-N-N ^DON-N-N-N ! 
 
 The church bell round the comer was ringing, and its tones, 
 ascending and descending, poured themselves out with a meas- 
 ured reasonance, full of timeful clamor, and fell in broad 
 waves, half gay, half sombre, roxmd Gombarov; prolonged 
 dinning followed stroke on stroke of the male bell hammer, 
 as his elated skirted spouse, responding to her consort's com- 
 mand, full-throated droned-moaned her doleful-joyful song, 
 which sounded on Gombarov's ears: 
 
 "Lon-n-n don-n-n-n / Lon-n-n don-n-n-n / 
 
 Lon-n-n don-n-n-n /" 
 
 "Lon" on the up stroke, "don" on the down; a short din- 
 ning between, a long and deeper after. 
 
 All of a sudden, it dawned on the half awake Gombarov 
 that that was the day on which he was starting for London. 
 
 Manfully came the triumphant, clamorous strokes of the 
 bell and their frightening, wavering refrain: 
 
 "Lon-n-n don-n-n-n / Lon-n-n don-n-n-n / 
 
 Lon-n-n don-n-n-n /" 
 
 He was sensitive after his sleep, and the soimds touched 
 
 74 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 him as if he were a sounding board. They impenetrated him 
 from head to foot, insinuated themselves into his every nerve, 
 and he reverberated with them. He was frightened at their 
 song, which filled him, lifting him and letting him down. It 
 acted upon him as a sudden and overwhelming crescendo of 
 feeling after a prolonged adagio; he knew that on that evening 
 he would consummate a seven-year-old desire. It was as if, 
 while looking into a mirror, he had suddenly and impremedi- 
 tatingly caught a vision, as yet a shadow, of loveliness, peeping 
 into the glass over his shoulders, a vision he had not seen before 
 and was longing to see. 
 
 London, he was too well aware, had had her many lovers — 
 artists and poets — and who was he, coming with empty hands, 
 with no ready gift but the yearning of his love? But this 
 yearning he was bringing from afar, imquestioning, without 
 even having seen his love. All his knowledge of her was such 
 as he had got from books, pictures and hearsay; above all, 
 he was sharply aware that Shakespeare had trod her stones. 
 If these things had whetted his appetite, he was even more 
 strongly conscious of a deeper longing. He did not know 
 whence it came, but it had nothing to do with explicable 
 surface incentives. He only knew that he was being urged, 
 driven, lashed on! But suddenly faced with the fact of 
 being near the place of his desire, he was frightened at his 
 own presimiption, his audacity in attempting the quest. 
 
 "Lon-n-n " dinned the bell again on the upward stroke. 
 
 Gombarov's heart rising with it, throbbed to its lingering 
 tremolo, full of exultant notes. 
 
 "don-n-n-n " came the downward stroke, with its ascend- 
 ing dinning; and down went Gombarov's heart with it, with a 
 faltering dying, until it reached its downmost depths of timor- 
 ous resonance. 
 
 75 
 
BABEL 
 
 The last echo of the bell died slowly away. 
 
 Gombarov looked at his watch. There were still two hours 
 before the train started. He had packed his bag the evening 
 before, but to control his excitement, he jumped briskly out 
 of bed and began to dress. His movements were feverish, and 
 he cut himself shaving. He went to an outdoor cafe and 
 ordered coffee and rolls. He followed this with a liqueur 
 brandy, and another, and another, to steady him. Then he 
 walked up and down Winifred's street, past Winifred's house, 
 wondering whether she was up, whether he might stop in and 
 bid yet another farewell. Or was she asleep, her enchanting 
 little head, its black hair loosened, buried in soft white bed 
 clothes? Could he but get a glimpse of her thus! It was sad 
 to go away, even to his beloved London, leaving her here. 
 He restrained his desire to go in and see her, and strode 
 energetically toward the hotel. 
 
 XJNIVERSAL SPEECH OF HOTEI, ATTENDANTS 
 
 The concierge waited for him with the hotel bill on an old 
 silver platter. 
 
 Gombarov paid the bill and gave the man a generous tip, 
 but the man appeared dissatisfied and gr\unbled in French. 
 Gombarov understood the nature of the grumbles, if not their 
 precise particulars; whereupon the attendant, by means of an 
 open hand, described in the air a series of heights, as of organ 
 stops; immistakably indicating that he was a husband, had a 
 buxom wife living — to judge by the series of curves he used 
 in describing her frontal and rear rotimdities — ^and was the 
 father of five yoimg ones. Gombarov retaliated by drawing 
 a similar series of heights, going his protagonist three better. 
 
 The man threw up his hands in amzizement. 
 
 "Oh! Mais vous etes qu'un jeune hommel" 
 
 76 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 "No, no!" said Gombarov, and mustered a few French 
 words: 
 
 "Pere . . . mere . . . freres . . . soeurs . . ." 
 "Ah.' Je comprends!" laughed the man, sjrmpathetically, 
 and accepted two additional francs. And good-naturedly he 
 seized Gombarov's bag, which he carried downstairs. He 
 fetched a taxi, without again holding out his hand, and as he 
 shut the taxi door, nodded a farewell full of comprehension. 
 
 UNIVERS.'\L SPEECH OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 
 
 At the Gare du Nord, Gombarov foimd himself installed in 
 a carriage with a young German, who was reading Nietzsche's 
 Also Sprack Zarathmtra. The latter circumstance soon 
 led to their entering into conversation and remaining com- 
 panions until they reached London. The man spoke perfect 
 English. 
 
 "No, I don't think there will be any war between the 
 European countries; least of all, between Germany and Eng- 
 land, who need each other, and are each other's best customer. 
 That in spite of the fact that all countries are increasing their 
 armaments. We'd all stand to lose, none to gain. Jean Bloch 
 and Norman Angell have demonstrated that pretty dearly." 
 
 "But surely not all men of ideas are opposed to war," said 
 Gombarov. ''There is Nietzsche, who thinks only war can 
 cleanse our civilisation. . . . And I am told that there are 
 other lesser men in Germany who write quite frankly, advo- 
 cating war." 
 
 "Nietzsche? Der ist ein ideologt" replied Gombarov's vis- 
 a-vis, breaking into German. "No one nowadays pays any 
 attention to ideologists or ideas. Only resdistic facts coimt." 
 
 "They seem to, but I am not sure that it is so," said 
 
 77 
 
BABEL 
 
 Gombarov, and added, as a sudden idea struck him: "I should 
 think it was the other way round. It is ideologists who never 
 pay any attention to any one else. Rousseau and Voltaire 
 inculcated the ideas of the French Revolution, and who knew 
 at the time Karl Marx was writing that his idea would find 
 so many followers?" ' 
 
 The German looked at Gombarov with a new interest, but 
 said nothing. 
 
 The train was pulling into Victoria. 
 
 "You must look me up when you are settled, and we shall 
 discuss the matter further," said the German. "Here is my 
 card." 
 
 Gombarov casually glanced at it. It read: 
 
 MR. HUGO EBBING, 
 Private Secretary to James Hopper, U. P. 
 
 Mr. Ebbing observed Gombarov's astonished look. "Yes," 
 he said, "I'm just from a holiday in the Black Forest, and I 
 must be here, as in a day or two Parliament opens." 
 
 tJNIVEBSAL SPEECH OF LABOUK 
 
 "Where are you putting up?" asked Mr. Ebbing, when the 
 train pulled in. 
 
 "I don't know yet," replied Gombarov. "I shall look for 
 a place in Russell Square." 
 
 "Are you taking a 'bus or a taxi?" 
 
 Gombarov pondered for a moment. "A Tjus, I think," he 
 said in a voice of indecision. 
 
 "Well, let me put you on the right one," said Mr. Ebbing. 
 
 Gombarov seized his heavy bag, and followed Mr. Ebbing. 
 
 Once outside the station, they found a workingmen's pro- 
 cession in progress. Numerous red banners were carried, bear- 
 
 78 
 
A MEDLEY 
 
 ing various inscriptions in large letters, such as: "We Want a 
 Living Wage," "Solidarity of Labour," "Workers of All Lands, 
 Unite!" 
 
 Gombarov looked in amazement at the strange procession 
 of straggling men, with hard-worked, furrowed faces and large, 
 blackened hands; some of them wore no collar, only a kerchief 
 round their neck; a few had neither collar nor kerchief, and 
 showed patches of swarthy, hairy skin. There were women in 
 the procession, for the most part shabbily dressed; all looked 
 grim, and none was smiling; even the young showed symp- 
 toms of fatigue and age. They marched silently, the evening 
 sun accentuating the grimness of their faces; and the crowd 
 that watched them was also strangely silent. 
 
 Several things astonished Gombarov: the silence, the pres- 
 ence of the red flag, the fatigued, almost apathetic look of the 
 marching workmen, the apathy of the onlooking crowd, all 
 impossible in the land he had lately come from. The whole 
 scene assumed an intenser strangeness owing to the fact that 
 it was plunged in the fantastic atmosphere of evening daylight. 
 It was eight o'clock of a June evening. 
 
 "They are either striking or protesting," e:q>lained Mr. 
 Ebbing. 
 
 Just then a little group which brought up the rear began 
 to sing. 
 
 "What are they singing?" asked Gombarov, intensely inter- 
 ested. He might have been Dante asking a question of his 
 illustrious guide in the Inferno. 
 
 "Don't you know?" asked Mr. Ebbing in astonishment. 
 "It's the International/" 
 
 79 
 
BOOK II 
 
 PUBLICANS, SINNERS, SAINTS, ARTISTS, 
 PHILOSOPHERS, OUTCASTS 
 
 To Edward J. O'Brien 
 
CHAP. II: VARIATIONS ON A SINGLE THEME 
 
 "Reflection is itself a turn, and the 
 top turn, given to life." 
 
 — Santayana. 
 
 JOY ON A *BUS 
 
 Assisted to his "bus by Mr. Ebbing, Gombarov, weighed 
 down by his bag, struggled up the narrow steps to the top 
 and took the rear seat. He asked the conductor to let him 
 down at Tottenham Court Road, the nearest point for Russell 
 Square; then wholly gave himself up to the sensation of seeing 
 and absorbing London. 
 
 The great city was at its best in that fantastic evening 
 daylight of June. To him who had not seen it before, this 
 light was peculiar; it was neither of day nor of night, neither 
 twilight nor dawn; it was the light of another sphere, where 
 spirits hold revels and dreams are bom. So it appeared to 
 Gombarov, delicately attimed after seven years of enduring 
 and waiting, and thrice seven of toiling and suffering in a 
 land of violent contrasts, to receive the full charity of this 
 light, which played upon his nerves and caused bis flesh to 
 vibrate with quiet ecstasy, a strange low music filling him to 
 the tips of his fingers with red resonance as of blood and wine. 
 He had not yet seen the face of London, but only the radiance 
 of the face. Fear and misgiving left him for the time being; 
 he had no doubt that his bride was Dulcinea. 
 
 In that light the street lights were of a silvery dimness as 
 of early stars, while the buildings in Victoria Street stretched 
 
 83 
 
BABEL 
 
 on in long lightless masses, cliff-like and precipitate, densely 
 dark, fading into purple and grey. And looking right and left, 
 to lose nothing, he caught sight of a cleft, and through the 
 cleft a tall tower, formidable and perpendicular, like a colossal, 
 lightless lighthouse, aspiring to violate England's curiously 
 low skies. That was a strange thing he had had time to note 
 about the English skies; they appeared to be so much lower 
 than the American skies. 
 
 Having left Westminster Cathedral behind, the red Tbus 
 almost noiselessly glided on, darting in and out of the crowded 
 traffic, cunningly brushing past other red Tjuses, with a gon- 
 dola-like grace which was incredible; at times no more than a 
 hair's breadth separated them. And there were no sudden, 
 sharp, shrieking noises of taxi-horns and overhead trains as in 
 New York; but there was a trembling and a riunbling in the 
 air, steady and constant, the even breathing of modern life over 
 vast spaces. All the noises were swallowed up and became as 
 one noise, vibrant like that of a ship's turbine, incessantly throb- 
 bing, reduced to normal pulsation, diffuse mellowness of a tone 
 painting, in which conflicting colours take their place without 
 quarrelling with one another, and none shrieking. This, 
 Gombarov had time to observe before reaching the end of 
 his journey, had its counterpart in the physical contours of the 
 streets, which were curiously free from sharp abutting angles 
 so characteristic of the streets of the New World. This round- 
 ing of the edges at street crossings enabled wheeled traffic to 
 turn a comer without pulling up or breaking the steady con- 
 tinuity of its flow. And only the upraised hand of a traffic 
 policeman caused everything to stop and to gather at a single 
 point as at the sudden shutting down of a canal lock. As he 
 watched, with fascination, the upraised hand of the immov- 
 
 84 
 
VARIATIONS ON A SINGLE THEME 
 
 able figure, a kind of symbol, reductio ad absurdum, of law 
 and order, Gombarov thought: 
 
 "It must have taken centuries of civilisation to have evolved 
 this extraordinary power for an upraised hand, just as it must 
 have taken centuries to have rounded off the comers of Lon- 
 don's streets." 
 
 The growing, collected traffic, consisting of taxis, motor 
 Tjuses and drays, paused before the lone figure with upraised 
 hand, and throbbed and snorted like a single restless steed from 
 the kingdom of Brobdingnag. Then, after some moments, the 
 figure dropped its arm with an automatic swoop, as if the arm 
 were a railway signal; and the pent-up traffic moved slug- 
 gishly on. 
 
 Gombarov cast a lingering glance at the Abbey, at the 
 Parliament buildings, at the vista of lights stretching across 
 Westminster Bridge, and knew that he was now traversing 
 grey WTiitehall, the nerve centre of the British Empire. The 
 Tbus ran on in the broad avenue, speedily and without pause. 
 He had but time to note the squat solidity of the buildings 
 and the even continuity of their skyline, so different from New 
 York's anarchic silhouettes at twilight; above all, there was 
 the overwhelming impression of stony greyness, as if the 
 buildings had been plunged into some powerful grey solution 
 and now radiated greyness, an effect which conferred on the 
 architecture a sense of unity. And these buildings surely radi- 
 ated power also. Gombarov knew that these ramparts of grey 
 stone, famiUar to him through pictures, imprisoned an energy, 
 whose cerebral effulgence, emanating from constantly renewed 
 English skulls, ruled the destinies of perhaps half the himian 
 race — of Ireland, India, Rhodesia, AustraUa, Canada, New 
 Zealand, Egypt; and he could not help but reflect that there 
 must have been just such a street, such a series of buildings, 
 
 85 
 
_ BABEL 
 
 in ancient Rome, with an equally immense cellular Foreign 
 OfGce, and with separate Colonial Offices for the regions of 
 Spain, Gaul, Pannonia, Asia Minor, and even barbarian Britain. 
 WhoUy vanished was that street of the City of Seven Hills, 
 and out of the city's ashes rose the bird Phoenix, which, haviug 
 encompassed several deaths and resurrections, alighted on the 
 Thames, whose virgin waters then conceived an abundance of 
 life, such as had been once that of the Euphrates, of the Nfle 
 and of the Tiber, bereaved rivers now flowing with sacred 
 dead water. And out of the living womb of the new chosen 
 there came forth men on ships to conquer the earth, to establish 
 their speech and new universal laws, and to proclaim London 
 the new and more glorious Babel; for men have always loved 
 Babel, and their aspiration has ever been towards Babel, and 
 their existence has been a continuous pendulating between 
 Babel and Babel. 
 
 Gombarov had little interest in politics, but in the presence 
 of these Whitehall walls and monuments, as if overcome by 
 their imperative atmosphere, he found himself suddenly pos- 
 sessed with a curiously burning sense of history; possibly, the 
 cumulative memories of his race, which had experienced and 
 had witnessed other nations experience numerous vicissitudes, 
 now evoked in him a responsive chord to an atmosphere so 
 essentially historic and peopled with historic ghosts; where- 
 upon he gave way to his habit of introspection and meditated 
 upon whether a young stranger entering Rome in the heyday 
 of her glory had not experienced sensations like his own on 
 his entry into London. 
 
 And now here was Trafalgar Square, the Nelson coluron 
 looming to overshadow the memory of the Titus Arch, as Life 
 overshadows Death, as the Present overshadows the Past, 
 and, trembling, awaits the coming of the Futtire, before whose 
 
 86 
 
VARIATIONS ON A SINGLE THEME 
 
 corrosive, on-creeping shadow that which has been and that 
 which is shall xiltimately and inevitably crumble into dust, 
 and, crumbling, lie flat as a grave, upon whose dust living 
 men shall erect tall monuments and ponderous arches to per- 
 petuate the memory of the life that was. There was some 
 hint of intimacy about the figure at the top of the column, 
 as living men had heard their fathers tell of him, having seen 
 him in the flesh, of his god-like coiu^ge and of his human 
 frailty, of his braving such wilful elements as rage in men- 
 gods and nature, of his love for a woman, and of his love for 
 men, and of his dying cry, which as by some all too earthly 
 magic, in three simple words, had touched, and would con- 
 tinue to touch for generations to come, the hearts of his coun- 
 trymen: "Kiss me. Hardy!" 
 
 Even Gombarov, not an Englishman, felt the impelling spell 
 of the place the instant he first beheld it, and, while the Tius 
 paused, with each succeeding instant grew increasingly ecstatic 
 at the sight, in that mystic twilight, of the noble square with 
 its man-crowned tall column, its broad faqade, its background 
 of drowsing buildings, the low-domed National Gallery and 
 the high-spired St. Martin-in-the-Fields, over which hovered, 
 even as that caressing light, the genius of Christopher Wren. 
 Nelson and Wren! It was fitting that the twin spirits of two 
 such men, one a hero, the other an artist, should abide here 
 and permeate the place, since, it seemed to him, that the divine 
 attributes of courage and beauty alone make life worth living, 
 give a meaning to life, inspire emulation, and cause men's 
 souls to gravitate towards God, in whose image they have been 
 created, whose image they have so often betrayed. There was 
 one thing he could not imderstand: that was the almost un- 
 canny familiarity of the place. It was as if he had been here 
 before, as if some dimly remembered dream had become a 
 
 87 
 
BABEL 
 
 dear reality, as if an Englishman's soul had crept into his skin 
 and utterly possessed him, or possibly, re-possessed him, after 
 a lapse, from some previous existence, and had now re- 
 awakened on English soU, at the sight of a typically 
 English, quintessentially English scene. He had never thought 
 much about the matter, had hitherto regarded the rein- 
 carnation theory as a superstition, and there was no 
 explaining this strangely unaccountable feeling as of "coming 
 home." 
 
 Even at the height of his drunken ecstasy, all at once there 
 obtruded upon his vision the suddenly lit up ball of the 
 Coliseimi, and, simultaneously, up sprang the lights giving 
 names to the "stars." "Let there be light!" and "Let there 
 be stars!" Here was a new interpretation, and Gombarov saw 
 that it was not good. Was it not what he had run away from? 
 And here was the barbarian at the old door, with a new bag 
 of tricks and magic press-buttons to b^^ile the old soul away 
 in exchange for a new one. 
 
 The soul of old England was left behind in Trafalgar 
 Square; the 'hvs rolled on through one of the corridors of the 
 new England. Up Charing Cross Road, past a cinema house, 
 announcing "The Grim Avenger: A Thrilling Romance of 
 Three Continents"; past the Hippodrome, blazing with lights; 
 past the buildings of new flats, utterly banal but for the curve 
 of the old street; past a music hall, flaimting across its front 
 the pirouetting figure of a Russism toe-dancer on a coloured 
 screen, while underneath, flashing for the world to see, letters 
 of bright light proclaiming other attractions: a Cockney 
 Comedian, a Spanish Tango Turn, a Swedish Acrobat Troupe, 
 American Clog Dancers, an Argentine "Stunt" Artist, Naughty 
 Fifi the French Comic Chanseuse and Mimi her Eccentric 
 Accompanist, and so on, and so on. 
 
 88 
 
VARIATIONS ON A SINGLE THEME 
 
 "How amazingly international!" mused Gombarov, and 
 laughed to himself, as the after-thought struck him: "And 
 here am I, a Russo-American Jew, looking on! " 
 
 Was this chaos, or unity? It was chaos, and had a unity 
 after a fashion. It was the unity of a many-tuned medley, 
 each tune of which maintained its entity, losing it only at the 
 moment of embracing another tune; at best, it was the unity 
 of ultra-modem music, shaped out of discords, beaten but not 
 molten into a harmony. 
 
 One thing struck him as being extraordinary: that at a time 
 that articles of utility and commerce were being standardised 
 there should be a growing anarchy, a steady effort towards 
 indi\'idualisation, in the fine and the vulgar arts. This, the 
 pirouetting figure reminded him, was especially true of the 
 popular art of dancing. Not only was the dancing mania 
 growing and developing in diversity, but there were actually 
 dances in which all the participating couples were encouraged 
 to take individual steps different from those of the other 
 couples. A no mean measure of sensuality was introduced 
 into these dances, which equally departed from all standard 
 moralities, though the dancers were, for the most part, from 
 respectable classes, and lived content in their otherwise stan- 
 dardised lives. Stranger still, thought Gombarov, this mania 
 of nimble wantonness had come hither from two opposite direc- 
 tions, from two countries as diverse as Russia and America, 
 their one point of contact. To be sure, he had not got all 
 this knowledge from his short Tjus ride, but had had ample 
 facilities for acquiring stray and curious information at the 
 New World, where, for years, it had been among his duties 
 to follow events in the London periodical press, with the 
 object of concocting a weekly London letter, an object 
 
 89 
 
BABEL 
 
 attained by the use of scissors and paste and not a little 
 ingenuity. 
 
 In front of the pirouetting figure, Gombarov, sitting on the 
 traffic-arrested 'bus, would have allowed his mind, now gal- 
 loping and out of hand, to pursue its passionate meditations 
 on the subject of nimble-legged, short-skirted phenomena, 
 matters of curve and line, concerning which, regarding himself 
 a connoisseur, he judged with pagan-eyed detachment, coolly 
 yet passionately. The Hius, however, extricating itself from 
 the taxis, resumed its journey, and hardly more than a minute 
 elapsed before the conductor popped his head above the steps 
 and shouted: 
 
 "Next stop, Tottenham Court Road, sir!" 
 
 JOY ON FOOT 
 
 The "bus crossed an imcommonly straight, crowded street, 
 and stopped. Gombarov slowly descended with his bag and 
 while the crowd swarmed round him, paused to get his bear- 
 ings. He was somewhat dazed after his exciting twenty-minute 
 journey and his first sight of London. It had been altogether 
 an exciting day, beginning with his strange dream in Paris and 
 his awakening. Automatically, he pulled out a packet of 
 "Maryland" cigarettes, and lit one, and between abstracted 
 puffs watched people go by. No one paid the slightest atten- 
 tion to him, in spite of his wide-brimmed felt hat, his artist's 
 black wing tie and his wistful, energetic face, rich with a dark 
 pallour, coppery in tone, in spite, too, of his deep, well-set 
 eyes, grey-blue under the sharp-defined black spans of the 
 brows, which arched from the long, strjught pillar of the nose, 
 and on either side met a stray tuft of his longish Imir, against 
 whose black the eyes appeared of an intense and lustrous blue. 
 It was different in America, or even in Paris, where, it did 
 
 90 
 
VARIATIONS ON A SINGLE THEME 
 
 not escape his notice, he had served as an object of observation 
 even among ordinajy people. He had not yet had time to 
 learn that Paris was, in comparison, a walled town, that its 
 social instincts were those of a walled town, and that in spite 
 of its reputation as a refuge for artists and eccentrics, uncom- 
 mon appearances excited far greater interest than similar 
 appearances in London, a place as impersonal as the sea, taking 
 no notice of its driftwood, whether mahogany or plain spruce. 
 He soon saw a policeman standing in the very centre of the 
 open space where five streets converged, and once more gath- 
 ering up his bag, as well as his courage, approached him. The 
 mild-mannered bobby gave him his directions for Russell 
 Square with a courtesy so overwhelming and a precision so 
 meticulous that Gombarov, remembering the rude condescen- 
 sion of New York's law guardians, thought for a moment that 
 he had entered Alice's Wonderland. A moment later he was 
 conscious of having forgotten to thank the polite bobby, and 
 in great chagrin he paused on the kerb, uncertain whether he 
 ought not to go back; and even while he paused his eyes, 
 glancing upward, fell on the most extraordinary sculptures he 
 had ever seen, which quite banished the policeman from his 
 mind. He saw four male figures ranged along a ledge over shop 
 windows. Heroic in size, they were heroic in nothing else; 
 their backs to the wall of the house caryatid-wise, they held 
 up nothing but the empty air; without any pretensions what- 
 soever of bodily perfection, of abstract or ideal beauty, they 
 were yet lacking in modesty; they wore neither fig-leaves nor 
 goat-iins, neither Greek draperies nor Roman togas, nor any 
 outer garment ever represented in the arts, yet they were not 
 naked, but boldly stood up, for all the world to see, in suits 
 of up-to-date imderwear, comfortably fitting in spite of the 
 formidable paimches exhibited by two of the figures. Here 
 
 91 
 
BABEL 
 
 was bedroom realism for you, thought Gombarov, as his slow- 
 thinking brain grasped the fact that these masterpieces of 
 banality had been erected to glorify the heroic endurance of 
 the "You-can't-tear-'em Union Suits." 
 
 "Them's made to last as long as the British Hempire lasts," 
 said a cockney wit to Gombarov, having observed the latter's 
 preoccupation, and added before he passed on: "All you want 
 to complete the set is a couple of fat girls in combinations, eh?" 
 
 Gombarov laughed at the ludicrous vision evdied by the 
 ribald cockney, and suddenly awakened to the fact that he 
 was in Shakespeare's coimtry and that in spite of the Puritans, 
 the native wit of the people had not wholly run dry. Surely, 
 no "iatellectual" could have offered so trenchant a criticism. 
 At all events, the cockney's words broke the child-like spell 
 that held him before these extraordinary works of art attired 
 in the "You-can't-tear-'em imderwear"; and pulling himself 
 together, he threaded his way through the crowd towards Great 
 Russell Street. 
 
 After Tottenham Court Road, this street seemed pervaded 
 by an intense quiet. As his bag was growing heavy he often 
 paused to rest, and while resting he went on observing. Noth- 
 ing, however trivial, escaped him. It was impossible not to 
 notice the huge building of the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
 ciation, whose presence in a Christian coimtry was hardly to 
 be deemed as strange as that of the shop across the street, 
 where Buddhas and heathen gods of all nations could be bought 
 in assorted sizes and at varying prices by chance alien wor- 
 shippers and antique collectors, the latter a class accustomed 
 to handle and to buy strange images and idols and finely 
 wrought gem-encrusted crucifixes with equal irreverence, for 
 their esthetic or material value rather than for their being the 
 spiritual emanation of some artist drunken with the Divine 
 
 92 
 
VARIATIONS ON A SINGLE THEME 
 
 Essence. Gombarov walked on, getting his fill on the way of 
 Japanese and Persian prints, of Chinese ivories and dragoned 
 screens, of Indian chessmen, of all manner of lacquer wares, of 
 Malay Archipelago boat oars, of Maoriland spears, of Javanese 
 marionettes, of American Indian tomahawks, wampum and 
 moccasins, of an endless variety of gew-gaws, some of them 
 minute enough to have come from Lilliput. He had about 
 made up his mind to succumb to no further temptations, 
 when there hove in sight, seemingly endlessly stretching, a 
 series of tall iron railings, and as he approached nearer, there 
 became visible, considerably receding, an immense Greek build- 
 ing, nobly colonnaded, distinguished shadows falling from the 
 tall formidable columns and filling the portico with godly 
 mjrstery, vibrant in portentous twilight. The last daylight 
 hovered with a bright djong lustre, then perceptibly dark- 
 ened, like a woman's white body sleepily turning on its sidfe 
 and pulling over itself a diaphanous coverlet of purple. Gom- 
 barov stood for some time watching the beautifid building as 
 it softened imder the caresses of the steadily deepening pur- 
 ple, and mentally dissociating it from the relative meanness of 
 its siuToundings imagined it as a living temple, lonely on a hill, 
 dedicated to worship. 
 
 No dark-skinned Greek in white draperies stood at the stone 
 gates, but only a blue-uniformed commissionaire conversing 
 with a policeman. Gombarov had no need to ask what the 
 building was, for from photographs and engravings, he knew it 
 to be the British Musexmi, the greatest yet of all repositories, 
 nay, of mausoleums, dedicated to the preservation of fragments, 
 and fragments of fragments, of extinct, and nearly extinct, 
 civilisations; and it was wonderful to think that there was 
 
 93 
 
BABEL 
 
 hardly a known historic, or even prehistoric, event, but 
 there was some record of it here in stone or papyrus; that 
 hardly a nation, race or tribe, but was represented by some 
 intimate expression of its soul, congealed in stone, the works 
 of its nameless Phidiases; that hardly an emotion of beauty, 
 bom of the marriage of the mind and the senses, but was pres- 
 ent here in some image or form of itself; endless transient mo- 
 ments, each containing all eternity and preserved for eternity. 
 Simple weapons of war, too, with which human beings fought 
 one another before the apostles of Progress had devised the 
 machine-gim and the submarine, weapons ultimately surren- 
 dered to Death, the last victor; it was, indeed, as if the ancient 
 antagonisms were reconciled here, in this huge repository, a 
 kind of Babel of the Dead, placed by curious irony, perhaps 
 by divine design, in the very midst of the Babel of the Living. 
 Gombarov turned from this solemn thought and again imag- 
 ined the building as a living temple on a lone hill, whoi sud- 
 denly strange sounds broke in upon his abstraction. 
 
 JOY OF BAGPIPES 
 
 He had heard those sounds before, but never had they 
 sounded so strange. He looked in the direction from which 
 they came and saw a sturdy, bare-kneed figure in Scotch kilts 
 and tunic of plaid and tam-o'-shanter strutting up and down 
 the street, along the line of the kerb, blowing with puffed-out 
 cneeks into that strange puffed-out device, the Scotch bag- 
 pipes. 
 
 With a copious clamour strange, wild, imcanny soxmds burst 
 from the pent-up bag, as if a thousand small captive birds 
 from Scotland's hills were inside the bag, by some magic made 
 to sing one tune, the piper's own, to his charming and willing. 
 
 94 
 
VARIATIONS ON A SINGLE THEME 
 
 THE BAGPIPES 
 
 A bagful, a bagful of birds, 
 
 Birds, birds, bards. 
 
 Singing, chirping. 
 
 Warbling, twittering. 
 
 Trilling, caroling. 
 
 Fiercely jittering 
 
 In a tuneful capering, 
 
 Wlntnpering, clamouring. 
 
 For flight at dawning, 
 
 For delight of morning, 
 
 For at eve to hover 
 
 Over lassie and lover. 
 
 For at night to rest 
 
 With mate in soft nest. 
 
 At noon by Sun to be kiss't, 
 
 A tune to sing to the mist, 
 
 O kind MacPherson, 
 
 Blind piper's son, 
 
 Let us out, out, out/ 
 
 We are crying. 
 
 We are dying. 
 
 For MUst 
 
 For far, far hUls, 
 
 For green dells and rills. 
 
 For bluebells and heather, 
 
 Where birds may gather, 
 
 And sing together. 
 
 In highland and lowland. 
 
 The green land of Scotland, 
 
 Forever, forever, forever! 
 
 95 
 
BABEL 
 
 This was the curious fashion in which he later recorded 
 the bagpipes episode in his Diary, and to these simple rhymes 
 he added in prose: 
 
 "I could not help reflecting that there was a curious, if 
 indefinable, kinship between the simple grandeur of that 
 Greek building and those weird pipes; and something in me 
 responded to both. Can it be that my having been bom and 
 bred in the Russian woods has something to do with this 
 response? For, surely, both things are of natiu-e: the simple 
 building with its strong, erect columns like trees, which cast 
 shadows as trees cast shadows in a forest, among which the 
 strangely bird-like music of the bagpipes finds natmral, even 
 inevitable echoes. Both are of natiure, as much as the Egyptian 
 pyramid is of nature, having been created in the image of a 
 moimtain to secure the sense of permanence that is of a 
 mountain, for towards permanence man has always aspired, 
 towards some perpetuation of himself in flesh, stone, words, 
 music, some shape or art form. But there is nothing in com- 
 mon between the Museimi and the mean little houses by which 
 it is surrounded, and there is nothing in common between the 
 piper and the little pot-bellied man who, joining me at the 
 kerb, observed: 'Why don't they stop that terrible noise? 
 They ought to have a law against imdesirable noises. I'd 
 sooner hear a rag on a mouth organ!' I said nothing, but 
 fingering a malicious six-pence, so that the man could not 
 help seeing it, dropped it into the piper's hat." 
 
 JOY OF OBSESSION 
 
 The piper walked away. Gombarov would have absurd^ 
 followed the piper, but there was his own immnMral bag of 
 thick leather, brass-bound at the comers, containing clothes 
 
 96 
 
VARIATIONS ON A SINGLE THEME 
 
 and books, altogether heavier than any big bagful of birds' 
 tunes; it was not the sort of thing to lug about with one on 
 his first night in a strange city, and a lodging yet to be 
 found. 
 
 "Please tell me the way to Russell Square," he asked the 
 first man he met, as he proceeded on his way. 
 
 The man did not appear to understand and glanced at 'h\m 
 blankly. 
 
 "Russell Square," repeated Gombarov. 
 
 The man maintained his dumb if friendly look, but on 
 Gombarov repeating "Russell Square" for the third time, a 
 gleam of intelligence, even joy, leapt into his eyes, as in a 
 foreign voice, full of eager gladness, his hands gesticulatii^, 
 he exclaimed: 
 
 "Ah-h, ze Rossaile Squaire! Take ze left road, alors ze 
 right road. Cinq minutest" and he lifted up five fingo^. 
 
 "Merci!" said Gombarov, and wonda-ed as he continued 
 his journey whether if he had landed here in 1 6x2 instead of 
 19 1 2 he would have had a Frenchman show him the way, 
 and to his own question he replied: "No, nor a Russian, nor 
 a Bohonian, nor an Italian, but doubtless some roystering 
 Englishman, who would have looked me up and down as at 
 some strange animal." 
 
 He found Russell Square and stopped to look at the impos- 
 ing looking hotels situated there. A New York hotel of the 
 appearance these hotels presented would be expensive, and 
 the,elaborately uniformed commissionaires who stood haughtily 
 at the entrances gave a furth« forbidding touch. "There must 
 be cheaper hotels hereabouts," he thought, and trailed in the 
 direction of Wobum Place. Inquiries at four different houses, 
 which had signs up, "Bed and Breakfast, 3/6," elicited the 
 
 97 
 
BABEL 
 
 reply that they were "full up"; at the fifth he found a room. 
 Asked to register his name, he curiously ran his eyes down 
 the page, and the result gratified him beyond all expectation: 
 
 J. S. Mallik, Calcutto. 
 
 A. Goldstein, KiefF. 
 
 David Williams, Llandudno. 
 
 Patrick O'Flaherty, Dublin. 
 
 Thomas Ayres Watt, Chicago. 
 
 Jules L'Estrange, Marseilles. 
 
 Giuseppi Crescenzo, Genoa. 
 
 And so on, and so on. 
 
 "You don't appear to have many Englishmen here," observed 
 Gombarov to draw out the lodging house keeper. 
 
 "No," replied the latter, a Scotsman. "We had one last 
 week, and he left next day for Africa, to hunt lions, he said. 
 He didn't like the looks of London, said there were too many 
 tame foreigners about." The Scotsman grinned. "Gladys, 
 show the gentleman up to Number Nine," said he to a fair 
 buxom girl who had come into the room, in response to his ring. 
 "Youll find everything there in order, sir." 
 
 He had seen that room before. It was the same as every- 
 where, except that the reproductions consisted chiefly of sup- 
 plements to Christmas pictorials and of portraits of English 
 royalty. The inscription over the bed, "God Rest Me!" at 
 once aroused his suspicions of the bed, which, however, on 
 examination, proved imfounded. 
 
 Then followed the joy of washing his face after a strenuous 
 day, the joy of feeling cool water on his perspiring skin. But 
 he was still too excited to rest, so putting on a fresh collar 
 he walked out again, carefully following the original direction; 
 
 98 
 
VARIATIONS ON A SINGLE THEME 
 
 and there was the added joy of being quite free of his bag. 
 There are so many joys in this world that it would be folly 
 to count them aU. 
 
 JOY IN A CUP OF TEA 
 
 He was now back in Tottenham Court Road. After walking 
 up and down the street for a while, he entered an eating house, 
 and fell into a once red, now colourless plush seat against the 
 wall, ordered tea and bread and butter, then gave himself up 
 to a study of the room. Dingy, tired electric lights hung 
 down from the ceiling and revealed a dingy, tired room, full 
 of dingy, tired properties. There was a weary, rusty look, 
 reminiscent of a second-hand shop, about the steaming perpen- 
 dicular urns on the coimter, where also reposed apathetic sand- 
 wiches, which were now and then conveyed by apathetic wait- 
 resses to apathetic patrons. So it appeared to him after 
 America. He e^)ecially observed a young man and a girl 
 in one of the comer seats. The girl had an arm roimd the 
 young man's neck; one of his hands rested across her knees; 
 and thus they sat, immovable, a long, incredibly long time. 
 They might have been figures at Madame Tussaud's. The 
 light so fell that it lighted up their stationary smiles; and thus, 
 quietly, they smiled for a long, incredibly long time. The 
 remains of their fish supper lay on the table in front of them; 
 he observed that most of the patrons had ordered fish, which, 
 fried and dried and all curled up, had the appearance of a 
 stage property, such as he had seen employed with devastating 
 effect in American burlesque sketches, together with its friendly 
 rival, the syphon bottle. 
 
 The tea he drank was strong and black, but the pleasure 
 he experienced in being at last in London bewitched him, and 
 far from disliking it, he went on sipping it as if it were nectar 
 
 99 
 
BABEL 
 
 in the bowl of Dulcinea's palm. And suddenly, he felt an 
 infusion of blitheness and strength; his legs felt hard and 
 firm, his belly taut and as of brass, his coat full of shoidders. 
 To such an extent did his mind, at that moment, exert its 
 will over his body. He felt the joy of precarious freedom. 
 And he went on drinking nectar out of the bowl of Dulcinea's 
 hand. Then, suddenly, as yet slightly, his inner wings fl^ped, 
 wings whose existence he had hitherto hardly been aware of, 
 wings pinioned by the cruel imcouth hands of that man- 
 created monster, mechanical Caliban, who, by an evolved 
 cunning, had at last overpowered man, his master, and made 
 him his servant, and had caged Ariel in man's breast to 
 intensify his torment cuid discontent. He gnashed his teeth 
 at the thought of his nmny misspent years at the factory and 
 in factory-made society, and braced by this damning thought 
 his inner wings flapped again, now more vigorously. Such 
 was the effect of being at freedom in a strange city, yet a dty 
 in some way imaccountably familiar to him. And he went on 
 drinking that black, bitter tea as if it were some anodyne, 
 nectar out of the bowl of Dulcinea's hand. 
 
 JOY OF WINDING STKEETS 
 
 He paced the streets, and tinned into a winding lane, which, 
 like some lives, was a short but merry one. A curio shop, 
 before whose window stood a few gaping passers-by; the stage- 
 door of a music-hall, before which loitered some idle Johnnies 
 waiting for their sweeties to come forth; the back of a popular 
 restaurant, from whose open windows issued the strenuous 
 melody of an American "rag", played, judging from the 
 shadowy silhouettes visible against the lower opaque panes, 
 by an active orchestra of three; these were some of the features 
 of the little street, whose deviations of house and kerb line 
 
 lOO 
 
VARIATIONS ON A SINGLE THEME 
 
 struck him as quaint and lured him irresistibly on. Then it 
 took a sudden curve towards the main street, and at the apex 
 of this curve he f oimd an even tinier lane seductively diverging 
 in the opposite direction and disappesiring in an attractive, 
 unpremeditated curve between two rows of petty houses, lit 
 up quaintly at the curve's N'anishing point by a lone street 
 lamp, whose slight flicker caused the faint hght and fainter 
 shadows to move back and forward, like a caressing hand, 
 across the houses and pavement. There was in this arrange- 
 ment of curves and divergences a sense as natural as a meeting 
 of streams. Who knew if it did not owe its origin to precisely 
 such a confluence of waters, over whose drained beds the 
 road-makers had built these meandering city lanes? What- 
 ever the cause, there was in this composition a perfection the 
 greater for its artlessness. The lamp-post itself stood as a 
 mystic symbol at the convergence of these curves, and the dim 
 flare that crowned it cast a drcle of frail li^t of diffuse 
 softness, obliterating all sense of local colour and enduing 
 the spot with an aspect timeless and placeless, rich with 
 peniunbral mystery, as if, altogether, it were a stage design 
 devised by a master dramatist for the enactment of eternal 
 moments. Deserted, it yet appeared to vibrate with an intense 
 life, ready for the entrance of dark, indeterminate figures, 
 draped classically or in modem apparel, but tmchanged and 
 changdess in gesture, in the manner of a whisper, and in 
 alternate moods of love, conspiracy, ambition, and mxurder. 
 Here was nothing, and here was ever)rthing. Rembrandt 
 would have made a miracle of it. Gombarov stood there a 
 long time, bewitched by the simple magic of the spot, and 
 renewed his regret for not having followed his bent for 
 painting. 
 In the course of his stroll Gombarov found more than one 
 
 lOl 
 
BABEL 
 
 such exiled corner, crowded by a clamorous new world; more 
 than one such winding lane running into another, curve inter- 
 secting curve; and he thought of those endless streets of the 
 city he had come from, thoroughfares whose length, rectitude 
 and dullness had doubtless been designed to do tribute to 
 Virtue, that methodical, prudish goddess who disdained the 
 seductive roimdnesses of the female. And, as he recalled 
 those streets, he imderstood the violence they had done to his 
 nature. "No, no!" he thought, "not alone my nature, but 
 nature generally. Nature thinks in terms of streams, not of 
 canals. These old bits were built up slowly, naturally; ihey 
 were not planned, they just grew; there is a sense of leisure in 
 this. 
 
 But speed makes for straightness, straightn^s makes for 
 speed. And you want to go speedily through a straight street, 
 as it is boring and without mystery. A place of long, straight 
 streets must, therefore, influence the character of the inhab- 
 itants. It must influence all of life. I should say the modem 
 brain is no longer impressed with convolutions, but with rectan- 
 gles. That, perhaps, accoimts for much of modem art, the art 
 of Douglass." 
 
 Thus Gombarov went on thinking, and he realized more and 
 more the adventure and significance of trivial things, the fact 
 of trivial things having a meaning hardly less profound than 
 important, world-stirring events; for all things answered to 
 the same laws, and all laws were equally at the root of big and 
 little things. The known universe was but a small thing lost 
 in the immensity of space, and a whole universe throbbed on 
 his thumbnafl, in the bowl of a buttercup or on a butterfly's 
 wing. 
 
 I02 
 
VARIATIONS ON A SINGLE THEME 
 
 A JOY REFUSED 
 
 "Are you lonely, darling?" 
 
 The question was flung at him by a girl who suddenly 
 stepped out of the recess of a doorway. As yet he saw under 
 the broad brim of her hat a mere whiteness, the haunting 
 semblance of a smile, rouged lips parted and two rows of white 
 teeth, and the liquid glitter of two points, fixing him from 
 under the shadows. 
 
 The suddenness with which the question was flung at him 
 out of the darkness of the doorway, and the immediate 
 emergence of the girl, startled him, acted upon his thoughts 
 like the precipitate falling of a stone into very clear water, 
 which grew muddled and rippled, spreading into a series of 
 broadening circles, each flaunting in increasingly widening 
 letters the importunate question, "Are you lonely, darling?" 
 
 He made no reply, and the girl, presuming on his hesitation, 
 walked on at his side, without asking his leave. He looked 
 at her, and was about to speak, when she, recognising a 
 foreigner in him and wrongly suspecting the cause of his 
 hesitation, forestalled him in a reassuring voice: 
 
 "Oh. no! I'm not English, boy, if that's what you are 
 thinking. I'm real alive, direct from Sydney, Australia, the 
 Paris of the Southern world. And my mother was French. 
 The English girls are no good. You don't want a corpse, 
 do you?" 
 
 'I am sorry. I don't want anyone! " 
 
 "111 show you a good time," went on the girl, coaxingly. 
 She laughed and blew fumes of wine in his face. "I am 
 the joy of all nations, that's what I am! I can please a 
 Frenchie, an Espagnole, or an I-talian. That's honest, boy. 
 Testimonials? Come home with me and I'll show you enough 
 
 103 
 
BABEL 
 
 to snow you vinder. Love letters by the score. Photographs 
 too! The wall is covered with tiem. Frenchies, Hindus, 
 Dagoes, Jew boys, Yanks, Swedes, Rooshians, Japs, Chinks! 
 Some of them wanted to marry me, too! But I am not the 
 marrying kind. No, not me. I love no one man. I love 
 them all! I don't care where they come from. They are all 
 darlings to me, except when they are rotters. Now, I don't 
 mind a bounder, but I draw the line at a rotter . . ." 
 
 She went on volubly punctuating her sentences with good- 
 natured laughs. Suddenly she asked: 
 
 "And what may you be? One can see you ain't English. 
 But you may be a Yank, judging by the cut of yoxu: clothes," 
 and she teasingly felt the padding of his shoulders. "Yanks 
 are never as big as they look." 
 
 "I? I come from the moon. Just dropped down!" 
 
 "Oh, one can see you are moony," laughed the girl. "That 
 don't make any difference to me. Come along with me, and 
 I'll make you forget your faraway country." 
 
 "But I have a girl there!" he laughed. 
 
 "Ha! ha! ha! That's a good one! A girl in the moon! 
 You are moonier than I thought. I can make you forget that 
 girl. And let me tell you, boy, a girl in hand is worth two 
 in the moon any day. Are you coming with me?" 
 
 "No, I can't. I'm sorry." 
 
 She desisted, not without firing a contemptuous parting 
 shot: 
 
 "Ah, you are one of those nasty men who keep your bed- 
 room locked to keep out a bit of joy!" 
 
 Gombarov laughed, and said to himself: "Well, she doesn't 
 keep hers locked, that's certain. 'Joy of all nations!' A 
 regular Babel of love, according to her own account. What 
 an amusing creature!" 
 
 104 
 
VARIATIONS ON A SINGLE THEME 
 
 All his otha: thoughts had left him, and he was seized with 
 a desire for Winifred, who was as far away as the moon. 
 
 JOY OF JOYS 
 
 The joy, after an exciting, full-lived day, of being in bed, 
 lying still and feeling the tingle of the blood through weary 
 l^s, half -conscious of the gradual dropping into sleep! 
 
 Two different chiu'ch bells struck the hour of two. One 
 was a new bell, and its dang was hard, hoarse, of a muffled 
 deepness. The other was an old bell, of bell-metal loved 
 of its maker, and its sound was sweet and dear, tinged with 
 silver; there was in it the reminiscent sadness of andent years. 
 
 Each bell sang its separate song, and the louder resonance 
 of the new bell could not deafen the dearer, more slender 
 notes of the old, which evoked an image of a castle on a 
 hill, of hooded, cassocked men walking in a sequestered court 
 garden, in the centre of which, altar-like, stood a sun-dial, 
 beside a playing foimtain, exquisitdy fashioned by men who 
 loved their work. 
 
 Both bell songs, the old and the new, joined in the tingle 
 of his blood, took their direction with it, and merging with 
 the other in his brain, died away there. And with the last 
 dying note, Gombarov was soimd asleep. It was the joy of 
 joys, obliterating all other joys and all sadness. 
 
 I05 
 
CHAPTER III: THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 "Gather up the fragments that 
 remain, that nothing be lost." 
 St. John, vi: 12. 
 
 ELEPHANT AND CASTLE 
 
 With the help of Alfred Welsh, Gombarov was soon settled, 
 Elephant and Castle way, in a room of a house next door to 
 where Welsh lived with his family, poor people who keenly 
 felt the presence of an additional mouth. It was true that the 
 prodigal was received with a fatted rabbit, but a single rabbit 
 does not last a summer, and Alf, to use his mother's words, 
 "didn't have 'arf of an appetite." In the back-yard, over the 
 wash-tub, the harassed, grey-haired, little woman of over 
 fifty poured out her woes to Mrs. Tufnell, Gombarov's land- 
 lady, who unfailingly carried the gossip to her lodger, with 
 all the essential ornamentation and comment of her own. 
 
 Mrs. Tufnell had been, in her prime, "principal boy" in 
 pantomime, until Mr. Tufnell came along and made her his 
 "best girl," and ultimately, his better half, whereupon she 
 retired from the stage, and in the comfort of a home lost her 
 supple lines and grew fat, but retained the good natiu-e, 
 sportsmanship and temperament characteristic of the music-hall 
 artist. She not only suffered moods herself, but was sensitive 
 to moods in others, and was infallibly aware when her lodger 
 was worried. She understood the precise nature of most of his 
 indispositions, though he had told her nothing, and one evening, 
 after she had placed some cold meat and salad before him and 
 
 106 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 poured him out a glass of stout, she gently put a hand on his 
 shoulder and said: 
 
 "Come, boy, it's not worth thinking about. Chuck it! A 
 girl like that is no good to you." 
 
 He was astonished, but did not resent the intrusion. She 
 was a good, simple soul and, in his loneliness, he appreciated 
 her motherly attitude and understanding. 
 
 After that it seemed like a contradiction that a woman so 
 generously disposed should have married a bailiff, as that was 
 Mr. Tufnell's profession. In the world in which his short, 
 gruff, robust figure moved, he was "the chucker-out." There 
 is nothing cryptic in this, for, as bailiff, he had to superintend 
 in person the chucking out of the goods and chattels of people 
 who could not pay their rent. Some days he performed two 
 or three of these ceremonies, and as he usually followed each 
 with a whiskey and soda, he returned home full of his exploits, 
 which he told with a fair seasoning of strong breaths, though 
 not without good humour. 
 
 "It was a sight, and no mistake," he was relating one day, 
 at dinner. "There was the poor woman all huddled up with 
 her miserable kids — an 'arf dozen or so, as far as I could see — 
 and she sitting in a chair in the middle, dejected-like. And 
 I sajrs to her: 'You've got to pay up, and if you can't, it's 
 my orders to put you out. I'm sorry, ma'am, but it's my 
 duty.' She raised her face, and I see she 'as a black eye. 
 Woman,' says I, 'who gave you that black eye?' She says 
 nothing. I goes on: T suppose your 'usband's been drunk 
 again.' Again she says nothing. Then I 'ears footsteps and 
 the door of the next room flies open, and in steps a big, burly 
 bloke with the face of a bull terrier. He gets up right close 
 to me, an' 'e says: 'I can get dnmk when I Uke, see? It's 
 not the likes of you that's going to stop me.' And he glares 
 
 107 
 
BABEL 
 
 at me. Then 'e says: 'And what's more, I hits my wife when 
 I likes, see?' An' he walks up to 'er and kind o' takes 'er 
 head with 'is left hand, and a right handsome fist it was too, a 
 regular beaut, and 'e says to me: 'Say another word about my 
 woman's black eye, and I'll give 'er another, just to give you 
 something to talk about. Say the word, and I'll oblige 
 ye.' And the bloke made a move as if 'e was going to shoot 
 out his fist, so that the poor woman shut 'er eyes, that she 
 did. He almost forgot my being there. 'Ill show ye,' he 
 yelled out at the woman, ' 'ow to spend the last tanner on 
 ale, instead of keepin' it for your 'usband that wants a drink 
 mighty bad after sweating all day to keep you and the kids 
 in food and clothes!' He was about to let go, too, when in 
 steps the two constables I had waiting outside, for I 'card 
 the sort of customer he was, and took precaution. . ," 
 
 Mrs. Tufnell, who was carving the beef, let rest the hand 
 that held the knife, while she shot a look of scorn at her 
 husband, as much as to say: "It's a nice kind of man I mar- 
 ried, isn't it? A chucker-out!" He had more drink than 
 usual, and she was annoyed, especially as Gombarov was there 
 to see her shame. 
 
 Mr. Tufnell caught that look, and winking at Gombarov 
 went on: 
 
 "Well, I ain't told you yet that other yam about a woman 
 with a black eye. She had a whole litter of kids, too! It's 
 funny the number of kids all females with a black eye have. 
 It was as if that's the way brats were made. . . . Well, com- 
 ing back to this female with the black eye, I said to 'er, just 
 to start the conversation going, to be social-like: 'Did your 
 'usband give you that eye, ma'am?' 'Me 'usband?' says she. 
 'Bless ye, no! Why 'e's more a friend than a 'usband!' " 
 
 Gombarov burst out laughing. Mrs. Tufnell, too, over- 
 
 io8 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 coming her aversion, smiled, as she sat down before her roast 
 beef, potatoes and cabbage. 
 
 Tufnell, beaming at his success, thought to follow it up 
 with maudlin tactics. 
 
 "Darling!" he said, between mouthfuls, poking a forefinger 
 into his wife's ample side, to her obvious annoyance. 
 
 "Lovel" he said, repeating the performance. 
 
 "You know you don't mean it!" 
 
 "Pet!" he went on. 
 
 "Sweetheart!" was his next effort. Then: 
 
 "Treasure!" 
 
 "Precious one!" 
 
 "littie one!" 
 
 In each case the inevitable forefinger emphasized the word, 
 and it was hard to tell which annoyed her more, the action or 
 the word. But he was proud of his inexhaustible love vocabu- 
 lary and took care not to use the same word twice. He con- 
 tinued: 
 
 "Dove!" 
 
 "Duck!" 
 
 "Lamb!" 
 
 "I suppose youll want me with mint sauce," said she, 
 breaking her sOence, much to his delight. "Well, go on with 
 your blooming barnyard! " 
 
 "Bon-bon!" 
 
 "Sugar-<andy!" 
 
 "Turkish delight!" 
 
 "I've noticed you 'aven't called me your whiskey and soda 
 yet! " she retorted. 
 
 "I was leadiog up to that." 
 
 She saw her mistake, but it was too late. 
 
 109 
 
BABEL 
 
 "There's a dear!" he pursued his advantage. "And I'm 
 sure Mr. Gombarov wouldn't mind having a drop." 
 
 "You'll have to get it yourself," said Mrs. Tufnell. 
 
 He got up and fetched the bottle and syphon from the cup- 
 board. 
 
 "Have a drop?" he asked Gombarov. 
 
 "No, thank you. I feel too hot." 
 
 Tufnell poured some out for himself into a glass and gulped 
 almost the whole of it down. Then he took down the cage 
 from over the window, and poured what was left into the 
 little water bowl inside the cage. The magpie in the cage 
 avidly drank its contents, and presently was rolling imsteadily 
 on its perch, to the great delight of Mr. Tufnell, who sat 
 watching, fascinated by the droll spectacle. 
 
 "Baby!" said his spouse, contemptuously. 
 
 "Baby wants some more milk!" said Mr. Tufnell, reaching 
 out for the bottle. 
 
 But Mrs. Tufnell was quick to withdraw the bottle out of 
 his reach. 
 
 "Baby has had enough nulk. More than is good for him," 
 she said. 
 
 He made no protest, but, fascinated, went on watching the 
 magpie blinking, as it rolled from side to side on its perch. 
 Caliban had at last created a mad world of his own out of a 
 magpie and a mouthful of whiskey and soda, and it pleased 
 him to look on and see that small caged universe swinging on 
 its orbit and two blinking eyes answering the blink of his 
 own. 
 
 " 'Ere's looking at you, old boy!" exclaimed Tufnell, pick- 
 ing up his empty glass and raising it in the bird's direction. 
 
 Mrs. Tufnell gave another scornful look and said: 
 
 "Looking at you! Two blinkmg fools, that's what I call 
 
 IIO 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 you. There's something to be said for the bird. Poor thing, 
 he can't 'elp himself. But you! And you call yourself 
 a man!" 
 
 "Let us alone, darling," he said, without losing his temper. 
 "The bird's 'appy, and I'm 'appy. Eh, Mag?" he turned to 
 the bird. 
 
 "WTiat about the good folk that's done no 'arm to you 
 that you've chucked out to-day? Are they 'appy without 
 roof or shelter? To think of me marrying a chucker-out! 
 Me that was principal boy in 'Jack and the Beanstalk'! " 
 
 "Well, what about it?" he asked, taking the magpie into 
 his hand. "Someone's got to do the chucking-out. And one's 
 got to live. In this blooming, blinking world you've got to 
 be either a chucker-out or the chucked out. As for 'Jack 
 and the Beanstalk,' dearie, you can't say that you look much 
 like the beanstalk now," and, with a good-natured grin, he 
 surveyed her tall, portly form, without a straight line or sharp 
 corner anywhere. 
 
 "Yes," she retorted, "and the Jack Tufnell I married needn't 
 'ave looked in a glass to see a dog at 'is feet." She glanced 
 significantly at his paunch, which, as he sat, rested on his lap 
 like a small globe. 
 
 "That's all right, dearie," he laughed. "There's enough 
 lap left for you to sit on!" 
 
 "I dare say. Jack Tufnell, if I had as many whiskeys and 
 sodas as you, I'd see a good deal of more space there than 
 I see now." 
 
 "Not a bad idea. Try it, Nell. Itll do you good to see 
 this magpie looking like a blooming ostrich." 
 
 'If I could see that bird looking like an ostrich, then I'm 
 sure I'd see you looking like a blinking elephant, and not 
 'arf so nice, I'm sure." 
 
 Ill 
 
BABEL 
 
 "Don't say that, darling. Remember when I played the 
 'ind legs of an elephant in pantomime? That's when I first 
 saw 'er," he said, turning to Gombarov. "When I looked 
 through the peep-holes in the hide and saw 'er, my 'eart kind 
 o' stopped. Worse luck, my legs stopped, and the front legs 
 moved on without me — ^ha! ha! — and I got a raking over the 
 coals from the boss. She was in tights," he explained, his 
 maudlin eyes wandering reminiscently into the distance, "and 
 she looked as neat as a thoroughbred in the Derby. '£r back 
 was turned to me, and I ain't seen 'er face yet . . ." 
 
 Suddenly, without a word, Mrs. Tufnell swept out of the 
 room. 
 
 "Darling! " he shouted after her, as for a moment he released 
 the magpie, which he held against his bosom. The bird flopped 
 downward, but managed to find a grip on the apex of its 
 master's paunch. He put the bird back in the cage and hung 
 the cage iq> in its accustomed place. 
 
 "She's 'aving a cry," said Tufnell, and added: "IfU do 'er 
 good. Women are queer crittures, God bless 'eml" and he 
 went to the cupboard. "Sure you won't 'ave a drop, boy? 
 Itll do you good. God bless the stuff! " 
 
 Gombarov's sympathies were all with Mrs. Tufnell. But 
 the domestic atmo^here proved too much for him, and he 
 ascended to his own little back room, where, if he looked out 
 of the window, he could see himdreds of grimy roofs and 
 armies of chimney pots. If he chose to limit his gaze to the 
 interior, he found himself examining the pictures on the walls, 
 scenes and views typical of the Victorian era: a discreet "Venus 
 at the Bath" distributed by a soap firm in exchange for fifty 
 coupons — her arms whole that she might hold a cake of 
 Qeanola Soap in her hand; a tame Nero, resembling a Queen's 
 Hall performer, rendering a violin solo amid Roman candle 
 
 112 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 effects and falling stage screens; a Royal Acadany "Spring," 
 showing a scantily dressed flapper holding up a lapful of 
 daffodils in the hem of her nightie; a Royal Academy 
 "Innocence," certainly guiltless of all art; lastly, in their midst, 
 and the mother of them all, the inevitable portrait of the Queen, 
 who gave the name to her long reign, and without being auto- 
 crat had impressed upon her era the familiar characteristics 
 known as Victorian. There was the inevitable cosy rliair 
 in the room, large enough to have accommodated and encom- 
 passed the Queen's own spreading formlessness, and as with 
 most chairs of its kind, designed for comfort, its springs had 
 gone wrong and protruded upward into "our poor hero" — as 
 the Victorians would have called him. Here was the supreme 
 Victorian symbol: thi't chair stood for the great illusion, 
 Comfort; Comfort with a capital C, but Comfort with the 
 springs gone wrong. This chair occupied about a quarter 
 of Gombarov's small room and prevented what little free- 
 dom of movement he might have had. His efforts to relegate 
 it to a comer of the room were constantly frustrated by 
 Mrs. Tufnell, who replaced it in the exact spot it had stood 
 in before, without a deviation of so much as an eighth of an 
 inch. The linoleum bore the impressions of its four castors, 
 so that it was not hard for Mrs. Tufnell to arrive at such 
 precise results. 
 
 On the mantelpiece and chest of drawers, both overhung with 
 tawdry, frippery draperies, reposed heterogeneous collections of 
 bric-a-brac and gew-gaws, familiar to British households, the 
 latest addition being a clay statuette, with the inscription, 
 'One of the BTioys"; it was a grotesque conception of a Bond 
 Street type of young man with a monocle, as such a type existed 
 in the popular imagination. 
 
 'Something to make your room cheerful!" said Mrs. Tufnell, 
 
 113 
 
BABEL 
 
 as she deposited it on the mantdpiece in triumph, and added: 
 "It cost no more than a bob." He saw that she had bought it 
 for his benefit, so it was useless to protest. He reflected upon 
 the fact that this was an age of museums, and that every 
 house, however poor, was a museiun, a repository of articles, 
 great and small, due to the machine being able to turn them 
 out in huge quantities. But there was no beauty. It was 
 decidedly a quantitative, not a qualitative civilisation. 
 
 "All these things are waiting to be destroyed," said Gom- 
 barov to himself, wish being father to the thought. 
 
 When Gombarov reached his room, he sat down in his other 
 chair, a rickety thing that had been too often sat upon, and 
 its threatened collapse was a pleasure to look forward to. 
 From this precarious position he surveyed the treasures of 
 the room, tiring of which, he turned to look out of the window 
 at the rows of chimney-pots and the numerous bird cages 
 hanging outside the windows against drab walls, which appeared 
 the more drab for the relieving touch of window boxes and 
 flower-pots. This love of birds and flowers astonished him 
 since his arrival in England. But he grew tired of observing, 
 and was soon in the street. 
 
 Before the public house round the comer a barrel-organ was 
 pla3dng, and six small old women, black-garbed, in two trios 
 facing, were madly swaying to its common time. The arms of 
 each trio were entwined round one another at the shoulder, as 
 heads bent downward and bodies arched into two impulsive 
 wave-like curves, torn skirts uplifted, they tripped forward, 
 towards the other; then, in the contact, the curves reversed, 
 the heads were thrown back, the stomachs forward, forming 
 the apex of new curves, and thus, still facing, they tripped 
 back from one another. The faces of the dancers were deeply 
 furrowed, and crowning little clumps of black material, which 
 
 114 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 passed for hats, gave one more touch of quaintness to these 
 grotesque figures, shapeless, no doubt, to the ideal beauty 
 seeker, shapeful to the artist of character, the gargoyle maker. 
 They might have enacted the parts of the old witches round the 
 cauldron in "Macbeth," and might have been drawn by 
 Daumier, Goya or Hokusai. They were curiously of eternity, 
 changeless of type, and were, in this sense, both old and 
 yoimg. It was uncanny to see such youthful resilience in 
 such old bones, such ardent rhythm in such xmrhythmic shapes, 
 decked in tatters. The barrel-organ rolled away, the crowd 
 scattered, four of the women walked into the public bar, the 
 other two remained behind and over the grating in the pave- 
 ment performed a certain rite usually performed in privacy. 
 
 Gombarov observed everything with child-like wonder, and 
 the ribald and the vulgar seemed to contain for him not less 
 of the essence of revelation than the refined and the solann in 
 this atmospho-e of old-worldliness, breathing as it did ancient 
 life and emanating certain indefinable energies which could 
 only come from an accumulation of racial and historic 
 experience. 
 
 He had also been observed, for he heard ironic cockney 
 voices commenting on his appearance: 
 
 "I sa-ay, Bill, is it Bi-kon or is it Shikes-pirr?" 
 
 Gombarov was amazed that the famous literary controversy 
 should have penetrated the consciousness of Old Kent Road. 
 And he could not help laughing at the jest made at his espense. 
 This was not the first time that he had been the butt of 
 Elephant and Castle wit, and he had quite decided to reduce 
 the length of his hair and to shed his artistic effects for more 
 commonplace ones, less open to the assault of cockney ridicule. 
 
 He jumped on a "bus going towards Marble Arch. 
 
 "5 
 
BABEL 
 
 MABBLE ASCH 
 
 It was different at Marble Arch. The most eccentric appear- 
 ances excited comparatively little comment here. It was the 
 market place of eccentric appearances, as it was also the 
 market place of international ideas, or crwnbs of ideas, such as 
 were picked up by half-educated middlemen and dispensed to 
 the rabble. 
 
 A little old man, shabbily dressed, bore a piece of pasteboard 
 in his hat, with the inscription: "I am Tom Adamson, of 
 Glaigow, and I am looking for my wife, whom I lost sight of 
 thirty-nine years ago." Who has said that romance has van- 
 ished from life? Here was this scraggy little man. . . . But 
 Gombarov was listening to the couple behind him: 
 
 "The darling! " a woman's voice was saying. "How he rwjst 
 miss her!" 
 
 "A lucky man, only he doesn't know it! " was the rq)ly from 
 her male companion. 
 
 "Brute!" said the woman. 
 
 Another old man, tall, hatless, with long white hair reaching 
 down to the shoulders, and patriarchal beard, shabby, without 
 laces in his torn boots, stood supporting a large placard on a 
 tall staff. The placard bore the mscription: "THE MILLEN- 
 NIUM IS AT HAND." Attached, lower, to the same staff, 
 was a device containing various penny and half-penny leaflets 
 written by prominent Millenniolites. One of these, called "The 
 Millenniogram," purported to be, in the words of the sub-title, 
 "Absolute Mathematical Proof of the Near Coming of Our 
 Lord Jesus Christ." It was by Thomas Smith, MA., Pro- 
 fessor of Mathematics at the Millennium Institute, "Author 
 
 Ii6 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 of 'The Baconigram': Being a series of diagrams demonstrating, 
 in face of all contrary assertion, amply, and once and for all, 
 that Bacon wrote Shakespeare." Gombarov fomid "The 
 Millenniogram" a big ha'penny worth, containing as it did a 
 dozen or more intricate charts, in the first of which the learned 
 professor demonstrated to his own satisfaction that all 
 astronomers had made a very serious miscalculation in the 
 age of the world by seventeen seconds. Having thus established 
 his authority with his readers, he proceeded to make various 
 calculations: There were so many words in the Old T^tament, 
 so many in the New. If you subtracted the latter from the 
 former you arrived at such and such a result. That number 
 had to be borne in mind. Then, there were so many verses 
 in the Old Testament, so many in the New. If you subtracted 
 the latter from the former you arrived at such and such a 
 result. Again, you had to bear the number in mind. Then, 
 tbexe were so many ch^ters in the Old Testament, so many 
 in the New. If you subtracted the latter from the former you 
 arrived at such and such a result. You took the resulting 
 numbers and divided the first by the second, and the result 
 by the third. With a little more ju^ling you arrived at the 
 figure "1914," the year predestined for Christ's second m inin g 
 There were also various cryptograms, acrostics and other 
 devices to establish the prophecy in the eyes of the credulous. 
 
 Many speakers were ranged on portable speaking platforms 
 just within the entrance to the Park and tried to outcry one 
 another in advertising their respective spiritual wares. 
 
 Here was a pious looking, dour Scot, above whose head was 
 a signboard bearing the l^oid, "The Lost Tribes of Israel." 
 On the reading stand before him was a volume of the Scrq>tures, 
 
 117 
 
BABEL 
 
 from which, now and then citing a passage, he was demon- 
 strating to his audience, in a loud voice and with a gesticulating 
 hand, that the Ten Lost Tribes were none other than the 
 Scots themselves. 
 
 Next to the Scot was a Socialist speaker, who, taking 
 advantage of his neighbour's presence, shouted in a loud voice 
 that he didn't give a hoot as to who were and what became 
 of the Ten Lost Tribes, but that he was concerned with the 
 fact that certain members of the remaining Two — ^he need not 
 mention their names — ^were exceedingly active in doing "the 
 Joseph stunt," cornering the world's markets and grinding 
 down the poor. 
 
 "Hear! Hear!" shouted many voices. 
 
 While he paused for a while to collect himself for another 
 onslaught the voice of the Theosophist advocate on the other 
 side of him intruded upon his audience. The words, "karma," 
 "ego," "subliminal self," "reincarnation," "astral body," "next 
 existence," and other familiar terms of theosophical thought, 
 drifted in on the Socialist's silence. The latter was quick to 
 take up the cue. 
 
 "Ladies and gentiemenl " he resumed, "if we are not worrying 
 about the Lost Tribes of Israel, we are not going to lose any 
 sleep about what's going to happen to us when we are dead, 
 are we? The Theosophist gentieman next door thinks this is 
 going to be an awfully nice world for some of us four hundred 
 thousand years from now!" 
 
 The crowd broke out into guffaws. The speaker went on: 
 
 "A world without work, without trouble, without pov»ty. 
 no rich men to order you about, your morning bacon and eggs 
 coming to you without so much as lifting a finger, bushes 
 
 Il8 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 everywhere with steak and kidney pies growing on 'em, spigots 
 spouting gin and bitter and Guinness and old ale instead of 
 water; that's what you are promised by the gentleman next 
 door — four hundred thousand years from now! Ladies and 
 gentlemen, you have something to look forward to! Keep 
 yoiu: eye on the docks, and when you have got 'free of the 
 wheel,' to use my friend's language, which is a little matter 
 of four hundred thousand years, a mere bagatelle, which I'm 
 sure you won't mind waiting for, you will have such a good 
 time when it does come. Isn't it too bad, the Capitalist has 
 got to wait just as long as you have? In the meantime the 
 poor feUow is going to be miserable on his pittance of, say, 
 four hundred thousand a year, in his palace in Park Lane, 
 with a mere dozen servants, a wife in silks and satins, perhaps 
 a little Gaiety girl on the side ... a motor car or two, 
 Havannah cigars, wines and liqueurs, and what not — poor 
 fellow! Can't we — that is you and I — ^give him a hand to 
 free him of his wheel? Can't you and I do with a little of 
 his Karma, a bit of a drive in my OA^n car, eh? Are you 
 content to eat winkles and sassingers and mashed while he is 
 suffering on caviare and roast duck and hothouse pease and 
 strawberries in January, and can afford gout and liver com- 
 plaint at all seasons? Are you going to grouse when he eats 
 grouse? I ask you, what do you get to eat when you are out 
 of work and hungry? You go to some soup kitchen and are 
 given a plateful of slops they call soup, and if you swallow 
 a bit of bread afterward you can hear it splash!" 
 
 Laughter greeted the speaker's sally, and cries came of 
 "Hear! Hear!" 
 
 While the speaker paused to wipe his brow, the low, dear 
 
 119 
 
BABEL 
 
 voice of the Theosophist made itself audible again. "Kanna 
 teaches us," he was asserting, "that when men suffer, they do 
 so through their own past mistakes and ill-doings, so that in 
 countries where Karma is understood by peasants and labourers, 
 the belief causes them to face their troubles without railing 
 against God or neighbour." 
 
 "I quite agree with my Theosophical friend," the Socialist 
 speaker was again quick to pick up the cue. "You men suffer 
 through yoiur own past mistakes. You have let a few men 
 get rich at your expense, and if you are being exploited by 
 them you deserve to be. You possess the power to be your 
 own lords and masters, for there are so many of you — are you 
 going to let a few idle men manage you? Or are you going 
 to Church to pray? Perhaps you will find comfort in joining 
 the Theosophical Society, which will no doubt teach you to 
 live on what they call the higher plane, on fine thoughts 
 instead of bread and meat. If you are wise, you will be ruled 
 by your friends. 'Proletariat of the whole world, unite. You 
 have nothing to lose but your chains! ' Economic chains alone 
 hold you where you are. Get rid of the chains first, think of 
 the higher plane afterwards. Feed your stomachs on the 
 ground-floor, and you can then have enough strength to climb 
 upstairs . . ." 
 
 Again the speaker paused to take breath, while the Theoso- 
 phist was enunciating: "In the words of Mrs. Besant: "Let a 
 soul radiate in every direction love and compassion, and 
 thoughts of hatred can find nothing to which they can attach 
 themselves . . .' " 
 
 Presently there was a commotion in both crowds, and there 
 was a common movement to the left. Gombarov saw that the 
 
 1 20 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 excitonent was caused by the disappearance of the Lost Tribes 
 advocate and his replacement by a new arrival, a jolly little 
 round man, who, before taking his place on the platform, 
 with the aid of an assistant unfurled a red banner bearing the 
 following inscription: 
 
 The Only Wise Lovers of Mankind, 
 
 Considerate Masters of Animals, and 
 
 Grateful Disciples of the 
 
 ONLY TRUE GOD, 
 
 THE INFINITE GOVERNOR 
 OF NATURE 
 
 FOR THE ANNIHILATION OF ALL 
 FALSE GODS 
 
 Like Kmshna, Jehovah, Allah, etc., for 
 the Propagation of Humanitarian Deism, and 
 for the Conversion of Jews, Christians, Moham- 
 medans, Atheists and other Unbelievers and 
 
 Sinners 
 
 Into Human Deists. 
 
 Many of the crowd gravitated towards the new arrival as 
 thqr would towards a new down at the circus. For not a 
 few, like Gombarov, came here to be amused. He grinned 
 with the rest at the amazing prestmiption displayed on the 
 banner, and waited, with one eye on the threatening sky. No 
 
 121 
 
BABEL 
 
 sooner had the little man mounted the platform and rubbed 
 his chubby hands as a preliminary than a sudden swift 
 shower struck the spot, causing "the grateful disciple of the 
 Only True God" and his audience to flee for shelter, not, 
 however, before the little man, with smiling presence of mind, 
 explained that this untimely visitation of the elements was 
 not due to any temperamental malignancy on the part of 
 the Infinite God of Nature, but was rather the result of a 
 conspiracy on the part of the False Gods against the True 
 Faith. There was every reason to believe the little man to be 
 correct in his supposition, for strangely enough, hardly two 
 hundred yards away a suffragette was haranguing a crowd in 
 comparative immimity from the downpour, but not so free 
 from heckling. 
 
 As Gombarov came up, he heard a workingman shouting at 
 the speaker: 
 
 "You women want the vote so you can make laws against 
 us men!" 
 
 "We only want to protect our interests," said the speaker. 
 "As for that, you men have made laws long enough against 
 us women. We must protect our interests!" 
 
 "That means you want to stop our beer," shouted another 
 man. 
 
 "Milk is more important than beer," replied the woman. 
 
 "For them as likes it! " called out the last interrupter. "Milk 
 don't agree with me, not since I've been weaned. . . ." 
 
 "Sure you've been weaned? Just like a man! Always 
 thinking of his own tunmiy first! " This saUy provoked laugh- 
 ter. She pressed her point. "Don't you see how selfish that 
 is? Do you know who was the first person to be shot in 
 the riots in the North when you men were trying to get the 
 vote? It was a woman!" 
 
 "That was because she was in the wa-a-y! " cried out a cock- 
 
 122 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 ney wit, whereupon the laugh went against the woman. 
 
 "Cowar-rds!" she shouted at the top of her voice, showing 
 her temper for the first time. 
 
 "We may be cowards," retorted some one, "but weVe got 
 enough horse sense not to trust our women, chUdren and 
 limatics with poison!" 
 
 "Yes, that's what you've made of the vote — poison!" 
 replied the suffragette. "Yoiu: man-made laws are a shame 
 to civilisation!" 
 
 "A shime to civilisy-tion, is it?" shouted the cockney wit 
 who had spoken before. "What I sa-a-y is, it would be a 
 shime to ma-y-ke it worse!" 
 
 "Shut up! Give the lassie a chance!" shouted another. 
 
 Gombarov enjoyed these duels of wit. He loved going 
 among these crowds, which always reminded him of stage 
 crowds, the crowds of Shakespeare. There was always a 
 miniature, a stage element about these English crowds, and 
 you were conscious of the dramatis personae, of the inevitable 
 First Citizen, Second Citizen, Third Citizen, of Voices in the 
 Crowd, of Dissenting Voices, of Approving Voices, of voices 
 ebbing and flowing, of voices warm or hostile or both com- 
 mingling, according to the measure of the orator's persuasive- 
 ness, wit, reason or personality. And how different the temper 
 from that of an American crowd, before which no man dared 
 venture to speak against God, Government, or the Established 
 Order without encoimtering that most valid of arguments: a 
 brickbat, a bully's fist, or a policeman's truncheon! This differ- 
 ence amazed him. He had seen so much intolerance, had been 
 so crushed by it into a self-corrosive silence, that this common 
 tolerance, this practical expression of the love of fair play, 
 gave him the delicious feeling of breathing free air after con- 
 finement within prison walls. What finer thing than personal 
 
 123 
 
BABEL 
 
 liberty was there upon this earth? Surdy, it ejdsted on this 
 island, if anywhere. And he thought of the words of John 
 Stuart Mill: "All silencing of discussion is an assumption of 
 infallibility. If all mankind were of one opinion and only 
 one man against it, all mankind would have no more right to 
 sOence that one man than he, if he had the power, to silence 
 all mankind." 
 
 Again he saw a connection between big and trivial things. 
 He began to have a glimmering as to what imderlay the 
 otherwise inexplicable rudeness of small London shopkeepers, 
 who, if you were dissatisfied, did not appear to care a hang 
 whether you bought anything or not and allowed a prospective 
 customer to depart as if money were of no moment to them. 
 For every great virtue has a fault, and every great fault has 
 a virtue. And independence sometimes leads to insult, exces- 
 sive courtesy to cringing. 
 
 He saw that the significance of Marble Arch was that it 
 represented the modem world and its contending ideas in 
 microcosm. There was no unity, the world was here visible 
 in all its fragmentary nature, restless in all its fractious con- 
 tradiction. Thus Babel must have been before its fall. But 
 for tolerance, the by-product of a complex, many-tongued 
 civilisation, there seemed to be little that kept men from jump- 
 ing at each other's throat. . . . Only some great intolerance, 
 arising from some common danger, might weld together the 
 fragments of humanity on this island into one functioning 
 body, with one single-expressioned face . . . Gombarov medi- 
 tated upon a strange paradox of life. Tolerance did not, as 
 one might suppose, imite a world; on the contrary, it broke 
 it up, as it implied that a conmiunity with a million persons 
 might have a million different opinions. A commimity of a 
 million with a million opinions was a house a million times 
 
 124 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 divided against itself. Only a common faith could unite, but 
 there was no common faith, and a million discordant voices 
 rose up to a godless heaven, which, were it not godless, could 
 hardly, with the best intentions, be expected to distinguish 
 the separate entreaties of so many-voiced a prayer. Yet tol- 
 erance was a fine thing, and unity was a fine thing. Could 
 not the world have one and the other at the same time? . . . 
 But here was the appalling thing: Tolerance, one of the finest 
 products of civilisation, was a weapon civilisation had seem- 
 ingly created for its own destruction; for if there was no 
 common faith and unity and it was a thing all of warring 
 fragments, what was it worth? . . . 
 
 Gombarov tried not to think. He proceeded deeper into 
 Hyde Park and observed the nimierous clasped couples imder 
 the trees. The lovers held each other in tight embrace, silently 
 and immovably, and here and there a man bent over a woman's 
 upturned face, his lips on hers, as if drinking, and still was 
 their embrace, as if they were figures at Madame Tussaud's. 
 
 Gombarov was sadly thinking of his Winifred, so far away 
 in Paris. 
 
 HAMPSTEAD HEATH 
 
 All the world loves a plot. It does not love the lonely lover, 
 and it loves three lovers better than two. A loves B, B loves 
 C, who is A's best friend. The world is delighted. Some 
 one is bound to get left. That is called a "triangle." When 
 it is not a triangle, then it is a circle, a vicious circle, a circle 
 of circumstance or a circle of "psychic complexes," a sort of 
 whirlpool in which the victims move roimd and roimd and 
 no one can get out. The world outside has ceased to exist for 
 the persons within this triangle or circle. It has also ceased 
 to exist for the spectators forming this outside world, the 
 
 125 
 
BABEL 
 
 army of novelists and the greater army of novel readers. 
 
 Of the greater plot, what mi^t be called the all-embracing 
 divine-diabolic conspiracy, which contains and absorbs all 
 petty "plots" and "vicious circles," few have any conception. 
 For such as have, "life is a caravanserai, men come and go." 
 Only the nomad, the lone figure against the horizon, the person 
 solitary in a crowd, unrelated as it were to any other person 
 or persons, can comprehend his relationship to the unresting 
 elements, the continuity of life, the continuity of change itself. 
 No triangle or circle is there to imprison him, he is related 
 to life, he is a moving atom in this eternally tempestuous, 
 quivering universe, ever drifting, ever seeing contact, a pos- 
 sible inter-relation, with some other atom, perhaps finding 
 none, or concentrating itself in momentary responses, and 
 again drifting on. 
 
 Where but in London could a stranger find himself so 
 peculiarly aware of his own separate entity juxtaposed to a 
 universe of separate entities? Just as Gombarov never lost 
 the exhilarating sense of being on an island, so he never quite 
 lost the sometimes terrifying consciousness of being one among 
 London's seven or eight million. His immediate family was 
 in America. His other relations, with whom he had lost all 
 contact, were in Russia. Winifred was in Paris. He was 
 quite alone. 
 
 There could be, therefore, no sense of circumscribed plot in 
 life as he saw it, but a kind of perpetual continuity, as of a 
 flowing river, in whose watCTS, as Herakleitos said, "You could 
 not stop twice ... for other and yet other waters are ever 
 flowing on." There was in^lied in this a change of scenery 
 and of persons, a sense of things eternally coming and going, 
 of diverse living craft forever drifting by, on and on. But 
 the things and persons and scenes that thus drifted into his 
 
 126 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 life or vision and drifted out again were in no sense a loss, 
 but left a residue, a grain of sand, an atom of ignition, a phos- 
 phorescent irony, the accumulation of which, insinuating them- 
 selves into his system, acted as clashing irritants and trans- 
 formed his personality, as it were, chemically, and without 
 knowledge other than a consciousness of pain. 
 
 In his solitude, he sought distraction, explored London, 
 visited public houses, talked to strangers, who often at first 
 meeting told him the stories of their lives, and he absorbed 
 everything as a river of life its tributaries. Evoything was 
 significant, nothing trivial. And, as he thought of life, his 
 life in particular, it seemed to him that life was not a novd 
 in the accepted convention, but rather a collection of tales, 
 temperamentally attuned to a single character, whose person- 
 ality attracted experience peculiar to itself; in short, life was 
 not a "plot," but a collection, a pattern, of plots, with at least 
 one single-coloured thread meandering along through the design 
 to give it unity. Thirsting for adventures, he became the 
 repository of other people s adventures, which, as they churned 
 over in his soul, he made his own. But on occasions he actively, 
 if only as an accessory, took part in them, and drew sorrow 
 or joy or ironic pathos from casual persons as tunes from a 
 musical instrument; and even a slight, plaintive time, not 
 unlike a folk song, sometimes contained elements of living 
 folk tragedy, meaningful in spite of its quiet, low-pitched 
 monotone, that acted as a deadening veil over life repressed, 
 maimed and mufBed. One such trivial, significant tune 
 Gombarov drew one evening from a girl on Hampstead 
 Heath; it was the tune of all dumb, hurt things. Trivial, yet 
 it made him think of thousands of hurt lives, ground down by 
 the Machine, in the name of Progress, that Moloch of Molochs! 
 
 He was walking along moodily. Darkness was b^inning to 
 
 127 
 
BABEL 
 
 descend on Hampstead Heath, to submerge its hillocks, hollows 
 and trees in a purple mist. The lovers welcomed it, for it 
 covered them, and it made the lonely brood. He, of the lonely, 
 could see the recumbent everywhere. They scattered themselves 
 across the length and breadth of the heath, blissfully quiescent. 
 And it seemed strange to see so many hmnan beings lying still 
 under an open sky, bosomed against the bare earth. The^ 
 evoked in his mind the picture of a battlefield, of himself a 
 lone sentry. . . . 
 
 He emerged at last in the Spaniards Road. The night was 
 warm and languorous, and the promenaders, grown too dense in 
 numbers to be silhouetted singly, swarmed between the rows 
 of intermittent dim lights and merged into an animated 
 arabesque, strangely imreal in the ambient blueness. A 
 Saturday night crowd, they shambled along slowly, stodgily 
 gay, arm-linked — ^man to woman, woman to man — ^whOe the 
 unaccompanied girls invited the scrutiny of alert-eyed men 
 who stood ranged along the rail and made advances when the 
 quarry speared attractive and the chance offered. Motor 
 cycles rested in the road in small groups and flashed their 
 powerful rays, and the riders, dehumanised, grotesquely fierce 
 in costumes of khaki and armour-like headgear, were surrounded 
 by girls in coloured, shape-outlining jerseys, attracted hither 
 by these masculine apparitions moimted on iron steeds, yet 
 hardly mounted, for they seemed to be as much a part of the 
 machine as the human body had been a part of the centaur. 
 Here was the modem version, the mechanical centaur. Pres- 
 ently, one of these monstrous forms would be seen to lean 
 forward, touch a part of itself, and the whole mechanism, as 
 if suddenly awakened, would start to vibrate and snort. Then 
 an arm, stretching forward, would cla^ a willing girlish form, 
 and lift it on to a small seat at the back. There is a sense of 
 
 128 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 exhilaration in the captive's dimly lit-up face, as sitting sidewise, 
 she holds on with a small hand to her abductor's shoulder and 
 dangles her legs, stockinged in gauze. After a slow, loud 
 effort the machine would lurch forward and suddenly gathering 
 its strength disappear in the dark with the effect of a shot. 
 Another, violently tremulous, follows. Chuk-chuk goes a third, 
 sending out intermittent explosive chortles. Each bears its 
 desired biu-den, exultant, into the dark. . . . 
 
 His depression reasserted itself, a londiness overcame him. 
 . . . He wanted to talk to some one. ... He hungered for 
 the company of a woman, if she had but an ounce of attraction 
 in her, if but a pleasing voice. His was a fastidious appetite, 
 but a hungry man must be satisfied with a crimib. 
 
 Thus preoccupied, he crossed the road to escape the banjo 
 man who had taken up a position and begim to sing that 
 American importation: 
 
 7/ you ain't got no money, 
 You needn't come around . . . 
 
 He entered a narrow passage along a private garden wall. Here 
 everything was dark and stiD, and as he felt his way his eyes 
 gradually discerned along the parallel rail numberless clasped 
 figures, standing silent and statuesque in mutual immobility. 
 A bared, ghostly arm, like a streak of moonlight, showed itself 
 against the perceptible yet invisible drab of man and spoke 
 its simple eloquence. Elsewhere, beside a patch of white, the 
 light of a cigarette was the sole witness of a male complement. 
 The trees, sloping downward, sheltered other figures, and from 
 the gorse came sounds of mingled laughter. 
 
 He retraced his steps through the passage and re-emerged 
 in the road. A casual slender figure lured him on and to his 
 timid greeting sped away in dmsion. Tired, and desiring 
 
 129 
 
BABEL 
 
 cool and quiet, he once more descended on the heath, and 
 sitting dovm in a remote, deserted qwt, closed his eyes and 
 rested. Thus he sat a long time. 
 
 A cough near by recalled him to himself. He turned in its 
 direction. Not many feet away, leaning against a tree, sat a 
 girl, whose face he could not see and who, like himself, speared 
 to be alone. Reassured on this point, he timidly aept nearer, 
 and called out in a low voice: 
 
 "Do you mind if I sit near you?" 
 
 There was no reply. 
 
 He edged up closer and repeated his question. 
 
 Still no answer. 
 
 He got quite close. In the dim light he saw a pale girl, 
 who appeared to have a pleasant face, though he could not 
 distinguish her features. 
 
 Sitting almost at her feet, he again asked his qu^tion, this 
 time quite loudly. 
 
 He thought he detected a look of surprise on her face. A 
 slight pause followed, then she said quietly: 
 
 "I don't mind." She added: "You see, I'm a litUe deaf ." 
 
 Again a silence. Then he addressed her: 
 
 "Are you lonely?" 
 
 "What did you say?" 
 
 "Are you lonely?" This time louder. 
 
 "I'm used to it." 
 
 "Mm . . . so? Been deaf long?" 
 
 "These past three years. Got it at the factory. A chunk 
 of iron flew from the machine, struck the right side of my 
 head and face. Was laid up for two months." 
 
 "Hard luck!" he said, and thought of what he should say 
 next. He drew nearer, and was quite close to her now. He 
 helped himself to a cigarette from his case with great deliba^a- 
 
 130 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 tion, which gave him time to consider. The light of his match, 
 illumining her for a few moments, revealed a small, pale face, 
 darkly framed, a retroussee nose, and eyes almost lustreless but 
 for a sympathetic glimmer that passed across them and lingered 
 until the match went out. 
 
 "Do you read much?" it occurred to him to ask. He had 
 to repeat the question, which, he had to admit to himself, was 
 downright silly. Still, he had to make conversation somehow. 
 
 "I used to until the accident. And the light where I work 
 is bad. I can't read often now." 
 
 Her favourite author? She had two or three. Dickens, and 
 Elinor Glyn, and Marie Corelli. She didn't know which she 
 liked best. 
 
 He fimibled in the grass and found a small, cold homy hand. 
 It made no effort to withdraw, but lay docile in his large, warm, 
 soft one. He pressed the tips of her fingers, imtil they grew 
 warmer; they responded but slightly with virginal timidity, and 
 beneath this reticence he fdt an ardency all the more expressive 
 for its hesitancy. Presently he realised something uncomfort- 
 able, an involuntary shiver passed down his back. "My God! " 
 he exclaimed inwardly, and to hide his confusion mumbled 
 something about having another cigarette. 
 
 She asked if she might light a match for him. By its glow 
 he saw her face again. It was smiling, benign, child-like, 
 barely suggestive of a quiet, inner happiness, and for the 
 moment it made him nearly forget the discovery that had so 
 startled him. He had noted this look before in the faces of 
 docile women in public houses as they filled their men's pipes 
 for them. 
 
 He maneuvred ovct to the girl's other side, and grasped 
 her other hand. Thank God, this one had five fingers 1 He 
 foimd himself backward with this timid girl, and he held her 
 
 131 
 
BABEL 
 
 hand with the bashfulness of a boy. But he got touch for 
 touch, pressure for pressure, each slight but pathetically tender. 
 
 "Shall I give you another light?" she asked, having noticed 
 that his cigarette had gone out. She removed her hand from 
 his and struck a match. His head, stretching forward to 
 receive the light, was now almost upon her shoulder, and he 
 let it sink there. And even as she held the light he had time 
 to observe something. She was smiling, and her mouth, 
 slightly open, revealed instead of teeth a black gash. 
 
 Well, this was an adventiure! He knew the keen pleasure 
 he was giving her, so he tried not to think of her deafness, her 
 thumbless hand, her mutilated mouth. All of her seemed to be 
 maimed but her heart. She stroked his hair lightly, almost 
 reluctantly, as if afraid of his head being suddenly snatched 
 from her. And he tried not to think of her appearance, of her 
 sordid story, which he extracted bit by bit, a common enough 
 narrative, in its way, of the jungle of machines and machine- 
 made people — and this life had not embittered her I He let 
 his imagination dwell upon the dark, the grand dark, the 
 blessed dark, which hid the ugliness of the world. He 
 remembered nights, and moments in nights . . . but that was 
 so long ago! And now again the dark, which swallowed him 
 and this poor girl. Beggars they were, both of them, also 
 prince and princess. . . . 
 
 "Do you like the dark?" he asked suddenly. 
 
 "Sometimes," she replied gravely. 
 
 "To-night?" he persisted. 
 
 "To-night!" she echoed. 
 
 They stopped while he listened to the bagpipes, which made 
 themselves audible from the direction of Parliament Hill. A 
 party of revellers passed by laughing. The clock struck eleven. 
 
 132 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 "It's time to be going," she said. "The folks will be 
 wondering." 
 
 She rearranged her hair, then rose and shook herself. This 
 was his first opportunity for observing that her figure was 
 short, unpleasantly short. 
 
 "Thanks for the nice evening. Good night!" she said. 
 
 "Good night," he said simply. 
 
 He did not offer to accompany her, and still eyeing her figure, 
 he almost incredulously observed that she moved away limpmgl 
 Poor girl! a perfect product, a symbol, of our machine-maimed . 
 age! 
 
 "Well, 111 be blowed!" he muttered to himself, as the irony 
 of it struck him. He lay back in the grass, grinned into the 
 dark, and thought himself a philanthropist. 
 
 SOHO 
 
 There was another evening, in the early October. Gombarov 
 went to the Palace Theatre. The evening was crisp and clear 
 when he entered, but on making his exit before the final two 
 mmibers he found himself in the thick of his first London 
 fog, a dense grey-purple haze shot through with shafts of 
 light from the gas and electric lamps. 
 
 The crowd in Shaftesbury Avenue moved in fantastic proces- 
 sion, a blurred, conglomerate mass, as indeterminate as chaos, 
 and looked at from the opposite side of the street it presented 
 nothing more than a motionful darkness, above which, in the 
 phosphorescent haze of mufBed artificial light, there loomed, in 
 half-defined silhouette, a leisurely feather, an accompanying 
 topper, a scurrying bowler, and again a feather, a topper and 
 a bowler; and everywhere were to be seen the moving, lighted 
 points of cigarettes or cigars, worlds of a cosmos, and the 
 occasional flare of a match, suddenly lit and curvingly flung 
 
 133 
 
BABEL 
 
 into the street with meteor-like precipitancy. But when 
 Gombarov looked at the moving crowd on his own side of the 
 street, he still failed to define clearly the individual features. 
 Only smiles and scowls, disembodied and intense, hovered above 
 white shirt fronts or half-bared bosoms framed in fur. Was 
 she not attractive, that sad-gay street sylph, whose palpable 
 smile danced over her imseen features on a ground of pallor, 
 in which two points, glittering, drew you, invited you in, to a 
 revelation of mjratery, joy, disillusionment? 
 
 The iDuses and taxis sped by, rumbling, muffled all but in 
 sound, thunderously, thunderously dinning, because the ears 
 functioned for half-blinded eyes. A laugh burst forth, shrill 
 and hysterical, a woman's, come as from the depths of a womb, 
 and for a while the fog appeared to vibrate with this gestating 
 laughter. Gombarov turned to observe a drunken sailor reeling, 
 one arm around a woman's waist, his fingers playing with the 
 woman's breasts. Again she laughed her devastating laugh, 
 that with shrill echoes diffused itself in the fog. Then came 
 a running cry, approaching nearer; it was a newsboy's cry, 
 loud and raucous and unintelligible, and it violated the thick 
 air with its desperate insistence. After that he caught the 
 fragment of a conversation: 
 
 "Yes, really," a voice, the sort one associates with the Public 
 Schools, was saying, "Bergson is the prophet of the age. You 
 see, old chap, it's all a matter of flux, the great life urge. You 
 ought to read him. It's like this. ..." 
 
 Gombarov turned to get a glimpse of the man who spoke, 
 and caught what was obviously an artist's silhouette, with all 
 the customary trappings, the large felt hat, long hair and a 
 flowing tie. And again he caught the fragment of a conver- 
 sation in a voice the very soul of maudlin good nature: 
 
 "And so I says to 'im, says I, 'Don't do it, Jack, for the love 
 
 134 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 o' Gord' . . . An' 'e says to me, says *e, 'I must many the 
 girl. It's not me that'll be leavin' a girl in the lurch after me 
 doin' the dirty on 'er, and she a good pal and stickin' to me 
 like a mustard plaster! ' Well, what could I say to 'im after 
 that? Come, Tom, let's turn into the Bird-in-'and and 've 
 a mouthful. ..." 
 
 "Mouthful, did you say, Dick?" said his companion. "Ain't 
 a pint enough for you?" 
 
 Gombarov smiled, and was about to follow them into the 
 Bird-in-Hand, when a beshawled, half-bowed woman's figure, 
 with a man's cap on, accosted him from the neighbouring 
 doorway: 
 
 "Gentleman, do 'ave a sprig of white 'eather, and 'elp a 
 poor widow with six little ones. 'Ave a sprig, gentleman. It'll 
 bring you good luck. Six little ones, gentleman, and not one 
 o' them that's big enough to work. You'll be 'elping a widow, 
 gentleman. Let me stick a sprig in your button'ole." 
 
 And seizing the lapel of his coat, she had the sprig of heather 
 in before he could say a word. He dropped a six-pence into 
 her hand. 
 
 "Thank you, kind gentleman. Bless you, kind gentleman. 
 Good luck to you, kind gentleman!" 
 
 About to walk away, he heard her accost a joy-lady: 
 
 "A spring of heather for you, dearie. For good luck, dearie. 
 Sure to bring you a rich sweetheart, dearie! . . . Thank you, 
 angel-face! Bless you, my pretty. Sweet dreams to you, and 
 a purse of sovereigns, dearie!" 
 
 Gombarov paused on the kerb and wondered what to do 
 next. Crowds poured out of theatres and cinema houses and 
 swelled the stream of chaos which sluggishly surged past him. 
 Strange blurred objects detached themselves from the moving 
 darkness, and darted across the way or into side channels. 
 
 135 
 
BABEL 
 
 Something ponderous, on wheels, rolled by him, making the 
 ground quake, and all that was visible of it, in large characters 
 of light, was the figure "14," which, as it were, a number 
 appointed by the mysteries, unattached and imsupported, 
 moved mystically through space, and speedily receding at last 
 disappeared into the dark. 
 
 Gombarov turned into Dean Street and walked the small 
 narrow lanes of Soho, often pausing to look into the windows 
 and doorways of tiny foreign restaurants, cafes and public 
 houses, which were as toy havens and oases of light in a 
 suspended black cloud drifting imder the heavens. 
 
 Thus he walked on, passing lamp-post after lamp-post, shadow 
 after shadow, silhouette after silhouette, until he came to the 
 to-be-remembered lamp-post and, xmder it, ran into a to-be- 
 remembered shadow and more than a shadow, a thing soft 
 and of a plumpness and surely of a radiant, if for the moment 
 fog-enveloped presence, overwhelmingly pleasant in the sudden 
 contact. In short, it was a smiling girl, and at once it was 
 to be seen, and certainly to be felt, that here was no ordinary 
 girl, and no ordinary smile. In the impact they came together 
 as in an embrace, and in their astonishment, for some moments 
 stood immovable, face breathing into face, breast to breast, 
 limbs to limbs, touching. She was panting from the collision, 
 which had been a hard one, and together with her breath a 
 delicious aroma poured into his nostrils from her neck and 
 shoulders. 
 
 She was the first to disentangle herself, laughmg. "I am 
 sorry," she said in English, with a foreign accent, and was 
 about to pass on. 
 
 "Wea, I am not a bit sorry," he retorted. "On the contrary. 
 It isn't often that one is so lucky as to strike an Isola Bella 
 
 136 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 ... I don't mean the restaurant over there," he added, for 
 they were standing dose to the restaurant of that name. 
 
 "Well, you are clever to have thought of that," she said, 
 with a good-natured laugh. "But I wonder what you would 
 have said if we had stood by the Hercules Pillars or the Duck 
 and Drakes or the Dirty Dick!" 
 
 They stood there laughing, and after an embarrassing pause 
 he felt it incumbent upon him to speak, lest she depart and 
 leave him to his own devices. 
 
 "It's my first fog," he began. "I've been walking about in 
 it rather lonely, until I bumped into you. . . . What do you 
 say to a cofifee with me, or something stronger, if you like?" 
 
 The girl gave him a close scrutiny under the lamp-post, and 
 said impulsively: 
 
 "I'm afraid I haven't got time to stop, but if you like to 
 come along with me I don't mind!" 
 
 "Thanks. Righto!" 
 
 "So this is your first fog?" she said, as they walked on, side 
 by side. "Well! I've been in London seven years, and I've 
 been in many fogs, but this is the first time that anjrthing like 
 this has happened to me. You are an artist, aren't you?" 
 
 "I write." 
 
 "I thought so. I should think you were one of those persons 
 to whom strange things always happen." 
 
 "Strange that you should know it." 
 
 "Oh, I felt that about you at once. If I hadn't, I shouldn't 
 have stopped to talk to you. I have curious intuitions. But 
 here we are!" She stopped before an apartment house in a 
 narrow lane, and drew the keys out of her bag, while he stood 
 hesitant. "You can come in, if you like," she said, "but mind 
 you, only as a friend." 
 
 They walked up three flights, then pausing before Number 
 
 137 
 
BABEL 
 
 IS, she unlocked the door, and on entering, turned up the 
 electric light. Gombarov followed her in. 
 
 "Do take the big chair," she said. 
 
 She subjected him to a quiet scrutiny while taking her gloves 
 off. ^ 
 
 "I shouldn't have thought," she observed at last, "that you 
 had grey-blue eyes with that black hair of yours. It iai't 
 usual. And you've got a long head. Something in it, I dare 
 say. Strange, but you are both cautious and impulsive, always 
 at war with yourself. You don't know your own power. Your 
 mind is free, but you body is tied. You are introspective. You 
 torment yourself, inclined too much to worry, often needlessly. 
 It is as if you were lost in the woods, trying to find your way 
 out. . . . What will you have to drink? Would you rather 
 have wine, or spirits, or beer?" 
 
 Astonished at her extraordinary divination of his character, 
 he miunbled in an embarrassed way: 
 
 "I don't mind what I have." 
 
 "Come in and choose," and she opened the door of the next 
 room. He followed her in. 
 
 "You've givrai me something of a job," he said, laughing, as 
 he surveyed the bountiful shelves and the rows of variously 
 sh^>ed bottles with their variously coloured contents and the 
 open boxes on the floor containing yet other bottles. 
 
 Beaune and Fraisa and Chianti and Graves were here, and 
 Chablis and Ponunard and Chateau Le Rose and Chambertin 
 and French and Italian Vermuth, and Australian and Califor- 
 nian burgundy, and tawny port, and chary brandy, and 
 Hennessey and Martell Three Star, and Chartreuse and Creme 
 de Menthe and Benedictine, as well as the Italian Str^a and 
 Russian Kiinmiel; whiskey and gin, and Guinness and Bass 
 and lager, it goes without saying. 
 
 138 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 "But the most precious bottle here one may not touch," he 
 said with an air of audacious gallantry. 
 
 "No!" she laughed, "but you can choose any other." She 
 obviously enjoyed his bewilderment. 
 
 He thought for a while, and an inspiration came to him. 
 "ni have a drop of vodka," he said. 
 
 "You thought you'd catch me napping," she laughed, as 
 from a hidden corner she drew out a dust-covered bottle and 
 held it up against the light. "Instead, you've given yourself 
 away. You are a Russian, aren't you?" 
 
 "I was bom in Russia. And you?" 
 
 "I am from Brussels." 
 
 "You speak such good English." 
 
 "So everyone sajre. What will you have after this?" she 
 asked as they entered the next room and she poured him out a 
 liqueur glass of vodka. "What do you say to Pommard?" 
 
 On his giving a sign of assent, she brought in a bottle and 
 putting it between her knees very adroitly drew the cork, 
 while he watched the graceful curves of her in the action. He 
 noticed she had neat ankles and that when she walked there 
 was a fluidity in the lines of her slender form. Her pale, 
 somewhat dark-tinted face, with its awake brown eyes and 
 nearly regular features, and her jet black hair, done into a 
 Grecian knot, had distinction. No sooner had she poured out 
 two glasses of wine than there was a knock. 
 
 "Oh, it's my violin instructor!" she said apologetically. 
 "Itll only take about twenty minutes. You can amuse yourself 
 by looking at the books." 
 
 She opened the door, and in came a stout man, unmistakably 
 a German, with a violin case under his arm. He greeted her 
 in a thick if good-natured EngKsh, and after she had introduced 
 Gombarov as a "friend," she asked the new visitor: 
 
 139 
 
BABEL 
 
 "What will you have?" 
 
 "The same as usual, if it's handy." 
 
 She fetched a bottle of Guinness from the next room and 
 handed it to the German, who soon opened it and slowly 
 filled a large glass with its rich froth, which dung to his 
 moustache long after the first gulp. The girl brought her 
 violin from a cupboard and resting it tenderly on her shoulder 
 began to play, while the German corrected her between gulps 
 of Guinness. 
 
 Gombarov, in the meantime, reclining in the big chair, sipped 
 his wine, and furtively watched his strange hostess and the 
 graceful movements of her bared cums. He pretended to be 
 interested in the books which lay upon the table. Among 
 these were Flaubert's Salatnmbo in French, Tolstoy's Cossacks 
 and Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment in German, odd 
 volumes of Shaw's Plays and Conrad's Under Western Eyes. 
 
 "An extraordinary girl!" thought Gombarov. 
 
 After the lesson, the German helped himself to another 
 Guinness, and having exchanged a few banal remarks, said 
 good-night, and left. Gombarov's hostess sat down to her 
 wine, and began to tell something about herself. Her name 
 was Lina Linter and she was a waitress by profession. She 
 had no need to be that if she were willing to sacrifice her 
 independence by accepting the proffered assistance of influential 
 friends or by marrying one of her several admirers. She liked 
 men the same as women, as friends, as good pals, but that 
 always led to misunderstandings. Why couldn't men ever 
 forget that they were males? She loved books and music, and 
 had she her life to live over again she would have been a 
 dancer. It was her ambition to. . . . Then, suddenly, she 
 stopped speaking, and sat up rigidly against the back of the 
 tall arm-chair, with shut eyes in a drawn face. 
 
 140 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 Gombarov sprang forward and bent over her. "Are you ill? 
 Do you want some water?" 
 
 Her eyes still closed, her hand imperiously motioned him 
 back to his seat. He sat down and waited. His heart thumped 
 violently. He waited. 
 
 At last he saw her lips move faintly, but her other features 
 did not relax. She spoke in an even, imrippled voice. It was 
 as if a dead mask and not a living person were speaking. 
 
 "I see a tall man standing by your side," said the voice. "A 
 fine looking man with strong features. He is dressed in Eastern 
 garb, a long embroidered garment that reaches to the ground, 
 and around his waist is a golden girdle with long tassels. His 
 head is wrapt in a golden-white turban. He might be either 
 an Arab or a Jew. He stands beside you with a friendly 
 smile, and one hand is on your shoulder. He speaks to you. 
 He says ..." 
 
 There was a pause, and one of her ears seemed intent on 
 catching words mysteriously spoken. 
 
 "... He says . . . 'Do not be afraid, I am with you, I 
 shall not forsake you. Be strong, whatever happens be strong. 
 You have j-et much to go through. Your day is coming . . . 
 you shall speak. But the day is not yet . . . not yet' ..." 
 
 Again she paused, again her otherwise still face was poised 
 in a listening attitude, but a strained look began to creep into it. 
 
 "He sajrs. . . " she resumed, "he sajre ... his lips are 
 moving ... he has something more to say to you. ... I am 
 try ing to catch his words ... if I coidd only catch his words. 
 ... He says . . . 'Keep your soul whole in the midst of a 
 falling world. . . .' He says ... I am trying to get what 
 he says. . . . Things, other spirits, are coming between me 
 and him. ... I cannot hear what he says. . . . Dark spirits 
 are moving between me and him. ... He is gone. I can only 
 
 141 
 
BABEL 
 
 see his golden-white turban moving away in the darkness . . . 
 and there is a golden light plajring on the turban. Now it is 
 gone, gone ..." 
 
 There was a long pause, while she still kept her face rigid 
 and her eyes shut. Gombarov, too, sat immovable in his chair, 
 overcome by the extraordinary revelation, the strangeness of 
 his adventure. And expectantly he waited, afraid to utter a 
 word, lest he break the spell and hinder the oracle. 
 
 "He is gone ..." she resumed, "he hasn't come back. 
 Other spirits have crowded in between me and him, preventing 
 commimication. He is evidently your protective destiny. And 
 as you have him, so you have nothing to fear. But let me 
 see ... let me see ... let me look into your past . . . you 
 have had a sad past. . . ." 
 
 And again she was silent. Then: "I see a little boy. He is 
 running about in a forest in some faraway coimtry. There is a 
 large white house standing all by itself in a garden on the 
 edge of the forest. The little boy is nmning along a path 
 towards the white house. Now he ascends the verandah, now 
 he enters the house, which is full of people, but there is no 
 one to pay any attention to the little boy. No one, though the 
 house is full of people. ... He is very sad, the little boy. 
 He is looking for his parents ... he doesn't know that he has 
 no parents. A strange child, without parentage. . . . There 
 is a dark, strange man in the house. He hovers like a dark 
 fate over the house, and the little boy is afraid of him. The 
 little boy sees him and runs into the woods again. He embraces 
 a slender tree, and weeps as though his heart would break. 
 Poor little boy, no one to look after him, no one to be kind 
 to him. The dark man moves through the rooms of the house, 
 and leaves his shadow everywhere. A quiet woman follows 
 
 142 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 him about. Where he is there is she, but she leaves no 
 shadow. ..." 
 
 Gombarov listened to this strange recital of the story of his 
 childhood, and whole scenes of that curiously remote life in 
 Russian woods and in that white house rose up like a clear- 
 defined dream, and dream-like there moved in it the figures of 
 the shadow man, his stepfather, who had wrought ruin on 
 his step-children and on his own offspring through the prodi- 
 gality of his genius, and of the shadowless woman, his mother, 
 who had submitted to the will of this man. And at the intense 
 clairvoyance of the sharp images his heart flamed with sadness, 
 and his teeth were set to keep back the flood of tears. He 
 listened to that trance-possessed voice, as it rose from pathos 
 to despair: 
 
 "Now I see flames! flames 1 The house is on fire. A terrible 
 night. The shadow man is away. The shadowless woman and 
 many little ones seeking shelter. . . . Now it is daylight. The 
 dark strange man looking on at the ruins. ... He sajrs 
 nothing. ... A strange man. . . . 
 
 "Now I see the woman again starting on a long, long journey 
 with the little ones. ... I am going with them across many 
 countries. ... So many trains, so many trains. . . . Then a 
 large ship. ... I see them in a city with many tall houses. . . . 
 What a lot of people. . . . Oh, poor little boy, poor little 
 boy! . . . There are no trees in this city of tall houses, no 
 place to hide in, no place to run away to . . . oh, poor little 
 boy. . . ." 
 
 In this curious fashion she went on relating what he already 
 knew so well, and he was filled with wonder at the mjrstery 
 of her knowledge. Did she tap the well of his imconscious 
 thoughts? He could not forget some things if he would, but 
 after all, it was the present and the future that so vitally 
 
 143 
 
BABEL 
 
 interested him, and he waited for a glimpse of these with his 
 whole spirit in suspense: 
 
 "... And a heavy burden hangs over his soul, weighs 
 him down ... he wishes to forget ... to wipe out his whole 
 past ... as if it did not exist. ..." 
 
 She lapsed into silence, while his eagerness grew. For it 
 had been his chief thought since coming to Europe, how to 
 pluck the past out of his heart to make his heart light, how 
 to fling the albatross from his neck that he might stand up a 
 straight man! Men sensed its presence and kept away from 
 him, women ran from him as from a dumb animal in pain. 
 Simple to himself, he appeared incomprehensible to others. 
 The sUence of the girl before him tortured him, and at last, 
 in an imploring voice, as if she could help him, he let loose the 
 thought that was so pent up in him: 
 
 "Tell me, tell me if you can, what shall I do to rid myself 
 of this burden, to forget it altogether, as if it did not exist?" 
 
 There was in his voice a concentrated intensily as of his 
 whole life's pain. So comes a first flash of forkai lightning 
 after the long suspense and enduring of a too long repressed 
 thunder cloud. There was again a tormenting sOence, while 
 his temples throbbed and his eyes piercingly sought to penetrate 
 the girl's mask, as if behind it reposed all the mysteries of 
 existence, and surely the mystery of his own. Again.came the 
 even, unrippled voice: 
 
 "You must not try to get rid of it. You were chosen to 
 bear it. You are a bearer of other people's burdens, as well 
 as your own. It will grow yet greater, xmtil it will seem almost 
 too great to be borne. Then the burden shall burst into flame, 
 and out of that flame words will come. A message for the 
 world is being born in pain like a child in a woman's womb. 
 You must be patient, you must endure. . . . You will take 
 
 144 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 long joumejrs. . . . You will make friends. ... All who are 
 in your life now shall pass out of it. . . . Here he is again, the 
 tall man with the white-golden turban. He speaks ... he 
 says . . . 'Keep your soul whole in the midst of a falling 
 world' ... He is gone. ..." 
 
 She opened her eyes for the first time and wearily smiled. 
 "How tired I am. ... I am mediumistic. . . . Moments come 
 when I am commanded to speak to persons I £im with. I hope 
 I have told you something that you want to know. . . ." 
 
 "Yes, you have. It's quite extraordinary. I am most 
 grateful to you." 
 
 She refilled their glasses. The colour began to return to 
 her face. They drank and talked of the mysteries of the world. 
 And again she refilled their glasses. 
 
 'Would you like to try another wine?" she asked when the 
 bottle was finished. She went into the wine room and soon 
 reappeared with a bottle of champ^ne. Then she fetched 
 three champagne glasses and pleiced them on the table. "I 
 have a lodger," she explained. "I expect him in every minute. 
 It helps to pay for the flat. He is a waiter at the same hotel 
 as myself. He is an interesting, educated man and could do 
 something better, but like myself he does what he does by 
 choice." 
 
 Gombarov thought all this incongruous and mysterious, as 
 everything that had happened that evening, and his own 
 presence there was equally incongruous and mystmous. He 
 sipped the sparkling liquid, and as he had had but a scant 
 dinner, and had been excited first by the movement and colour 
 at the theatre, then by the fog and lastly by the strange 
 meeting with the girl and the ensuing revelations, the 
 champagne began to take effect, and his mind began dancing 
 like a feather in ether. He felt sublimely irresponsible, 
 
 145 
 
BABEL 
 
 and drank more and more, not caring what happened to him. 
 
 There was a knock on the door. Miss Linter jimiped up, 
 saying: 
 
 "It is Max!" 
 
 Max entered the room. He was a pale-faced German or 
 Swiss, with thin sensitive features, and but for the stains on 
 his dress-suit and white shirt-front he had the look of a 
 gentleman. They were introduced to one another, and 
 Gombarov was relieved to see that Max did not resent his 
 presence, but appeared to take the whole matter for granted 
 as one of Lina's vagaries. He could not help wondering what 
 relations existed between the two, and he had observed that 
 there was nothing demonstrative in their greeting. The three 
 clinked glasses: 
 
 "Prositl" said Max. 
 
 "A voire sante!" said Lina. 
 
 "Na zdoroviel" said Gombarov, in Russian. 
 
 Gombarov was looking at Max. Max's face was of an intense 
 pallor which gradually seemed to lose itself in the light, while 
 his white shirt-front loomed large, like a starched wall, and 
 great was Gombarov's desire to write on it in large letters, in 
 black chalk. His mind writhed on the horns of a terrible 
 dilemma. What, precisely, could he write on it? Yes, what? 
 What? It was tormenting not to know what to write on it 
 Even if he knew, where was he to get the black chalk? But 
 this was a secondary matter. If he only knew what to 
 write on it! He racked his brains for words even as he listened 
 to the conversation of the others as in a kind of tense dream. 
 Though hell and heaven fall, though that strange box, that 
 lit-up cubicle, containing him and Lina and Max, be hurled 
 within the next ten minutes through space, he must know 
 what to write on that colossal white shirt-front in large letters 
 
 146 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 in black chalk! His mind suddenly lightened, and he laughed. 
 Why, of coin-se! He had the very words. Why hadn't he 
 thought of them before? There was only one kind of writing 
 possible on any kind of wall: 
 
 "MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSmi" 
 
 He spoke these words half-aloud, of which he was hardly 
 aware. As if penned by a flaming torch, the words were being 
 graven on his mind in grotesque letters of fire, and he repeated, 
 this time louder: 
 
 "MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN!" 
 
 He heard lina and Max break into a laugh. As, in a sharp 
 flash, he realised its cause, he joined furiously in the laugh, 
 with his whole might and body, like a demon suddenly 
 unshackled, and in this fierce laughter the burden that had 
 earlier in the evening troubled him was thrown off completely. 
 
 "I wonder," said Lina, when the mirth had subsided, "what 
 made you say those words? For I had been thinking. Max 
 and I, you know, have been foretold violent deaths." And 
 without waiting for a reply, she added: "It is strange, but one 
 meets so many people nowadays who are doomed to violent 
 deaths. ..." 
 
 Gombarov listened to her, even while he listened to voices 
 in himself. His mind seemed broken up into several compart- 
 ments, each filled with a voice, and one voice appeared to have 
 no connection with another. In one compartment the newly 
 uttered phrase stirred: 
 
 "... many people doomed to violent deaths." 
 
 In another compartment there was the thought: 
 
 "What a lovely girl! What lovely lines to her neck and 
 shoulders! What lovely firm roundnesses those small breasts 
 of hers, their points showing through the soft material! What 
 a lovely mystery her whole body must be!" 
 
 147 
 
BABEL 
 
 Simultaneously, in a third compartment, the thought per- 
 sisted: 
 
 "If I could only write on that white shirt-front, in large 
 letters, in black chalk: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHAR- 
 SIN!" 
 
 There were other, pettier thoughts, stirring in yet other 
 compartments. He felt strange: his mind was intensely clear 
 and he held a rein on each thought. He was like a blindfolded 
 chess-player playing twenty simultaneous games, each separate 
 board dearly outlined in his mental vision. 
 
 Then, with ecstatic image-defining clarity, he saw the 
 fantastic absurdity of the whole thing, of this strange room, 
 and of the strange three beings in it, of his strangely drifting 
 into this out of the fog. Was it dream, or nightmare, or 
 phantasmagoria? And again he thought of this strange London, 
 incomprehensible city of a million compartments, of this 
 strange old London, which was like a huge old brain, made up 
 of millions of cells, impressed with millions of memories and 
 images, interspersed among tortuous convolutions and over 
 throbbing arteries, some dulled and deadened, some continuing 
 their reflex life, some grown over with multitudinous cells such 
 as this, alive with a strange stirring as of maggots in a corpse. 
 How many such cells were there in this human heap, how many 
 oases of flame and light and phosphorescent activity, how 
 many centres of cerebral combustion, islands of irrepressible 
 forces, daemonic in intensity? 
 
 His intense thought swept through him like a hurricane, 
 flung open the doors of all the separate compartments of his 
 brain, until all the outpouring thoughts fused into a single 
 thought, became one flame, one immense image, not imlike the 
 building of his dream at Paris, many-cellular and many- 
 corridored, its foimdations deep in the earth, its top piercing 
 
 148 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 the clouds, from top to bottom groaning and clamorous, as 
 of a habitation tottering to its doom. . . . 
 
 He dared not sit any longer. He must move. He must run. 
 He must sing. He must shout. . . . 
 
 Next morning he woke in his own bed. His head ached. He 
 rubbed his eyes, and wondered what had happened to him. 
 He lay very quietly and thought. He did not move, though 
 he heard the door of his room open, then footsteps approaching. 
 He saw Julius Strogov^y gravely standing over him, and his 
 dead eyes were looking up into his friend's without the 
 slightest tremor. 
 
 Juhus, who years ago had been intimate with him in 
 Philadelphia, had lately arrived from Germany, and had 
 induced him to remove from Mrs. Tufnell's at Elephant and 
 Castle into this more ostentatious boarding-residence in Princes 
 Square. 
 
 "I am afraid you are too late for breakfast," said Julius. 
 "I tried to wake you, but you slept like the dead. Even the 
 alarm clock, which I put to your ear, failed to do the trick. 
 What were you up to last night, my boy? Give an accoimt 
 of yourself." 
 
 Gombarov did not reply at once. He kept on looking fixedly 
 at the morose if kindly face of his friend, then said: 
 
 "I think I must have had a dream ... a strange, terrible 
 dream." 
 
 "You may have had a dream," said Julius. "I know nothing 
 about that. But it doesn't explain your coming in at three in 
 the morning. I couldn't sleep again last night, and I heard 
 you." 
 
 "Then it was not a dream," relied Gombarov. "Certainly, 
 a dream could not have been stranger. Perhaps I had better 
 
 149 
 
BABEL 
 
 call it a nightmare." And he rel^sed into silence, while his 
 mind tried to disentangle the events of the evening. 
 
 "Ill get the maid to bring you a cup of tea, and you will 
 feel more fit to tell me about it," suggested Julius, who then 
 went into the corridor and called Lily, a pretty Yorkshire girl, 
 new in domestic service. 
 
 Lily came in and gave a knowing wink at Gombarov, as if 
 to say, "I know all about it. Boys will be boys!" She soon 
 returned with a cup of tea and two slices of bread and butter. 
 
 And Gombarov narrated to his friend ever)rthing that he 
 remembered of his evening, and concluded: 
 
 "I do not exactly remember how I left and how I got home. 
 But I have a vague sort of recollection of stopping in Bayswater 
 Road to look at seven poor old wretches, men and women, 
 huddled together on a form under the trees. It was bitterly 
 cold, and they leant against one another at an angle. That 
 angle has somehow eaten itself into my consciousness. I 
 remember I thought of Maeterlinck's The Blind. And I also 
 remember looking at that great row of palatial houses across 
 the street, and imagining the interior of one of the bedrooms 
 ... a lovely woman lying in the arms of a man in a comfort- 
 able warm bed, her nice soft expensive things over the arm of 
 a chair. One thing has dropped to the floor. It's a camisole. 
 I don't know why, precisely, I thought of a camisole. But 
 there it is, I thought of a camisole. And I thought, the cost of 
 that fine silken camisole, with its embroidery, would have fed 
 those poor seven wretches for three days, perhaps for a week. 
 ... I remember giving them all the loose change I had about 
 me. . . . It's strange, but the first word I thought of this 
 morning was camisole. . . ." 
 
 "What, in heaven's name, is a camisole?" asked Julius, 
 breaking out into his characteristic chortles. 
 
 ISO 
 
THE SOUL OF LONDON 
 
 "111 show you one in a shop-window in Oxford Street," 
 replied Gombarov, "and incidentally, a sample of British 
 reserve. There is not a secret of woman's dress that is not 
 exposed there." 
 
 "You are a fimny mixture of seriousness and flippancy," 
 observed Julius. "But strange things do happen to you," he 
 added, not without a touch of envy. "Of course, you intend 
 looking up this Linter girl again. You might give me an 
 introduction." 
 
 "I think I can find her place again," said Gombarov, 
 reflectively. "But I wouldn't swear to it. You see, I arrived 
 there in one kind of fog, and I left in another kind." 
 
 That very afternoon he went to Soho. He had no trouble 
 in finding the remembered lamp-post, which was dose to the 
 remembered restaurant, the Isola BeUa. He then followed the 
 route he and Lina had taken, noting a landmark here and a 
 landmark there, which he thought they had passed on the way 
 to the flat. And he came to a lane, which he thought was the 
 lane, and he came to a house which he thought was the house, 
 and he ascended the stairs and came to a flat which he thought 
 was the flat. He rang and knocked, and expectantly waited. 
 A smiling young woman, dressed in a kimono, came to the 
 door, but it was not she. 
 
 "Is Miss Linter in?" he asked, falteringly. 
 
 "I don't know any such person," replied the smiling yoimg 
 woman. 
 
 There was a disappointed look in his face. She went on 
 smiling, as if to say, "Won't I do?" 
 
 "Sorry to have disturbed you," he said, and went to look 
 for the housekeeper. 
 
 "Miss Lina Linter? I am sorry, no such person in this 
 house," said the janitor. 
 
 151 
 
BABEL 
 
 Gombarov scoured the streets of the neighbourhood, without 
 success. "Lina Linter . . . Lina Linter," he went on repeating. 
 "I am sure that's the name." But he failed to find her, and in 
 time she passed out of his mind. 
 
 Little did he then know that in days to come, nearly three 
 years hence, his startled eyes would read in the columns of a 
 newspaper of the fate of a certain "Mrs. Joseph Koenig, alias 
 Miss Lina Linter . . . shot in the Tower as a German spy . . ." 
 and that it was not till then that he would recall again the 
 strange injunction of his "protective destiny": 
 
 "Keep your soul whole in the midst of a falling world! " 
 
 152 
 
CIJ.\PTER IV: LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, 
 GHOSTS 
 
 "Nothing was lost. The terrible 
 past had a way of projecting 
 itself into the future. Ghosts 
 would arise and, holding hands, 
 dance round him in a whirling 
 circle." 
 
 ENTER POSTMAN 
 
 All the world's roads led to London. That was natural, for 
 all the roads also led away from it; in particular, since Queen 
 Elizabeth's day, when English adventurers and pioneers set 
 forth towards imknown lands and seas and left behind them 
 trails and highways, still binding them to their mother. After 
 three centuries this energy had not wholly spent itself, and 
 London was its heart and core, which grew and developed in 
 ratio to the increasing proportions of the common body, called 
 Empire. 
 
 Thanks to the accumulations of this splendid energy, the 
 city had become like some vast, impersonal sea, and he who 
 lived in it might take some pride in his city, hardly — ^unless 
 he were arrogant — in his insignificant self. The presence of so 
 many human beings bred an indifference, each being floated 
 as a particle upon a vast sea. As a particle, it was insignificant 
 against all this vastness; as a living particle, it felt intensely 
 conscious of itself in all this vastness, even as a bather in the 
 vast sea. 
 
 153 
 
BABEL 
 
 What of a stranger, an alien particle, plimged in all this 
 vastness? 
 
 Against the background of London Gombarov felt more and 
 more keenly his own insignificance. The mystery of London, 
 biding behind a veil of indifference, was to him a frightening 
 thing. Yet, strangely enough, it drove him, as a bather in a 
 vast sea, to a thorough consciousness of himself, to take stock 
 of himself, of his movements and strokes in the effort to keq) 
 his body up, and inevitably to regard himself as an independent 
 world floating in the midst of a vastness, which might, at the 
 least show of weakness, submerge him. And as one alone and 
 learning to swim, he was horribly conscious of himself, and 
 equally so of the vast and indifferent world around him. He 
 saw this world, felt this world; this world, vast and inscrutable 
 as it was, infected him with its impersonal personality; imder 
 its averted eyes he was groping, as in a darkness, towards his 
 own individuality. 
 
 But there was one extraordinary day when Gombarov, a 
 person of no importance, felt himself to be something of an 
 international character. It was while he yet lived at Elephant 
 and Castle with the Tufnells, and the beaming Mrs. Tufnell 
 came in with a batch of letters for Gombarov: 
 
 "Six for you, sir. I hope it's some good news for you! " 
 
 He glanced rapidly at the half dozen envelopes, and 
 exclaimed: 
 
 "This is extraordinary! From six countries, Mrs. Tufnell!" 
 
 "Well, I never!" said Mrs. Tufnell. "You must be an 
 important person, Mr. Gombarov." She took great pride in 
 her lodger. 
 
 It was true that one letter was from England. This, without 
 opening, he knew to contain the rejected manuscript of a story. 
 The one from America he also put aside for later reading. It 
 
 154 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 was from his mother, and was sure to contain depressing news 
 of the fanuly. Poor Gombarovs! Their lot was a hard one. 
 They were at the mercy of a cruel world. God alone could 
 help them. Gombarov spent many weary days and nights 
 troubling about them. The third letter was from Winifred, 
 from Paris. 
 
 "Dearest one!" it began. ... It went on: ... Life was 
 short . . , they were getting old . . . she was waiting for him 
 ... all in white ready for him . . . waiting for his knock . . . 
 but he did not come . . . other yoimg men came, with certain 
 glances in their eyes . . . she gave them cakes and tea . . . 
 again and again they came . . . and he, whom she loved 
 dearly, was in London. ... If he only truly loved her, he 
 would hurry up and earn some money, and he would come to 
 her . . . who, all in white, was ready for him. . . . When they 
 were married, couldn't she be called Madame Gombarov instead 
 of just plain Mrs. Gombarov? After all, they were in Europe 
 now, and it was so much nicer to be called Madame than 
 Mrs. Anyhow, it went well with his foreign name. . . . But 
 why wasn't he there instead of in London . . . and why didn't 
 he earn enough money quickly, so he could come and take 
 her, all in white, ready for him? . . . Could he truly love her, 
 yet not do that, and come? ... If he truly loved her, he 
 would. 
 
 A letter like that drove him to despair. How could he, "a 
 stranger in a strange city," be exp)ected to earn enough money 
 from the most precarious of all vocations, not so much a 
 profession as a form of vagrancy? . . . Why did she mention 
 those yoimg men, as if other young men existed! There was 
 something about it which, rightly or wrongly, offended the male 
 in him. This was a feeling with him rather than a reasoned 
 conclusion, and as with most sensitive, intuitive persons, his 
 
 155 
 
BABEL 
 
 feelings had a way of proving truer than elaborately reasoned 
 hypotheses. Besides, he remembered how after all the seeming 
 eternity of their love she had once forsaken him, and now he 
 was no longer sure of her. His forebodings clung to him, and 
 it was not for Reason, that moral, irreproachable goddess, to 
 soothe away with her too cool fingers the throbbing pains of 
 a passionate spirit. "Take cold baths!" say reasonable men 
 of little passion to men of genius and to lovers, as if cold 
 water could put out inner fires, as if the quenching of sacred 
 flames was a thing to be desired. But whether reasonable 
 men put up bathtubs or other barricades against their enemy 
 passion, passion retaliates on the treacherous, becomes an 
 enemy within the gates. "After all," thought Gombarov, 
 "so-called reasonable men haven't any passion. They fight 
 passion in other men, not in themselves." He could not cool 
 his passion for Winifred, and it was a flame turned upon 
 himself, for he was not sure of her. 
 
 With a helpless gesture he threw aside this letter and picked 
 up a fourth. This was from Holland, but he did not recognise 
 the handwriting. He tore open the envelope and looked for 
 the signature. The letter was from Thomas Bowl^, a yoimg 
 English painter whom he had casually met through Welsh. 
 Gombarov and Bowles had taken to each other at once. He was 
 a simple, robust and lovable fellow of Gombarov's own age, who 
 painted the quiet English countryside, and in particular, 
 English trees, with the same passion with which another might 
 paint human beings or love a woman. He was faithful to his 
 changeless English country, with its dear meadows and winding 
 lanes. New art movements interested him without violating 
 the eternal innocence of his outlook, and in this he was like 
 his trees, which enjoyed standing still and steadfastly refused 
 to imitate the shapes given them by modem painters. His 
 
 iS6 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 wife, whom he had met at the art school, had given up painting, 
 but spent much time urging her husband to steal something of 
 the colour palette of the moderns if not their grotesquerie of 
 pattern. Her mind was a whip that tried to set her husband's 
 brain spinning like a top, but he was a tree, with the static 
 soul of a tree, and his roots were deep in the ground. There 
 was no spinning his mind round! She passionately loved her 
 husband, yet never grew tired of enjoining upon Gombarov the 
 folly of marriage for an artist, who, she thought, if he needed 
 a woman, had best "live with one," without the formality of 
 legal marriage. She considered women quite inferior beings, 
 who ought not to meddle in the arts, though she herself showed 
 undoubted talent in the casual exercise of her art. Like 
 Gombarov, the Bowles couple despised Welsh, whom they had 
 known since their art school days. 
 
 Bowles' letter was dated from Amsterdam. "A funny thing 
 happened a day or two ago," wrote Bowles. "Madge and I 
 were sitting in a cafe here and happened to be talking about 
 you, when a yoimg American chap, who was sitting with his 
 wife at the next table, leant over towards me, and, excusing 
 himself, asked whether the John Gombarov they heard 
 mentioned was the same Gombarov they had known in 
 Philadelphia. . . . And so we spent some time talking about 
 you. Curiously, his wife also paints. The couple's name is 
 Davis. I thought I had better warn you, especially, as on their 
 request, I gave them your address. They started for London 
 yesterday, and may look you up. I thought the episode very 
 strange. It made the world seem such a tiny place. ..." 
 
 The fifth letter was from Germany, from Julius Strogovsky, 
 who, seven or eight years before, had left Philadelphia for 
 Berlin to study philosophy. 
 
 "My dear John," wrote Julius, "I hear that you have at last 
 
 157 
 
BABEL 
 
 broken the shackles which have so long held you m Phila- 
 delphia, and are now in London. I heartily grasp your hand in 
 congratulation. Yet freedom, too, for homeless vagabonds 
 such as ourselves is more interesting than comfortable. These 
 past several years have been for me, in a sense, years in 
 piurgatory, with rare glimpses into paradise. But this is to 
 tell you that I shortly expect to be in London, and as I believe 
 you intend stajring on for some time, we shall, I hope, see 
 something of one another, if you do not mind seeing one who 
 feels tired and sick. Yours, with affectionate greeting, Julius." 
 Gombarov lingered with Julius' note in his hand, and, his 
 eyes scanning the imseen distances, an image rose in his mind 
 of the Julius he had known in Philadelphia, tall, broad- 
 shouldered, pale, grey-eyed — ^blonde and wide-featured like a 
 Slav — ^with impetuous ways, seldom walking but with a stride, 
 seldom laughing but giving way to a series of pent-up chuckles, 
 above all eloquent when not morosely silent, and possessed of a 
 strong will which outwardly manifested itself like a clap of 
 thunder. In an outburst of fury at the stupidly of his 
 University instructors in Philadelphia he exclaimed: "Poverty 
 or no poverty, I am going to Berlin!" And to Berlin he went 
 on money he had collected from various friends and reluctant 
 relatives. Afterwards he wrote for more money; Gombarov 
 was among those to respond, in a small way. One gathered 
 from what one knew of Julius and from his letters that between 
 momentary opulences he lived like a dog, that he was heavily 
 in debt and that his mind was as full of philosophy as his 
 stomach empty of food. Two years of this life in Berlin served 
 as a preparation fitting him as a student in a small university 
 town famous for its philosophical school, the head of whidi 
 was a world-wide celebrity. Gombarov had lost touch with 
 Julius for the Isist year or two. 
 
 158 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 Gombarov felt something infinitely sad about this letter. 
 Had this fiery, strong-willed fellow, his junior, who years ago 
 had set such an example, lost his will and buoyancy? What 
 chance had he, Gombarov, older than his friend, starting his 
 free life eight years later, after his long fierce struggle to 
 support his family and with a phjrsical and educational 
 preparation shamelessly scant compared to Julius's? Wearily 
 he put down the letter and thought how good it would be to 
 see his friend again. 
 
 Tremblingly he examined the sixth envelope. It was from 
 Russia, postmarked Astrakhan. Strange that he should receive 
 this letter. Though he did not know the handwriting, he 
 suspected whom the letter was from. Two months earlier he 
 had put his London address on his visiting card, and with no 
 other message placed it in an envelope and posted it to an 
 old address in St. Petersburg, that of an old relative, whom 
 he had never seen, being ignorant even of the exact nature of 
 their relationship. The misave itself, the envelope with the 
 card in it, was however intended for his elder brother, Feodor. 
 and was addressed in care of tViit relative because that was the 
 only address Gombarov possessed. When he had last seen 
 Feodor, Gombarov was four years old, which is to say that he 
 had not seen him at all. Feodor was several years older than 
 himself, and their ways parted when their mother had parted 
 from their father and taken unto herself "old Gombarov" as 
 her husband. Feodor went with his father, John with his 
 mother. John and his two elder sisters were so young when 
 this had happened, and they knew so little of their own father, 
 that it required no effort on their part to slip into the use of 
 the name Gombarov, though their own father's name was 
 Semenov. And there was bad blood between Mrs. Gombarov 
 and her eldest son, Feodor Semenov. 
 
 159 
 
BABEL 
 
 Hence, when John Gombarov sent so curious a missive to 
 his brother, it was problematical whether it would ever reach 
 him, and if it should, whether Feodor would deign to reply to a 
 brother bearing the hated name. After all, twenty-seven years 
 had elapsed since they had seen each other, so there was some 
 reason for Gombarov trembling when he looked at the postmark 
 and judged the letter to be from his brother. 
 
 "Strange!" he thought, "but why from Astrakhan, on the 
 Caspian?" 
 
 For he did not even know his brother's {^ofession. At last 
 he tore open the envelope, and foimd three separate sheets of 
 paper, each written on in a different language: Russian, German 
 and French. He took up the one in Russian and read: 
 
 "My beloved brother! I was delighted to get your card, 
 but as you gave no inkling as to what language, apart from 
 English (of which I know only a little), you know best, you 
 have put me to the necessity of exhibiting my linguistic 
 attainments. I am svure you will understand at least one of 
 these languages, in which I am writing to you. 
 
 "It is strange to hear from you, and from London! For I 
 have understood that you were in America. I too have been 
 something of a rover. I have studied engineering in Germany 
 and France. My home is in Moscow, where I have a wife and 
 three children, but I spend some of my time in St. Petersburg. 
 I am now at Astrakhan, after a protracted tour down the 
 Volga, where I have been inspecting steam-boats. 
 
 "I intend shortly taking a holiday abroad. I shall visit Italy, 
 Switzerland and Germany, and wonder whether you could 
 manage to meet me either at Bremen or Hamburg. If you 
 cannot, I will try to come up to London and spend two or 
 three days with you. 
 
 1 60 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 "You give me no hint of how you are, what you are doing, 
 why you are in England, and frankly, I am astonished that 
 you should bear the name of the horrible man who has wrecked 
 our home. Your father, now a white-haired old man of 
 seventy, his family scattered, is spending his last lonely days 
 in Odessa. . . . However, we shall talk things over when we 
 meet. Let me hear of your plans, and we can then make 
 arrangements. I enclose my address in Moscow, where I am 
 now boimd. 
 
 "Your brother, Feodor." 
 
 "Most extraordinary!" exclaimed Gombarov, half aloud, and 
 repeated, "most extraordinary! Most extraordinary!" 
 
 He automatically picked up the long envelope containing 
 the rejected manuscript, and opened it. It contained a typed 
 note instead of the usual printed rejection form. As he read it, 
 he burst into loud laughter: 
 
 "Dear Sir," it ran. "I return herewith your admirable 
 translation of the Russian story. I do not find that the 
 readers of the Empire Review are much attracted by Russian 
 literature, which is usually of a more disturbing kind than 
 they care to read. Yours faithfully, Percy Primrose, Editor." 
 
 "Well, I wonder what they would say to the story of my own 
 life, if it were written as a novel!" thought Gombarov, his 
 eyes fixed on the morning's correspondence. 
 
 His whole past life seemed to be contained in this batch 
 of letters, and what was furthest past appeared to come nearest 
 forward, and to strike with greatest force into the future, like 
 a far incoming wave that rolled onward and onward, and 
 gathered itself up into a final fierce curve, as at last it struck 
 shore. And yet since coming to England, he had been thinking: 
 
 "If only I could forget my past, put it wholly behind me as 
 
 i6l 
 
BABEL 
 
 if had never occurred, if only I could rid mjrsdf of this 
 oppressive burden, start life anew, then how free I should 
 feel, how I should enjoy life! " 
 
 This was before that extraordinary experience in Lina 
 Linter's flat, when that invisible presence, piuT)orting to be 
 the spirit of his protective destiny, enjoined him to wait and 
 endure, untU his future should bloom out of his biurden as a 
 flower out of well-manured soil. 
 
 But now, as he reflected upon all these letters, his past life, 
 like a flood, seemed to hvast in upon him and to overwhelm 
 his frail, tired person, already worn by the recurring fierce 
 tides of life, which advanced and receded only to return with 
 trebled fury. 
 
 He awoke from his reflections and moved by sudden excite- 
 ment, arising out of the consciousness of dramatic meetings 
 to come, thriist his letters into his pocket and rushed out into 
 the street. Too much wrought up to sit quietly on the t(q) of a 
 'bus, he walked with a fast stride all the way in to Piccadilly. 
 
 ENTER ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 He walked rapidly in KccadiUy Circus, as one who has no 
 eyes. At one crossing he ran into a couple, and stopped to 
 apologise. "I beg your pardon!" he said, and was about to 
 walk on. But he felt his arm seized tightly and heard a voice 
 saying: 
 
 "No, you don't. You can't escape us like that, Gombarov! 
 And we were just talking about you! " 
 
 Startled out of his thoughts, Gombarov looked up, and saw 
 that he had r\m into the Davis couple. 
 
 "Well, well! Only this morning I've heard about you in a 
 letter!" said Gombarov, shaking hands with them. 
 
 "Oh, you mean from Mr. Bowles! He has told you how 
 
 162 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 we met through hearing them mention your name. It's the 
 most uncanny thing that's ever happened. And now, no sooner 
 do we come into London — ^it's our first day here — than we run 
 straight plumb into you. Really, it's uncanny. But come 
 and have a bit of lunch with us." 
 
 And they walked into Appenrodt's. 
 
 They were mere acquaintances, such as seldom notice one 
 another in their own city, but all but fall on each other's necks 
 in a strange one. Points of contact are discovered and exploited 
 to the full, a hitherto imsuspected intimacy creeps into the 
 conversation, crumbs of personal gossip become mountains of 
 interest. 
 
 "Is it true that you are married?" Mrs. Davis sprang the 
 question, after they had discussed ever5rthing and everybody. 
 
 "No. Why do you ask?" 
 
 "Why, when we left Philadelphia a month ago there was a 
 rumoiu- to that effect." 
 
 "And, pray, to whom have they married me?" 
 
 "Winifred Gwynne." 
 
 "Why, she is in Paris! May I ask who is responsible for 
 this interesting information?" 
 
 "Let's see. . . . Oh, yes! I heard it from Miss Dooley, 
 who had heard it from Miss Edgar." 
 
 'That dough face!" said Gombarov, spitefully, raising a 
 laugh. 
 
 "All the same," put in Mr. Davis, "everyone is talking about 
 it." 
 
 "I suppose I ought to feel flattered," observed Gombarov, 
 "for, at all events, it shows that I have not been forgotten 
 after a whole six months! I dare say, they'll be having me 
 commit bigamy next, and making me the father of three sets 
 of twins!" 
 
 163 
 
BABEL 
 
 In his heart he felt incensed because the rumour was not 
 true, and it appalled him to think how small the world 
 was. There was a spark of pleasure, too, that he had not 
 been forgotten, even though there was malice behind the 
 remembrance. 
 
 ENTER FRIEND 
 
 A fortnight later he received a brief pencilled message on a 
 postcard: 
 
 "Arrived last night, and feel weary and sick. Do be a good 
 fellow, and come and see me as soon as you can. Julius." 
 
 An address in Princes Square, Bayswater, was given. Gom- 
 barov swallowed a hasty cup of tea, and hurried out to find 
 his friend. It was not a part of London that he was familiar 
 with. Thus far he had been cultivating those populous sections 
 that were within the reach of his purse. High-sounding names 
 frightened him, gave an air of inaccessibility to the places that 
 bore them. He was at home with simple people, and in ^ite 
 of his alien appearance invariably gained the confidence of 
 all simple folk during the first few minutes of conversation, 
 after which he might count on them to tell him the stories of 
 their lives. They divined in him something that was qxiite 
 outside themselves, yet with it a sympathy that comprehended 
 them. They were mostly like that workingman he had once 
 met in a public house, who told him his romance, then 
 observed: "Now, what would ye have done in my place? It 
 isn't as if you were the likes of me. One can see as you have 
 more in your little finger than I've got in my whole brainl " 
 
 He discovered that his best way to Princes Square was to 
 go to Queen's Road by tube. He had to change at Charing 
 Cross and at Tottenham Court Road. There was something 
 incredibly diabolic to him about this intricate network of 
 
 164 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 underground railwa5rs. It was not that he had not seen the 
 subways, tunnels and overhead raUways of New York, but 
 whereas these ran up and down almost as erectly and as 
 disconnectedly as its streets, London's system, like its streets, 
 was convolutionary, as if, indeed, the great city were a colossal, 
 tight-knit brain, its diffused energy throbbing more or less 
 evenly over vast spaces. 
 
 Gombarov found Princes Square and wondered, as he looked 
 at the large colonnaded, ochre-coloured houses, whether Julius 
 had come into a fortune to enable him to live in one of them. 
 He rang the bell, and was admitted by a black-frocked, white- 
 pinafored, white-capped maid, who conducted him into a large 
 desCTted sitting-room, full of large upholstered chairs. He 
 sat down in one of them and picked up a copy of Punch from 
 a table crowded with newspapers. He read the lines under 
 the pictures as so many words devoid of meaning, for his mind 
 was full of his friend. ... He was picturing to himself how 
 he would look. How slow he was in putting in an appearance! 
 Long minutes passed. . . . Then the door quietly opened, and 
 in stepped the tall form of Julius, tired and solemn and 
 pale-faced; though three years yovmger, he looked as many 
 years older than Gombarov. His hair, which in the old days 
 had been long, was cropped short, like a German student's. 
 Deep lines marked the face he had known as absurdly young. 
 There was none of the impetuosity of maimer that he had 
 alwaj^ associated with him. He was not prepared for such 
 violent changes, and for an instant there flitted across his 
 mind the image of Rudin in that ineffable scene in which 
 Lezhnyov ran across him for the last time in the hotel of a 
 smEiU Russian town. He was so startled that he did not move 
 at once. Julius came over to him. Then he rose, and the two 
 embraced in the Russian manner, kissing each other. 
 
 165 
 
BABEL 
 
 "Yes," said Julius, who had guessed the cause of Gombarov's 
 astonishment, "I am Julius, your friend of old, and I am not 
 what I was. Life is not kinderspiel. You can see it has beoi 
 none too gentle with me. But you — you look the same as 
 when I last saw you. That is strange, as according to aU 
 accoimts, you've had a small army to' provide for, which is 
 neither easy nor pleasant when you have a little pack of your 
 own dreams to shoulder at the same time. Yet you do not 
 seem changed at all. ... I hope your mother is well. And, 
 by the way, how's your stepfather, the old Gombarov?" 
 
 "Oh, he! Still at it, immersed in the problems of the world. 
 In particular, he is busy stud3nng comparative cultures, as 
 far as I can gather, in order to demonstrate the Jews to be 
 the centre of the solar sjrstem." 
 
 "Poor man! " exclaimed Julius, laughing his old characteristic 
 chortling laugh. "I am inclined to agree with Borne that 
 Judaism is not a religion but a misfortune. . . . Frankly, I am 
 not attracted to it at all. The study of philosophy, the exercise 
 of supreme reason, makes all that impossible for me. . . . And 
 how is your unde Baruch?" 
 
 "Oh, Baruch! He has become a mere chemist's assistant. 
 I cannot think of him but with pity, for I am sure he is one of 
 the world's great men wasted. . . . Well, you remember how 
 inspiringly he used to talk on science and philosophy, keeping 
 us up till dawn, when you and I and Leon used sometimes to 
 go out and watch the sunrise. Then for me, it was back to 
 work at the New World. Poor Baruch!" 
 
 "Yes, yes, you are altogether a sublimely ridiculous famOy, 
 and you by no means its least distinguished member. How 
 often, during my first two years in Berlin, on days when hunger, 
 cold and despair were my constant companions, did I think 
 with tenderness and affection of your wistful figure and your 
 
 1 66 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 grey, sad, old-world face, so strangdy out of place against that 
 madly boisterous background, and I thought of your patience 
 and endurance, and I gathered courage from the thought of 
 your courage. Ah, my dear John, do jrou know that courage is 
 the supreme virtue!" 
 
 "I was not aware of possessing courage," returned Gombarov. 
 ''Indeed, I always thought myself a great coward for not 
 kicking over the traces earlier. Now it may be too late. . . . 
 I am thirty-one. I have stuck so long in one place. I have 
 had no schooling, and fed mysdf supremdy ignorant. But 
 you, with your years at philosophy, yoiu: life and experience 
 abroad, you must consider me a child. Like a child, I have 
 often envied you . . . yes, envied you . . . and hated mysdf." 
 
 "Yes, my friend," proceeded Julius, in his soft mdodious 
 voice, "you are a mere child when I think of the worlds of 
 Reason that I have traversed with the best philosophical 
 minds of Germany — I will not speak for the moment of the 
 world of unreason into which I have sometimes deviated — 
 but in the very fact that you are an illusioned child and I a 
 full-grown man, a reason-possessing animal, may be your 
 deliverance and my damnation. For a child's mind is still 
 moved by illusion and the blind energy that gives rise to 
 illusion, and in this illusive energy there is stuff and iacentive 
 for his creating, if only a palace of wood blocks or a sand 
 castle by the sea. And so the yoimg spirit of the artist, 
 taking possession of its material, however imworthy, impreg- 
 nates it with itsdf and makes it live. . . . But Philosophy, 
 Reason, is quite another thing. Its processes are quite the 
 contrary. It disengages itself from matter and soars above it 
 in the vast, infinite spaces. What can the creeping sopent 
 know of the thoughts of the soaring eagle? The serpent is of 
 the earth, and his wisdom is of the earth; and the eagle is of the 
 
 167 
 
BABEL 
 
 air, and his wisdom is of the infinite air. . . . And so the 
 philosopher, the man of Reason, looks down upon the earth, 
 where, to his distant vision, all things lose themselves, become 
 at best no more than a pattern as of a buttrafly's wings, 
 relatively a nothingness. Do you realise that there are stars 
 compared to which the earth is a hand-ball? What meaning, 
 then, can earthly fame and glory and wealth and ambition have 
 to a thinking man? Reason gives man wii^ to soar above all 
 earthly things. But it is not as an eagle that man flies above 
 the earth, it is as a winged serpent, and there is ever that 
 heart-deep longing towards the earth, which, however, is no 
 longer the same, since a more rarefied atmosphere has been 
 enjoyed. . . . Mark you, the great Plato destroyed his tragedies 
 when he b^an to follow Socrates. . . . For the serpent can 
 grow wings only at the expense of his fangs. . . " 
 
 "Yet the eagle," interrupted Gombarov, "has a beak, and 
 like the serpent, is still a thing of prey." 
 
 "That is quite true," replied Julius. "I was leading up to 
 that. The original bird, as you may know, has evolved from 
 the r^tile, but the first birds had no beak, and that is the 
 precise tragedy of man aspiring towards the heights. . . . 
 He has neither a fang nor a beak. He is neither of the earth, 
 nor of the air. . . . And that is my tragedy. You behold 
 in me one who has desired and still desires both. And, having 
 desired both, I have been in a state of incessant conflict. For 
 I beg you to remember that a himian being in general, and one 
 of us — ^whose life, after all, consists of thinking, of continued, 
 uninterrupted soul-processes — ^in particular, is a very complex 
 bundle, and very variegated, and presents a most surprising 
 play of colours when held up to the light: we are one and all 
 things at different moments." 
 
 "Do you intend to say," interrupted Gombarov once more, 
 
 i68 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 "that the philosopher has killed the poet in you, that the one, 
 in a sense, has overwhelmed the other?" 
 
 "Yes and no ! That is to say, only roughly," replied Julius. 
 "Reason itself is a kind of poetry, perhaps the supreme poetry, 
 and soars above all things. If it were not so, Plato might have 
 gone on writing tragedies." 
 
 "Perhaps it is a pity that he did not do so," said Gombarov 
 in a manner that indicated almost a personal annoyance, for 
 he was thinking this in connection with Julius and not with 
 Plato. "There is the analogous case of Tolstoy, who, if he 
 could, would have destroj'ed all the artistic work that he had 
 ; done — all, in fact, that mattered — for the sake of his Christian 
 philosophy, which few will read." 
 
 ) "Don't be angry, my dear friend!" exclaimed Julius, in a 
 voice full of appeal. "And please don't speak disreg)ectfuUy 
 of men whose genius has led them to renunciation. It takes 
 the greatest possible courage to renoimce. Had I been able 
 to do it, I should not be returning to you like this. I am tired, 
 life-tired! Oh, brother, cannot you understand me? Do 
 you not behold me in my pain? All my joy is lost. All my 
 illusions gone. Ambition a dream — though still mightily 
 lowering upon me — fame, glory; nay, brother, the very essence 
 of happiness, mark me, I have dissected, coolly, gradually, 
 inexorably, and have fovmd this essence nichtig. Do you 
 comprehend what I am saying? Do you? I am coming back 
 an old broken man to you." 
 
 He sighed. Then the soft look in his eyes assumed a harder, 
 more determined character, as he went on: 
 
 "Be careful that you do not misimderstand me. You will 
 do me the highest and most impardonable wrong if you think 
 that I have declared the grapes sour because they are beyond 
 my reach. For, John, let me tell you, though perhj^ you 
 
 169 
 
BABEL 
 
 know it already: there is one spot, one little comer, one spark, 
 that is pure, high and eternally noble within me, and though 
 I may be the veriest serf and craven in many moments and 
 days in my life, this one spark is the judge and decider in the 
 highest things of my life. And all I have said proceeds from 
 this one spark. And if I had riches, I would still be imhappy, 
 still be identically the same: for these but cast an illusion of 
 gladness and joy over one, and it is the conviction that such 
 are illusions which crushes me. . . . 
 
 "Crushes me? Yes, a thousand times. Yes, for it robs 
 the very basis on which the whole fabric of my entire life has 
 rested. Right well do I know that no man worthy of the 
 name rests on his oars when he comes to this point, but the 
 task of remaking and remoulding a life is hard and terrible. 
 Look at history. How few men have done it! True, it is 
 already something to have developed even to this early stage; 
 true, you must not esteem me so mean as to say nay to the 
 task at the very outset. But I wish to be honest, I do not 
 wish to lie, and as I know the terrors of the way which I shall 
 have to wander, I tremble. But let this be uttered, this one 
 word said, which I shall not retract to the end of my existence 
 on earth: life is a bitter thing. This is glibly said, but 
 upon whom the light of this knowledge first dawns, his soul 
 quakes. And in spite of the reconciliations that await the 
 hero who accepts life to the bitterest dregs, the ineffable peace 
 that comes upon him who emerges from the awful conflict — 
 Jesus of Nazareth, whether the tale be truth or fiction, to 
 mention but one instance — in spite of this peace that passeth 
 all understanding, though it may be sublime, — in spite of all 
 this, I say, this and all that is concomitant therewith: the 
 infinite woe that is the greatest teacher, and thus the sole 
 instructor — in spite of this: let no glib tongue dare to impugn 
 
 170 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 the name and honour of those who have honestly rejected life. 
 A mighty people and the most preponderant and serene of 
 religions, Buddhism, see in it their highest dogma; and one 
 of the clearest and deepest thinkers, Arthur Schopenhauer, 
 was its avowed and fanatical disciple. Do you know who 
 would best xmderstand such life-negating natures? Not the 
 mob, the many, but the heroes of the other side. And one 
 thing more: these heroes have not traversed the longer path. 
 No, the scheme is not to be thought of as a single line on 
 which some paiise and the others go on, but rather as a common 
 line up to a point, up to a psurting of the ways. . . . But I 
 am a rhetorician, although I have battled and am battling 
 against it. Carlyle was a rhetorician . . . 
 
 "Well ..." and Julius laughed, "here I am talking away 
 very hard on philosophy on our very first meeting, but I 
 haven't seen any one for days. . . . And I have so much to 
 say to you, and I can't. Do you understand such torture? 
 I dash myself against the gate, but it's barred, bolted, locked; 
 and within such treasiures! Do you understand such torture? 
 Did you ever hear a certain story of a certain man, one who 
 never had a moment of rest? By the way, the story saj's that 
 'never' is not what they call a figure of speech. Not a moment 
 of rest. Every moment he lived. Just think of that! Not 
 even in his sleep, or when he was roaring with laughter. . . . 
 Well, junge, come out and let's have some dinner." And 
 Julius hit his palm mightily on Gombarov's shoulder, making 
 his friend wince. And he looked more like himself, the Julius 
 that Gombarov remembered of old. 
 
 Such was the extraordinary meeting of the two friends, who 
 had not seen each other for seven years. 
 
 They had dinner in a small Soho restaurant, where, over 
 an exotic meal and a bottle of wine, they exchanged raninis- 
 
 171 
 
BABEL 
 
 cences and discussed old mutual acquaintances and friends. 
 As the evening progressed, Julius became more and more 
 his old impetuous boyish self, while Gombarov developed an 
 ironic mood, and Julius luaghed uproariously at his apt if 
 sometimes bitter quips made at the expense of men and 
 things. 
 
 "I tell you what," said Julius, "your sufferings, which have, 
 indeed, been great, have caused you to grow an ironic shell 
 about you, which puts people off who do not know you. But 
 my sufferings have wholly disarmed me, have opened up all 
 the doors of compassion in me, and I suffer with aU. Do you 
 know, John, it sometimes seems to me that I have a greater 
 capacity for loving than any of you . . . But come, junge, 
 let's pay the bill, then get back to my room." 
 
 Once up in Julius's room, they resumed the conversation 
 where they left off. Gombarov sat in the large chair, while 
 Julius lay on the bed, propped up on the pillow, and from this 
 position he talked as fluently as from any other. 
 
 "It is a terrible, a terrible thing," Julius was saying in a 
 tired, poignant voice, after he had talked for some time. "It 
 is a terrible thing to be able to soar, yet to have this intense 
 longing for the earth, this intense craving for a body, I should 
 say a particular body, so insqjarable from the q)irit, to fed 
 always, always, that one is a lost, a wandering soul, or half 
 a soul, ever seeking the other half, needful to its health, com- 
 pletion, spiritual well-being. . . . Ah, need I tell you? Can't 
 you guess? . . ." 
 
 "A woman? . . ." 
 
 "A wonderful woman. A goddess." 
 
 "Doesn't she love you?" asked Gombarov, after an awkward 
 silence. 
 
 "Yes, but matters are very complicated. She has a husband, 
 
 172 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 a fine, brilliant fellow, and once my best friend. And she 
 has two children. . . ." 
 
 '"And she is in Gennany?" 
 
 "No, in Italy, just now." 
 
 'TSTiat do you propose doing?" 
 
 "I want her to come to me." 
 
 ''Has she her own income?" 
 
 "My dear John," said Julius, leaning forward from his pillow, 
 "don't ever say such a thing again!" 
 
 "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings," explained Gombarov, 
 astonished. "For, after all, I have touched a very sore wound 
 in myself at the same time. ..." 
 
 "Oh! " exclaimed Julius, with a new interest. "Where, then, 
 is she? For you look miserable! " 
 
 "In Paris." 
 
 "WTiy isn't she here?" 
 
 "Lack of an income, my friend! Now, perhaps you will 
 understand why I asked you that question." 
 
 "Tell me about her." 
 
 Gombarov told him briefly about his affair. 
 
 "YoiU' position is comparatively simple," commented Julius. 
 "Surely, she has offered to join you here." 
 
 •"Xo. You must not forget that American women have a 
 different conc^tion of things. And that is what troubles me. 
 I want everything offered up to me, whether I take it or not. 
 That condition is a need vrith me. Nor is this need altogetha 
 actuated by selfishness. You see, life has been continuous 
 change with me. AU my life has been one effort to establish 
 relations. But no one has ever stuck long to me. Life has 
 been a constant dropping away of what has been won. Has 
 it been my fault? I don't know. I have always been faithful 
 to a woman, loyal to a frioid. Change may be salutary, but 
 
 173 
 
BABEL 
 
 I sometimes find myself hating it. For however changeful a 
 person's life may be, there is always at least one something, 
 at least one thread, that he desires to be constant. In the 
 midst of all change we seek an eternal note in life, one thing 
 we may stick to, one thing that may stick to us. Since I have 
 come to London, life has struck me as a thiag essentially of 
 fragments. All you have to do is to walk out into the street 
 and look about you, or read the newspapers or get to talking 
 to people and have them tell you about their lives, and you 
 get the same impression: of boredom, disillusion, of a snatching 
 at the fragments of life, not a single solid thing to ding to. 
 It is as if a canker were eating at the heart of the world, and 
 at yom: own heart. . . ." 
 
 "Have you felt that, too?" interrupted Julius. "But that 
 is also true of Germany. One gets the impression of the world 
 being in the state of an over-ripe cheese, all but falling apart." 
 
 "living in the midst of all this," resumed Gombarov, "how 
 often do I say to myself: If only I could depend even on one 
 thing in life! And the more I think the more I say to mjrself 
 that only a woman, and the love of a woman, can redeem me, 
 save me from this horrible feeling of being always on the verge 
 of falling apart. You will call this sentimentality, no 
 doubt. . . ." 
 
 "Poor boy!" said Julius. "Yet nothing is so changeful as 
 a woman's love. I think I may be right, after all, that it is 
 better to be an eagle of reason than a serpent of emotion. One 
 must learn to keep aloof from everything." 
 
 "But even an eagle," interrupted Gombarov, "has his she- 
 eagle." 
 
 "Yes, damn it, that is so!" exclaimed Julius, and laimched 
 forth mto an eloquent dissertation on love, from which his 
 listener gathered that the speaker regarded the figure of speech 
 
 174 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 as illustrative of a concrete and particular instance. It was 
 apparent that the 'she-eagle" idea strongly appealed to him 
 as illustrating his own case. 
 
 After a time the glow vanished from Julius's face, which 
 grew haggard and assumed a tormented expression. "Leave 
 me! Leave me!" he implored his friend. "Leave me! I 
 want to be alone!" 
 
 Gombarov rose and left, after securing his friend's promise 
 to call next day. He went away, thinking: "What a strange 
 fellow! And how strange that we should meet in London, 
 we two, who were bom in Russia, have known each other in 
 America, each with a love in another country, the one in Paris, 
 the other in Rome! " 
 
 Next day Julius called, and it was evident that the Tufnells 
 did not take kindly to him. It was clear that they regarded 
 him as a strange animal, an alien. Mrs. Tufndl's eyes showed 
 apprehension of losing her lodger. 
 
 "How can you live with these impossible people?" was the 
 first remark Julius made when they were alone in Gombarov's 
 room. 
 
 ''It never occurred to me that they were impossible," said 
 Gombarov, naively. "I dare say, he being a bailiff is some- 
 thing of a monster. But she is a good soul, and has been as 
 kind to me as a mother. Besides, I pay only nineteen shillings 
 for the room and all the meals, which includes an eleven 
 o'clock supper, if I want it. I may tdl you I have taken to 
 eating meat three times a day since I've been in England, 
 whCTeas in America I could eat it no more than three times a 
 week, and it's all included in the nineteen shillings." 
 
 "That is indeed cheap. Still, I think you had better come 
 with me to Princes Square," urged Julius. "It will cost you 
 thirty-five shillings, but we wHl be together. Besides, it is 
 
 175 
 
BABEL 
 
 very important, if you are to get along, to have a West End 
 address." 
 
 "I shall have to write more articles than I am writing now," 
 said Gombarov, astonished at the last piece of information, 
 and wondering how Julius had got hold of it after two days 
 in London. 
 
 "Ill help you," said Julius. "We will, both of us, become 
 practical, and write articles together. We will encourage one 
 another." 
 
 "Ill think it over," said Gombarov. 
 
 Within a week, to the great disappointment of Mrs. Tufnell, 
 he moved into Princes Square. Here the two friends talked and 
 planned, discussed their love affairs, cocked coffee in a common 
 pot over a methylated spirit lamp; tiring of which, they took 
 long walks through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, and 
 often continued their way into Piccadilly Curcus. Again there 
 were days and nights, when the pair threaded their way 
 through all sorts of streets, and Julius, acting as mentor, 
 pointed to this house and that, and informed his companion 
 of its occupancy by some celebrity, past or present, whether 
 duke, author, artist or politician. Julius astonished him by 
 his wide erudition on this peculiar subject. 
 
 When they did not do any of these things or were sick of 
 each other's company, they either walked alone, or were in 
 their separate rooms, listening to each other's footsteps, as 
 of a captive wild beast pacing back and forth in his cage. 
 Julius's footfalls were the heavier and the louder, and as he 
 was a poor sleeper he often continued his peripatetic medita- 
 tions after the rest of the house was dark and everyone was 
 in bed; it was not long before the occupant of the room below 
 his complained of the disconcerting nocturnal exercise over 
 his head. 
 
 176 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 During this period Gombarov wrote fewer articles for his 
 American newspapers than before, and he watched the ebbing 
 of his resources with a perturbed heart. 
 
 ENTER BSOTHER 
 
 A month after his rapprochement with Julius, Gombarov 
 heard from his brother again, this time from Genoa. It was 
 Feodor's plan to come up to London shortly. A week later 
 a telegram came at breakfast, stating that he would arrive 
 at Charing Cross the same morning. 
 
 Gombarov gobbled down his breakfast and, too restless to 
 sit still, took a 'bus to Charing Cross, getting there an hour 
 before the arrival of his brother's train. He paced up and 
 down the main tniin floor, while his mind was engaged in 
 speculating on Feodor's appearance. After all, it was no mean 
 event meeting a brother one hadn't seen for twenty-seven 
 j^ears, and himself only four years old at the last meeting. 
 What did he actually remember of his brother? Only this: 
 his brother's grey school imiform and its silver buttons, as 
 with his small legs, he, John, then Vanya, tried to keep pace 
 with their wearer along the streets of Kieff. Nor did he 
 possess a picture of him at any period of his life. There was 
 nothing at all to build a portrait on. Nevertheless, a portrait 
 did shape itself in his mind — perhaps, had shaped itself in 
 the imconscious part of him for some time — ^Russian of feature, 
 stamped with Russian melancholy, altogether like some Rus- 
 sian Hamlet in mood. Why should this portrait have thus 
 persisted in his mind, in the absence of all evidence? He 
 was, indeed, after what he had seen and known of the various 
 members of his fanuly, incapable of conceiving any new 
 member whom he had not seen as a normal, reasonably con- 
 tented being. He had subconsciously put all his knowledge, 
 
 177 
 
BABEL 
 
 of which he was made up as a kind of mystic bundle, into 
 the portrait of his brother. 
 
 Drunken with expectancy, he paced up and down past the 
 platfonn gates. Ah, he would know him at once, the long-lost 
 brother of his secret desire! The minutes slipped by slowly. 
 He entered the refreshment room, drank a cup of coffee at 
 the coimter, and studied his reflection in the mirror opposite 
 The hot liquid wanned his blood and quickened his thoughts. 
 He experienced one of those occasions, not uncommon to him, 
 when coSee intoxicated him more than could any spirituous 
 liquor. It made him keenly aware of his individual entity, 
 and not all his misfortime and misery made him desire an 
 entity other than was already his. If fortune were to come 
 to him, he desired it only on his own terms; he wanted to 
 enjoy it with that peculiar consciousness that he learned to 
 know as John Gombarov, and not as any one else. Vfle or 
 good, he intensely desired to be himself. It seemed a strange, 
 unreasonable desire. A lean, miserable bundle he outwardly 
 looked in that mirror, but he felt, at all events, in that instant, 
 the presence of the imrevealed, the invisible him, his true self, 
 which, strong and proud and audacious, was chafing imder the 
 ludicrously imfitting shell conferred by ironic gods. In that 
 intuitive, abysmal instant, there was revealed to him a black 
 ravine, flooded as with lightning, tremulous with the fluttering 
 of broad, black wings. This image formulated itself into a 
 thought, and he said to himself: "I must dig into myselt. 
 What I find I must make an inventory of — on paper. Pct- 
 haps, I can dig up all my past, and get rid of it in that way. 
 Then I shall feel lighter." But here was his brother coming 
 to remind him, to show him the downmost bottom of the 
 ravine that was his past. Nothing was lost. The terrible 
 past had a way of projecting itself into the future. Ghosts 
 
 178 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 would arise and, holding hands, dance round him in a whirling 
 circle. 
 
 Another ten minutes to wait. He bought a platform ticket, 
 and walked through the gate. And waited, waited . . . 
 Unspeakable suspense, unutterable pleasiu'e ... A railway 
 station was an alluring thing; today, like a fascinating woman, 
 it held out intense moments. The huge engine triiunphantly 
 steamed in, trailing its long chain of carriages. Dozens of 
 doors were flung open, innumerable porters hustled. Gom- 
 barov watched the passengers issuing forth. Immediately in 
 front of him he saw a stout male form, its back turned, strug- 
 gling with a large bag through a door. It scrambled down 
 to the platform, then tinned full face towards Gombarov. 
 
 Two glances interpenetrated. Recognition was instantaneous. 
 The stout figure and the lean rushed towards one another 
 and onbraced. 
 
 "Ah,Vanya!» 
 
 "Ah, Feodya!" 
 
 Then they drew back, and scrutinised one another from 
 head to foot. 
 
 "You are as thin as a herring," said Feodor, in Russian. 
 "I could make a mouthful of you!" 
 
 "You are as fat as a whale," retorted John, in the same 
 language. "You'd last me at least six months! " 
 
 "I'd make tough eating," replied Feodor. "I am all muscle." 
 
 A greyhound and a bull-dog could not have prraented a 
 more violent contrast. John was slightly taller. Feodor had 
 a thick neck, a pair of mighty shoulders and a chest which 
 would have done credit to a heavy-weight chanq)ion. They 
 held their hats in their hands, and John's eyes were for a 
 moment fixed on Feodor's huge head, with its scant, short- 
 cropped hair, tinged with grey. 
 
 179 
 
BABEL 
 
 "Oh, you needn't look at my hair," laughed Feodor. "I 
 admit you've got the best of me there. You look like a poet 
 with your long black locks. Are you a poet? Fancy, me a 
 brother, and not even knowing your occupation!" 
 
 Feodor's clean-shaven, swarthy face was gay with the rq)- 
 pling smile of one who lived an outdoor life and knew how 
 to make the best of it. There was, certainly, nothing about 
 his person that suggested the melancholy Russian one meets 
 with in books. 
 
 "Cheer up, Vanya!" he exclaimed. "Greet your long-lost 
 brother with a smile from ear to ear. And, in a low voice, he 
 began to hum a Russian comic song: 
 
 Ckook, chook, choomandra, 
 Navarila booraka . . . 
 
 "I tell you what," he said, suddenly breaking off. "You are 
 going to laugh with me for the next three days, for that's how 
 long I am going to stay with you." 
 
 "Do you want your bags carried?" asked a passing porter. 
 
 "Yes, and a taxi," said Gk)mbarov. 
 
 They walked behind the porter, Feodor laughing, John 
 smiling. Behind his effortful grimace, John was thinking: 
 
 "Yes, that is how I should have been had I been properly 
 taken care of. That is how I should have been if as a boy 
 I had got proper food, proper sleep, proper education. That 
 is how happy I should have been. That is how I should have 
 laughed, I had the makings of a big frame like his, of muscles 
 like his, of an outlook on life like his . . ." 
 
 And a picture rose in his mind of himself as a boy, waking, 
 after five hours' sleep, to the clamour of an fdarm-clock, 
 wading through the snow in the night to secure his little bundle 
 of newspapers, braving the frosts and the rains, suffering 
 
 1 80 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 insults and humiliations . . . then, in the morning, scurrying 
 home to breakfast and sleepily dragging himself to school . . . 
 Three years of this! Then those other years that followed, 
 in a factory, and ... He did not want to think any 
 further. 
 
 "My God! My God!" he whispered under his breath. 
 
 He walked beside his brother and smiled grimadngly, which 
 made him fed like a pitiful gargoyle. He wanted to weep. 
 Oh, how he wanted to weep! It came all over him at once, 
 the whole tragedy of his life, the futility of his existence, and 
 the futility of the existence of all the Gombarovs. Oh, how 
 he wanted to weep, to bury his head somewhere, and weep, 
 weep, weq) . . . They sat in the taxi; his brother's robust 
 hand was on his shoulder; it gave him the sensation of shrink- 
 ing and of smallness, and he smiled grimadngly. 
 
 "WTiat are you thinking of, Vanya?" asked Feodor. "Some 
 one would thinV you were married to a vixen to have such 
 a worried look! Are you married? To be sure, you are old 
 enough. Well, look at me, my boy. I am married, am a 
 father, too, three little ones, and I wouldn't give one up, no, 
 not I, not for a mint of money. . . . Come, tell your brother 
 what you are worried about!" 
 
 This was rubbing it in, as it evoked another flood of mem- 
 ories concerning certain quests in his life, not gratified. . . . 
 With an effort he controlled himself and, incongruously smiling, 
 rephed: 
 
 "No, Feodya, I am not married. But I was just thinking 
 how strange it was that we should have recognised each other. 
 Just like that! Now, I recognised you by yoiur nose, also 
 by the formation of your eyes, but chiefly by your nose. You 
 have our family nose, just like grandmother's, mother's and 
 sister's, long and aquiline." 
 
 l8l 
 
BABEL 
 
 "I can return the compliment," said Feodor, laughing. "I 
 also recognised you by your nose." 
 
 There was a pause. John was thinking: 
 
 "There is this about a nose. Least of all the bodfly organs 
 is it dependent on food, affection, women, money, exercise, or 
 disposed to any radical visible change. At all events, it always 
 keeps the same size and shape, so that the only outward 
 difference it may present is purely relative, in the degree that 
 it may belong to a filled-out or a starved face. There is my 
 half-brother, Absalom, whose nose seems to be larger since 
 he has become a vegetarian, but that, of course, only seems 
 so, because his under-nourished face has grown thinner. On 
 the other hand, Feodor's face is almost round from good 
 health, and so his nose seems smaller, though actually, our 
 noses are identically the same." 
 
 Grotesque, naive, child-like thoughts had a way of bracing 
 him, and he said aloud: 
 
 "Yes, we have certainly been granted a nose. I always 
 say to myself: 'If I win out in life, it will be by a nosel' 
 It's an English racing term, and it suits our family to a T." 
 
 "What a huge city! What a magnificent park!" exclaimed 
 Feodor. 
 
 They were passing Hyde Park, along Bayswater Road. 
 
 "Yes, and you haven't seen a fraction of it!" replied John, 
 with a personal pride that might have done credit to a bom 
 cockney. He directed his brother's attention to points of 
 interest along the way. 
 
 No sooner had he reached his room in Princes Square than 
 Feodor began rolling up his sleeves, in order to wash. Lily 
 was not long in coming in with a jug of hot water. Full of 
 fun, and prettily smiling, she was about to walk out of the 
 room, but Feodor, spreading his arms out, barred the way. 
 
 182 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 "What your name is?" asked Feodor, in the best English 
 he could muster, to the amusement of the others. 
 
 "Lily," said the girl, growing prettier with blushes. 
 
 "A pret-ty name," said Feodor. "Is ze pret-ty smile for 
 me?" 
 
 Lity giggled with pleasure, partly hiding her face in her 
 pinafore and teasingly showing one eye. 
 
 "You like my brother, yes?" laughed Feodor, chucking her 
 under the visible side of her chin. 
 
 Lily made an afBrmative nod and, still giggling, rushed out 
 of the room. 
 
 "A handsome girl!" resumed Feodor, in Russian. "I dare 
 say, you have a kiss every morning before breakfast. Out 
 with it, you rogue! Say that you have. Or you are no 
 brother of mine!" 
 
 "I have a girl," said John, half shyly. 
 
 "Ah, I congratulate you! And where is this girl of yours?" 
 
 "In Paris!" 
 
 "Hah, hah! That's a good one! In Paris! What's the 
 good of a girl in Paris? And how do you know whether she 
 may not be kissing some other young man?" asked Feodor, 
 teasingly. 
 
 John winced. Ever since he had received that letter from 
 Winifred, telling him of the young men who called at tea, 
 certain vague suspicions troubled him with an irritating fre- 
 quency. It suddenly occurred to him that Lily had a "boy," 
 who took her out every Wednesday, and an idea came into 
 his mind, which he would put to the test at the first oppor- 
 tunity. In the meantime, the trivicd episode of Lily and his 
 brother had given him another aspect of Feodor's bounty of 
 joy, and this helped him to imderstand what lay crushed in 
 himself under all the strata of pain and suffering. A no 
 
 183 
 
BABEL 
 
 imcertain voice spoke within him, and asserted with convic- 
 tion that had his life been better conditioned, he too should 
 have been like that, a normal human being enjoying all that 
 life gave to enjoy. And yet — ^that was the irony of it — he 
 could not and would not live that life now. With his intenser 
 perceptions, gained through suffering and experience of the 
 arts, he was yearning for a life that was at once sensuous 
 and exquisite, subtle-nuanced and many-faceted, like the dream 
 he once had had of a room, heptagonal and seven-doored, each 
 door leading to a new delight. But, as in that dream, so 
 now in life, he sat in a hypnotic chair which held him helpless 
 and from which he could not rise, though seven genii opened 
 seven doors slightly and their dark-lashed eyes beckoned him 
 on! "I desire too much!" was written in Greek over the 
 portrait of a celebrity he had forgotten, £ind he thought: "It 
 could be written over mine!" 
 
 The boarding-house mistress, duly impressed with the 
 importance of the occasion, assigned John, Feodor and Julius 
 a separate table in the dining room. This was to be appre- 
 ciated when one considered the nature of the clientele of the 
 houses in that region in pre-war days. This clientele consisted 
 mostly of women, old and middle-aged, maidenly and super- 
 annuated, widows and wives and daughters of Anglo-Indian 
 officers and of Colonials generally, by-products of Empire, 
 living in idleness on small incomes, pensions and annuities. 
 Without occupation and lacking outlet for their moribund 
 energies, they vented their spleen on the poor over-worked 
 housemaids, whom more than once Gombarov and Julius had 
 caught crying in the rooms or on the stairs. Lily, it is true, 
 being a healthy fun-loving country girl, got her revenge by 
 mimicking the ways of the termagants before the two friends, 
 but Mag, the other girl, took things to heart, and was so over- 
 
 184 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 whelmed by JuKus's pitying kindness that, to his chagrin and 
 hiuniliation, she straightway fell in love with him, and, snatch- 
 ing his hand, would kiss it and slobber over it with the gratefid 
 affection of a dog, which caused Julius to keep his hands in 
 his pockets whenever poor Mag entered the room. 
 
 Julius, who was in the dining-room first, greeted the appear- 
 ance of the two brothers with an outburst of welcome. He 
 was dearly overcome with astonishment. 
 
 "Well, well!" he exclaimed. "You two, side by side, look 
 like a Before and After advertisement!" 
 
 They seated themselves and began to talk. They found 
 that they could best get along if Julius and Feodor talked 
 German, John and Julius English, Feodor and John Russian; 
 so that there was the odd spectacle of three persons sitting 
 at one table and conversing in three languages. 
 
 'TTou may well be astonished," Feodor said to Julius, "I 
 come to London, expecting Vanya to look like a breezy young 
 American, full of vim and dash, not to say business, and what 
 do I find? A melancholy poet!" 
 
 "And I," retaliated Gombarov, "had expected to find in 
 Feodya a real Russian, a sort of Hamlet, like Rudin. And I 
 find — ^well, you can see for yourself!" 
 
 At that moment a young Canadian came into the room. 
 He had never spoken either to John or Julius before, had 
 hardly more than nodded to them, though they had been in 
 the hotise for some time. Obviously he had taken them for 
 outrageous foreigners. On entering the room, his eyes fell 
 at once on Feodor and scrutinised him. A gleam of pleasure 
 was visible in them as he made his way among the tables and 
 paused before the animated trio. 
 
 "Excuse me," he drawled in a nasal tone, addressing himself 
 to Feodor. "But you are from the States, aren't you?" 
 
 185 
 
BABEL 
 
 The three of them burst out laughing, so uproariously as 
 to cause the rest of the diners to look round. It was xmusual 
 to laugh so healthily in a place as respectable as this. 
 
 "Have I made a mistake?" asked the astonished Canadian, 
 laughing with them. 
 
 "This man is a Russian," explained Julius. "This is the 
 Yank!" and he pointed a derisive finger at Gombarov. 
 
 "Well, I never!" was all the Canadian could find to say, 
 and after a bewildered pause apologised for his intrusion. 
 
 None appreciated the irony of the episode more than 
 Gombarov, and more than once they retiuned to jest 
 about it. 
 
 The brothers spent the rest of the day in sight-seeing, and 
 John found it hard to keep up with Feodor's inexhaustible 
 energy. They went to bed that night without touching upon 
 very intimate matters. 
 
 Next morning John rose early. Lily came in with a jug 
 of shaving water. She looked pretty and fresh in her clean 
 white pinafore and white cap, her blue eyes were smiling, hw 
 pink complexion invited the touch of fingers or lips, a wisp 
 of fair hair hung seductively over one ear and partly concealed 
 it, her firm virginal breasts were outlined clearly. 
 
 As Lily put down the jug on the washing-stand, Gombarov 
 took one of her hands, and she did not demur. 
 
 "Kiss me, LUy! " he said. 
 
 "I won't!" she replied, drawing her head backward. 
 
 He put an arm aroimd her waist, and a struggle ensued. 
 Once he prevailed, and held her tightly against him, his lips 
 on hers. She made no further protest. 
 
 "What soft lips you've got!" she whispered, when at last 
 then: lips parted. "Any girl would like them. You've got a 
 girl, haven't you?" 
 
 i86 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 "What about your young man?" he asked, without answering 
 her question. "I know you have one!" 
 
 "Of course, I have. What about him?" 
 
 "Your young man wouldn't like your kissing me, would he?" 
 
 She laughed. "He needn't know, need he?" 
 
 "But you love him, don't you? I mean you wouldn't like 
 him kissing any other girl, would you?" 
 
 "Let me catch him, and his niraiber will be up!" she 
 exclaimed viith amusing asperity. 
 
 Someone in the corridor called Lily. Gombarov lathered 
 his face and proceeded to make rapid strokes with razor across 
 his face, to keep pace with his thoughts. 
 
 "Lily is nice as girls go. Brought up respectably. And she 
 has a boy. And she loves him. Yet she kisses me and evi- 
 dently takes pleasure in it. And objects to her boy doing it. 
 And I, too, who didn't do it for pleasure's sake, nevertheless 
 took pleasure in it. There's Winifred in Paris, and those 
 young men who come to see her. There must be moments 
 when these young men try to kiss her. Is she then different 
 from Lily? But there must be other moments ... do they, 
 then, stop at kisses? Would Lily stop at kisses? . . ." 
 
 Thus his thoughts rambled on. One sudden, daring thought 
 stirred above the rest, and agitated him. It was to agitate 
 him for days to come. 
 
 All that day he and Feodor spent in sight-seeing, which 
 included a strenuous visit to the East India Docks, as Feodor 
 was interested in such mattCTS professionally. They had limch 
 at a hotel in the Strand, where another of those extraordinary 
 episodes occurred, confirming still more Gombarov's impression 
 of the bewQderingly complex network of modem life. It was 
 after lunch. They were sitting in the loimge, sipping their 
 black coffee and liqueurs, just as they might in any lounge 
 
 187 
 
BABEL 
 
 in any hotel in Ein-ope, when a tall, broad-shouldered English- 
 man, who, for some time had been looking intently at Feodor 
 from another chair, walked up to them and said: 
 
 "Mh Semenov, I believe?" 
 
 "Yes, and you are ... " Feodor looked questioningly at 
 the speaker. 
 
 "I have a better memory than you," said the latter, smiling. 
 "Perhaps you will know me when I remind you of the English- 
 man with whom you kindly shared a samovar at Nijni-Nov- 
 gorod two years ago." 
 
 "Oh, yes. Mister Richards! I did not expect ze pleasure 
 to meet again. I found my lost brother. That is why I 
 come here." 
 
 Gombarov was glad because of the interruption. He and 
 Feodor had been discussing painful family affairs. Feodor 
 had been urging him to adopt his own father's name, that of 
 Semenov, and to drop Gombarov. 
 
 "What do you owe the man, except your troubles?" asked 
 Feodor. "According to your own accoimt, he has ruined you 
 all, even his own children. As you may know, father pro- 
 vided some thousands of roubles for the education of Raya, 
 Dunya and yourself. You were to have become a doctor. 
 Instead the villain, whose name you bear, has squandered the 
 money — on what? Just smoke, as far as I can see. As for 
 your mother — ^and it is my misfortune as well as yours to be 
 her son — ^what do you owe her, who has driven you on the 
 streets at ten, who ..." 
 
 "She has suffered," interrupted John. "If she has made a 
 mistake, she has paid for it dearly. Who is to blame for 
 people making mistakes? People cannot help themselves. 
 They become wise too late, when all the mischief has been 
 done. I remember when I was fourteen I wanted to run 
 
 l88 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 away from home. I often r^ret that I didn't, as it might 
 have been better for the family as well as for me. Yet who 
 can tell what is best in the long run? Who can explain one's 
 actions or inactions, why one has done this and not done that? 
 A thousand, or even ten thousand, previous actions or inactions, 
 on the part of ourselves or our forefathers, may be responsible 
 for the pettiest action we do in life. It is paralyzing to think 
 of it. You do not love our mother, but what do I know of 
 my father? I sometimes feel as if I were bom into this world 
 without father, mother, relatives, or country. . . . Whom do 
 I owe anything? WHio, except friends and occasional strangers, 
 have shown me kindness or affection? But I was bom full 
 of pity, and I have always pitied all who have suffered . . . 
 but whether I have loved I cannot say. I have hated my 
 stepfather, and I have pitied even him. You ask me to change 
 my name, but what difference can it make whose name I bear? 
 life itself, as I have seen it, seems ugly and unbearable, and 
 it has made people what they are. We call ourselves civilised, 
 but how often I have wished that I were bom a savage. For 
 I have the great misfortime to be able to see all sides, and 
 so I pity everyone, including myself, almost without exception. 
 Of course, I am sorry for father, at his age spending his last 
 days alone. As for love, that is another thing. Tell me, why 
 should I love my father, whom I do not remember, whom I 
 do not know, who has left me all these years to my own fate, 
 and what a fate? . . ." 
 
 "My answer is this!" — and Feodor drew a small photograph 
 from his wallet and handed it to John. 
 
 It was a portrait of an old man of extraordinary beauty and 
 dignity, with full-grown beard and hair as profuse as that of 
 a youth, yet of a snowy whiteness that gave distinction, even 
 loveliness, to the face, suffused with a spiritual softness, a 
 
 189 
 
BABEL 
 
 kindliness, having in it an inscrutable something to kindle 
 gentle feelings in others. 
 
 John silently studied the portrait, and a strange feeling 
 came over him as from the sudden contact of a paternal hand 
 for the first time. Oh, what sadness, what infinite sadness, 
 was in those eyes, yet without a tinge of bitterness! Oh, 
 father, dear father, take pity on your son, see what they have 
 done to him! So young, and there is no peace or rest for him! 
 He is quite alone, wandering to find home. He is at your feet, 
 put your hands of blessing on his head. Ah, if you only knew 
 how he needs your blessing! Holy man, father, God will hear 
 you, if he will not hear him, your son! . . . 
 
 Gombarov was overcome by the intensity of his emotion, 
 and the thoughts it engendered. It was the only time that 
 he had ever experienced filial feeling, and he understood what 
 a void had been his in the childhood that had passed. And 
 he was like a child now, begging what was due to a child. 
 This feeling flared up, a flame that filled his frame. He 
 wanted to die. 
 
 "A fine head ... a fine head! " he murmured faintly, hand- 
 ing the portrait back to his brother. Then, after a pause, he 
 added: "You grew up with him, Feodya. Perhaps you can 
 tell me whether you see any resemblance between him and 
 me?" 
 
 "Not a little, but a great deal," replied Feodor. 
 
 "But I also resemble my mother a great deal," said John. 
 "Ill show you a portrait of her when we get back to the 
 house." 
 
 "I don't want to see it," said Feodor. 
 
 John took little note of the brusqueness of the answer, 
 for a new thought, a new discovery, took possession of him. 
 It was a possible explanation of certain clashes in his t^npera- 
 
 190 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 ment. Undoubtedly, his mother and his father were incom- 
 patible temperaments. Feodor was their eldest child, he the 
 youngest. Between Feodor's birth and his the incompatibility 
 of the father and the mother had time to establish itself. 
 Altogether, his mother had had thirteen children, four of whom, 
 luckily for themselves and others concerned, died at birth or 
 in infancy. She had the fierce, imappeasable creativeness of 
 a mother, and all the unconscious, rierce self-assertion of some- 
 thing that was part and parcel of nature, pre-destined, like 
 Nattire herself, perpetually to create; wherefore. Nature is so 
 often referred to as Mother Natiure, a creature both kindly 
 and fierce. In "old Gombarov," himself a "creator," man of 
 genius, irresponsibly creative, she found her mate and coimter- 
 part, like herself, like Nature, caring but to create, careless 
 of the fate of offspring, who are left to shift for themselves, 
 a prey to the strong, with no other defence against surrounding 
 life but the cunning and protective colouring conferred by the 
 instinct of self-preservation, which does not always preserve. 
 John had inherited this fierce creative spirit from his mother, 
 his philosophic reasonableness from his father, who was forty 
 when he was bom. As everjrthing in life sought an expression, 
 a perpetuation of itself, so all the fierce incompatibility of 
 his parents chose him for its battleground, fought in him 
 continually, would fight in him to the last day. He now 
 understood why he was hard and pitiful, timid and assertive, 
 why he wanted to write books and be the father of children, 
 why women repulsed and attracted him, why he was so shy 
 with them, yet wished to command them, make them do his 
 bidding. His conversations on this subject with Julius were 
 fierce, as if all his fierceness went into his words. No wonder 
 Julius sometimes called him "Turk! " 
 But there was adventure in discovery, in the continuous 
 
 191 
 
BABEL 
 
 finding of oneself, in the exploring of every crevice of one's 
 heart and brain. 
 
 There was a painful pause after Feodor's remark, in which 
 he conveyed his refusal to see his mother's picture. Thai 
 John observed: 
 
 "As you like . . ." 
 
 It was then that the Englishman whom Feodor had met at 
 Nijni-Novgorod came up to them, and the subject was not 
 resumed. 
 
 Feodor stayed three days and left, after exhausting John's 
 energy in sight-seeing. They parted on friendly terms at 
 Charing-Cross, but the departure left no void in John's heart. 
 He was simply indifferent, and neither hated nor loved his 
 brother. Twenty-seven years were an abyss of time not to 
 be bridged in three days. 
 
 Yet this mood of indifference hid something else. It was 
 a shallow crust which covered smouldering feelings, volcanic 
 in temper. From half-past eight in the evening, the time of 
 the departure of his brother's train, imtil twelve, moved by 
 these fires, he strode the streets. But at night, in bed, his 
 confused, tormented feelings crystallised into definite thoughts, 
 which arose from the same point and pursued the same 
 course, yet ultimately forked off into two separate channels, 
 one purely personal, the other abstractedly detached; for he 
 had a way, at odd moments, of escaping from his troubles in 
 a philosophy, or, if not exactly escaping, then watching his 
 affairs and his passions with dispassionate eyes, eyes of a 
 spectator. Thus his thoughts ran on: 
 
 There was his life before his brother came on the scene. 
 It was a bad enough mixtmre, full of strange, incompatible 
 ingredients. All these fragments of his life were in a mortar, 
 and his brother's coming was like the acting of a mysterious 
 
 192 
 
LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS 
 
 hand which held a pestle and ground down the contents of 
 the mortar, and there was one ingredient which permeated all 
 the others, and it contained the root and secret of all his desires. 
 It was the creative ingredient, his mother's soul, now permeat- 
 ing his being, speaking through him, crying for perpetuation, 
 for satisfaction, for material to wreak its passion on. This 
 recognition of his mother, this new knowledge of himself, was 
 a seed of fatality, since it fiercely clamoured for freedom, 
 growth, abundant expression of itself. Knowledge did not 
 act as a controller, but demanded further knowledge. "Knowl- 
 edge of good and evil . . ." He pondered over the phrase, 
 and thought: "But knowledge is in itself evil, as it arises 
 from curiosity, curiosity leads to experience, and experience 
 is evil. To experience is to know, and I want experience. 
 There is something profound in the Biblical use of 'to know' 
 . . . 'And Adam knew his wife . . .' An artist knows his 
 material . . ." His mother's fires in him fiercely craved for 
 a perpetuation of themselves . . . 
 
 And this led to the second line of thought: 
 Why was not this craving granted satisfaction? Why was 
 he allowed to suffer so? Why had the poor Gombarovs to suffer 
 so? Why did the whole world suffer so? And they all seemed 
 to suffer from the same a£9iction: the thwarting of a thousand 
 natural desires, above all, the desire to create. Why was he 
 so sensitively built that all his own sorrows and thwartings, 
 and those of the poor Gombarovs, and of the whole world, 
 should take refuge in his frail frame, and rage and boil and 
 seethe there? Was it that some day he might pour himself 
 into a book? It was a terrible, an appalling thought to him, 
 the sudden, flashing thought that he was chosen to bear it 
 all for no other reason than that some day he might pour the 
 concentrated essence of all this sorrow into a book, and that, 
 
 193 
 
BABEL 
 
 in its turn, this precious essence might diffuse itself among 
 men to console them with the refining processes of noble sorrow. 
 That was, then, the meaning of the phrase of "Qirist in men" 
 ... It was something to know the taste of the sacred wafer 
 soaked in Christ's blood. . . . 
 
 194 
 
CHAPTER V: BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 "God hath made timn upright; but 
 they have sought out many inven- 
 tions." 
 
 — EccLESiASTES, vii : 29. 
 
 BREAKES OF IKONS 
 
 GoMBASov had not been many weeks in London when he 
 bethought himself of its great men. There were many reasons 
 for his interest, and two in particular. There was the circum- 
 stance of his coming to London because he wanted to become 
 an author, and he thought he needed a sight of great men and 
 the example of great men. There was the second, equally 
 essential circumstance of his having to earn a living, and the 
 interviewing of celebrities for two or three American journals, 
 with which he had contact, offered one source of remunerative 
 enq)loyment. 
 
 As he often foimd himself shy even before ordinary men, 
 the thought of standing in the presence of great men terrified 
 him, and he knew he must do it precisely because it terrified 
 him, if only to dare his soul and to conquer his fears. 
 
 In those days he had an exalted idea of great men. He 
 imagined them as being but little short of gods, if in human 
 form, from whose mere presence emanated an aura, a divine 
 glow, whose very speech was as the emitting of sparks, starting 
 a conflagration, where a spark fell. England, he knew, had 
 
 195 
 
BABEL 
 
 several great men, to whose voices at least two, and sometimes 
 five continents paid homage. But what if one stood face to 
 face with one of these beings who possessed such far-reaching 
 vibrant voices! Surely a fine soul took refuge in a fine body, 
 and by that he did not mean that it was necessarily a large 
 body, or a perfect body, but that it was essentially an expres- 
 sive body, an instrument rich with magnetic force. And he 
 still retained his old idea of man and artist synthetic in the 
 same person, and could not mentally dissociate the two. Had 
 he not read Plato's Banquet, and were not all who took part 
 in it of the man-god tribe? 
 
 He made out a list of England's great writers and artists, 
 and after some deliberation chose as the subject of his first 
 interview no less a celebrity than Philip Jenkins Drill, known 
 the world over not only for his novels and plays but also for 
 his startling social theories and speculations in science. This 
 man had the ear of the world, and into this ear, when he was 
 not smacking it, he periodically sent down a hoarse whisper, 
 full of evil portent, of dreadful prophecy, which too frequently 
 had a way of coming true. One of his pet prognostications 
 was the destruction of the world in a war in which the com- 
 batants fight each other by pressing buttons. The large pubHc 
 read his stories for amusement, in much the same manner 
 as children read fairy tales or as adults read ghost or detective 
 stories. It was an age in which the public, living comfortable, 
 standardised, banal lives, demanded from an author above 
 all a thrill, and if, incidentally, they got ideas with it, they 
 were all the more pleased, since they were flattered by the 
 implication of their belonging to the intelligentsia, a class pre- 
 eminently fashionable in its admirations. He had his ardent 
 following, however, among the usual minority that takes an 
 author seriously even in England. England struck Gombarov 
 
 196 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 as being a strange country in its attitude to abstract thought. 
 The only men apart from a small circle of readers to give 
 consideration to current ideas were the humourists of the press. 
 Here was a limerick that went the rounds of the press at the 
 time: 
 
 There was a quill-driver named Drill, 
 Who wrote to give high-brows a thrill; 
 
 If you asked him for bread. 
 
 He said: "Bad for the head. 
 But here's an electrical piUI" 
 
 Yet he was one of the few men who thought seriously. In 
 spite of his obsession with the machine he undoubtedly had 
 hiunanity at heart. His reputation was almost as great in 
 other countries as in his own. His own, to be sure, intensely 
 interested him, and he was constantly manufacturing explosive 
 ideas to undermine complacent social institutions. One clever 
 ironist of the time pictured him as a ferret-like creatiu-e, darting 
 in and out of all sorts of mysterious comers and crevices, 
 and always nibbling, nibbling, at the weak, rotted places of 
 the social foxmdations of the Empire, which he symbolically 
 represented as a huge Victorian chair, standing somewhat 
 awry, its springs bulging. x\nother ironist, distinguished for 
 his black and white designs, drew Mr. Drill as a circus rider 
 standing upon two horses, one of which was labelled "Science," 
 the other "Art." For like other men engaged in two conflicting 
 mental activities, Mr. Drill drew the fire of the specialists in 
 both. His scientific contemporaries dubbed him poet, while 
 the poets contemptuously referred to him as scientist. A third 
 smaller group, looking down from Olympian heights, asserted 
 that he was neither one nor the other. Still, there was no 
 gainsaying the fact that no contemporary was more provoca- 
 
 197 
 
BABEL 
 
 live, none more talked about. His work, "An Ideal Country," 
 in particular, aroused the ire of the artistic clan, which saw 
 in the imaginary world the author had created a synthesis 
 of all the scientific prejudices of the time, wrack and driftwood 
 coming in on the wave of Darwinism, a wave clamorously 
 sibilant with now familiar sounds and slogans: "Natural selec- 
 tion! "—"Survival of the Fittest"— "Evolution!"— "Progress!" 
 Ruthlessly the author had cut away the weeds of senti- 
 mentality, and with it the red flower of sentiment. His "ideal 
 country" was a sort of a super-garden-city, covering the planet, 
 and quite dogless and catless, and horseless and hawkerless; 
 only birds were not excluded, possibly because there was no 
 way of wholly exterminating them. The inhabitants of this 
 country consisted of all sorts of progressive people, such as 
 scientists, eugenists and teetotalers. The chief basis of mar- 
 riage was a medical certificate. "Unnatural selection!" was 
 the phrase one critic flung at the author in this connection. 
 And the people, indexed, numbered and thimib-marked, existed 
 by manipulating electric switches and pressing buttons, and 
 by travelling at incredible speed in giant de luxe trains, which 
 enabled everyone to see the world, a world grown smaller 
 because of space-consuming engines. One correspondent 
 naively asked in a letter to a newspaper how it was possible 
 to see the world while travelling two himdred and fifty miles 
 an hour. Another wanted to know whether a world so monot- 
 onously constructed, on principles so orderly and mechanical 
 was worth travelling in, as on reaching one's destination one 
 would come upon a place in no wise different from the place 
 one started from. That, the correspondent argued, was 
 inevitable in a world coimtry in which nationality was abolished 
 and men became super-cosmopolitans or synthetical citizens, 
 living synthetical lives, speaking a synthetical language, 
 
 198 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 indulging in synthetical habits. One irate artist wrote: "If 
 this be an ideal country, give me hell!" Mr. Drill retaliated: 
 "Hell, you say? Why, you have that already!" And he 
 proceeded to point out all the meannesses, hatreds, prejudices, 
 injustices, boredoms and banalities and all the fragmentary 
 inconsequences that make up the existing world. "If this be 
 not hell," he concluded, "I ask, in the name of Beelzebub, 
 what is it?" 
 
 In choosing Drill as the subject of his first interview, Gom- 
 barov was actuated by several motives apart from the fact 
 of the author's international prominence. The chief of these 
 was what Gombarov called his humanistic attitude. Drill 
 pfissed for a Socialist-Individualist; that is to say, he advocated 
 a state in which individuals should be given all individual 
 rights as far as they were compatible with the interests of 
 the community. There was the other fact of his being a 
 self-made man, of his having left school at the same age as 
 Gombarov. Surely, a man of such wide sympathies, a believer 
 in human justice, and one who had had to fight his way to 
 his high position, would be courteous and considerate to a 
 Iks fortunate individual, an appreciator of genius, and by 
 no means a dunce. 
 
 Gombarov spent a whole morning in evolving a letter. It 
 was carefully, and, he thought, attractively worded, calculated 
 to appeal to a genCTous mind, such as sxirely belonged to the 
 author of "An Ideal Country." After rewriting the letter six 
 or seven times he posted it and began to look eagerly forward 
 to an answer. Four days passed before a card from the great 
 man arrived. It requested Gombarov to telephone at a certain 
 hour the following day. This Gombarov did. The following 
 conversation ensued: 
 
 •Is that Mr. Drill qjeaking?" 
 
 199 
 
BABEL 
 
 "Yes. Who is that?" 
 
 "My name is Gombarov. You asked me to ring you up 
 with regard to the interview." 
 
 "What do you want to know?" asked Mr. Drill in a brusque 
 voice, that nettled Gombarov. 
 
 "I w — ^want an interview." 
 
 "Next week I am publishing my new novel, 'The Great 
 Drifting,' m which I develop the idea that marriage in modem 
 society is . . ." 
 
 Gombarov realised that Mr. Drill was trying to give him 
 an interview on the telephone. 
 
 "I am sorry," interrupted Gombarov, "but I am afraid 
 this won't do. Besides, the New York Literary Leader expects 
 me to give a personal sketch of you as well. . . ." 
 
 "Do you think you can do it in fifteen minutes?" 
 
 "I can try!" 
 
 "Where are you now?" 
 
 "Trafalgar Square Tube Station." 
 
 "Take the Piccadilly Tube and come out here at once. 
 The station is South Kensington, and my house is only five 
 minutes' walk from the station." 
 
 Within less than a half hour Gombarov rang Mr. Drill's 
 door-bell. He was ushered into the drawing-room, and was 
 received by Mrs. Drill. She motioned him to a large chintz- 
 draped arm-chair, whose presence astonished him because of 
 Mr. Drill's powerful denunciations of Victorian comfort. 
 
 A door leading to the next room opened, and in stepped 
 Mr. Drill, while Mrs. Drill, quietly, almost invisibly, slipped 
 out of the room. The great man came forward and shook 
 hands with Gombarov. He was a small alert man of no 
 particular distinction either in physique or dress, and only 
 his keen blue eyes gave any suggestion of the Drill one knew 
 
 200 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 from the pages of Ms books. Had Gombarov met the man 
 in a City office or behind a shop-coimter he would have been 
 far less astonished. 
 
 "What can I do for you?" asked Mr. Drill, motioning 
 Gombarov to a seat beside him on the lounge. 
 
 Gombarov felt crushed by the man's business-like tone and 
 manner, and Mr. Drill's appearance had been a shock to him. 
 After an awkward pause, he said: 
 
 "I should like to have your opinion as to the place of the 
 novel in our civilisation. ..." 
 
 ■'That is a large question," said Mr. Drill, smiling for the 
 first time. "I should say that the novel is the ideal, the 
 supreme art-form of our time. Ours is a diverse, a variegated 
 civilisation, and the loose, rambling form of the novel, untram- 
 melled by rigid conventions, enables a writer to present all 
 the facets of modem adventxure, not excluding the great adven- 
 tiure of the himian mind; that is to say, we are free to deal 
 with ideas, as well as with action and passions. . . ." 
 
 Gombarov hastily noted down 'Mr. Drill's words, and said: 
 
 "But that is precisely what your critics have against you, 
 that you put ideas into your novels." 
 
 "That is to be expected from men who still cling to Greek 
 and Latin, to dead languages and dead classics. They fail 
 to see that our Odjrssey is in the present and lies precisely 
 in new discoveries and scientific inventions and explorations, 
 in man's unceasing conquest of nature. . . ." 
 
 Gombarov was about to put in an interpellation, when Mr. 
 Drill suggested: 
 
 "Suppose you write an interview with me, and send it to 
 me to look over." 
 
 Gombarov, who had not grasped Mr. Drill's meaning, looked 
 puzzled. 
 
 20I 
 
BABEL 
 
 "I mean," explained the great man, "that you invent the 
 interview, then send it to me. If I like it, I shall say so. If 
 changes are necessary, I shall say so. If it won't do, I shall 
 say so. My article on 'The Future of the Novel' in the 
 current niraiber of the Empire Review should help you." 
 
 "Very well, I am willing to try," replied Gombarov to the 
 strange suggestion, which appealed to his sporting instinct. 
 
 They rose from the loimge, and shook hands. Mr. Drill 
 pressed a button near the door, and a maid appeared to direct 
 the visitor out. Altogether he had spent seven minutes in 
 the great man's company. 
 
 He worked a whole week on the interview, using the brief 
 conversation and Mr. Drill's article in the Empire Review as a 
 basis. The article proved useful, but as it was out of the ques- 
 tion to employ the same wording, he set to work to put some of 
 its ideas into a conversational form. He was not, however, 
 content with this, but wished to improve upon, add piquancy 
 to, the author's hard, methodical, almost scientific, expression. 
 He tried to give what he considered a brilliant turn to Mr, 
 Drill's conversation, putting into his mouth picturesque meta- 
 phors and similes and ironical mots, the latter usually at the 
 expense of Mr. Drill's unnamed enemies. Unfortunately, he 
 did not observe that in improving on Mr. Drill he was elimi- 
 nating Mr. Drill and substituting himself; he had not then 
 suspected how deeply antagonistic he was to Mr. Drill and 
 Mr. Drill's scientism. His own ideas were as yet embryonic. 
 It was all, however, very exciting intellectual exercise, and he 
 enjoyed it. One point upon which he heartily agreed with the 
 author of "An Ideal Country" was the infectiousness of 
 ideas, and the power of ideas, which have been eternally the 
 inevitable prelude to individual actions and world events. He 
 stressed this point, and evolving out of it his own chain of 
 
 202 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 thoughts, made use of Mr. Drill's lips to give them utterance. 
 
 Gombarov was intensely pleased with the result. He posted 
 the interview to Mr. Drill, and expectantly waited for its 
 return, hoping it might be accompanied by an expression, 
 however brief, of Mr. Drill's pleasure. 
 
 Mr. Drill's rqjly arrived exactly a week after Gombarov's 
 despatch of the manuscript. 
 
 The first third of the article, which chiefly dealt with the 
 interviewer's personal impressions of the great man, was passed 
 by Mr. Drill without comment, save a few slight corrections, 
 but once he came to the interview he was merciless and grew 
 more and more cruel as he progressed. He began by crossing 
 out a word or a line here and there, then proceeded to ^motate 
 the wide margins with blimt comments, which gradually devel- 
 oped into rudoiess, such as "Tommyrot!" — "Tosh!" — "Rub- 
 bish!"— "Qaptrap!"—" Damnation!" And he ended with a 
 final comment, "DAMN!" in large letters, underlined. 
 
 That was all. There was no note, no invitation for Gom- 
 barov to come for a prefer interview. After all, Gombarov 
 had in one way or another spent a full fortnight on Mr. Drill. 
 Couldn't he have spared just a half hour for the thing to be 
 done properly? This imaginary interview was Mr. Drill's 
 suggestion, not his. 
 
 He was in no mood to lau^ at his intellectual misadven- 
 ture. He tore the manuscript into fragments, and dropped 
 them into the waste-basket. After a half hour of intense 
 depression, he picked the fragments of the torn manuscript 
 from the waste-basket and put them into an envelope, which 
 he sealed up and addressed to Mr. Drill. 
 
 Aita his curious ecq)erience, he could no longo: regard Mr. 
 Drill's humanistic, democratic doctrines seriously. "The man 
 preaches, but he does not practice," he concluded. He was 
 
 203 
 
BABEL 
 
 not blind to his own shortcomings, but he had the passion for 
 truth; and some feeling, too deep for analysis, told him that 
 no really great man could have acted like that. For many 
 weeks he made no effort to interview a celebrity. He dared 
 not court another disillusion. 
 
 MAKER OF MASKS 
 
 It was not imtil one afternoon seven weeks afterwards that 
 Gombarov, strolling about aimlessly, after paying a visit to 
 the British Museum, suddenly drew up before a house in 
 Bedford Square. 
 
 "Why, this is where Mr. Sherwood Saville lives!" the 
 thought darted across his consciousness. "I wonder if I dare! " 
 
 SavDle's name was better known in Moscow, Paris, Munich, 
 Budapest and New York, than in his native London. He was 
 a maker of masks, and these masks were of so wonderful a 
 quality, so full of ineffable, potent meanings as of glimpsed 
 visions of some promised land, that whole philosophies and 
 commentaries were inspired by them throughout Europe, the 
 chief aim of these writings being to show what these masks 
 concealed, though Saville himself, in occasional essays, repeat- 
 edly insisted that they were not intended to conceal, but to 
 reveal. An apostle of ideal beauty, his utterances were, in the 
 main, directed against the Realists, of whom Drill was a 
 characteristic example. Saville was as violent in reacting from 
 the mechanistic age as Drill was wholehearted in his acceptance 
 of it. In those days Gombarov vacillated between the two 
 opposing schools of thought: his hard realistic life forced him 
 to express himself realistically and to lean towards Realism 
 in art, but in ecstatic moments and in dreams his words and 
 visions took on decorative, abstract forms. And he never 
 ceased to be moved by one deep hatred, that of machinery. 
 
 204 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 He had hated inventions and all that went under the name of 
 "Progress" ever since the days when he had worked in a 
 factory, feeding the insatiable mouth of a machine with raw 
 wool. 
 
 Gombarov knew little about Saville's ideas. He had seen 
 but a half dozen of his masks in reproduction, and had read 
 but one or two of his essa5rs without quite imderstanding them, 
 in spite of the astonishing simplicity of their language. And 
 he had not yet got hold of a copy of Saville's most famous 
 work, "The Meaning of Masks." He realised how ill-equipped 
 he was for facing its author. Nor had he fully recovered from 
 the effects of his failure with Mr. Drill. 
 
 When he foimd himself standing before Saville's house, he 
 naturally paused to deliberate over his sudden impulse to ring 
 the bell and make himself known. He felt nervous and per- 
 turbed. If Mr. Drill, an avowed humanist and democrat, a 
 man who himself had risen from humble beginnings, and was 
 now a pillcir of light to the new generation, could treat him 
 like that, what had he to expect from Mr. SaviUe, who was 
 bom a gentleman and in his art proclaimed himself an aris- 
 tocrat? And he had not even written to him for an appoint- 
 ment, nor brought a card with him. It was a rash proceeding. 
 
 But he would do it! And now that his audacious self had 
 uttered its command, the timorous self hoped and prayed that 
 Mr. Saville might be out, or that he might be engaged and 
 send word arranging an appointment for another day. Gom- 
 barov stood there, for some moments, on the door-step, one 
 finger on the bell-button, which he suddenly prised with a 
 portentousness that might have done credit to one of Drill's 
 heroes despatching a populous planet into the oblivion of 
 destruction. He waited. And waiting, he caught sight of his 
 dustry boots, frayed cuffs, and creaseless trousers. It was too 
 
 205 
 
BABEL 
 
 late to withdraw; he heard footstq)s approaching, and his lips 
 were rehearsing the words he would put to the maid: "Is Mr. 
 Savillein? Is Mr. Saville in?" 
 
 The door opened, but instead of a white-capped maid, a 
 tall, strange, handsome man appeared and looked questioningly 
 and penetratingly at the visitor. 
 
 "Mr. Saville?" asked Gombarov, nervously, and knew at 
 once that he was in the presence of one who was unmistakably 
 a great man. 
 
 "Come in!" said the man in a dear, deq> voice, and stood 
 courteously aside to let the visitor pass. 
 
 Mr. Saville shut the door, while Gombarov hastened to 
 explain the object of his visit and apologised for coming 
 unannounced. 
 
 "We can talk better in my workshop," said Mr. Saville, 
 leading the way upstairs, imtil they reached the last landing, 
 three flights up. "So you are an American," he remarked, 
 as he fumbled in his pocket for the key. "Americans have 
 been very kind to me. They are a go-ahead people. My own 
 countrymen are in a sloth. Here am I, an Englishman, living 
 in my own country, yet among all the strangers that come to 
 see me my countrymen are few and far between. Yest»day 
 I had a visitor from Argentine, this morning one from Vienna, 
 tomorrow I expect a Pole from Cracow. ..." 
 
 They entered the workshop, a large room, with an outlook 
 on the square. The windows were high, so that only the tops 
 of the trees were visible, giving the effect of country and 
 seclusion and of incredible height from the ground. It was a 
 workroom in every sense of the word. There was a large, 
 plain, substantial table in the centre of the room covered with 
 all sorts of wooden models and hand tools. A smaller, equally 
 substantial table by the window was covered with papers and 
 
 206 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 manuscripts; evidently Saville did his writing here. The 
 wann ochre walls were covered with drawings, designs, paint- 
 ings and extraordinary looking masks, all evidently made by 
 the same hands. By the large table stood a hand press, on 
 which the artist made his own wood-cut prints. There seemed 
 to be nothing in the room to obtrude on the artist's personality. 
 Three or four robust wooden chairs, impolished, painted a 
 dark brown, completed the setting, which was wholly natural 
 and ideal for creative adventure. 
 
 Here, in the presence of these objects and of their master, 
 a feding of respect and humility, and of joy and sadness too, 
 seized Gombarov. He was keenly aware of an inexplicably 
 intimate atmosphere, yet an atmosphere curiously impersonal 
 and aloof. It was as if he had seen the place, or some place 
 resembling it, before; as if he tried to recall something that 
 he had seen and quite forgotten. Mr. Saville noticed his 
 preoccupation with the surroimdings, and discreetly observed: 
 
 "Excuse me a moment while I make a note," and he sat 
 down at the writing table and began to write. 
 
 Gombarov cast furtive glances at Mr. Saville, noted his 
 distinguished profile, his longish hair combed straight back 
 and outlining a head of harmonious proportions, his straight 
 sensitive nose, his deep, wide-placed blue-grey eyes, his large 
 clear-skinned, clean-shaven face and well-shaped forehead, 
 prominent just over the eyes, and his firm neck: altogether the 
 work of a master-sculptor, who evaded no difficulty, left 
 nothing unfinished. 
 
 "A joUy room, isn't it?" said Mr. Saville, closing his note- 
 book and rising from his chair. "Do sit down!" And he 
 drew up his own chair. 
 
 "Not a superfluous thing in it!" said Gombarov, with 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 207 
 
BABEL 
 
 "No, not one! " said his host. "To work properly, one must 
 have no distracting objects, no unnecessary chairs and furni- 
 ture, above all, no banal works of art. One must have calm, 
 nothing to make one fuss and fidget. As for working in the 
 average furnished apartment, that is quite fatal. So-called 
 inanimate objects made by human beings, have a life of their 
 own, and our modern world is so full of ugly objects, whose 
 mere presence has a bad influence on hiunan minds, even 
 on those who work in the arts. We need a new kind of Savon- 
 arola, who could hate ugliness as the Florentine Savonarola is 
 said to have hated beauty. We want some one to make a scrap- 
 heap and a bonfire of what men today call art, that terrible 
 abomination cichieved, I won't say created, in the name of 
 Realism!" 
 
 "Why do you detest Realism?" asked Gombarov. "It 
 seems to me that there is no reaching the great public but 
 through Realism." 
 
 "That is a common fallacy," replied Mr. Saville. "Art is 
 auto-suggestive, hypnotic, and so by depicting the sordidness 
 of life, sordidly, the novelists and dramatists make the people 
 not less, but more sordid. The cry nowadays is, "Give the 
 pubUc what it wants!" but few realise that the public has been 
 hypnotised by commerce into wanting what it wants. Give 
 the public a certain kind of thing long enough, and it will 
 want it again and again, as the drug fiend his cocaine. The 
 spark of beauty that is in nearly all men has been smothered, 
 but it is there all the time. Hidden, waiting to come out. There 
 is history to prove this. Look at London! Towards the end 
 of the Sixteenth and at the beginning of the Seventeenth Cen- 
 tury, it had, let us say, between fifty and a hundred thousand 
 inhabitants, yet think of its theatres, think of the plays in 
 blank verse. Thirty thousand listened to Agathon reciting a 
 
 208 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 prize lyric poem at Athens, the same nimiber as would be 
 seen at a cricket game today, and an equal number saw a 
 play by Aeschylus, or a farce by Aristophanes. Consider how 
 recently Japan, until Western Realism invaded it, was an 
 artistic nation! Beauty was a true religion. Today we are 
 agitated by problems. Problems bring furrows and wrinkles 
 to the face of Art, and hence, also, to the face of Man. No 
 longer is the face lit up with the glow of love, the courage 
 of faith, the light of noble death. Everything is so fussy, 
 and fidgety, and restless, and man is strutting about, a 
 parody and a caricature of himself. The artists of today, 
 with their insidious Realism, are everywhere engaged in in- 
 tensifying the ridiculousness of the human figure, which has 
 become a crazy-quilt and patchwork of problems, a thing of 
 absurd fragments, like those Futurist paintings. While, all 
 the time, underneath, buried and smothered imder the confusion 
 of collected debris, lies the true spark, the true soul, the 
 audacious, child-like, god-like spirit of man. Not the ridiculous 
 problem man turned out by the machine, but the beautiful 
 creative man. The picture-maker. The table-maker. The 
 garment-maker. The ham^s-maker. The poet. Each a 
 master in his own world. Each a creator. Each taking a 
 pride in his work. What a wonderful thing a man is, if he 
 only knew it! What a bimdle of fine impulses lurks in every 
 man!" 
 
 Gombarov listened without putting a single note on paper. 
 To have done so might have stopped the flow of fire. Indeed, 
 there was a fire and a glow in the speaker's strangely calm 
 face. He spoke with clearness and deliberation, yet each 
 word was a word of fire. It puzzled Gombarov. He did not 
 dare to ask a question. Mr. Saville continued: 
 
 "I think you imderstand. I could not talk if I felt that 
 
 209 
 
BABEL 
 
 you did not understand. . . . Nowadays man has become a 
 machine. There is but little warmth left in him. And so 
 when they talk of man's power, they use the word 'dynamics.' 
 They speak in terms of mechanics. It is not dynamos we want 
 but daemons! If we could only reawaken the daemon in man! 
 If we could only arouse all his warmth, enthusiasm, inspira- 
 tion: the beautiful and the heroic, his laughter, too! All 
 his childlikeness, playfulness, all the rhythm of his body and 
 mind! Modern painters talk of the mechanics of the human 
 body, as if man were a thing of steel, working on hinges: cold 
 and bloodless. . . . 
 
 "People are puzzled by my masks . . . and masks, by the 
 way, are only a small part of my work. What are my masks, 
 after all? Everything has degenerated, even men's idea of 
 the mask. A mask is now commonly regarded as something 
 for concealing one's feelings, for duping people. Actually, 
 a mask is intended to reveal what is deepest and truest. I 
 am not thinking of the individual, but of qualities in the 
 individual common to the race. In my masks I have tried 
 to reveal, to bring to the surface, all that men have forgotten, 
 that noble spark I spoke of, that fine, audacious human soul, 
 the soul which at least two great men in our own time have 
 seen and recognised. I mean Walt Whitman and Nietzsche. 
 Nor does it matter that one speaks of democracy, the other 
 of aristocracy, which, at their best, are one and the same 
 thing, and meet even as the East and the West meet. Only 
 beauty, a balanced, harmonious existence, and a recognition 
 of this beauty in men asserting their creative spirit can save 
 us from disaster. But himianity has become like the Gadarene 
 swine, possessed by an evil spirit, and dashing on to destruction. 
 . . . When you do not create, you destroy. ... All the nations 
 are arming. Especially Germany, where the mechanical spirit 
 
 2IO 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 is in its apotheosis. . . . Have you seen that wonderful old gun 
 in the Museum at Florence?" 
 
 "Yes, I have spent fifteen minutes admiring it, wondering 
 why men took so much trouble to make an instrument of 
 death beautiful," replied Gombarov. 
 
 "Preciselyl Can't you see that a people tha,t will take so 
 much trouble to cover a gun with such magnificent designs 
 cannot possibly take an equal interest in its death-dealing 
 effectiveness. Well, a year ago, I happened to be at Essen, 
 and saw part of the plant. Thousands upon thousands of 
 guns are being turned out there, grim, stark-looking mechan- 
 isms, which have but one object, to kill! One day they are 
 bound to go off. . . ." 
 
 "May I see some of your masks?" asked Gombarov. 
 
 Mr. Saville led the way to a comer of the room, 
 the walls of which were covered with masks, some in varie- 
 gated tones, others in red and gold, still others in silver 
 and grey, a few in monochrome. Both sexes and all 
 ages were to be seen here, beautiful Mirandas, pensive 
 philosophers, adorable boys, tragic actors and laughing come- 
 dians. 
 
 "What a lovely infcmt's head!" Gombarov could not help 
 exclaiming. 
 
 "Oh, that one! Let me take it down and put it by itself. 
 To be seen properly, each mask should be by itself." Mr. 
 Saville took it down and attached it against a plain canvas 
 background in a wide frame. 
 
 "This infant surely had Aphrodite for its mother," said 
 Gombarov. 
 
 "We'd better not discuss the father," laughed Mr. Saville. 
 "Aphrodite, as you know, was not the most faithful of wives. 
 That is the way with beauty, which is the greatest wisdom 
 
 211 
 
BABEL 
 
 and loves experiment, to perpetuate itself in an infinite variety 
 of combinations." 
 
 "Has this mask any especial significance?" 
 
 "In one sense, no. I have merely tried to create a beautiful 
 child, though, it is true, I have catalogued it as 'An Infant's 
 Head to be Kept in the Chamber of a Woman in Pregnancy.' 
 Few realise the power of auto-suggestion in art. The bad art 
 in suburban homes today helps to b^et suburbanites. After 
 all, there's nothing like implanting the spark of beauty while 
 the child is yet in its mother's womb. And it's more sensible 
 to have a thing like that in a bedroom than the sort of thing 
 you see, 'I Need Thee Every Hoot,' 'God Give Me Strength,' 
 'Abide in Me,' and what not." 
 
 Mr. Saville laughed a child-like laugh. "Now here is a 
 different sort of mask," he went on, as he rq)laced the child's 
 head with that of a youth. "What do you think of that?" 
 
 "I think," said Gombarov, slowly, after pondering a while, 
 "that this face is the very sold of courage and determination. 
 If I look at it for some time, it affects me strangely. Tha'e is 
 something infectious, I should say, hypnotic, about it. I can 
 imagine having it constantly in my room, and growing to look 
 and to feel like it. . . ." 
 
 "You are clever to see all that," said Mr. Saville. "But 
 you are quite right. I had intended to pour into this mask 
 the very essence of will. An idea takes hold of a man, pos- 
 sesses him utterly. Such a possession implies faith, love — ^if 
 you like. They are one and the same thmg. Faith is love. 
 Faith is strength, courage, will. Every true work of creation 
 is an act of faith. All that I have tried to put into this mask. 
 And if it contains all this, then it must surely speak to others. 
 For love is power, and seeks to perpetuate itself through 
 others. . . . 
 
 212 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 "Those are actors' masks," went on Mr. Saville, noticing 
 that his visitor's eyes had strayed towards a group of masks, 
 somewhat apart from the others. "People today, seduced by 
 Realism, object to actors wearing masks. Of course, the actors 
 themselves object to it. They want to display their personal 
 pettinesses and individual idiosyncrasies, at the expense of the 
 god in them, whom they set at defiance. They want to be 
 important, our actors and actresses. They want to show how 
 changeable they can be, the number of changing expressions 
 of which they are capable. But they are not capable of a single 
 eternal expression, which would stamp them as gods, or as 
 instruments of the gods' will. A mask is an arrested expres- 
 sion. And as such it is at the same time an arresting expression. 
 In a play written for masks, you would be so fascinated, so 
 held by their single, inexorable, changeless expression, that 
 their grandeur would fix an ineradicable imprint on your mem- 
 ory ... as of some grand and impressive religious ceremony. 
 But today we are making tiie most of our pettinesses, we are 
 breaking up into pieces. . . " 
 
 He made a helpless gesture, and during the pause children's 
 footsteps were heard on the stairs, the door burst open, and 
 two beautiful children came rushing into the room. One was 
 a boy of about eight, the other a girl of about seven. 
 
 "Daddy!" they exclaimed together; then, on seeing 
 Gombarov, stopped short. 
 
 "Here is a very nice man I want you to meet," said Mr. 
 Saville, and they came forward with outstretched hands. 
 "This is Richard Saville, and this is Miss Audrey. 
 Now, children, nm away and tell mother to send up tea for 
 two!" 
 
 Gombarov was thinking: "This man practices what he 
 preaches. He is a kind of artistic Midas, and all that he 
 
 213 
 
BABEL 
 
 touches becomes beautiful. What beautiful children! Works 
 of art, surely!" 
 
 Presently, the maid came in with tea and cakes, and the 
 conversation became more personal. Mr. Saville was now the 
 interviewer, Gombarov the interviewed. Gombarov was aston- 
 ished that the great man should take an interest in his plans 
 and doings. 
 
 After tea Gombarov rose to go, and thanked his host pro- 
 fusely for his kindness. 
 
 "Nonsense!" laughed Mr. Saville. "Come round tomorrow, 
 if you have nothing better to do, and have lunch with Mrs. 
 Saville and me." 
 
 "I should be only too happy, but may I make a condition?" 
 said Gombarov, growing bolder. 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "That you and Mrs. Saville lunch with me the day after, 
 or the first day that you are free." 
 
 "Righto!" said Mr. Saville. "I have no lunch engagement 
 the day after tomorrow." 
 
 Gombarov left in a state of exultation, and as always, when 
 greatly moved, paced the streets for hours. 
 
 GENIUS AS MERCHANT 
 
 If any one were asked to name the first six literary celebri- 
 ties of London, there could be no question that Horace Juniper 
 would be one of the six. Some persons, indeed, placed Jimiper 
 above Drill as an artist. 
 
 Juniper was not interested in machines. But he was 
 intensely interested in people who worked at machines. There 
 were few idlers in the commimity which populated Juniper's 
 novels. The chief fact about his people was that they worked. 
 They lived by clocks, they watched the hands of clocks, they 
 
 214 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 obeyed docks. Xone of your idling away of valuable hours 
 in some candle-lit cellar or wretched attic over zakuska and 
 vodka and samovars, in high-falutin' talk on man, Christ, God 
 and devil. None of your wasting away your hours in plotting 
 to kill some miserable old money-lending woman, who is after 
 all no more than a himian louse, in order to show yourself a 
 petty Napoleon among petty men; then, after the deed has 
 been done, to se^ consolation in the company of a prostitute, 
 making a goddess of her! None of your morbid pathology 
 about people who didn't have sense enough to get out of the 
 wet; who, if they did have sense enough to get out of the wet, 
 did so only to get into some smoky cafe or public house, 
 where by turns they talked philosophy and grew maudlin 
 with some total, but not teetotal, stranger. As for "getting 
 on," that was their very last thought. Juniper's people 
 had sense enough to get out of the wet and stay out of 
 the wet, except for the brief interval which they spent in 
 going from their little suburban homes to the factory or 
 shop and back to their little suburban homes again. Then, 
 you may be sure, they had their umbrellas with them. 
 Jimiper's were a diligent people, and their one common aim 
 in life was to "get on," "carry on." They worked in shops 
 or at machines, emd kept their eyes on the docks. That week 
 Mabd could afford the camisole she wanted; that we^ Harry 
 would have enough saved up for an engagement ring. By the 
 time Mabd got her trousseau together and Harry had enough 
 money for a wedding ring, thdr affair was ripe for a breach 
 of promise, and poor fickle Harr}- was faced with the prospect 
 of having to pay damages or being miserable for life. If he 
 was dever, he could manage to escape, of course! And some 
 of Jun^jer's characters were deddedly dever. They not only 
 managed to escape, but to get a rich girl in the bargain! The 
 
 215 
 
BABEL 
 
 admirers of Juniper's books woiild smack their lips, and say: 
 "There's a clever chap! There's realism for you! " 
 
 There could be no question that Juniper wrote brilliantly 
 and convincingly of these things. His writings were, in their 
 way, epics of the bourgeoisie. After all, every author deals 
 with the environment and material he knows best. That he 
 should, in the course of the process of creation, unconsciously 
 emulate his own heroes, in a greater or lesser degree, is one of 
 the penalties of an artist's life. For, according to all accounts 
 and the author's own confessions, he had solved the secret 
 of material success in literature. Juniper had solved the 
 artist's economic problem. Perhaps, he himself had not 
 realised how effectually he had solved it. He had made a 
 heroic gesture with one or two fine books he had written; he 
 had shaken his fist in the face of the shopkeepers, then recon- 
 sidered, for he saw a way of conquering them, though it 
 involved turning shopkeeper himself. He would become a 
 shopkeeper of literature. He would convert his brain into a 
 machine for the turning out of a variety of wares wanted by 
 publishers and editors. He would stand at the counter and 
 attend to customers. 
 
 "What can I do for you? ... A serial story? Certainly. 
 When do you want it? . . . By the end of the month? I am 
 sorry. I have too many orders in hand. The middle of next 
 month is the best I can do. I can promise it, without fail. . . . 
 All right, you shall have it. . . . Terms? You know my 
 terms, but I shall have to charge overtime, since it's an express 
 order. Thank you. Good day!" 
 
 "Good morning, Mr. Editor. What can I do for you this 
 morning? . . . Two short stories . . . five thousand words 
 each .... Yes, I just happen to have two in stock. You 
 don't mind one of them being just a little overweight ... a 
 
 2l6 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 little matter of five hundred words or so? Yes, they are quite 
 fresh. Only finished them yesterday .... Shall I have them 
 sent, or will you take them with you? . . . Very well, you shall 
 have them by the first post. Thank you. Good day ! " 
 
 "Good morning, Mr. Theatrical Manager. And what can I 
 do for you? ... A play in three acts? And a curtain raiser? 
 Certainly. Who's the leading lady? ... Ah, Miss Lily Fair- 
 blossom. . . . Yes, I have her measure here . . . and I know 
 the goods she likes . . . plenty of emotional situations, a 
 climax or two, and a touch here and there of light comedy 
 trimming. ... I have the very thing in mind for her. In a 
 day or two I can give you estimates. A big job, of course! 
 You can have it in six or seven weeks at the earliest. And 
 I'm afraid I must ask for an advance. Yes, it's been a busy 
 season in all lines. . . . You can have the scenario, sir, the 
 day after tomorrow, say at four o'clock sharp. Thank you. 
 Good day! " 
 
 In some such series of imaginary colloquies one might con- 
 trive to get at the theory formulated in Juniper's audacious 
 brain, which was a brain made up, as it were, of a number of 
 brains, each efficient in its own way, and one and all so organ- 
 ised as to be businesslike in a business world. He was, however, 
 too consummate a craftsman wholly to abandon the world of 
 artistic masterpieces; and if one may carry the analogy fur- 
 ther, he was like one of those shopkeepers, not so rare as may 
 be supposed, who keep one little room, one little comer, at the 
 back of their shop, inviolate of commerce. Juniper, too, it 
 may be assumed, had one such little comer, where he worked 
 sometimes at the things he liked, where he kept the few things 
 he loved, his dreams and the promise of all that he might have 
 been in a world constituted differently from ours. 
 
 Gombarov could not screw up his courage to visit a man 
 
 217 
 
BABEL 
 
 who was so obviously busy, and his several visits to Mr. 
 Saville's house had something to do with his hesitation. Here 
 he was always welcome to a frugal meal, here he listened to a 
 great man who had surrendered nothing to commerce, here he 
 whiled away some of his time in playing with the children. 
 His mind opened of itself to Mr. Saville's ideas. . . . 
 
 MERCHANT AS GENTDS 
 
 The next name on Gombarov's list of great men was that 
 of Mordecai Shipton, celebrated as a shop-keeper with an imag- 
 ination, who, all were agreed, if he were not a shop-keeper, but 
 an author, would have won renown equal to that of Balzac. 
 
 Shipton had one of the bluest emporia in London, and 
 if rumours were to be believed he employed some of the best 
 authors of the day to write his advertisements. No one 
 doubted Shipton's genius, not even Mr. Saville. The latter 
 had one day conceived the idea that Shipton was the very 
 man to open up a department for his masks. "This man 
 Shipton has imagination!" he said. So the artist sought the 
 patronage of the Prince of Commerce, who granted him an 
 audience. They limched together, and Saville broached his 
 project with all the enthusiasm of a boy. Shipton was genial 
 and courteous, but could do nothing for Saville. He said that 
 his shop, huge as it was, was overcrowded, and that the 
 women's imderwear department was especially in need of 
 expansion. Some day he hoped to build a new wing and he 
 might be willing then to consider the masks. But the lunch 
 was good, and they were charmed with one another. 
 
 An interview with Shipton presented some difficulties. 
 What should he interview him about? One day he picked up 
 a newspaper and, glancing at the Shipton advertisement, 
 exclaimed: 
 
 218 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 "The very thing!" 
 
 The advertisement consisted of obiter dicta on Modem 
 Business. After some preliminary remarks to the effect that 
 "business makes the world go round" and that "business is 
 no longer merely business," it proceeded with some categorical 
 obsen^tions: 
 
 BUSINESS IS 
 
 Knowledge: Because no man may do business without a 
 knowledge of men and women, without keeping in touch with 
 public opinion, public taste, public psychology. 
 
 Pleasure: Because no salesman but feels pleasure in selling 
 things he has confidence in, no customer but feels pleased in 
 getting full value for his money. 
 
 The Golden Rule: Because a good business man treats his 
 customers as he would himself be treated. 
 
 Faith: Because the honest business man inspires the confi- 
 dence of his customers. 
 
 Kindness: Because to give employment is better than to 
 give charity. 
 
 Integrity : Because honesty in business is the best policy. It 
 pays and sets a good example to others. 
 
 Sociability: Because wdthout courtesy no business may be 
 done. It teaches self-control, tact, and inspires with a desire 
 to please. 
 
 Development: Because good business encourages the cus- 
 tomer to come back; that means growth, accumulation. 
 
 Morality: Because six days a week the business man sets an 
 example to the community in honesty, eflSciency, courtesy, and 
 on the seventh he rests. 
 
 Civilization: Because the true business-man is a servant of 
 the community, encouraging civic progress, comfort, improve- 
 ment of streets, the election of men who will work for the 
 prosperity of the community. 
 
 Patriotism: Because a nation's honour rests on the reputa- 
 tion of its business men. 
 
 219 
 
BABEL 
 
 Genius: Because all the best men today go into business. 
 They are a nation's best asset. Without them Civilisation 
 would fall. 
 
 Gombarov read this panegyric with some astonishment. 
 Surely, the world must have changed since Goethe's day, for 
 it was Goethe who said that war, trade and piracy were on a 
 par. Ah, thought Gombarov, he would beard the great 
 Shipton in his den, and put the question of the new morality 
 squarely to him. If all that was true, then something had 
 occurred in the world's history but little short of a revolution. 
 It would make an exciting, above all, a provocative article, 
 and he might be able to dispose of it to some American news- 
 paper s)^dicate for a goodly sum. He was infected with the 
 prospect of making money. 
 
 One day he screwed up sufficient courage to enter 
 Shipton's Emporium, armed with an introduction from Mr. 
 Saville. That particular entrance led him through the mil- 
 linery department, which was full of women. Shyly he ran 
 the gatmtlet of these women and hoped that he would soon 
 strike a masculine department, or at all events, a neuter one. 
 Actually he was jimiping from the frying-pan into the fire, for 
 the next door brought him to the women's imderwear depart- 
 ment, which, owing to a "sale" being in progress, was so full 
 of women, that once caught in the maelstrom he could neither 
 go ahead at more than a snail's pace nor retreat. The best 
 he could do was just to shuffle along. 
 
 Whiteness dominated the large room, a riot of whiteness, of 
 white frailty, dazzling to masculine eyes. Fluffs, flounces, 
 ruffles, interspersed with coloured ribbons and fragments of 
 lace, spread out on coimters or hanging from stands, or handled 
 by women's hands; dunrniy female torsos attired in white 
 soft things and dummy female legs in silk stockings with 
 
 220 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 variegated ribbon garters above the knees. If he shut his eyes, 
 it was worse. He felt himself smothered under a mountain of 
 women's underclothes, while all around him was this crush of 
 women, the penetrating, overpowering sense and odour of 
 women, which streamed up his nostrils and made his head 
 go round, and for some imaccountable reason evoked in his 
 mind the image of Rubens's Rape of the Sabines, at the 
 Na,tional Gallery. Goodness alone knew why of all pictures 
 he should have thought of that one. But there it was: he 
 thought of Rubens's Rape of the Sabines. Nor would the 
 thought leave him. He emerged at last from that extraor- 
 dinary room, or series of rooms, and found himself in the 
 confectionery department, 
 
 "Whew!" he said to himself, drawing a deep breath; then 
 turned to the shop-walker: "Where is Mr. Shipton's office, 
 please?" 
 
 "Take the lift at the end, to the left, and go to the top 
 floor. They'll direct you there." 
 
 He followed the direction indicated and entered the lift. 
 Once in the lift, he felt he could not see Mr. Shipton. He was 
 too much shaken and unnerved from the experience he had 
 just undergone. The lift was emptied of all but himself by 
 the time it reached the third floor, and the lift-man turned 
 to him and asked: 
 
 "What floor, sir?" 
 
 "I don't know," replied Gombarov, falteringly. "I w-want 
 a-a — ^bird-cage. ..." A bird-cage was the first thing he 
 could thing of. Why, precisely, a bird-cage? Here was a rid- 
 dle for the psychoanalysts. 
 
 "You are in the wrong lift, sir!" said the lift-man. "You 
 should have taken the lift to the right, going to the base- 
 ment." 
 
 221 
 
BABEL 
 
 Gombarov thought he detected a sneer in the liftman's 
 voice. 
 
 He found his way out into the street, and what a breath 
 he took, deep-drawn and full of relief! That was unfortunate, 
 as at that instant a taxi-cab standing near the kerb was emitting 
 a thick cloud of petrol smoke, and Gombarov got the full 
 benefit of it. 
 
 BACK-TO-NATUKE ADVOCATE 
 
 The next great man on Gombarov's list was the picturesque 
 John Weightly, who advocated new land laws, which would 
 make possible the depopulation of large industrial cities and 
 the return to farm life. He wanted a new Merrie England, 
 with plenty of pubs, and wenches and swains dancing on the 
 green. He was the enemy of all current fads, whether scien- 
 tific, social or religious, and wrote amusingly against woman 
 suffrage, eugenics, prohibition, science and "other contempor- 
 ary superstitions." He was for ancient guilds as against 
 Capitalism and preached universal brotherhood by the door 
 of Catholicism, over which he inscribed: "All hope abandon, 
 ye who enter not here!" This did not prevent him from 
 writing for a Socialist newspaper, as he ascribed all the hated 
 ills and fads not only to irreligion, but also to the twin part- 
 nership of Science and Capitalism. To Gombarov he explained 
 his writing for the Red Standard by the statement that "that 
 paper took in all sorts of lunatics!" 
 
 Mr. Weightly came up from the country to lunch with him 
 in a Soho restaurant. Gombarov found some difficulty in 
 understanding the utterances of the Falstafiian figure sitting 
 opposite him, as Mr. Weightly had a way of filling his 
 mouth with food and wine and talking and chuckling 
 through it. 
 
 222 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 He was palpably excited at the mention of the word, 
 exigenics. "This cult," he exclaimed indignantly, "would in- 
 stitute a tyranny worse than the tyranny of kings, a fanaticism 
 more frenzied than that of any religion. Kings, at all events, 
 declared the principles on which they conducted their tyranny, 
 and when on the rack of the Inquisition you coidd at least 
 sing out when you were converted. But no one knows the 
 principles on which the science of eugenics is conducted, and 
 when on the rack of scientific tyranny you are likely to fall 
 into the grievous error of declaring your agreement with the 
 opinion which science held last week." 
 
 "You can't be an expert on normality! I should say, you 
 can be thoroughly ignorant of abnormality!" Mr. Weightly 
 emphasised this statement by savagely crushing a roll with his 
 left hand against his chest. "This modem mania for special- 
 isation is in itself an abnormality; to be logical in his msinia, 
 a eugenist must assume a superiority, must indeed develop 
 megalomania. Our first parents, healthy though one must 
 assume them to have been, experienced the first shock of 
 uncertainty when they gave birth to Cain, just as a good many 
 sensible people must have experienced a similar shock in giving 
 birth to a eugenist. There is, at all events, something to be 
 said for Cain, who killed his brother in the heat of passion; 
 but the eugenist would kill the unborn in the absence of 
 passion. By cold calculation, a sacrifice on the altar of 
 science. A doctor's conscience does not permit him to put a 
 hopelessly ill, dying man out of his pain; yet a eugenist's 
 lack of conscience would allow him to put young men and 
 women, with life before them, out of their joy. Had the laws 
 formidated by the eugenists been in force in the past, Galileo 
 and other great benefactors of mankind would not have been 
 
 223 
 
BABEL 
 
 born, as eugenic laws would have debarred their parents from 
 marrying. A great responsibility devolves upon men who wish 
 that Keats and Stevenson and Poe had never been bom. And 
 yet Keats got more happiness out of his short life than the 
 majority of eugenic doctors in ninety-nine years. And Steven- 
 son died at forty-four, happy and having made the world 
 happier. 
 
 "The worst of it is that the capitalists, with their shibboleth 
 of efQciency, are, perhaps imconsciously, on the side of the 
 eugenists, and they would use eugenist laws in establishing 
 a system of servitude. They would send a doctor round to 
 tell a woman that she might marry Harry Jones but not Tom 
 Jenkins. Now, a woman may marry a man who bets on horses 
 and drinks beer and still be proud of him, while the capitalists 
 think it a pity that she has tied herself up with a non-working 
 man. Thus, the eugenic science would become a capitalist 
 measure against the independence of the poor, and the English- 
 man's home would become a dungeon in the rich man's 
 castle. ..." 
 
 Thus Mr. Weightly went on, denoimcing the mod- 
 ernists, and wound up before parting with a startling proph- 
 ecy: 
 
 "What of the unrest in politics and literature? . . . Well, 
 it's not unlikely that a war may come along and settle hun- 
 dreds of things. If war does come, woman suffrage will be 
 swallowed up as in an earthquake. When a woman shall see 
 men go to war, she will say: 'I do respect men. How fine 
 and brave and noble they arel' The worst of this demanding 
 the vote is that you somehow imply that everyone is happy 
 who has a vote. . . ." 
 
 Gombarov saw the apostle of Medievalism into a taxi. 
 Taxis were a great weakness of Mr. Weightly's. 
 
 224 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 BKAIN IN THE FOG 
 
 The same October week that he had his strange meeting 
 with Lina Linter, Gombarov had another extraordinary expe- 
 rience. It was an evening of thick fog, and he and Jidius 
 were walking from Knightsbridge along the railed barrier of 
 Hyde Park towards Albert Hall, where the literary celebrity, 
 Mr. F. OTlaherty Desmond, was to speak on The Crime of 
 Poverty. He had the reputation of being an amusing, para- 
 doxical speaker, who provoked many laughs on the most 
 solemn subjects. By a stroke of luck Julius had secured two 
 box seats. 
 
 The rail-barrier of Hyde Park stretched on at their side 
 like some eternal penance. Little else was visible, and there 
 appeared to be no end to it, but the penance was a 
 sweet torment, and it did not matter if the end did 
 not come. Voices and laughter came out of the fog, 
 with edges as blurred as of the shadows that darted past. 
 A lius crawled along the kerb, and the conductor 
 walked by its side with a lantern in his hand. Now the foliage 
 of a large tree spread overhead and became an exquisite lace 
 in varying degrees of sflver and grey tones; now an electric 
 light loomed just ahead, a large, luminous orange, very high 
 up, suspended as if it were a planet, without visible support — 
 a strange, imaccountable phenomenon, reappearing at inter- 
 vals. The fog, not equally thick, was as a dark veil, worn in 
 places, and through its rifts London's complexion glowed and 
 her jewels dimly shone, renewing her msrstery and seductive- 
 ness so irresistible to her imwearying lovers. For who, once 
 having loved her, has ceased loving her? Who, once conscious 
 of her fascination, has been able to free himself? Under this 
 dark veil the personality of London was felt as at no other 
 
 225 
 
BABEL 
 
 time. One felt her closeness, the wonder of her past, the 
 hovering of the spirits of her lovers of aforetime, and she was 
 the more lovely for having been loved before. Oh, London, 
 London! Oh, old; oh young! Oh, cruel; oh, kind! Oh, 
 ugly; oh, beautiful! ^Tio are you? What are you? Who 
 conceived you? Who gave you your name, with its sound of 
 bells, dinning, high and low? 
 
 But there, across the way, what was it, that tiny 
 oasis of green and red l^ht, emerald and ruby? It was the 
 window of a chemist's shop. This spot, before which muffled 
 figures passed and passed, was as beautiful as a dream. 
 
 "That means we have passed Albert Hall!" said Julius. 
 "Let's cross the street and walk back." 
 
 A crowd was pouring through the entrances of the large 
 rotund structure. There were some queer looking people to 
 be seen, obviously intellectuals, young men with long hair, 
 yoimg women with short. There were many pale faces in 
 the corridor, such as Gombarov had seen at a vegetarian 
 restaurant, faces with gleaming, consumptive eyes, which 
 refused to look upon beef when it was red. Two "arty" 
 women wore curiously cut green frocks with Greek borders; 
 their stockingless feet were shod in sandals. 
 
 The two friends soon foimd their box in the hall. There 
 was a rising and falling of voices, now and then a flurry of 
 applause or a stamping of feet, as the crowd near the plat- 
 form recognised a new arrival among the speakers, of whom 
 not so much as a shadow was visible from where Gombarov 
 sat. This was due to the hall being full of fog, which hung 
 in clouds, or drifted, thickly, like tobacco smoke, lit up and 
 interpenetrated with shafts of light, emanating from the lus- 
 tres in the centre and the arc lights circling the amphitheatre. 
 Groups of faces were to be seen in the immediate neighbour- 
 
 226 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 hood, in the curve to the right and to the left, and in the 
 balcony just overhead; these were blurred and veiled, and 
 merged into a vast texture of pale spots, quite indistinguish- 
 able in feature one from the other, or even man from woman. 
 Snatches of revolutionsiry songs were heard from various parts 
 of the immense hall, and staccato effects were supplied at 
 intervals by isolated or grouped coughers. 
 
 At the sudden loud rap of an invisible mallet the great crowd 
 grew sUent. An invisible chairman introduced an invisible 
 speaker, who was greeted with applause from thousands of 
 invisible auditors. The speaker, a Socialist, fired hard, explo- 
 sive words through the fog, which he likened to the fimies of 
 capitalism hanging over the people, choking them, smothering 
 them, and only waiting to be dispersed by a little breeze. That 
 breeze was socialism. "If it were only a hurricane!" he ex- 
 claimed, to the accompaniment of "Hear! Hear!" from the 
 audience and of the coughing and cleansing of many throats. 
 
 "Abolish capitalism, and you abolish poverty!" he went 
 on. "You have the power, if you only will, to generate the 
 breeze, nay, the hurricane, to sweep away the fog of capital- 
 ism. The chains that hold you are but yoiu: own sloth. You 
 yourselves are that hurricane, if you only knew it! In all 
 parts of the earth the sleeping winds are awakening, and 
 together they shall sweep the earth clear of the fog and miasma 
 of the old order. We Britons must join hands with our 
 brothers in France, Germany, Austro-Hungary, America and 
 Russia. There is no patriotism, only the International. We 
 shall scrap all armies and navies, and do away with aU the 
 parasites who live on the sterile labour of the thousands forging 
 weapons of destruction, and the same laboiur and the same 
 wealth shall go to the making of comfortable homes, education, 
 sanitation, health. . . ." 
 
 227 
 
BABEL 
 
 The fog in the hall deepened. The neighbouring faces 
 became less and less visible. Discomfited throats continued 
 coughing. The speaker went on, and it seemed as if he had 
 gained confidence from seeing no one, and was addressing his 
 speech, full of defiance, to the fog, to the whole world. . . . 
 When he sat down, the applause did not come at once, as no 
 one was quite sure that he had sat down, but when it came 
 it was like a dam bursting. . . . 
 
 Again a hard rap from the mallet, followed by a silence. 
 A new speaker was introduced, this time a woman. . . . The 
 soft, warm tones of a feminine voice came drifting, and it 
 seemed as if they were further softened and warmed by 
 commingling with the thick, smoky air. There was a caress 
 in that voice, and no hard edges. It was seductive and rich 
 with the quality of its owner's sex, and because of the speaker's 
 invisibility it was easy to imagine it as coming from the otha 
 side of a screen or partition, from imder a coverlet of eider- 
 down. There was a vibrancy in it, modulated at first, grad- 
 ually developing volume, rising to passion, with little outbursts 
 of hysteria, normal to modem women, so pleasant to the sus- 
 ceptible ears of modem men. Women's voices affected 
 Gombarov curiously. . . . This one aroused his tenderness, 
 unaccountably awakened the male in him. Now it came as a 
 pleading for a lover, now as a mother appealing for her little 
 ones. There was in it a refined primitivity. . . . "What a 
 tigress! What a lover!" said Gombarov to himself, cmd sud- 
 denly became angry with himself for not paying proper 
 attention to what the lady had to say. But that was a way 
 with him: some music and some voices acted strangely on 
 him. He caught at soimds, sounds had a special meaning for 
 him, and what the sounds said to him was not always what 
 the words said. Meanwhile the voice rose and rose, grew more 
 
 228 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 and more vibrant, now deep, now shrill, overreaching itself 
 now and again on a top-note, which appeared to break and 
 scatter into a series of faint little shrieks. As she was reach- 
 ing the crescendo of her speech, there was a sense of effort, a 
 sense of panting, a sense of sudden rising to dizzy heights, 
 then a prolonged note bordering on a sob, brokeii as if its 
 utterer had swooned away. ... An intense sOence of some 
 moments followed, then the crowd, held breathless by the 
 H>eaker, broke loose in a thunder of applause. 
 
 Again a sharp rap of the mallet, and the chairman was 
 "pleased to introduce Mr. F. O'Flaherty Desmond, who 
 needed no introduction." And sharply, out of the fog, there 
 came the dear, deliberate, business-like tones of Mr. Des- 
 mond's voice, which, in contrast to the previous speaker's, 
 was whoUy dispassionate, with a touch of mockery. A rapier, 
 it cut boldly through the fog, and its edge remained imsoft- 
 ened and unblurred. The woman's voice had been in that fog 
 a flsuning torch, flickering, flaring, wavering, it had the 
 warmth that comes with the consummation of a passion. Mr. 
 Desmond's was cold and electrical, even and balanced, quite 
 ruthless and imchanging, a searchlight of so much horse- 
 power, incapable of increasing or decreasing its voltune of light. 
 This voice, too, had its effect on Gombarov, if of a different 
 sort. It did not appear to come from a hiunan being, visible 
 or invisible, but from a brain, quite separate and detached, 
 suspended in space there, without visible support, like those 
 luminous electric oranges outside, and this suspended brain 
 was speaking in metallic, cerebral tones its hard logic, in terms 
 of banter and irony. Horace Walpole's observation crossed 
 Gombarov's brain as he listened to Desmond's voice: "Life 
 is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel." 
 "In this fog," began Mr. Desmond, "I feel as Jehovah must 
 
 229 
 
BABEL 
 
 have felt when he uttered his laws from the smoke of Mount 
 Sinai. For I warn you, ladies and gentlemen, that like 
 Jehovah I shall stand no nonsense from you. I have caught 
 you dancing roimd the golden calf. But that is not what I 
 have against you. What I have against you is that you haven't 
 danced roimd the golden calf quite enough! I should like 
 every one present here to possess a golden calf of his own. 
 My quarrel with you is that you are not capitalists. I should 
 like to see every man a capitalist. It is the duty of every 
 man to be a capitalist. I am a capitalist myself. I want to 
 see no man poor, as I want to see no man a thief or a murderer. 
 Poverty is the most prevalent crime of the age, and it is not 
 a whit less serious than petty larceny. Our syston today 
 recognises that. A man who steals a loaf of bread goes to jafl, 
 but a man who steals a million pounds or so of sterling out of 
 the pockets of his fellowmen is considered to be a clever fellow 
 and not only is allowed to go scot free, but is patted on the 
 back for it and allowed to have a palace, a dozen servants and 
 a Rolls-Royce. My sympathies are all, naturally, with the 
 idle rich as against the pregnant poor. Poor fellows! You 
 can have no idea what a plague idleness can be! Besides, the 
 poor devils must be always thinking of finding jobs for you. 
 You will breed so! There has been nothing like it from 
 Methuselah to Malthus! There are so many of you. They 
 can't possibly provide for you all. . ". . I am a capitalist my- 
 self, and so I know. I get my publishers to charge you as 
 much as possible for my books. I get the theatre managers 
 to charge you as much as possible for seats for my plays. 
 Now if you were wise — God forbid! — ^you would, looking at it 
 from your point of view, natioixalise me. What I mean is, you'd 
 come to me, and you'd say: 'Look here, old duffer. We like 
 you, and we adore your novels and plays. Shakespeare can't 
 
 230 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 hold a candle to you, and Moliere has to take a back seat. 
 We don't hold that up against you, your being bom so clever. 
 Still, we don't think it right that you should gather in all our 
 shekels. Tell you what well do. We'll build you a theatre. 
 We shall, of course, name it after you. We will also give 
 you a house rent free, and all the necessities of life, such as 
 bread and ink, and we'll see that you don't die in the poor- 
 house, and that you have a decent funeral with lots of flowers, 
 and a tombstone to say what a splendid fellow you were. . . . 
 In any case, it's an ultimatum.' I'd make a wry face and be 
 sure to sulk for a while. In the end I should have to cave in, 
 and thank you with Chinese poUteness. And you? You'd be 
 getting my splendid productions practically for nothing, and 
 their cost being taken out in taxes, you'd have the pleasure 
 of not knowing that you paid me anything. . . ." 
 
 In this fashion Desmond went on castigating his audience, 
 which judging from frequent laughter and applause, appeared 
 to enjoy being flouted. The voice proceeded to spesck of the 
 inevitable with no more emotion than that of an orade. "You 
 are poor, ladies and gentlemen," the voice was saying, "in 
 order that armies and navies may thrive. Your work is not 
 creating real capital, but anti-capital. You are forging 
 weapons of destruction. What are weapons of destruction for 
 if not to destroy? Destroy whom? Germany? But Germany 
 is our best customer. We are Germany's best customer. And 
 so, even if we could destroy Germany, we should only be 
 destroying ourselves. . . . Millions are being spent in aU coun- 
 tries for destruction. Millions are being paid for battleships, 
 which soon become obsolete . . . new inventions are con- 
 stantly displacing the old and for every new weapon there is 
 invented a counter-weapon. . . . And one day, they are 
 bound to go off. . . . What then? . . ." 
 
 231 
 
BABEL 
 
 Thus spoke that voice of the brain suspended in the fog, 
 coldly, deliberately, metallically, and when it ceased there was 
 applause. But who ever heard of an oracle being applauded? 
 It was as if they applauded their own coming doom, as if it 
 were a thing to be desired. 
 
 Gombarov and Julius walked out into the outer fog, without 
 waiting to hear the other speakers. 
 
 "The most clear-thinking man in England!" said Julius. 
 "He was, as you say, a cold brain speaking in the fog, but 
 that fog, my boy, is an excellent symbol for England!" 
 
 TOAD-IN-THE-HOLE 
 
 Gombarov felt that his education in the matter of great men 
 was incomplete without meeting a real, live Royal Academician. 
 He went to see Sir Algernon Pengwynne, RA. 
 
 Sir Algernon, an old gentleman with white beard, dignified 
 and courteous, a trifle solemn, questioned Gombarov about his 
 experiences in England, and asked him what he thought of 
 the Post-Impressionists. Gombarov discreetly observed that 
 he thought there was a touch of madness about them. 
 
 "I shouldn't call it exactly a touch!" exclaimed Sir Algernon. 
 "They are fit for the lunatic asylum, that's what I say! The 
 idea of grown-up people enjoying the benefits of civilisation 
 wanting to paint like savages or children. Well, they've 
 certainly succeeded, if that's what they want. Of course, 
 you've heard of the joke played on these nuxlems in Paris! 
 Some wag, it appears, got a donkey to stick its tail into a 
 pot of paint, then got the donkey to work its tail over a 
 canvas. The result was sent to the Modem Exhibition — ^and 
 was accepted! A Post-Impressionist masterpiece! Ha! Ha!" 
 
 "Yes, I've heard the donkey story, but won't you let me see 
 some of your work?" 
 
 '32 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 "You won't mind it not being painted by a donkey's tail?" 
 
 They passed through the library on the way to the studio. 
 Here, in the musty atmosphere of books, Sir Algernon paused 
 to expatiate on the value of books and learning to a great 
 painter. 
 
 "I've designed the house myself," he said. "And I've pur- 
 posely put the library here. I like to think that no man may 
 take up the art of painting without knowing something about 
 literature, especially the classics. I have three thousand 
 volumes here, and IVe read every one of them. . . . How can 
 one paint Nero fiddling while Rome burned without knowing 
 something about Nero's history and character and habits, and 
 something about the current architecture and fashions? But 
 those donkey Post-Impressionists thinfe they can cast off all 
 civilisation, paint how and what they like and call it what they 
 like. They are madl And the world is mad I I hear that 
 some people actually buy their work. . . . Donkeys! " 
 
 The artist led the way into the studio, the sort of studio 
 one would e3q>ect of a Royal Academician. The first canvas 
 to strike Gombarov's eyes was a large, full length portrait of 
 a handsome tall man in a very gaudy uniform. Sprawling 
 across the top of the canvas, in large Roman letters, was: 
 "The Duke of , K.G., K.T., G.C.M.G., G.C.V.O." 
 
 "The Duke has received another title since I've painted 
 that, and I shall have to do the lettering all over again to get 
 it in," said the painter. "Let me show you one of my abstract 
 subjects, 'Aphrodite Rising from the Sea'." 
 
 Gombarov looked at the picture, which showed a naked, 
 obviously English girl, with flowing fair hair, standing rather 
 shyly, knee-deep in the sea. 
 
 "I had some difficulty in getting the model to stay in the 
 water any stretch of time," said the artist. "She is a good 
 
 233 
 
BABEL 
 
 girl, but a bit shy outdoors. I believe in drawing from models. 
 Here is my latest picture, 'The Afternoon Call'. " 
 
 Sir Algernon pointed to a canvas on an easel that showed a 
 Louis Quatorze room and a handsomely attired gentleman of 
 the period bowing to a young lady, who was sitting in a chair. 
 
 "This picture," said the artist, "will give you some idea of 
 how I work. I have been at it for some weeks now. Painting 
 a picture is not so simple a thing as those modem donkeys 
 imagine. Here are some of my original designs. He picked 
 up a pile of drawings from the table. "As you see, I have 
 drawn the gentleman and the lady quite separately at first, 
 and absolutely naked. That was to get my anatomy correct. 
 It wasn't until I got them just as I wanted them that I put 
 clothes on them. . . ." 
 
 Gombarov could not resist smiling, but refrained from asking 
 the question that was on his lips: Did Sir Algernon put their 
 clothes on piece by piece? . . . 
 
 "The costumes are all historically correct," went on the 
 painter. "Now, look at the picture on the wall. I mean the 
 picture in the picture," he added, as he saw his visitor's eyes 
 stray elsewhere. "It was my original intention to invent a 
 design to represent a picture of the period, but on second 
 thought it occurred to me that I couldn't do better than insert 
 the real thing. That's a picture by Watteau. I first copied it 
 in the Louvre full-size. Then I took it home and painted a 
 copy in miniature. There's no use inventing when you can 
 get the real thing, is there? The original colours are all 
 there, tool And now look at the pattern of the parquet floor, 
 also of the period. As you can see, it's a simple enough pattern, 
 but there's the question of perspective. I have that mathe- 
 matically correct. Just look at these!" and he drew out a 
 number of blue prints of meticulous workmanship. 
 
 234 
 
BABEL'S GREAT MEN 
 
 "Certainly," thought Gombarov, "if genius is the art of 
 taking pains, this man is a genius, but " 
 
 "... It was a toss-up," Sir Algernon's voice was saying, 
 "whether I should be an engineer or a painter. This perspective 
 design is a result of my having studied engineering for a while, 
 and I do not regret it. It used to be said that a little learning 
 is a dangerous thing, and now these young modern donkeys 
 would have it that a lot of learning is a dangerous thing. ..." 
 
 "What made you take to painting?" asked Gombarov. 
 
 "Ah, young man, thereby hangs a tale," replied Sir Algernon, 
 his expression softening. "My little wife, God bless her, 
 decided that. She saw my talents, and urged me on. That 
 was before I married her. And I never regretted it!" 
 
 Gombarov couldn't quite make out whether he never 
 regretted having taken up painting or having married his little 
 wife. 
 
 Then his host again burst into abuse of modern painters. 
 "Notoriety seekers, nothing else! . . . They talk of youth 
 knocking on the door. Bah! I don't call it knocking, but 
 thimipingl thumping! thumping! They want to break into 
 the Palace of Art with an axe! Thimiping is what I call it, 
 young man, thimiping, thumping! . . ." 
 
 235 
 
CHAPTER VI: THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! 
 
 "Merits a knocking indeed! If a 
 man were porter of hell-gate, he 
 should have old turning the key 
 . . . Knock, knock, knock! Who't 
 there, »" the name of Beelsebubf 
 . . . Knock, knock! Who's there, 
 i' the other devil's name? Faith, 
 here's an equivocator, that could 
 swear in both the scales against 
 either scale; who committed trea- 
 son enough for God's sake, yet 
 could not equivocate to heaven: 
 O! come in equivocator . . . Knock, 
 knock, knock! . . ." 
 
 — Macbeth. 
 
 GHOST-SEEKEK 
 
 After being admitted by Tobias Bagg's landlady, Gombarov 
 ascended two flights of rickety stairs and knocked on the door 
 of the poet's wretched little room, and waited. There was 
 no answer, but he could hear the click of the tsrpewriter 
 within. He knocked again, this time louder, which brought 
 forth the vigorous response, "Come in!" 
 
 He entered and found Tobias in his shirt-sleeves. He was 
 sitting with his back to the door, his face toward the window, 
 which looked out on an old graveyard. He did not timi at 
 once, but went on banging away at the typewriter. His long 
 fair hair, which even in repose stood up on end, swayed re- 
 sponsively to the movement of his fingers, reminding one of 
 a pianist. 
 
 "Hello!" he exclaimed, pausing suddenly, as he wheeled 
 round in his seat. He fixed his blue eyes on the visitor and 
 
 236 
 
THUMP! THUMP 1 THUMP! 
 
 smiled mischievously, while one hand clutched his blonde beard. 
 His hair stood up bristling and erect, and Gombarov remem- 
 bered that someone had called him a "sun god." 
 
 "Do sit down, Gombarov," said Bagg in a somewhat shrill, 
 twangy voice, unmistakably American. "I was just doing a two- 
 hundred-and-forty-line poem, to show that it can't be done! 
 That isn't to say that it isn't better than the long poems 
 being written nowadays, but if I and Patrick Raftery, the two 
 best poets writing English today, can't write a decent long 
 poem, who can? The best poems, I should say the only 
 poems, are always short. Yet the old fogies, who represent 
 the Royal Academy of poetry, go on producing poems by the 
 yard, like merchandise! You can put that in the article you 
 are writing about me, if you like. I've received my new por- 
 trait today, which you can use with it. Here it is. You can 
 see, I've had it taken in my dressing-gown, which is a more 
 esthetically satisfying garment than the banal bags we wear 
 today. TTiatll make the New Yorkers sit up and take notice, 
 what d'you think? And you might put in that I am using 
 the royalties of my last book of poems. Mutatis mutandis, in 
 having a Cubist necktie made to order at the Cubist Industries 
 Shop. Am spending the whole cheque of seven shillings and 
 sixpence on it." 
 
 "You don't mean to say that, with all your reputation, that 
 is all you get for a book of poems! " 
 
 "That's only for the second six months. I've made as much 
 as five pounds out of a book, which contained the best of 
 several months' work. But you can't be a great poet and 
 make money. If I once began to make money, I should ask 
 myself: 'What's wrong with my work? In what way have I 
 compromised with public taste? What have I done to gain 
 the praise of Phineas Penwick?' 
 
 237 
 
BABEL 
 
 "I say, Bagg, and what's wrong with Penwick? He is 
 counted by some as being England's best literary critic." 
 
 "Everything is wrong with him! He is dead! As a corpse 
 he may be very beautiful. As a mummy in the British Museum, 
 he'd look splendid. But the idea of his pontificating on litera- 
 ture! He's got no guts! To get a new idea out of him would 
 require nothing short of a Caesarian operation, and to get a 
 new idea into his head would be as difficult as to walk through 
 the great wall of China. In short, he's a fine specimen of 
 English stodge, the Royal Academician in literature. What 
 are you doing tonight, Gombarov?" 
 
 "Oh, nothing in particular! Why?" 
 
 "Meet me at the Isola Bella at eight. We can have dinner, 
 then go along to Hugh Rodd's place, close by. Some of the 
 best of the yoimg poets will be there. We intend to launch a 
 new poetic movement, and to discuss a new periodical, which 
 I propose that we shall call 'I' or 'Myself.' Our idea, you see, 
 is to encourage everyone to express himself in his own way, 
 and to discourage schools and academies. We will expose the 
 Art Trust! The periodical will be our first bomb against the 
 old fogies, the art merchants. I shall put yoiu" name on the 
 contributors' list, if you like. I am afraid we shan't be able 
 to pay for contributions, not at first." 
 
 "Of course!" said Gombarov. flattered to be counted among 
 the rebels. "Fimny you should speak of it, for I've brought 
 a little article along with me, that I should like you to look 
 over. It happens to be against the Academy!" 
 
 While Bagg was reading the article, Gombarov sat by 
 rather nervously. He regarded himself as a mere acolyte in 
 literature, and he was never fully to recover from the nervous- 
 ness he experienced in the presence of another reading a 
 manuscript of his. 
 
 238 
 
THUMP 1 THUMP! THUMP! 
 
 "The very thing!" he was relieved to hear Bagg say. "You 
 know, you'll make a fine art critic. But you'll have to get 
 away from inversions and cliches. You have a chance of 
 succeeding Wilfred Suttle as the best English critic. Suttle, 
 unfortunately, belonged to the 'nineties, when every decent 
 artist was driven by society to go to the devil. One drowned 
 himself, another shot himself, a third took to drink, two others 
 to drugs, a sixth to the gutter, and so on. . . . Yes, you have 
 a splendid sense of prose, much better than my own. . . ." 
 
 "Do you really think so?" asked Gombarov, flattered by 
 this imexpected praise, though it was notorious that Bagg, a 
 fine poet, wrote atrocious prose. Still, praise from Bagg was 
 something of a compliment. Bagg was not a man given to 
 admissions of his own inferiority. There was this to be said 
 for him: within his limitations, he had a keen, critical mind, 
 quick to detect flaws of technique. 
 
 Bagg was one of the first of that horde of Americans, of 
 whom the forerunners were Henry Jjimes and Whistler, to 
 invade Europe with the purpose of acquiring something out 
 of the accumulated treasure of her cidture. Gombarov called 
 these the "ghost-seekers," for it seemed to him that they came 
 to commune with old ghosts, to learn something in lands where 
 hovered the spirits of the dead and the living great. It was 
 something to know that here Shakespeare nursed his creative 
 dreams, that here Rabelais let loose his cornucopia of world- 
 shaking mirth, that here daemons still lived and held forth. 
 The first American messengers never returned to their native 
 land, but became part and parcel of the old soils, to which 
 they added something, while their seed was exported to 
 America, a curious Americo-European quantity. Those, like 
 Stuart Merrill and Vide-Griffin, who went to France, were 
 swallowed up by Europe, and their seed remained there. Such 
 
 239 
 
BABEL 
 
 was the strength of Europe. It was not only Americans who 
 intermingled with Europe, but the Europeans themselves 
 intermingled more and more, the men of one nation with those 
 of another. Before James and Whistler and Conrad, England 
 and her arts had been, to all intents and purposes, English, 
 or produced by Englishmen, but at the time Gombarov came to 
 London, individuals of alien blood were making serious 
 depredations on the native arts, and, in that sense, England 
 had ceased being insular. The plastic arts, especially, were 
 beginning to lose their national and local characteristics. And 
 international Europe was drawing America more and more 
 into its intellectual orbit. 
 
 Tobias Bagg was perhaps the first of the American invaders 
 consciously to perceive this phenomenon. He preached a 
 European culture for America, and having made London his 
 home, he extended a welcome to any young American poet 
 who came to the metropolis, and in spite of his poverty man- 
 aged, somehow, to entertain him lavishly to dinner, and to 
 introduce him to those whom he considered "the most inter- 
 esting people." In this way he not only did a good turn to his 
 culture-himting countrymen, but also established his own 
 importance. He was not without admirers in England, and 
 apart from his friendships with such celebrities as the poet 
 Raftery and the poet-critic-novelist, Rupert Hunt, he had two 
 or three English disciples, in whom he took great pride and 
 who shared with him his admirations and detestations. They 
 were united in one common aim, which was to break the chains 
 that held poetry to old forms, and they thought to restore 
 youth to poetry by returning to primitive rhymeless forms. 
 They called themselves the Primitivists, and though their idea 
 was to write as if no one had written before them, yet they 
 curiously argued that no one could write good English who 
 
 240 
 
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! 
 
 was vmacquainted with modern French masterpieces in the 
 original. 
 
 Bagg himself was all art for art's sake, yet there was a 
 Pauline, a Salvation Army, air about him — ^he was a convert 
 maker, a drum-beater, a blower of fanfares, calling upon 
 young artists, especially Americans, to join his group and be 
 saved — from bad art! This aspect of him, this tendency to 
 prosdjrtise, was possibly due to his being a descendant of an 
 old New England family, with aggressive Puritanic traditions, 
 though actually he was bom in Kansas, which doubtless 
 accounted for his Yankee breeziness. like most intelligent 
 Americans who had stayed some time abroad, he was both a 
 product and a reaction from forebears and environment. And 
 in England he was more continental than EngUsh. The 
 English critics received his first little book of poems with 
 enthusiasm and prophesied wonderful things for its author. 
 Actually, on the appearance of his second book, they raised 
 a imited chorus to say that "the author of Reveille had not 
 lived up to the promise of his first book, Menestralsie. . . ." 
 
 Bagg explained to Gombarov that "the English way was to 
 pat a yoimg writer on the head only to give him afterwards 
 a stout kick from behind. Their first praise is like dressing 
 up a man for his execution or his fimeral. You are bound to 
 write a book one day, and you will see! " He was bitter about 
 the English attitude and harped on the treatment Whistler 
 had received. Gombarov had the impression that Bagg re- 
 garded himself as the champion of good poetry in the same 
 way that Whistler was the champion of good painting. There 
 was, indeed, a curious resemblance in their methods of living 
 and working. Both had come from a land of few ghosts, and 
 they were defenceless against the army of ghosts which swooped 
 down on them in lands of old culture, and took easy posses- 
 
 241 
 
BABEL 
 
 sion of them. Whistler had communed with the ghosts of 
 Velazquez and Hokusai, and even with that of Turner, whom 
 he is said to have detested, possibly for the same reason that 
 Bagg detested UTiitman, for dealing with "cosmic forces," for 
 not working within prescribed limitations, for letting his 
 material over-run his frames, break his frames. That was 
 why Bagg was doing a two-hundred-and-forty-line poem, to 
 show that it couldn't be done— by him! Out of Velazquez, 
 Hokusai and parts of Turner, Whistler, a man less than any of 
 these, had performed an experiment m alchemy, had, indeed, 
 achieved a new combination, all his own. Bagg had com- 
 mimed with the ghosts of England, China, Spain, Greece, 
 Japan, France and Italy, but had not achieved an equal syn- 
 thesis. He could do a poem in the style of an old English 
 ballad, another in the style of Meleager, or of Li Po, or of 
 Laforgue; but though an American, he could not write a 
 poem that could be called American. Like America itself, he 
 was a combination of alien, unassimilated, if sometimes beau- 
 tiful fragments, striving to impenetrate one another, to fuse 
 with one another, and succeeding only here and there, more 
 or less. But he was unable to see America from a height, as 
 an incessantly active chemical pattern, trying to stabilise 
 itself. 
 
 He had a horror of the word "cosmic." But there was no 
 getting aroimd it: America was cosmic! It was chaos, a world 
 in the making, a melting-pot, an appearance — ^if gazed at 
 from a height — ^like one of Turner's mad paintings of a sunrise; 
 the particulars were in the process of melting in order to 
 assume eventually the shapes of different particulars. The 
 Americans in Europe were thinking of the future of America 
 and their idea was to accelerate the cooling processes by 
 throwing into the pot a potent solution of older cultiures. They 
 
 242 
 
THUMP! THUMP 1 THUMP 1 
 
 wanted to see America "a finished product," a gentleman with 
 manners and manicured finger-nails. 
 
 In the meantime some of America's escaping heat was 
 infecting Europe. In Europe they were sick of being cultured 
 gentlemen, and the "barbaric yawp" of Whitman was falling 
 on responsive ears, especially in France, which was of the 
 very essence of Europe, and out of France came the influence 
 of Whitman to Ammcans in England, just as previously, in 
 the 'nineties, out of France came the influence of the American 
 Poe and gave rise to the English Sjnnbolists, who, in their 
 turn, sent to America a few spare crumbs, which America 
 had refused at the source. The Atlantic had become a cultural 
 billiard table. You struck a ball out of America and it shot 
 in a straight line to France, went off at an angle to England, 
 and back to America. Europe was Europeanising America, 
 America was Americanising Europe, Like two interacting 
 chemicals they were dissolving and fusing with one another 
 in the arts as in the economic and social spheres. 
 
 One sometimes wondered whether Bagg was aware of having 
 borrowed a couple of tricks from his spiritual enemy. For 
 vers litre came to him presumably from France, actually from 
 America, by way of France. Bagg preached revolt in poetry, 
 but, then. Whitman before him had been a rebel, in practise. 
 Bagg, who exercised an influence on yoimg American poets, 
 possibly imagined himself, perhaps, to be king of the chess- 
 board, but to Gombarov it seemed that the Spirit of the 
 Inevitable was using him as a pawn, an effective pawn to be 
 sure, but one knows what happens to pawns, the best of them. 
 Bagg, indeed, had come to that point in his career when he 
 wrote less and less poetry and more and more manifestoes as to 
 how poetry should be written. He was making disciples, and 
 though his growing influence was appreciably felt among a 
 
 243 
 
BABEL 
 
 small Anglo-American set in England, it was in America that 
 the seed thus sown showed signs of fructifying on a large scale. 
 
 Gombarov first met him casually at Saville's one day, and 
 they rapidly became friends. Nevertheless, Gombarov often 
 felt constraint in his presence, which was not wholly due 
 to shyness. There was Saville, the one unmistakably great 
 man among the celebrities he had met, with whom he never 
 felt constraint. He could tell Saville anything. Saville was a 
 great artist and also a great man: for he created great art 
 and at the same time lived abundantly. With Bagg it was 
 difficult to discuss anything but art forms. Bagg's one topic 
 was the technique of poetry, and Gombarov foimd that, on 
 his part, he coidd make conversation by dragging in painting, 
 of which Tobias knew little or nothing. In this way they 
 learnt something from one another. It was to be said for 
 Bagg that he was an eager listener to all matters appertaining 
 to the technique of the arts, and was quick to put to use what 
 he had learnt. 
 
 They seldom talked of Ufe, or of art's relation to life. 
 Whenever Gombarov touched on the subject, he found every 
 approach barred. Bagg, with a superior air, hovered above it 
 all, as if the matter were vulgar and did not concern him. Art 
 to him was an abstract pattern, a sort of superior jig-saw 
 puzzle, the arranging of words, colours or sounds in harmonious 
 combinations, almost wholly independent of life. Life was a 
 slut, a woman of easy virtue, and he had no use for her. The 
 truth was that Bagg's experience of life was limited, and he 
 made a virtue of his limitations. But Gombarov, who had 
 seen something of life, and tasted of her bitterness, could not 
 get away from the idea that the roots of art are in life, and 
 in the abundance thereof, smd that mere pattern making could 
 never content him. 
 
 244 
 
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! 
 
 This fundamental difference kept them fundamentally apart, 
 precluded any idea Bagg may have entertained of Gombarov 
 becoming a disciple, and raised up that wall of constraint 
 between them. 
 
 Bagg was in good spirits when he met Gombarov at the 
 Isola Bella. He was dressed in a black velvet coat, a grey- 
 yellow velours hat and a purple flowing tie, and the buttons on 
 his coat were of red glass. 
 
 "Here is the first shot of our campaign," he said, handing 
 a letter to his vis-a-vis. 
 
 The letter was addressed to Laurence Winmill, Georgian 
 poet, and was couched in the following terms: 
 
 "Dear Sir: — I have great pleasure in challenging you to 
 a mortal duel for your incredible stupidity in thinking Words- 
 worth a poet and for imitating him. Yours faithfully, Tobias 
 Bagg." 
 
 "WTiat do you think of it?" said Bagg. "That wUl wake 
 him up, eh? We will take them all by the shoulders, shake 
 them, as they snooze in their comfortable chairs, and say to 
 them: Wake up, England!'" 
 
 Gombarov smiled, but said nothing. He wanted to say 
 "Don't you think, the best way to shake them up would be 
 to write great poems?" He said instead: "Worthy of 
 ^Tiistler!" — an ambiguous remark, siu-e to please Bagg more 
 than anjrthing else he could say. 
 
 Tobias purred with pleasure. He was in his way a chOd, 
 playful and malicious, and he took as great pleasure in a prank 
 as in writing a poem. If Gombarov's supposition that he had 
 modelled his career on Whistler's was correct, to say that he 
 had done something "worthy of Whistler" was to give him the 
 moon itself. 
 
 245 
 
BABEL 
 
 "Take a look at these poems," said Bagg, "and tell me what 
 you think of them. They came by post this morning." 
 
 Gombarov's eyes, as he opened the book, fell first of all on 
 the flyleaf, with its inscription: "To the Master, the only 
 Tobias Bagg, himibly, from Conrad Barron." 
 
 Gombarov smiled inwardly, and turned to the title page, 
 which read: "Nxiptials, by C. Barron, published by the 
 Author." He turned over the page, and there was the dedica- 
 tion: "To all virgins waiting their hour, speedily, lest the wine 
 turn into vinegar." There was an intriguing air about these 
 preliminary pages, and Gombarov turned another page, to find 
 a poem "To Amaryllis," in which it was related how the Poet 
 had watched Amaryllis grow from bud to blossom, and from 
 blossom to full bloom, until her 
 
 ". . .flower-like face, dark-framed with wealth of hair. 
 More silken to the touch than pansy petals. 
 Gazed softly out of its eyes, tormented 
 With the up-flowing sap of passion, flooding 
 From the roots ..." 
 
 and how the Poet at last took pity and plucked the flower, 
 much to the lady's edification and his own joy. The poem 
 concluded: 
 
 "And in that hour, Amaryllis, 
 I uncorked a fresh flask of wine. 
 To honour our mutual ecstasy. 
 What if I struggled with the corkt . . . 
 The wine was good." 
 Variations on the theme were written also "To Helen," "To 
 Phyllis," "To Juno," and other ladies with idyllic names. 
 
 "They seem to be all about free love," observed Gombarov, 
 amused.. 
 
 246 
 
THUMP! THUMP 1 THUMP 1 
 
 "The important thing is that they are in free verse," said 
 Bagg. 
 
 "Perhaps it is natural," observed Gombarov, "that free love 
 should find expression in free verse. Great passion, as you 
 have said, cannot completely express itself within the hide- 
 bound laws of rhyme. Free love, of course, implies the breaking 
 down or the surmounting of traditional laws, and such strength 
 of passion in life often results, as we know, in the birth of 
 extraordinary men. Da Vinci, to mention one, who said, 'I am 
 a bastard, and am proud of it.' But both free love and free 
 verse do follow natural, or, if you like, fimdamental laws. . . ." 
 
 "Well, I never thought of that," said Bagg. "It's a good 
 argimient against conventional morality, which we know is 
 bad. There is an idea for an article in it. You are not using 
 it yourself, are you?" 
 
 "No. You are welcome to it!" replied Gombarov, amused 
 that Bagg had taken him seriously, and wondering whether 
 he had given away a good idea in a jest. "You don't believe 
 in marriage for an artist, do you, Tobias?" 
 
 "Decidedly no. A wife is a coffin to an artist. You are not 
 contemplating attending your own fimeral, are you?" 
 
 Tobias grew thoughtful. A suspicion crossed Gombarov's 
 mind that he was having an unhappy love affair. 
 
 "By the way," said Tobias, "you may meet the author of 
 these poems to-night. I've sent him a wire to come to Rodd's. 
 I think there's something in the boy. It's well to catch them 
 young." 
 
 At that moment a young man entered and absent-mindedly 
 looked round the room. Bagg beckoned to him. 
 
 "Sit down with us, if you are not expecting anyone else," 
 said Bagg. 
 
 "I don't mind," replied the newcomer. "Sure I'm. not in the 
 
 2-47 
 
BABEL 
 
 way?" He had a gruff, drawling, somewhat arid voice. "I 
 got yoiir note about tonight," he added, as he sat down at the 
 narrow end of the table between Bagg and Gombarov. 
 
 A FIONEES 
 
 "Roy Christopher of Chiptaw, Arizona — John Gombarov of 
 Samovarski, Russia!" was Bagg's way of introducing them. 
 Christopher looked curiously at Gombarov out of his grey 
 eyes, which, three-quarters hid, peeped out of their long, 
 narrow slits. Apparently, the mention of Russia awakened 
 something in him, for a spark suddenly showed in his eyes, 
 a gleam of response, which, achieving a rapid scrutiny of 
 Gombarov, at once vanished. 
 
 "Do you know Russian?" he asked. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Is it a hard language to learn? I should like to read Biely, 
 Blok and Sologub in the original." 
 
 Gombarov was astonished, for he was better acquainted 
 with the Russian classics than with contemporary names. 
 Christopher, without looking at his listeners, went on talking 
 about these new writers, concerning whom he had gleaned 
 various facts from French and German periodicals. His eyes 
 fixed in the distance, he went on talking as if he were reciting 
 a monologue, wholly disregarding the waiter who had been 
 standing by for some time waiting for the order. 
 
 "What will you have to eat?" Bagg interrupted him, and 
 even while, in an imdecided manner, Christopher was examin- 
 ing the menu, he now and then looked up and interjected a 
 few remarks on Russian literatiu-e, which were uttered as by 
 some reflex action in his brain. 
 
 "Cotelette MUanaise," he said at last, grufiBy, and proceeded 
 with some observations on Biely's book on Symbolism. 
 
 248 
 
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! 
 
 From this he naturally diverged to the subject of modern 
 French poetry, its technique and to an intricate exposition of 
 various vers librists. 
 
 He came down with an avalanche of French names, some 
 of which, apparently, were foreign even to Bagg, who prided 
 himself on his knowledge of modern French poets. During 
 Christopher's talk he now and then noted down a name new 
 to him. 
 
 Gombarov felt sad not to be able to join in with a remark, 
 as he did not know French, and the subject of French poetry 
 was obscure to him. In his insufficiency he felt bored. The 
 man's voice went on monotonously; it was a dry, jagged, un- 
 relenting voice, a voice from the prairies. But he found some 
 interest in watching the man himself, with his lean, big-boned 
 frame, his marked, tortured face, high cheek-bones, and high, 
 broad forehead imder a few wisps of thin brown hair; above 
 all, those long, narrow eyes, whose glittering, liquid pupils slid 
 back and forward in their slits like drops of mercury. 
 
 Then, somehow, the monologue digressed to the subject of 
 ancient and modem painting, the arts of the Egyptians and 
 the Aztecs, the Italian Primitives, then to Cezanne and Picasso, 
 Van Gogh, Matisse and Gauguin. One remark foimd a response 
 in Gombarov: 
 
 "The difference between Matisse and Gauguin," Christopher 
 said, "is that one is a rebel against modem civilisation and is 
 content to express his revolt entirely in his art; the other ex- 
 pressed it in his life as well, for he chucked his bourgeois 
 family and went to Tahiti to live like a savage. A titan, if 
 there ever was one! " 
 
 Christopher appeared to know everything. And it all 
 poured out of him in a steady monotonous flow, yet with a 
 sense of reluctance, as if the words were being squeezed out of 
 
 249 
 
BABEL 
 
 him like paint out of a tube. Only an occasional remark by 
 Bagg or Gombarov interrupted the flow. Gombarov did not 
 then know that it was not due to any desire to display his 
 knowledge, but came from sheer nervousness, and in his ignor- 
 ance Gombarov resented it. 
 
 Christopher, in spite of his tormented, dour expression, had 
 an extremely boyish look, and it was astonishing to hear him 
 refer so casually to the extent of his travels. Though bom 
 and bred in Arizona he had, after studying at BEarvard — an 
 experience he apparently regretted — traversed Mexico, New 
 Mexico, the States of the West and Southwest, had seen New 
 Orleans, San Francisco and the Grand Canyon, had been down 
 the Mississippi, then wandered on through Europe, through 
 Spain, Italy, Sicily, France, Germany, Belgium and Switzer- 
 land, and now divided his time between London and Paris. 
 
 The recital depressed Gombarov, because with the bitter- 
 ness of unreasoning youth he realised his own disadvantages, 
 the cramped narrowness of his life before coming to London, 
 and his relative ignorance. He almost hated Christopho: for 
 the advantages he had had, and the knowledge he possessed. 
 For he did not know the bitterness that was Christopher's, 
 the bitterness that drove him from place to place, and gave 
 him no rest, and with all his travelling made the world such 
 a small place for him. Envy and dissatisfaction and bitta- 
 ness gnawed at Gombarov, and in his feeling of impotence he 
 could have wept. 
 
 "You seem to have travelled a great deal," said Gombarov, 
 while Bagg was paying the bill. 
 
 "Yes. I suppose it's in the blood. My ancestors follovred 
 Daniel Boone across the American continent." 
 
 Once outside, Christopher excused himself for a few moments 
 to buy cigarettes, and Gombarov observed: 
 
 250 
 
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP 1 
 
 "I say, Bagg, that man knows too much!" 
 "He is a good poet, and we want him with us," said Bagg. 
 It was dear that Gombarov and Christopher had no use for 
 one another. The time had not yet come for recognition. 
 Two souls, blind to one another, walking in the darkness, 
 they did not know that they sought one another. No oracle 
 was there to tell them that in the chaos and turmoil of great 
 events, five years hence, their eyes and hearts would suddenly 
 leap to one another, and, their masking shells dropping 
 away, would reveal one to the other, two londy souls, lost 
 daemons, aspiring towards the islanded hill, where dwell the 
 exiled gods. 
 
 THE INTtJITIONISTS 
 
 In Soho Square the trio paused before a large Georgian 
 house, with a broad arched doorway, single-pillared on dtho' 
 side. Mrs. Rodd admitted them and led them up a broad, 
 curving stairway, harmoniously flowing banisters on the right, 
 high white walls on the left. 
 
 The double doors on the second floor landing were open 
 and they passed into the dining room. Here a large table, 
 in the centre, was ^read with sandwiches and cakes; on a 
 small table at the side were bottles of wine, cherry brandy, 
 whiskey and soda. Through the broad open door, a large 
 company could be seen assembled in the next room, broken 
 up in small groups, talking. They raised quite a clamor. 
 The newcomers shook hands with the host, Mr. Rodd, who, 
 sitting on a low stool, was holding forth to a little cirde on 
 Bergsonism. He was a big, brawny fdlow, with broad fea- 
 tures, and his voice was loud and aggressive. He was an art 
 critic who expounded modem art, hence a Borgsonian. Gom- 
 barov noticed Stn^v^y and Douglass among the listen^^.. 
 
BABEL 
 
 He had not seen Douglass since their meeting in Paris, months 
 ago. Rodd addressed himself chiefly to Strogovsky, who, as a 
 neo-Kantian, was evidently disputing some of the new doctrines. 
 When everyone was seated again, Rodd resumed where he had 
 left off: 
 
 "... All art is interpenetration. Men have always sought 
 the absolute, the eternal in art. The old idea of static eternity 
 is no longer tenable. Only life, ceaseless movement, continuous 
 change, is absolute. Whatever is eternal lives and persists in 
 this unceasing movement. We mourn the loss of Greek temples, 
 whose beauty we call eternal, but if the earth were covered 
 with Greek temples, you would destroy the implication of new 
 creation. Something dies, something is bom, every age, yes, 
 every moment. There is a difference even between the early 
 temple of Olympus and the Parthenon. But the memory of 
 what has died persists, and joining with new perceptions and 
 new experiences, gives rise to new structures created out of this 
 interpenetration. A memory or a host of memories and per- 
 ceptions from the past project themselves into a body subject 
 to new perceptions in the present and continue their way into 
 the future, never for an instant ceasing to undergo the pro- 
 cesses of creation. It is the same in the life of a man. We 
 say that a human body undergoes a periodical chemical trans- 
 formation until not a single original cell remains; such is the 
 transformation that goes on continuously in the whole creative 
 world, which is an unceasing becoming through both inner 
 action and new contacts, combined with the resistances of old 
 but by no means dead bodies. Artists have always passed 
 through such processes. 
 
 There is Whistler. Memories of Velazquez and Hokusai lurk 
 in his art, but his new experiences and perceptions, his contacts 
 with the French Impressionists and London have caused his art 
 
 252 
 
THUMP 1 THUMP! THUMP! 
 
 to evolve into what seems to be a new and original mould, which 
 is really a creative projection of his personality: the sum total 
 of all his hereditary and living memories and his perceptions 
 and experiences. Nothing is lost here. The artist's personality, 
 through infinite combinations and interpenetrations, has evolved 
 into a will, and his art is an expression of this will, which 
 discards what it cannot use and takes what it must . . . imagine 
 to yourself a world in which things are made up of infinitesimal 
 fragments that continuously fall apart and as continuously 
 come together in a new form. . . . 
 
 "But if these processes are slow and continuous, there are 
 intense moments and epochs — and epochs are but moments — 
 in the life of humanity, of iadividuals as well as nations, which 
 may be called moments of intuition, when great truths pre- 
 sent themselves in culminating points, as in flashes of light- 
 ning, and great actions and renaissances — ^yes, even catastro- 
 phes — ^take place, and these bear witness to the Bergsonian 
 truth. We have suddenly become conscious of the meaning of 
 life, continuous becoming, which explains both life and death, 
 really the same thing, and with this consciousness the creative 
 process is accelerated, and we boldly project our impetuous 
 forces against the resisting yet relatively dead bodies, such as 
 Royal Academies of all sorts, and aU deadish tendencies that 
 bar the way to oiu- upward, precipitate flight. . . ." 
 
 It was obvious that Rodd would have gone on, if it had not 
 been that Bagg, who had heard it all before, imfolded a letter 
 and thrust it under Rodd's very nose. Rodd, glancing at the 
 letter, burst into a long, loud guffaw, and passed the letter to 
 his neighbour. 
 
 It was Bagg's challenge to Winmill. The whole room was 
 soon rocking with laughter. Gombarov's eyes suddenly fell 
 iqx)n a painting on the wall, showing a group of pregnant, 
 
 253 
 
BABEL 
 
 laughing women dancing in one sweeping circle, painted by an 
 English follower of Matisse, and it struck him that thare was 
 something in common between the expressions of the faces in 
 the picture and the living laughing faces in the room. The 
 room shook with fecund laughter. On its subsiding, there was 
 a general movement towards the dining room, towards the 
 sandwiches and the whiskqr and soda. A few remained behind, 
 chiefly the women. Gombarov took advantage of the relative 
 emptiness of the room to examine the pictures. 
 
 The room, large and high, with three long windows leading 
 to a balcony, combined harmony and comfort. It was a 
 characteristic example of the best Georgian architecture. The 
 furniture, too, was for the most part old and solid. Old 
 miniatures and silhouette portraits himg over the mantel, but 
 these modest specimens and gew-gaws were lost against the 
 modem {»intings hung roimd the waUs, pictures full of strident 
 movement and violent contrasts of colour. The room being 
 but dimly lighted with candles, the flare from the fire on the 
 broad hearth gave even a greater sense of animation to the 
 pictures, especially to the picture in the centre of the left wall, 
 showing a mechanical contrivance painted in a series of hard- 
 edged strips of bright colour, which, as the active light jumped 
 across them and pranced and wavered, gave the illusion of a 
 kaleidoscopic dance of steel girders. The inscription imder- 
 neath read: War in the Air. At one instant the old walls 
 seemed themselves to totter and waver under the play of lights 
 on the fantastic pictures. 
 
 Another picture that attracted Gombarov was called 
 Friedricksbanhoj, Berlin. It showed a perfectly intact engine, 
 a monster in size, entering a station, and the houses on either 
 side were tottering, and some were in a state of collapse, a ina«i<t 
 
 254 
 
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! 
 
 of debris. There was English lettering on the side of the 
 engine, and that was strange. Why should an English engine 
 enter a Berlin station, why all this debris, why should the 
 bufldings totter? And if you but half dosed your eye, you 
 saw something else, the curiously phallic construction of the 
 engine, and you gathered the impression that, consciously or 
 unconsciously, the artist, doubtless, so intended it. Man was 
 returning to primitive, to sexual ^rmbols in art, and Natiure 
 the imconquerable was not above using for her own ends the 
 mechanisms with which man has proudly presumed to have 
 conquered her. All this flashed across Gombarov's brain in 
 a single instant. A Bergsonian intuition, Rodd would have 
 called it. 
 
 A little statuette, hewed out of granite, which stood on a 
 writing desk, next attracted his attention. It was the figure of 
 a pregnant negr^s, and she stood in an attitude of torment, 
 curved almost into a question mark, her two hands on her 
 stomach. It bore the inscription, The Fecund Earth. It was 
 by the Jewish sculptor, Daniel Gordin. There was an extra- 
 ordinary potency in it for so small a piece of stone. Hardly 
 more than fifteen inches high, it yet gave an illusion of big- 
 ness; decorative, it was yet deliberately crude; a thing fraught 
 with elemental forces, wrought by them from within and 
 without; it was as a mountain in travaU giving birth to new 
 life. Gorbarov half closed his eyes and imagined it as a 
 colossus in an African desert, the size of the Sphinx of Ghiza, 
 a host of awed worshippers bowed down before the mystery 
 of creation. 
 
 "Mr. Gombarov, will you have a whiskey and soda?" he 
 heard Rodd's voice, and his host handed him a glass. "A 
 fine thing, isn't it?" 
 
 "Do you work in this room, at this desk?" asked Gombarov. 
 
 255 
 
BABEL 
 
 "Yes. Why?" 
 
 "Don't you find your works of art rather disturbing?" 
 "Of course! " said Rodd, laughing. "That's why I work here. 
 I want to be disturbed. I am a critic of dynamic arts, and 
 I must have d)mamic works of art around me to stir me to 
 dynamic thinking." 
 
 DEMIGODS IN EXILE 
 
 They were joined by a young couple, who also stood r^;aid- 
 ing the statue. 
 
 "Do you know each other?" asked Rodd. "No. . . . Mr. 
 and Mrs. Hector Covrfey, otherwise known as Heracles and 
 Hylas, because of the Greekishness of their poetry — ^Mr. 
 Gombarov!" 
 
 Mrs. Cowley — ^Hylas — gave him the deciduous hand of a 
 Henry James heroine, and Heracles followed with a more 
 hearty handshake. 
 
 "That is not to say," explained Rodd, "that there is any- 
 thing pseudo-classic about their work, but they have Greek 
 memories and quite up-to-date perceptions. In fact, Mrs. 
 Cowley is a countrywoman of yours, a Yank like yourself." 
 And laughing, Rodd left Gombarov to his new acquaintances. 
 
 "I've heard of you," said Hylas, "from Toby, that is, from 
 Mr. Bagg. I believe we both come from the same city, the 
 City of Brotherly Love!" 
 
 "Yes, it's a good city to come from," said Gombarov signifi- 
 cantly. 
 
 Hylas burst into a nervous laugh. "That's delicious, Mr. 
 Gombarov! 'A good city to come from!' Why, Hector won't 
 believe half I tell him about our city. You are not exactly 
 a native, are you? A Russian, I believe. But I had the 
 great misfortune of being born there. . . ." 
 
 256 
 
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! 
 
 "You Yanks amuse me," said Heracles. "I've yet to meet 
 a writing chap or artist from the States who has anything good 
 to say for Gawd's own country." 
 
 "Now, Hector," said Hylas, holding up a playful finger, 
 "you know that you'd rather be a Frenchman! Yet Hector 
 is an Englishman from way back. His family tree would 
 make the best families in Philadelphia green with envy. I 
 am urging Hector to take a journey to America. It would 
 be an amusing experience, don't you think?" 
 
 "Decidedly," rejoined Gombarov. "I dare say, he'd get all 
 sorts of invitations to read his poems before the women's clubs, 
 the Browning Societies, the Daughters of the American Revo- 
 lution, the anti-Saloon-Leaguers . . ." 
 
 "There, Hector!" said Hylas. "What did I teU you? 
 You'd. . . ." 
 
 'I say, sure, lid be the main cheese, the only smell going!" 
 said Hector, breaking out into Americanisms and badly imitat- 
 ing the twang. "I'ld be the only pebble on the beach. lid have 
 a real peach of a journey, and some peacherinos, sure, would 
 come to listen to me. Brass bands and bouquets everywhere, 
 eh, kiddo? And some real nice skirts would fall for 
 me. . . ." 
 
 "Don't, Hector!" Hylas burst into her hysterical laugh. 
 
 ''You must come and see us," said Hylas, as the company 
 began to return after refreshment. She drew a card out of ha: 
 bag. "Come next Thursday, if you like. Do come!" 
 
 Gombarov watched Hylas's tall, langtiid figure trail off on 
 Heracles's arm. She was as tall as he, and his broad form 
 accentuated her height and slenderness. Altogether a Botticel- 
 lian figure. She had a small head, too small for so tall a body. 
 
 257 
 
BABEL 
 
 Its smooth brown hair, terminating in a Grecian knot, fitted 
 it closely and revealed its exquisite shape. Her face was like 
 a Greek marble, except for one flaw, the nose, whose tip 
 seemed slightly chipped off as if by accident, so that the effect 
 was that of a museum marble. Her eyes were a sea-grey, as 
 became a poetess, a devotee of Glaukopis Athene. 
 
 Heracles's face was that of a broad-faced, small-nosed satyr, 
 'Tacking just two budding horns and vine leaves in the hair," 
 as Tobias had once put it in a bantering mood. As if he 
 were actually supplied with these satyric appurtenances, he 
 never wore a hat but allowed his longish, fair, straight hair 
 to hang about his head in wisps. Tobias claimed him for his 
 disciple, and Tobias was a man to learn something from his 
 disciples. Heracles himself used to declare that his wife was 
 the greatest poet of the age, Sappho herself come to life, and 
 confessed that he owed his poetic stimulus wholly to her. She 
 was some years older than he, and their apparent happiness 
 was a thing Gombarov had dreamt of. 
 
 Gombarov saw Hylas and Heracles walk away, and sadness 
 gnawing at his heart, he thought of Winifred. Of the pair 
 Gombarov preferred Hylas. She was a woman and there was 
 an intriguing air about her, and she was friendly, and he was 
 famished for the mere presence of woman. As for Heracles, 
 in spite of his joviality at the moment, there was a lurking 
 moodiness about him and a sense of English reserve; one felt 
 oneself before a closed gate flaunting a "no trespassing" sign. 
 He had heard of both of them from Tobias and had read some 
 of their poems, which appeared for the most part in the more 
 precious American periodicals. 
 
 258 
 
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! 
 
 LEAGUE AGAINST AGE 
 
 Of the several Primitivists in the room there were as many 
 Englishmen as Americans. The movement had its impetus 
 in America, by way of France. The Americans gave vers libre, 
 the French precision. Poetry was laid on the table, operated 
 upon, and had its "cosmos" removed, like some useless appen- 
 dix. Sentimentality, rhetoric, vagueness and cliches went 
 along with it. Words were reshuffled, revalued; adjectives, 
 except essentially descriptive ones, were discarded as so much 
 dead matter; hardness, concreteness and precision were 
 required. Rhythm and cadence were to displace rhyme, and 
 integral patterns were placed above subject-matter. The new 
 poetic efforts were received with abuse and ridicule in the 
 press, which delighted the rebels. 
 
 Young, confident and militant were the rebels gathered at 
 Rodd's, especially the Americans. "There is Tobias Bagg," 
 reflected Gombarov, "a broncho-buster, if there ever was one, 
 let loose in the culture pastures of Europe, lassoing every kind 
 of P^asus that happens to strike his fancy, and breaking it 
 in to serve his uses. . . . There is Hylas, searching for live 
 Greek fragments, just as another American, Isadora Duncan, 
 has hunted among the Greek tombs and vases to rekindle in 
 Europe and America the ancient flame of dancing. There is 
 Roy Christopher, following the old culture trails of Europe 
 to find new life, a quest as intrepid as the one in which his 
 forefathers had followed Daniel Boone; but imlike theirs his 
 has no end. For him no sea is a boundary, but only a start- 
 ing point for a new journey. And here am I, not a native 
 American, still an American, and here am I wandering, seeking, 
 groping, as in some foggy hell, God knows where. How eager 
 
 259 
 
BABEL 
 
 they all are, these Americans, myself, too, in this old comitry; 
 but the natives seem by comparison tired, listless, quiet, perfect 
 gentlemen. To them Eiurope seems to be a grave, to the 
 young barbarians a cradle." 
 
 Or was it, he asked himself, that the young rocked a cofBn, 
 to wake the dead? "Heracles is £dive enough under the influ- 
 ence of the Yankee Hylas. But there is Briggs, always writing 
 of swans and peacocks and of girls he hasn't kissed and of 
 his family troubles! A nice fellow, but how did he come 
 among the thiunpers?" Well, there was at least one thing 
 that held them together: their common revolt against old age 
 and all that goes with old age, the old age that would always 
 betray youth. 
 
 While he was thus reflecting, the company were warmly 
 disctissing the new journal, Tobias leading the discussion. In 
 moments of excitement he moved his arms and figure like a 
 circus Indian performing a ritual dance. 
 
 There was much irrepressible life in the man. They were 
 debating the title of the periodical, for which Tobias said 
 "some half-witted sympathiser was willing to put up the 
 funds." Some militant titles were suggested: "The Bayonet," 
 "The Rapier," "The Attack," "The Thrust," and so on. 
 Bagg's suggestion was then discussed, and a compromise was 
 effected on "Self," with the sub-title: "An International 
 Journal of the Arts. No compromise with public taste. No 
 quarter to the Royal Academies. No encouragement to 
 parochiaUsm and local patriotism." The list of contributors 
 was to include English, American, French, German and Russian 
 names. Raymond Dinhard, leader and spokesman of English 
 Cubists — ^he it was who painted the War in the Air — ^was 
 present, and he promised to contribute some articles and 
 manifestoes. Two or three of his disciples were also there, 
 
 260 
 
THUMP 1 THUMP! THUMP! 
 
 who appeared to r^ard him with awe and roundly abused 
 his critics and enemies. Conrad Barron, Bagg's admirer, also 
 turned up. This youth, who had virgins on his brain, was a 
 sallow-faced, grey-eyed Pole-Czech, and Gombarov did not 
 take to him. After exchanging a few trivial remarks with 
 him, he joined Douglass, who took him by the arm. They 
 joined a little group, of which Rodd was again the centre, 
 expounding Borgsonism: 
 
 ". . .we have at last invented a S3rstem that combines God 
 and Devil in one, or, if you like, we have abolished both, and 
 put in their stead the idea of creative evolution. What men 
 call good and evil, creation and destruction, love and hate, 
 are complementary to one another, are, in fact, one and the 
 same thing. Destruction is creation. . . ." 
 
 "Don't you think sex is a good symbol for this?" interposed 
 Barron. "There is no conception without destruction, as all 
 good virgins learn, sooner or later." 
 
 Bagg winked an eye at Gombarov, who smiled. 
 
 "Yes, that is true," said Rodd. "In every sexual ecstasy 
 a man momentarily destroys his woman, and he, the conqueror, 
 destroys himself, too, in the process, is absorbed, as it were, 
 by the vanquished. A young man of genius sits at his 
 master's feet, yields to him, in order, like a woman, to absorb 
 him. Who knows, Shakespeare might have thus sat at Mar- 
 lowe's feet, and yielded to him as a disciple, in order to 
 absorb him? Great weapons of destruction resembling phalli 
 are being made by all nations, and it is conceivable that one 
 day they will be used to destroy things that are to make way 
 for the things that are to be. The artists also, in their new art, 
 are forging weapons to batter down the doors of the Royal 
 Academies to make room for the art that is to be." 
 
 "That is a terrible philosophy," observed Strogovsky, "for 
 
 261 
 
BABEL 
 
 it does away with the absolute, the idea of things in them- 
 selves." 
 
 "It merely changes the conception of the eternal," replied 
 Rodd. "Consider a formidable rock in the sea. Now men 
 would call that rock eternal. But it is only a matter of time 
 when that rock will be worn dovm by the sea, and only the 
 movement of the sea is eternal. Living modem art is that 
 gathering sea making onslaughts on the rock of the Rojral 
 Academy and all dead arts, and, conceivably, it will one day 
 change the colours and contours of that rock. There is no 
 dead matter, since anjrthing can be changed or destroyed by 
 impact or by inner chemical processes accelerated by this 
 impact. There is only eternal energy, conflict, movement, 
 and the indestructible human will, which, at moments of 
 profound intuition, comes indeed like an irresistible tidal 
 wave. . . . Never fear, all the walls humanity has built up 
 will be battered down. It's all a matter of time. How 
 many civilisations have fallen to make way for others, but 
 none have fallen in a day, and none were built up in a day. 
 And the new has always its beginnings before the old has 
 fallen. It has always been interpenetration, the new ever 
 impregnating what appears to be dead matter, and giving it 
 new life in a new form. . . ." 
 
 "Hugh, the Cowleys are leaving," came up Mrs. Rodd, 
 interrupting the conversation. "Heracles would like to have 
 a word with you." 
 
 This was a signal for breaking up, and all the visitors were 
 scrambling for their overcoats and hats. 
 
 262 
 
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! 
 
 KINGS WITHOUT KINGDOMS 
 
 Gombarov and Strogovsky walked home together, on that 
 December night, in silence, each absorbed in his own oppressive 
 thoughts. Latterly, Julius had been morose and uncommuni- 
 cative. Each knew the other's troubles, these had been talked 
 over again and again, there was nothing more to be said. 
 .And they were both ashamed before one another. What did 
 all these things, such as love, matter? Beside the things that 
 were going on in the world, beside the big thoughts being 
 thought, the big things being done? And love was no more 
 than hate, or the same thing, as Rodd had said. And here, 
 along Bayswater Road, as always, sat old beggars, men and 
 women, huddled together to keep warm; and there, across the 
 way, as always, stood a row of big houses, with luxuriant 
 bedrooms, man and woman, man and woman, man and woman, 
 in large soft beds, and lovely soft things across a chair. Was 
 it not so in Nineveh, in Babylon, in Carthage? What did it 
 matter? Yet it did matter, if you were not a beggar in mind, 
 but thought a king's thoughts, as you wandered on foot in a 
 fog, without the tiniest kingdom, be that kingdom no more 
 than your queen, a loved and loving woman, subject to your 
 rule, a willing vessel for your loves and wraths. 
 
 "It's all nonsense for you and me to be going on like this," 
 said Julius, breaking the silence. "And I can have no intel- 
 lectual sympathy with either of us. Yet what's to be done? 
 Rodd is quite right. We are v^sek of energy, and what are 
 we to do with this energy that pours over? The sea beats 
 against the rock, the artist hammers against old doors, the 
 soldier fires his guns on the enemy's defences; but what is 
 left for us to do but to beat our heads against the wall, an 
 ui^rofitable business!" 
 
 263 
 
BABEL 
 
 They parted in the corridor on the top floor of their board- 
 ing house in Princes Square, and each went to his cold bed. 
 
 Gombarov turned from side to side, unable to sleep. His 
 thought, a restless energy, squirmed within him, and he 
 squirmed with it. The rain began to patter on the roof, and 
 presently came down in a hard shower. The fog had appar- 
 ently lifted. He felt himself alone and forsaken in this 
 great London. He clutched at the pillow and groaned as in 
 pain. 
 
 He had a dream. He dreamt he sat in a blue room, in the 
 twilight and that he flew a kite out of the window. There 
 was a single bright star in the sky, and towards it the kite 
 aspired. He was letting out the string little by little and 
 came to the end of it. The kite was tugging toward the star 
 and could not reach it. He felt infinitely sad and thought, 
 where could he get more string? And suddenly a woman's 
 form appeared beside him. It was a Botticellian figure, with 
 the face of a smiling Fra Angelican angel, and together they 
 bent down to look in cupboards and under beds and in all 
 sorts of corners and crevices for a bit of string, so that the 
 kite might reach the lone star. He was filled with a great 
 hope that together they would find that bit of string, and 
 that his kite would at last reach the lone star. His companion 
 was on her knees on the floor, and graceful was the line of 
 her curve in voluminous^, clinging draperies. "I have it! " she 
 exclaimed, turning her face to him, while her hair brushed 
 him. But a hard, frightening knock came on the door, and 
 he shook all over. He opened his eyes on broad daylight. 
 He lay still, uncertain whether he was still dreaming. 
 
 A hard knock came to the door. He shouted: 
 
 "Come in!" 
 
 LUy came in, smiling, a jug of steaming water in her hand: 
 
 264 
 
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! 
 
 "Well, you are a sleepy-head!" she said. "That's the third 
 time I've knocked. 
 
 And, as had become her habit, she came over to him and 
 kissed his lips, and sat down on the edge of his bed. 
 
 26; 
 
CHAPTER VII: WITCHES' CAULDRON 
 
 "Weary sennights nine times nine 
 
 Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine: 
 Though his bark cannot be lost. 
 Yet it shall be tempest-tost." 
 — Macbeth. 
 
 IN QXJEST OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 "Well, ducky-bird," said Lily, as she sat on the edge of his 
 bed and shook a finger at him. "It's another late night you've 
 been having! Doing good to the girls, eh? Well, b'hoys 
 will be b'hoys, won't they, honey?" 
 
 He lay still, and made no answer. She waited a few 
 moments, then bent over and kissed his lips again, and took 
 hold of the cold hand lying outside the bed-cover. She took 
 it in her two hands and rubbing it and fondling it, went on 
 speaking: 
 
 "My poor ducky-bird is cold. My poor ducky-bird wants 
 warming up. My poor ducky-bird wants making a fuss of. 
 A nice girl to hold his hands. A nice girl to kiss him. . . ." 
 
 And she bent over him again and putting her lips to his 
 kept them there. 
 
 He was beginning to be keenly aware of the proximity of 
 the white buxom girl. He felt himself thawing out. She was 
 infusing a warmth into him. It came gently at first, then 
 poiu-ed through his body in a wave. His two arms, coming 
 out of striped pyjama sleeves, slipped round her shoulders and 
 held them, fingers spread out and feverishly clutching and 
 digging, through the material, into the soft flesh. Coinci- 
 
 266 
 
WITCHES' CAULDRON 
 
 dently, a thought stirred in his mind, a long conceived, a hesi- 
 tating, an unacted thought, which first came to him in the 
 days when, much to his astonishment, Lily began to show a 
 fondness for him. It was an unaccoimtable fondness, as LQy 
 already had a young man, whom she had promised to marry. 
 It was an incomprehensible state of affairs that curiously 
 intensified his misgivings about Winifred. The thought had 
 been stirring in his mind for weeks, but he had lacked courage 
 to put it to the test, for it takes courage for men of Gombarov's 
 type to act imlike themselves, and he had waited imtil the 
 thought should gather sufficient impetus to translate itself into 
 action. His fingers still clutching at Lily's shoulders, he was 
 thinking fast, precipitately, a wave of blood pressing on his 
 brain. 
 
 "What are you thinking of, honey?" she asked, observing 
 his preoccupation. 
 
 Her question seemed to snap the last thread of his inde- 
 cision, and hurling himself out of bed and pressing her 
 shoulders down he leaned over her and with strangely dilated 
 eyes looked into hers, which showed fear. 
 
 "Don't! Please don'tl" she cried, as if she had divined 
 a sinister intention on his part. "You know, ducky-bird, I 
 would give myself to you, body and soul. Indeed, I would, 
 darling, for I like you heaps. But I'm afraid! Horribly 
 afraid. You know I would if I weren't afraid! Don't you 
 think I want you? But we mustn't!" 
 
 -\nd they looked into one another's eyes, full of fear, his 
 as well as hers. 
 
 "And yet, Lfly, you have a young man," he said, slowly, 
 and added: "Do you mean you'd do it, even though you have 
 a young man, if you weren't afraid of a baby?" 
 
 'Yes," she rq)lied, unhesitatingly. "He never need know 
 
 267 
 
BABEL 
 
 it. You make me feel like that. But what chance has a 
 girl the likes of me in this world, if anjrthing happened? 
 And you, being a gentleman, could never marry me. I'm just 
 afraid, that's all!" 
 
 "That's all I wanted to know," said he, releasing her. "I 
 didn't mean to hurt you. I wouldn't hurt you, poor child, 
 for all the world. I just wanted to see if you would." 
 
 She stood up, shook herself, and looked puzzled. 
 
 "Forgive me," he said. "You know I didn't mean to hurt 
 you!" 
 
 She laughed and walking up to him planted an impetuous 
 kiss on his lips and ran out of the room. 
 
 He remained standing in his pyjamas for some time, think- 
 ing. But he was not thinking of Lily. He was thinking of 
 Winifred. He would not have taken advantage of Lily even 
 if she had not protested. He had merely used the energy of 
 a passionate moment to try out his thought, conceived long 
 since. As a result of his test, a new thought, a new misgiving, 
 came to him. If Lily, despite her young man, was willing 
 but for fear of consequences, what of Winifred in Paris, if 
 some intrepid young man appeared with less conscience than 
 himself — and Paris bred such yoimg men in plenty! — ^yes, 
 what of Winifred? — granted that she entertained no such fears? 
 For she had forsaken him once and he was not sure of her. 
 
 His mind full of tiunultuous misgivings, he vigorously pro- 
 ceeded with his shaving. 
 
 A woman's way 
 
 He found two letters waiting for him at the breakfast table, 
 where JuUus sat, morosely consuming his porridge. One letter 
 was from his mother, the other from Winifred. 
 
 He opened his mother's letter first. It contained an account 
 
 268 
 
WITCHES' CAULDRON 
 
 of family affairs, which was even more depressing than usual. 
 Things were going from bad to worse. The little sum he had 
 left with her from his many years' savings was nearly gone. 
 Her husband, Semyon Gombarov, was still collecting material 
 for his book on Comparative Cultures, Ancient and Modem, 
 Occidental and Oriental, all of which was excellent for a 
 bonfire, but hardly the sort of thing one could make a meal of. 
 Besides, he was now a confirmed invalid, and the doctor said 
 he ought to have his daily chicken broth. Raya, the truly 
 golden heart, was still making artificial flowers. Absalom was 
 working as a book-keeper, but was troubled with his eyes, 
 which necessitated his taking a holiday, and Sonya, poor girl, 
 was about to imdergo another operation on her ear. Dimya, 
 though the mother of two little ones, with difficulties of her 
 own, did all she could for them. Misha, with his genius for 
 mathematics, was about to try for a Government position. Of 
 course, she knew that he, John, had been a very good son, 
 had sacrificed his life to them and so ought to have his chance; 
 still, wasn't it foolhardy of Him to remain in Europe when 
 good jobs were going in America? Wouldn't it be to his 
 interest, for the good of his career, to come back and either 
 resume his position on the New World, or with his increased 
 experience find a better in New York? He had better think 
 it over. Besides, she didn't like the idea of his being without 
 a home, living among strangers and no one to look after him. 
 
 Gombarov translated the letter which was written in 
 Russian, to Julius, who said without hesitation: 
 
 "My dear boy, I advise you to stay where you are. You 
 have given your life to your family and though it's true they 
 couldn't help it, yet they've drained every drop of your blood. 
 You've got yourself to look after. As it is, you have such a 
 handicap to overcome. I sometimes marvel at your courage, 
 
 269 
 
BABEL 
 
 after the start you've had. But look at it practically. What 
 will happen if you go back? You will be caught up in your 
 old whirlpool, and you wiU end up by cutting your throat, 
 which will be a kindness neither to your mother nor yourself. 
 Besides, you've been only nine months in Europe, yet you've 
 changed incredibly. Youll not be able to go back to the old 
 grind. It's unthinkable, my boy! " 
 
 "You are quite right, Julius. I've been thinking that 
 m3rself. Just what I would do, cut my throat! Mother is a 
 brave, enduring soul, but what can I do? God knows, it hasn't 
 been easy for me here, what with earning my living, thinking 
 of art, and of other things I need not tell you of." 
 
 He opened the letter from Winifred, but as he read on his 
 face slowly turned grey. Julius fixed his eyes on his friend 
 and waited for him to speak. But Gombarov, thrusting the 
 letter into his pocket, said nothing, and listlessly sipped his 
 coffee. 
 
 "Look here, John," said Julius. "I don't want to pry into 
 your affairs, but I don't like to see you suffering. Chuck it, 
 I say, once and for all. If you can't chuck it, be firm. The 
 best of women want to be ruled with an iron hand. You 
 don't want to deal with the woman who is at the back of your 
 mind, but with the woman as she is. Don't be too soft with 
 them. There is too much himianity, too much pity in you. 
 Mind you, I like you for it. Still, women are not slow in 
 taking advantage of it. You've got to be firm with them, 
 though they be angels incarnate. They can't help themselves." 
 
 "You may be quite right," said Gombarov, after a silence. 
 "Still, there's my own nature. Shall I compromise with 
 myself? And an American woman has been trained to e^)ect 
 chivalry from a man." 
 
 "All women are at bottom alike," replied Julius. "And there 
 
 270 
 
WITCHES' CAULDRON 
 
 are times when a man must overcome his own nature, be above 
 himself. There is only one way to deal fairly with women, 
 and that is to be a man to them, firm and unvacillating. You 
 must follow the biological law." 
 
 They gave a spontaneous laugh. A good sign, to be still 
 able to laugh. 
 
 "I know it's all very silly," said Gombarov. "I never go 
 out of my way to seek a quarrel. Yet what is all this about? 
 Simply this. Some days ago she sent me a novel and asked 
 my opinion of it. In this novel a woman of spirit has the 
 choice of marrying a man of genius, one of the vampire sort, 
 who thrives by absorbing others, or a nice harmless, soft- 
 hearted idiot named Reginald. She chooses the first and loses 
 her personality in him. He has no use for her but as a 
 housekeeper and bedfellow. The woman of spirit submits. 
 Yet all the while she holds the other man as a friend and 
 companion, and he submits to the humiliation. That rather 
 riled me. Such things may be possible in our civilisation, 
 but I hold that it is lumatiu'al. A woman who marries the 
 man of her choice, yet keeps her other lover tied to her 
 apron-strings is detestable, whUe Reginald is a milksop and 
 deserves his humiliation. I said so in my letter. Now it 
 appears that Reginald is a particidar pet of hers, I mean 
 Winifred's." 
 
 "All this is very trivial," said Julius, with a shrug. 
 
 "Nothing is trivial, things only seem trivial," returned 
 Gombarov. "Trivial things in matters of love are the straws 
 showing the way the wind blows. Why did she send me that 
 of all books, insisting, too, for an opinion of it? Why should 
 she take a fancy to a milksop like Reginald — it's not like 
 her at all! — and then pick a quarrel with me because I called 
 him a milksop? She may not be doing it dehberately, or even 
 
 271 
 
BABEL 
 
 consciously. Yet she may have an eye on one of those budding 
 geniuses that Paris is full of, and she is fancying herself in the 
 part of the wife and me playing the part of Reginald the 
 milksop 1 Women's acts are usually trivial, but their motives 
 are often of great inwardness. Besides, a woman seldom quar- 
 rels with her lover about books; she either shares his opinions 
 or pretends to. The only time I've quarrelled with her about a 
 book was when she chucked me the first time. It was the 
 prelude to her chucking, and that's why I don't like it. That 
 being so, you will say I ought to chuck the whole thing. 
 Perhaps I should. Yet, though I see all this, how am I to 
 control my feelings, all of which irresistibly draw me towards 
 her, as if she were my very lost soul, without which I cannot 
 live?" 
 
 "Whatever you do, my boy, be firm with her. Don't let 
 her feel that you haven't got hold of the reins." 
 
 Gombarov lapsed into melancholy, and said after a sflence: 
 
 "What do you think of moving to Bloomsbury? I examined 
 my bank balance yesterday and calculated my income. I 
 cannot afford to live here and pay for meals that I don't have. 
 In Bloomsbury, too, I shall be saving on 'bus fares." 
 
 "Not a bad idea. I too must retrench. My lessons are not 
 bringing in much. What do you say to looking for a place 
 to-day?" 
 
 "Righto!" 
 
 FOG 
 
 Ten dajrs later the two friends were installed in Bury 
 Street, Bloomsbury, not many yards from one another, and 
 within sight of the British Museum. 
 
 "Bury Street!" exclaimed Jxilius. "Just the street for two 
 living corpses!" 
 
 272 
 
WITCHES' CAULDRON 
 
 Theirs were typical Bloomsbury "digs," containing all the 
 melancholy paraphaualia usual to bed-sitting rooms which 
 fetched their owners ten-and-six a week, without breakfast. 
 There was an appearance of dust on everything, and the 
 windows looked out on grimy roofs and armies of chimney-pots 
 and telegraph wires. 
 
 In looking through the chest of drawers Gombarov found a 
 large quantity of luxuriant silken red hair fittingly shrouded 
 in a black veil, doubtless a souvenir of a Bloomsbury romance 
 and by no means an edifying omen to a disconsolate lover. The 
 hair seemed alive, as if it were still on the head of its owner 
 and the temptation he had to stroke it reminded him of a 
 certain story by Maupassant, which told of a man's passion 
 for just such a treasure, a passion that drove him to put it 
 by him on his pillow every night. "Poor little woman!" 
 thought Gombarov. "In leaving this behind, the man to 
 whom you have entrusted these locks has betrayed you!" 
 He wrapped them up and restored them to the place where 
 he had found them. "Why should this make me sentimental?" 
 he asked himself. 
 
 There was not much to choose between their landlords and 
 landladies. Gombarov's landlady was a short fat cockney 
 woman married to a German tailor, who, on seeing Gombarov's 
 books and learning that he was a literary "gent," spouted to 
 him, when the opportunity offered on "de pewtiful poezie" of 
 Schiller and Heine. "There's no such poezie in England," he 
 used to say. "We Germans make pest poezie and pest beer. 
 . . . Ach, Gott, and die German moozic!" Julius's landlord 
 was an Englishman, a silent man, while his wife, a thin-faced, 
 shrewish hag, took the precaution of warning her lodger that 
 her house was "strictly respectable. For gentlemen only. No 
 lady visitors allowed!" Poor Julius, returning to his room 
 
 273 
 
BABEL 
 
 late the first evening, whQe on the stairs heard voices coming 
 from the bedroom occupied by the virtuous pair. One phrase 
 
 caught his ear: "You , you are worse than a prostitute!" 
 
 uttered by his landlord. 
 
 At that time there descended upon the two friends a pall 
 of fog, dense and impenetrable, internal and external, a fog 
 of sadness, of inchoate despair. They were steeped in that 
 fog, and there was no sign of its hfting, and they were doomed 
 to walk in it as blurred, disturbed shadows, shrouded in a 
 smoky mist only a degree less shadowy. Grey shadows, they 
 walked in silence, in separate and distinct imiverses, and their 
 unheard hearts were screaming eagles within making free with 
 sharp, pitiless beaks and agitated broad-fiapping wings; and 
 they seemed to walk among other shadows, equally grey and 
 indeterminate, among other separate and distinct imiverses, 
 some silent, some talking or murmuring, some boisterously 
 laughing, but all equally shadowy, equally unreal. 
 
 Gombarov got into the habit of getting up late. Why get 
 up at all? To wake in the morning was to prepare for one's 
 execution. Sleep itself was a passing into another kind of 
 wakeftilness, in which the nothingness and imreality of day 
 assumed highly concentrated forms of dream and nightmare. 
 What horrible beings lived in the chaos of unconsciousness, 
 what shaggy sinister forms with jeering faces, prodding one 
 at last into waking in cold sweat and terror, and arousing an 
 impulse to stretch out a hand and grasp at a poison pill or a 
 revolver, wherewith to put an end to an existence in which 
 such things were possible. 
 
 There was a night when he thought he was awake, and he 
 heard the door quietly open until it rested against the bed, 
 where his head lay, and a woman, a hag-like creature, peered 
 round the door at him. She was ugly and horrible, malice and 
 
 274 
 
WITCHES' CAULDRON 
 
 lasciviousness and evil were on her face, and with it all she 
 was smiling; only in hell could one conceive of such a smile. 
 And, looking upon her with fascinated terror, he thought: 
 "She is evil incarnate, all the ugliness of the world is concen- 
 trated in her face. If I do not stare her out, I am lost!" 
 And, in sweat and terror, with all the will at his command, 
 he raised his head from the pillow and stared at her with a 
 painful intentness, until the face lost some of its features, 
 tiuned amorphous, and slowly vanished. He dropped his 
 head back on the pillow and, quite awake now, wondered 
 whether he had been awake while the vision lasted. And, 
 inevitably, he thought of Winifred, who had forsaken him. 
 
 There was another night, another dream. He was sitting in 
 a barber's chair, and in the next chair sat a burly, bald-headed 
 man with great folds of fat running over his collar at the 
 back of his neck. He had a hard, aggressive face, the face of 
 a ruthless business-man, who ground down widows and orphans 
 and took the last bit of bread out of their mouths. Gombarov 
 observed him with horror. The barber was plajdng a keen 
 blade over Gombarov 's face, and it suddenly occurred to him 
 that the barber intended to cut off his head. "It's all right," 
 the barber seemed to say, "don't be alarmed. It will be much 
 easier to shave than on your shoulders." And helplessly he 
 observed the barber cutting off his head, and doing the same 
 to his horrible neighbour. Then he grew fiercely terrified, as 
 he divined the barber's intention of putting Gombarov's head 
 on the shoulders of the othCT customer, and the latter's horrible 
 head on his own shoulders. He tried to protest, but found 
 himself unable to utter a word. He just caught the barber's 
 words: "You'll be much happier with this one!" and swooned 
 away into wakefulness. And on awaking, in cold sweat and 
 terror, he thought of Winifred, who had forsaken him. 
 
 275 
 
BABEL 
 
 And, days and nights, thinking of her, he saw no future, 
 only a wall of impenetrable fog. His mind, too, was in the 
 nature of fog, motionless but for the sciurying of blurred 
 shadows of thoughts, and neither ray nor shaft of light to 
 give colour or semblance of conscious life. His heart alone 
 lived and flamed, with terror and despair. 
 
 He revived on days when the outer fog, tinged a translucent 
 yellow, the yellow of a canary and soft as its down, brooded 
 over London like an immense yet gentle fowl, and he fotmd it 
 pleasant to lose himself in it as a yoimg bird under the 
 protecting soft wings of its mother. This yellow fog calmed 
 him, soothed him; his whole being softened under it, borrowed 
 from its mellowness; with fascination he watched the soft, 
 two-dimensional purple shadows flit by. On such days his 
 favotu'ite spot wcis the Thames Embankment, where his eyes, 
 resting on the river, found peace in contemplating the funereal 
 barges, which either stood still or moved in stately procession 
 toward London Bridge. A red sail nearby, its coloiur softened 
 by the yellow air, wjis like an outspread wing of a huge bird 
 resting on the water. Nothing could be lovelier than the 
 Bridge, observed from the Embankment. It was a deep purple, 
 two-dimensional, for all the world like a series of arches cut 
 out of cardboard, or better, soft felt, and the 'buses and the 
 drays and the little people which moved or glided across it 
 also appeared to be cut out of the same flat felt and lost in 
 the yellow as in the reflection of dim firelight. It was all as in 
 a fairy tale, and had all the unreality of rhilriisti invention. 
 He found a comfort in this beautiful unreality, and reflected 
 with some plefisure upon the fact that he, too, must have 
 seemed a two-dimensional toy cut out of soft felt and swathed 
 in the yellow caressing light of another world. He immersed 
 himself in contemplation of this unreal world, and his troubles 
 
 276 
 
WITCHES' CAULDRON 
 
 vanished, or became transformed and transfigured, assumed 
 this unreal, decorative, two-dimensional quality, put on the 
 deep purple of a king's robes. What did anything matter? 
 Princes and princesses glided by, or were they beggars? It did 
 not matter. They were all alike, and they were all beautiful. 
 A strange faith came to him out of this yellow fog, an 
 incomprehensible belief in beauty consuming ugliness, reality 
 and pain. What else mattered? 
 
 But there were times when things did matter, especially 
 on waking in the morning. Waking to what? To thoughts of 
 nothingness and death. . . . Still, there was plenty of time 
 for that; in any case, one must die sooner or later. 
 
 He would set to work preparing his breakfast. Breakfast 
 without hope was a wretched thing. It made a bad start for 
 the day. The thought of Winifred interposed itself into the 
 most trivial things. He had once liked to think of having his 
 breakfasts with her, of seeing her things on the wall, of hearing 
 her footsteps in the next room or coming up the stairs. . . . 
 There were all the usual thoughts a man thinks. . . . When she 
 was loving and kind to him, he had regarded her pityingly, as if 
 she were a child, but when he saw her slipping from his grasp 
 he could have treated her as ruthlessly as any soldier a virgin 
 on entering a conquered city. He coidd see her side, too: 
 life was flitting by, and what with his handicaps much time 
 woxdd pass before he could ask her to come to him. Why 
 had he been given reason and pity on the one hand, this fierce 
 masculinity on the other, to be torn between the two? He 
 thought of that dream of his in the barber's chair. One must 
 choose either, but he was both. 
 
 He wanted a love that would give itself unconditionally, 
 flame eternally. It is said that every man desires a woman 
 like his own mother, and his mother had loved her Semyon 
 
 277 
 
BABEL 
 
 unconditionally, enduring eveiything for the sake of her love. 
 
 Breakfast over, he would sit down at the table, pen in hand, 
 a pile of paper before Mm, and fixin g his gaze out of the 
 window on the chimney-pots, row upon row of them, one above 
 the other, he would sense a hard Cubist impression of life, and 
 only a rare small tear, blurring his vision, woidd dissolve the 
 geometric perception, against the background of intersecting 
 telegraph wires, into an illusion of running, even precipitate, 
 musical notation, which, if it could be translated into sound, 
 would doubtless be productive of a jangling, frenzied, iron 
 music, interposing itself between him and the waning harmony 
 of his lost world beyond. 
 
 Having achieved a comma, a phrase, or even a paragraph, 
 he would rise, put his hat and coat on, and venture out. After 
 some indecision he would run in to see Julius. 
 
 He would find Julius sitting in his dressing-gown, looking 
 into the fire. One elbow on knee, chin on palm, his frame 
 would be rigidly motionless, a thing hewn out of stone, a 
 distinguished brooding emanating from every inch of it, for 
 all the world Rodin's Le Penseur. This brooding swathed him 
 like a perplexed aura, hovered round him in thick clouds; its 
 infectious fumes caught poor Gombarov, who, after futile 
 efforts at cheering up his friend, would succumb to the same 
 brooding silence, until imable to bear its intensity any longer, 
 he would depart, leaving his friend in the statuesque attitude 
 in which he had found him. They were Job meeting Job, 
 but Gombarov's pity for himself was lost in his pity for his 
 friend, who, like himself, had cut the thin thread that held 
 him to his cherished world, and he now glimpsed that world 
 gliding in the distant ether, unreachable and irrevocable. 
 And his frozen fury held him still and rigid in his chair. 
 
 278 
 
WITCHES' CAULDRON 
 
 FLAMES 
 
 This is how things had come to such a pass for the tvro 
 friends. 
 
 Coincidently with Gombarov's receipt of his letter from 
 Winifred, Julius having long contemplated the futility of his 
 own affair had already come to a decision and despatched to 
 his love an ultimatum of "All or Nothing!" One morning a 
 voluminous letter arrived for him, and it was quite apparent 
 from his face, as he silently read it, that the answer was, in 
 fact. Nothing! Clearly, few women could write "Nothing" 
 in a single word. 
 
 As for Gombarov, he had been conducting an acrimonious 
 correspondence with Winifred for a full fortnight, and matters 
 had approached a breaking-point. Julius, moved partly by 
 sympathy for his friend's suffering, partly perhaps by his 
 fury, unspent after his own precipitate action, passionately 
 exclaimed: 
 
 'Your policy of reasonableness will never get you anjrwhere. 
 There are no two ways out of this. What you want to know, 
 once and for all, is whether she wants you or not. You must 
 put it to her firmly and clearly. You are writing to her now, 
 are you? Well, write her this." And Julius grasped his 
 friend's hand, that held the pen, and furiously conducted it 
 across the paper. 
 
 "This correspondence," declared the two-handed pen, "has 
 gone on long enough. I must know, and have a right to know, 
 what your intentions are. I demand all or nothing, and ask 
 for a definite answer as to which it shall be. I need not 
 dwell here on my own feelings towards you. These have been 
 quite clear and unconditional, and I cannot do with less from 
 you!" 
 
 279 
 
BABEL 
 
 "You don't think it's too strong?" asked Gombarov. 
 
 "You can't make it too strong. If a woman loves you, she 
 won't let you go just because of that. On the contrary, she'll 
 have a new respect for you. If she doesn't love you, it doesn't 
 matter I" 
 
 Gombarov had to confess this to be good reasoning. 
 
 "Now address the envelope, and let's go out to post it," 
 added Julius, seeing his friend hesitate. 
 
 And it was done. 
 
 An answer came within three days: Nothing! Or words 
 to that effect. She added that if he returned her letters, she 
 would return his. 
 
 The last thread that held him to the eternal snapped. Love, 
 that atoned for his past, gave reason to the present, and wa« 
 to have been a projection into the future, had ceased to exist. 
 The illusion of love, if illusion it was, had held him together, 
 and now that it was gone he felt himself to be falling apart; 
 and life appeared to be no more than a collection of inconse- 
 quent fragments, drifting hither and thither, with nothing to 
 hold them together. Was it weakness to give love so high a 
 place? Weakness or not, now that it was gone and left him 
 empty, a whirlwind of rage swept through the devastated 
 places of him, and for a fuU week a demoniac fury drove him 
 through the London streets, until it spent itself and left him 
 exhausted. 
 
 He did not reply to her letter. On the eighth day another 
 letter came from her, imploring him to write to her. Was 
 he still among the living, and well? She was frantic for news 
 of him, she was horribly afraid of his doing harm to himself. 
 God knew, though things could never be as he wanted them, 
 yet she felt as sad as he. But if only he was still alive, she 
 would feel comforted. 
 
 280 
 
WITCHES' CAULDRON 
 
 "I am alive and quite well," he wrote, to relieve her anxiety, 
 "and pleiise do not trouble to write me again." He was sorry 
 for her, but felt that he had to be hard, even on himself. 
 His stubbonm^s aspired to become a will. He needed that 
 to replace his lost illusion. He said to himself: "To lose 
 in the estimation of others is a misfortune, to lose in one's 
 own eyes is a calamity." He was fighting for life. His back 
 against a waU, he straightened out. A wall was straight, it 
 was a good place to straighten out against. 
 
 Then, three days later, came the final blow in a letter from 
 her, hitting him in his most vulnerable spot. "The trouble 
 with you is that you have no charactCT." And again, she 
 curtly reminded him of the imretiu-ned letters. Strange, how 
 a woman always picked one's most vtilnerable spot. She took 
 the very ground from under his feet. If he had not character, 
 then he had nothing. All his conscious life he had been trying 
 to decide this vexing problem, as to whether or not he had 
 character. And now the answer came from one he had cherished 
 as his own life. He collapsed imder the blow, but his rage 
 and stubbOTnness braced him, and he hit out half blindly, 
 half deliberately in a letter, which he had much sinister 
 pleasure in writing. 
 
 ''I am sorry," he began, 'that I cannot comply with your 
 request for your letters. They are my own, all the more 
 ance I have paid for them with several years of imswHving 
 devotion. Instead, I shall derive no little pleasure from 
 'consigning them to the flames' (that, I believe, is the thing 
 hCToes in noveb always do). An excellent symbol, isn't it? 
 Love going up in smoke! Love is so much smoke, isn't it? 
 And all of life is so much smoke, too? There is a curious 
 pleasure in watching poor living words, filled with one's heart's 
 blood, wriggling and writhing in agony, as their flames ascend 
 
 2gl 
 
BABEL 
 
 the chimney, and they become dust and ashes! It is a 
 sentimental pleasure — ^I am aware how imfashionable such 
 pleasure has become! — shall I be daiied it? I choose these 
 letters in chronological order. It is just as well to begin at 
 the root, to watch how love grows and develops, like a m3retery 
 or a flower,' as the poets would say. And so the ceremony 
 begins. 
 
 "There it goes — the first letter. ... A charred remnant 
 . . . what does it say? "Your own, your very own Winifred.' 
 The second ... 'I want you, body and soul!' . . . That's all 
 I could get of it before the flames sent the little wriggling 
 words scurrying up the chimney. What will the third bring 
 
 forth? 'Shall try to be so much to you some day. 
 
 . . . ' Gone. Up the chimney. Just so much smoke! Once 
 more. '. . . a hundred warm kisses. . . . ' Up the chimney, 
 my dear, the whole hxmdred of them! 'If I could see you for 
 five little seconds. . . .' Up the chimney, in less time than 
 that! Poor little writhing words. ... 'It would be so nice 
 to be in a little flat with you. ... I will cook you two eggs 
 every morning. ... I will be your own little slave if you 
 will let me. ... I know you are doing everything you can 
 for me. ... I have implicit faith in you, always, and you 
 must have in me. . . . ' No more faith, no more ^gs, eh? 
 It does not matter. The flames will take all, including the 
 little flat. 'No, I will not regret anything. ... I am yours 
 forever, forever, forever. . . . ' Just three seconds for three 
 forevers to go up the chinmey. And two more forevers go the 
 same way, with an 'Amen!' for good measure. . . ." 
 
 And more in the same vein. Let these words, he thought, 
 look as eyes of reproach into her soul, and make her writhe 
 even as the bits of cnunpled paper writhed in the flames. 
 Responsive flames swept through his body, and everything 
 
 282 
 
WITCHES' CAULDRON 
 
 that went under the name of tender and noble withered. A 
 smfle played on his face, and suddenly catching sight of himself 
 in the mirror, he did not recognise the smile as his own. He 
 thought of Saville's masks, and said to himself: 
 
 "I must think out a mask for myself, or at least the idea 
 of a mask, a vision of which I must keep ever before me. It 
 must have a definite purpose and goal, and I must try to live 
 up to it. Otherwise, I shall go to pieces." 
 
 A reply from Winifred came a week later. It was hardly 
 likely to add to his peace. The gist of it was contained in the 
 following sentences: 
 
 "... I feel that nothing I can say wiU convince you that 
 certain things are unjust both to you and me. Your letters 
 have been painful to mother and myself, and apparently I am 
 wholly to blame. Do you realise the enormity of what you 
 have done? It is down in black and white. . . . You have 
 cleared yoiu"self, I stand convicted. ... I can only protest 
 sincerely, again and again, that I am not to blame for my 
 change of feeling. I did change my mind evoy two or three 
 months. I have written whatever letters you remember in 
 complete honesty. . . . And it is simply this — ^I have changed 
 my mind. You are not responsible in any way. You are the 
 same Gombarov whom I shall always like and want to know 
 all my life. But you must understand that women cannot 
 help their poor, foolish minds. You must remember, too, that 
 when I was struggling with my agonizing doubts of myself 
 (not of you), your letter came and ended everything. . . . 
 Perhaps you will think this a weak conclusion, but can't we 
 always know each other? That should mean something, if 
 little, to you. It would mean a great, great deal to me. . . . 
 Please write to me. ..." 
 
 "In other words," reflected Gombarov, "she wants me to 
 
 283 
 
BABEL 
 
 stick to her like that milksop Regmald, as a 'friend.' I was 
 right after all in my original diagnosis. But this can never 
 
 be. . . . " 
 
 Without replying to her letter, he took up the burden of 
 his lost world in addition to his other burdens. His money 
 was dwindling, he was writing little and earning little, his 
 mother went on sending depressing letters, his dreams of art 
 had so far come to nothing, his health was affected, he had 
 no friends in London who could help him, he lost all confidence, 
 everything seemed to hit him at the same time, and he did 
 not know what to do. The three witches at the cauldron had 
 surely cooked a nice stew for him. 
 
 Every day the temptation came to him to return to America 
 and to take up his job again on the New World. Why didn't 
 he? A little pride, a little stubbornness, a little hope— God 
 alone knew where it came from — ^together contrived to keep 
 him there, and sometimes a word from a mere stranger. At 
 this time a yovmg Irish acquaintance from Philadelphia — a 
 lawyer at that! — ^wrote him: 
 
 "I could hug you for having written, for, believe me, or not, 
 I was seriously athirst for news of you — ^you and your GREAT 
 IDEA. My dear Galahad, don't you know the Irish love a 
 bold man? . . . Pardon me, but you have done something 
 startling! Your leaving a good job, packing up your bag 
 and taking a room in London possesses a truly Disraeliesque 
 startlingness. ... It is characteristic of a man of talent to 
 hesitate about attempting big things of which he is capable; 
 his discerning intellect clearly perceives his difBculties. Milton 
 wasted (?) a youth-time; we remember how Stevenson backed 
 and filled, and succeeded in finally and forever dodging the 
 great work. I feel, however, in my bones that you are going 
 to work out your literary (I hate the blooming word, but 
 
 284 
 
WITCHES' CAULDRON 
 
 must xise it, I suppose) salvation in your own way, in your 
 own time. . . . Now, my dear fellow, bless you, hang on by 
 your teeth . . . and look confidently forward to the inevitable 
 dawning of your era . . . remembering that the night passeth 
 and strength and peace come with the new day and a great 
 light, AND remember me as ever, Your friend, Michael 
 O'Connor." 
 
 How could he go back in the face of that? In the face of 
 the faith of others? A letter like that from a practical stranger 
 acted on him with the strength of an omen. Why should it 
 come at precisely that moment, the moment of his great need? 
 And he imaccountably drew from the words a faith, mystic in 
 intensity. 
 
 His dreams, too, had sometimes the same quality. There 
 was the dream he had about a fortnight after receiving 
 Winifred's last letter. He dreamt he was in his room with 
 one or two friends, whose identity he could not establish. 
 Suddenly one of them exclaimed: "Look at that!" He looked 
 up and saw a dagger over his door, point downwards. Moved 
 by a strange will, without the slightest hesitation he seized 
 hold of the sharp blade with a bare hand, and with a super- 
 human effort bent it imtil it assiuned the shape of a sickle. 
 On waking, he somehow felt that the final betrayal was coming 
 and that he would conquer it. 
 
 That very afternoon a parcel arrived. It contained all the 
 things he had given Winifred, including a bracelet, a Venetian 
 shawl and his letters. The sight of these objects was painful. 
 Inanimate objects had a life of their own, and these particular 
 objects, emanated in great waves, an aroma of tender associa- 
 tions. He did not want these things back. What was he to 
 do with them? He could not give them away, nor sell them. 
 And, surely, he could not keep them in his room. There 
 
 285 
 
BABEL 
 
 was a power of disruption in them, and in their presence he 
 felt himself to be just such a parcel of fragments, just such a 
 collection of memories and associations. He must return 
 them. He must beg her to do just this one thing: accept them 
 and keep them as souvenirs of their former tenderness. He 
 really wanted her to have them. They could not possibly 
 belong to anyone else. There was no ulterior motive in this. 
 Involuntarily, on top of this, came another thought, which, 
 not to be repressed, brought a gloating smile to his face, the 
 same smile he had caught in the mirror while burning the 
 letters. This thought ran: "You know well enough why 
 you want her to have these things. You know their painful 
 effect on you. And you'd rather she suffered this instead of 
 yoiurself. You may say, she does not care for you, therefore 
 she will not suffer at the sight of these things. But you know 
 well enough that she does love you, only she had not the 
 strength to face circumstances. . . . Never mind, the presence 
 of these things is sure to cause her pain in their constant 
 reminder of you. Walking with another lover in the cool 
 of an evening, with that shawl roimd her shoulders, a momoit 
 is sure to come in the midst of her happiness, when she will say 
 to herself: 'I have betrayed someone who has loved me so!'" 
 In moments of detachment he analyzed this contradiction in 
 himself, and understood how thwarted nobUity becomes malice, 
 creative fires destructive, and beauty a gargoyle. 
 
 Three days later a letter arrived, which put an end to his 
 fluctuations. Addressed in Mrs. Gwynne's hand, it was post- 
 marked Venice. The letter began by expressing the hope 
 that the parcel despatched from Paris had reached him, and 
 went on: 
 
 "I have been offered a good position in New York, and we 
 are now on our way there, via Naples. We shall be in Naples 
 
 286 
 
WITCHES' CAULDRON 
 
 in a month, and we can be reached care of the American 
 Express Company. If there is ever anjrthing I can do for you, 
 let me hear from you. I am still, Your friend, Priscilla 
 Gwynne." 
 
 This news, if it stunned him, gave him also a new will, fired 
 him with new desire. And he sat down to commit a superb 
 folly, folly of follies. The fact that an address was deliberately 
 given did not escape him. He sat before his paper and wrote 
 and wrote, passionately and eloquently, firmly yet tenderly, 
 logically yet lyrically. He was inspired with desperation. It 
 would be his final appeal. And with true diplomacy he wrote 
 to her mother, too. They were both long letters. He also 
 packed the bracelet carefully and sent it to Naples, by 
 registered post. Next day he sent two more letters, one to each 
 of them. He begged Winifred not to make her decision 
 precipitately, but to think it over carefully and weigh all the 
 considerations, pro and con, which he had placed before her. 
 
 Then he waited for the weeks to pass, and, while waiting, 
 he neither hoped Einy longer nor despaired. At all events, he 
 had done all he could, and now he was prepared for anything 
 and everything. And he just waited, waited. . . . 
 
 Life is full of taunts. About this time he received a letter 
 from a former colleague on the New World, who wrote him 
 congratulating him on his rumoured marriage. "If it is true 
 that I am married," he wrote back, "then it is also true that I 
 am a bigamist. When the Turkish-Bulgarian war is over, I 
 intend going to Turkey, where a man may marry as many 
 wives as he pleases, without anyone losing sleep over it but the 
 husband." Thus he wrote in his malice and bitterness, and 
 sat down to his work, which he had latterly neglected. And 
 he waited for the weeks to pass, for the witches' stew to be 
 unstewed. . . . 
 
 287 
 
CHAPTER Vin: ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 "Verily I say unto you. That the 
 publicans and the harlots go into 
 the kingdom of God before you." 
 — St. Matthew, xxi: 31. 
 
 "The stone which the builders re- 
 jected, the same is to become the 
 head of the comer." Ibid. 42. 
 
 REFLECTIONS IN PICCADILLY 
 
 Man must have company, though he ever remain a solitary 
 in its midst. Gombarov had, by now, acquired many acquaint- 
 ances among painters and writers. He saw, at intervals, 
 Bagg and Rodd, Hylas and Heracles, and made friends with 
 Douglass, whom he liked for his blunt, simple ways. He 
 sometimes went to the Tuesday evenings of the Irish poet, 
 Patrick Raftery, who, boyish-looking in spite of his forty-five 
 years, held forth rh3rthmically and decoratively before his 
 visitors, chiefly young aspirants, in his small Bloomsbury 
 apartments, amid books, pictures, hanging draperies and tall 
 ceremonial candles, whose serene light, mingling with cigarette 
 smoke, gave picturesque if subdued effects to the semi-circle 
 of reclining figures facing the poet, endowed the still-Iifes 
 with a rich soft glow and sent perpendicular glints down the 
 bottles of red and white wine, cherry brandy and benedictine 
 standing on a small table in one corner of the room. All this 
 was successfully designed to create an artistic island haven 
 amid the immense turbulences of murky London life. No 
 potential artist was refused entrance here, no undesirable 
 
 288 
 
ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 admitted twice. Gombarov could for once in his life crow over 
 the multi-millionaire, who, unless he was a discriminating art 
 patron, could no more effect an entrance here than the rich 
 man get past the toll-stile of St. Peter. 
 
 Though, thank God, they eschewed politics and economics, 
 the company of artists did not always content him. Art talk 
 of the coteries, which were beginning to mark London like 
 some spotted beast, was apt to weary one. It was not enough 
 to eat eternally of one dish, however fastidious, and he 
 hxmgered for life, the many-faceted adventure of larger humani- 
 ties. During those many weeks of waiting for a reply from 
 Winifred this craving became a sharp blade, aimlessly swinging 
 to get within the reach of the spiritual bread and meat of life. 
 
 How was a stranger in London to find life? Life, if sought 
 and snatched at, was a harlot, at the beck and call of a stout 
 purse. Still, a hungry man is fascinated by food in shop- 
 windows, and a man hungering for life must often be content 
 with the mere observation of potential feasts in Life's sh(q>- 
 windows. He usually found himself wandering in Piccadilly 
 Circus. In this triangle, shaped like a familiar symbol in 
 Egyptian cuneiforms, was the sterile harlot womb of London. 
 Where, then, was London's heart? Wiseacres would tell you 
 that it beat with a steady tremulousness within the inaccessible 
 walls of the Bank of England and in the surrounding regions 
 of the city, abundant with huge coiling arteries. 
 
 Round and round he walked, from Leicester Square, turning 
 the sharp angle at the Pavilion, up Shaftesbury Avenue and 
 down Wardour Street, back to Leicester Square; then the 
 same round again, meeting the same faces of women and girls 
 with eyes which sflently beckoned him. He observed the more 
 wistfiil of them, dressed imobtrusively, unrecognisable for 
 what they were but for their slow, erect walk and those 
 
 289 
 
BABEL 
 
 beckoning eyes. They were different from the flaunting types 
 he had seen in the streets of New York, Rome and Naples, 
 and not so far different from the respectable women with whom 
 they mingled on the pavements. 
 
 "Here am I," he grimly reflected, "walking round and 
 roimd, just like one of them. In what way am I really different 
 from them? They sell their bodies, I sell my brain, and for the 
 same reason. We must live. I am, perhaps, the worse 
 offender. And I am sure, they are better paid. ..." 
 
 Some of them, tall, shapely and handsome, looked as if 
 they would have made splendid wives and mothers. What 
 drove them to it? Well, what drove him to do hack work? 
 Was he making a farfetched analogy between venal newspaper 
 work, as he remembered it on the New World and the vocation 
 of these poor girls? He recalled those days, and the demands 
 his work had made on his mind and soul, even though, as in 
 prostitution, it gave a certain amount of personal freedom. 
 You gave the best of your brain for a consideration, and your 
 brain, such as it was, was at the service of the proprietOT 
 and the public. You had to follow the policy of the house, 
 and if you had any thoughts of your own it was for you to 
 keep them to yourself. It was not uncommon for an editorial 
 writer to abandon a newspaper having a certain political policy 
 and to transfer his employment for a better salary, to a 
 newspaper having a diametrically opposite policy and to write 
 convincingly and approvingly of what he had formerly written 
 equally convincingly and disapprovingly. And always, in the 
 end, youth displaced the superannuated. No profession, barring 
 prostitution, contained so many cynics as journalism. This is 
 not to speak against cynicism, which is profoimdly misunder- 
 stood by the pseudo-optimistic who, with Pangloss, insist on 
 regarding this as the best possible of all worlds. For cynicism, 
 
 290 
 
ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 at its best, is in its way a philosophy, a stoical hardening of 
 oneself to an acceptance of things as they are. It is a protective 
 colouring, a preparation to meet what blows may come and 
 thus soften them. If, after a dajr's work, you have but a 
 grain of idealism left in you, you can indulge in it, as Gombarov 
 had done, by sitting down in your own little room and writing 
 a story or poem, or what you will, after your own heart. 
 Thus, he reflected, a prostitute, after her day's work, may 
 indulge in a lover, reserving for him what sweetness is left in 
 her. 
 
 As he thought these thoughts, he was reminded that he had 
 not yet learnt to accept life as it was, and it occurred to him 
 that he would like to know these women and talk to them, and 
 learn their secret, which might help him to face life with the 
 same composure and nonchalance. 
 
 MOIXY 
 
 No sooner had this thought become a full-grown, fixed reso- 
 lution, than he set out to put it into practice. One evening, 
 as he went his usual rounds, he was attracted by a fair, slen- 
 der, neat-ankled girl. She had a winsome if not exactly pretty 
 face, broad across the eyes, and a large, if unobtrusive mouth, 
 the whole face a mask of good natxire. She was standing 
 under the awning of the Pavilion, and her face was in the 
 shadow of the broad brim of her hat, so that an observer 
 caught a sense of these features, veiled by a smile, rather than 
 the features themsdves, and this intensified the impression of 
 her attraction. He walked past her several times, and finally 
 tipped his hat. 
 
 "Good evening 1" she returned his greeting. 
 
 Shyly facing her, he was at a loss for words, and as she 
 waited for him to speak, he finally blurted out: 
 
 291 
 
BABEL 
 
 "Look here, I don't want to go home with you. But will 
 you come and have dinner with me? I'd like someone to 
 talk to." 
 
 "I don't mind, honey!" she replied, and took his arm. 
 
 "Where shall we go?" he asked. 
 
 "Well, you don't look like a multi-millionaire. You had 
 better come along with me to the place I usually go to. The 
 waitress is my friend, and she'll treat us properly." 
 
 "That will suit me fine!" 
 
 "You are an artist, aren't you?" she asked, as they walked 
 on, arm in arm. 
 
 "A sort of one. I'm a scribbler, which is hardly better 
 than a beggar." 
 
 "Never mind, boy, you'll get along. I'm sure you're clever, 
 and have a lot of will. You're a Jew boy?" 
 
 "Yes," he said, astonished. 
 
 "Oh, you'll get on!" she repeated confidently, giving his 
 arm a squeeze. "Here we are!" — and they paused before a 
 little restaurant in the proximity of Leicester Square. "Let's 
 go upstairs, boy!" she said, releasing his arm, and leading 
 the way in. 
 
 They ran the gauntlet of tables, all apparently occupied by 
 girls of Molly's vocation, who eyed the newcomers with pro- 
 fessional interest. Molly was well-known there, judging by 
 the nods she received. They ascended the stairs and 
 found themselves in a long narrow room, less crowded than 
 below. 
 
 As they faced one another across a corner table by the 
 window, what astonished him was the child-like expression 
 of his compsmion's face, intensified by a pouting smOe, as she 
 asked, pleadingly: 
 "May I have a Guinness, boy?" 
 
 292 
 
ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 She looked like a child pleading for a bar of chocolate. 
 
 "Of course!" he laughed. "Here, waitress, two Guinness, 
 please! What will you have to eat?" 
 
 "It will be good to have something hot!" and she ordered 
 soup and chops. "My hands are quite cold!" She extended 
 her hands to him. 
 
 "You have nice hands, child," he said, rubbing and stroking 
 them. "But I don't know your name yet! " 
 
 "Molly," she replied. "Your hands are nice, too!" 
 
 "How old are you, Molly?" 
 
 "Twenty-five, boy." 
 
 "One wouldn't think it, to look at you." 
 
 "No, boy, but I've had a heap of trouble. Have a baby 
 girl to take care of, too. About eighteen months old. Of 
 course, I can't think of keeping it with me!" 
 
 "Then you are married?" 
 
 "No, boy. Got let down. Married some one else. Nine 
 girls out of ten in this place will tell you the same story. It's 
 a way men have with a girl. They are all alike!" 
 
 "Sometimes it happens the other way about," observed 
 Gombarov. "But I don't understand anybody wanting to 
 chuck you. You'd make a nice little wife to anybody. In 
 different circumstances, I might kidnap you myself!" 
 
 "That's what they all say, boy. But there it is, myself 
 and a kiddie to look after. There's the landlady, too, who 
 takes the very skin of girls the likes of us. Oh, yes," she 
 added between gulps of Guinness, "we might go into a work- 
 shop or the service, if they'll have us, and work off our hands 
 and walk off our feet, without getting so much as a thank 
 you! Or we might marry some bloke, and live in a suburban 
 little home and spend our time looking out of the window, 
 waiting for something to turn up. No, boy, not for me, thank 
 
 293 
 
BABEL 
 
 you. Besides" — she laughed softly — "maybe, it was all pre- 
 ordained, and I am paying out my Karma. . . ." 
 
 "Paying out your what?" 
 
 "My Karma. I once met a chap like yourself, who just 
 wanted to stand me dinner and have a chat. He put the 
 notion in my head. He was a Theosophist, and it was his 
 notion that in my previous existence I must have been a man 
 and done the dirty on a girl, promised to marry her, then 
 let her down — ^with a kiddie, too! — and now I've been turned 
 into a girl so I might be paid out in the same coin — just to 
 taste what it was like!" 
 
 "If that's true," said Gombarov, "then I must have led 
 the very devil of a life in my previous existence, judging by 
 the way I am paying for it. I must have been a multi-mil- 
 lionaire who took the bread out of the mouths of the poor, 
 and at the same time I must have been a fascinating female 
 who led a yoimg man a fearful song and dance." 
 
 "So that's your trouble, boy? Let me tell you no girl is 
 worth it. If she does that, she don't love you! Well, maybe, 
 the Theosophist chap was right. He was in dead earnest and 
 told me heaps of facts, which he said was all in books and 
 true. To tell you the honest truth, I often feel that if I were 
 a young man, I'd do just that sort of thing, that's been done 
 to me, even now — ^yes, boy, life is sure enough a funny mess! 
 . . . What's your name?" 
 
 "Call me John, if you like!" 
 
 "Funny, that's my boy's name!" 
 
 "So you have a boy?" 
 
 "Yes. Even in my business, nearly every girl has her own 
 boy. You've got to love someone, haven't you? Can't be 
 pretending all the time, can you?" 
 
 "But there's your John! He isn't satisfied, is he?" 
 
 294 
 
ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 "He wants me to quit it, but he can't support both kiddie 
 and me, so we must wait. He knows I love him, and there's 
 one little part of me that's all his own" — and she pointed to 
 her left breast — "there's my heart, and I let no man ever 
 touch it but John." 
 
 "That about describes my own case," reflected Gombarov 
 to himself. "When my hack work is done, I sit down and 
 try to do something that is all my own, for art's sake alone, 
 something that has nothing to do with commerce. And that 
 amounts to the same thing. I am acting just as this girl does." 
 A peculiar calm, even contentment, descended on him from 
 being with this girl. 
 
 "Go on, Molly, tell me more about yourself," he said. 
 
 "I don't know why I am telling you all this, except that 
 you are one of those people one tells things to naturally." 
 
 "Yes, Molly, I sometimes think I have the nature of a 
 father confessor. But tell me: you can't always go on like 
 this! Don't you ever think of the future?" 
 
 "Don't! Don't!" She shut her eyes with her hands. 
 "Don't talk to me about that! We daren't think of the 
 future. . . ." She took her hands from her eyes. "Look out- 
 side. It is raining and sleeting. It is cold. Our stockings 
 are thin. Our necks are bare. We walk for hours through 
 sleet, rain and fog. Waiting for someone to pick us up. 
 Sometimes we are lucky to get a gentleman. Sometimes the 
 pig thinks he's bought us for a miserable sovereign. Some- 
 times it's nobody! And there's kiddie always to think of. 
 And fine clothes cost money! A dowdy girl has no chance 
 at all. A man won't look at a girl unless she has silk stock- 
 ings. . . . We can only think of the present. To-morrow has 
 to take care of itself." 
 
 295 
 
BABEL 
 
 ANITA 
 
 There was a commotion at the next table. A girl who had 
 just come in sat down at the table with four others, and was 
 ciying. Her pals were tiying to cheer her up. 
 
 "Buck up, Nitty!" 
 
 "Don't cry, honey!" 
 
 "Here's a cup of chocolate for you, pet!" 
 
 "There's a dear," said the fourth, taking up the girl's hand- 
 kerchief and wiping her tears. 
 
 She now sat up and tried to smile. Gombarov noted her 
 jet black hair and dark eyes, which, deep and lustrous, glowed 
 like liquid fire within their sockets. She had the strangeness 
 and expressiveness of one who had suffered much, and had 
 lost something of her beauty through suffering. Touched by 
 the solicitude the others showed for her, Gombarov remarked 
 upon this to his companion. 
 
 "We hate to see a girl in trouble," said Molly. "And 
 trouble may strike any of us at any time. Anita — ^that's her 
 name — ^was a very pretty girl once. . . ." And Molly lapsed 
 into a sullen silence. 
 
 "Would it be too much to ask you what her trouble 
 is?" 
 
 Molly did not answer at once. 
 
 "I don't know whether it would be right to tell," she said 
 at last. "She is being sorry now." Molly looked at Gom- 
 barov, long and searchingly. "I think I can trust you," she 
 went on. "But heaven help you, if you tell. I wouldn't tell 
 you, if you weren't a Jew boy, and I didn't like you." 
 
 The reasons for her statement soon became dear. She 
 drew herself across the table, and spoke in whispers: 
 
 "She was such a pretty girl once, the oldest of her family, 
 
 296 
 
ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 with a widowed motho- and some kiddies to look after. About 
 three years ago she went out looking for a job, in the reviews 
 and the halls. She had a good voice then — and there were 
 her good looks. When the managers saw ha, they junqied 
 at her, you bet, and smacked their lips, you may be sure. 
 Of course, they'd engage her, give her a good job too, if she 
 would — ^well, you know! That's how some girls get on the 
 stage. Not that she hadn't talent, but it wasn't that that 
 counted with those goats. It's the old story, boy. Nitty 
 wouldn't — not at first! Besides, she had a young man of 
 her own, and he getting only two poimd ten a we^. But there 
 was the large family, mostly kiddies. Wish people wouldn't 
 breed so! What could Nitty do but give in at last? The 
 first goat gave her a job starting at five per. After a bit 
 another p-etly girl showed up on the scene, and by then he 
 had had his fill of Nitty, and Nitty passed into the hands 
 of Goat Number Two. She passed like that through several 
 pairs of hands, and the last one gave her something worse 
 than a baby. He happened to be a Jew, and now that Nitty 
 is on the street, she has vowed that she'd pass it on to evoy 
 Jew she comes across — ^there, now you know why I've told 
 you!" 
 
 "The brutes!" exclaimed Gombarov. "A horrible tale! 
 And we call ourselves civilised. Poor little thing! Savages 
 would have been kinda." 
 
 'Tou may well say that. . . . She is being sorry now. But 
 it won't last. One time she would come up to me and say: 
 'You think me a beast, don't you? Well, pahaps I am! I 
 do feel sorry for than afterwards, but at the time I simply 
 can't hdp mysdf, and I have a great joy, my only joy. Yes, 
 Molly, I know I'm going to hell!' Anothar time, she'd get 
 into a fit, and just yeU: *I don't care! I don't care! I shall 
 
 297 
 
BABEL 
 
 send the whole lot of them to hell, before I go there 
 myself!'" 
 
 Gombarov looked at Anita with a new interest, not without 
 a shudder. Her face was pale, and an intense flame showing 
 in her eyes appeared to be consuming her. "Poor little 
 Anita!" he thought. "Life has not treated you too well, and 
 you look but a child, a poor, hurt child! " Who was to blame? 
 Oh, the imfathomable cruelty of a pitiless world, and oh, the 
 infinite malice of injured and humiliated humanity! Here, 
 in Anita, once love had dwelt. Had she not sacrificed herself 
 and her own dear one for the poor children of her hapless 
 family? What was his own sacrifice compared with hers? 
 And now, in her last gasp, she was turning on a vulture world, 
 and even while she offered her rotting carcass to pitiless beaks, 
 she was yet sufficiently aware that she was carrying retribu- 
 tion to a world that knew no pity. Who was to blame? 
 
 "Molly," said Gombarov, with a sudden impulse, "will you 
 promise to do me a favor?" 
 
 "What is it, John?" 
 
 "I am not very well off. But I happen to have a sovereign 
 in my pocket. Will you give it to Anita when I'm not here, 
 and tell her that it came from a Jew, who saw her and took 
 a fancy to her? Give her any explanation you like, so she 
 needn't know that you told me an3rthing. Will you do that 
 for me?" 
 
 "Look here, boy, don't be foolish, if you can't afford it. . . . 
 Still, 111 do it, if you like. You're a queer one!" 
 
 "That's a dear, Molly!" and he gave her the sovereign. 
 
 "Never fear," she said, to allay any suspicions he might 
 have of Anita not getting the money. "Goodness knows, we 
 are heartless enough, but we are not selfish!" 
 
 298 
 
ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 KATHLEEN 
 
 The waitress had gone out to the nearest public house to 
 fetch two more bottles of Guinness, when in came dancing 
 a hilarious girl, holding her skirts up at her sides and dis- 
 playing the tempestuous whiteness of her laced and frilled 
 underthings. She seemed wholly oblivious to the scrutiny 
 of amused eyes, and laughing, as if she would never stop, 
 danced straight upon Alolly. Her slender, black-stockinged 
 legs, showing above her small, well-rounded knees, gave her 
 the appearance of a young girl. Rebellious wisps of fair 
 hair stuck out from under a green tam-o'-shanter, and her 
 grey-blue eyes danced as nimbly as her girlish legs. She 
 controlled herself sufficiently to exclaim: 
 
 "Oh, MoU!" 
 
 "Hello, Kath! What's up?" 
 
 Once more she burst out laughing, and again repeated: 
 
 "Oh, Moll!" 
 
 "You've been up to pranks again, I see," laughed Molly, 
 infected by her friend's mood. 
 
 "It's the funniest yet," said Kathleen, planting herself in 
 a chair, and suddenly restraining herself as she looked at 
 Gombarov. 
 
 "Go on, out with it!" said Molly. "He's all right! Kath- 
 leen — a friend!" she introduced them. 
 
 "Yes, do go on!" urged Gombarov, amused by the alluring 
 little figure. 
 
 But Kathleen gave way to another fit of laughter. 
 
 "What's one to do with her? She's always like that! Just 
 a kid!" said Molly. 
 
 "Bless you, and it's forgiving you must be to me," said 
 Kathleen, at last, with a delicious touch of Irish. "But it's 
 
 299 
 
BABEL 
 
 too funny for words. Do you remember the young blood, 
 that was all sweetness and honey on me and for getting off 
 with me last night?" 
 
 "You mean the pale duffer with the shining topper and 
 white shirt-front and a bit of hedge on his upper lip?" 
 
 "The very same. Well, there was he getting properly 
 drunk, and there was I jimiping into a taxi with him and 
 taking him to Mrs. Ripp's. He was as droll as droll, taking 
 off his trimmings in a strange fashion, like an vmdertaker 
 would be preparing himself for his own fimeral, and dropping 
 off into a deep sleep with nothing but a vest itself and a 
 topper on the head of him. Blowing his nose tnmipet, too, he 
 was like fury. You'd think he was the big elephant at the 
 Zoo. There was Reggie boy expecting me, you'd suppose, 
 to be sitting up for him till morning, until his own royal high- 
 ness should wake, and to find his own little hiunble slave 
 there by his side, with his bacon and eggs. There was I 
 Ijring and thinking and worrying as to what to do, until a 
 brilliant idea was bom in me foolish little brain." 
 
 "You with your brUliant ideas!" interrupted Molly. 
 
 "Darling, wait till you hear. So up I jumps out of bed, 
 and puts on me things. And up I go, gathermg all of Reggie's 
 things after, and doing them up in a neat little parcel, all 
 but the topper and the undervest he had on, and his socks and 
 his shoes. Then it's down stairs with them, and into a taxi, 
 hugging his own royal highness's tmiform. But I'm all for 
 the proprieties and for being kind to a man, so I pinned a little 
 biUet-dottx on his pillow, that said: 'I'm the one, your own 
 darling, would like to be seeing you in the morning, with your 
 shinmg crown and silken vest and dear little socks on, holding 
 a kingly scepter in your noble hand.' " 
 
 300 
 
ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 "What will Mrs. Ripp say?" asked Molly, when the laughter 
 had subsided. 
 
 "Oh, Mrs. Ripp! First thing in the morning there does be a 
 knocking on me door, and me sleeping peacefully in me own 
 little flat, and waking from me beauty sleep, and there, as 
 large as life, is the parcel on the chair, looking at me, and 
 I laughing till me sides would burst. Up I jimips out of 
 bed, and just as I am, in me linen and lace, grabs up the par- 
 cel and opens the door to a cherub of a boy. Says I to him: 
 'And it's you that's come from Mrs. Ripp for to be taking a 
 parcel back to her?' And he hands me a note from herself, 
 to say she had seventy fits to see Reggie come down at seven 
 in the morning in his high hat and blanket, like a poor ship- 
 wrecked man, all excited-like, waving me billet-doux in one 
 hand, his ebony stick in the other, the very Archangel Gabriel 
 himself in person, and poor Mrs. Ripp never setting her 
 darling eyes on him before! And it's after me reading the 
 note and laughing and dancing before the wondering lad, in 
 me linen and lace, that I handed him the parcel and a bob 
 for his trouble and told him to hustle as quick as he ever 
 could back to Mrs. Ripp. . . . But sure, I would be giving 
 the sight of me two eyes to see Reggie through the keyhole 
 in the morning, and him with his shining crown, his under- 
 vest and socks, and holding a kingly scepter in his noble 
 hand. . . ." 
 
 WMLe Kathleen was recoimting her adventure, in her best 
 Abbey Theatre manner, her listeners frequently interrupted 
 her with tearful laughter. 
 
 "Have a Guinness, Kathleen?" asked Gombarov. 
 
 "I don't mind if I do, and it's right kind of you!" 
 
 "I must be going," said Molly, and seeing a question on 
 
 301 
 
BABEL 
 
 her host's face, she said: "I'm here almost every day about 
 four, if you care to look in. Good-bye, boy! " She rose and 
 shook his hand. "So long, Kath! May see you later." 
 
 "You are a cheerful little person, Kathleen!" he began. 
 
 "What's the use of a moaning and a groaning, and a worry- 
 ing and a bothering?" 
 
 He manoeuvred her round to a serious mood and succeeded 
 in getting her to tell about herself. He was astonished to 
 find her dropping her quaint manner of speaking, except when 
 she burst into her fits of humoiu:. This was explained by the 
 fact that she was bom in the West of Ireland, but was edu- 
 cated in a convent school near Dublin. It was a kind of rever- 
 sion to her early enviroimient. She knew something about Irish 
 literature and had seen Synge's plays acted. When she 
 was nineteen — she was but twenty-four now — she married an 
 Anglo-Indian officer and went out to India with him, spending 
 much of her time between Burma and Ceylon. He turned out 
 a brute, and after three years of married life, diudng which, 
 for a mere trifle, he once beat her while in pregnancy, causing 
 a miscarriage, she took advantage of a holiday in England to 
 escape from bondage. 
 
 She, a gay, wild thing, humorously recollected the social 
 functions held by officers' wives, and how she scandalised 
 them by her unconventional behaviour and piquant tales: 
 
 "As I saw them there with their armoured corsets and stays 
 and stiff manners, I used to delight in teUing them of how I 
 once went riding with my husband in the jungle, and how it 
 used to get so hot that I would remove my frock and go on 
 riding my horse just in my undies, and how the monkeys and 
 the wild birds and the serpents would stare at me just as 
 men might in Kccadillyl" 
 
 In London, at last, while her husband was away, she took 
 
 302 
 
ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 some of her personal belongings and a few odds and ends of 
 jewelry, crossed Westminster Bridge one night to "digs" in 
 Lambeth Road, getting the cabby to stop long enough for her 
 to fling the key of her husband's apartments into the Thames, 
 which was her way of burning her bridges behind her. She 
 sought work in the halls and on the kinema stage; her per- 
 sonality stood her in good stead for odd jobs, and she had 
 come to straits, where, in the jobless intervals, she was forced 
 to eke out a livelihood in Moll5r's way. What was one to do? 
 One had to live. 
 
 "Why didn't you go to your mother? Didn't you say you 
 had a well-to-do mother in Ireland?" asked Gombarov. 
 
 "Last person I'd go to! You don't know mother. She 
 swore and cursed at me when I married an English officer, 
 and when she heard that I went on the stage she swore and 
 cursed at me some more, and vowed that I'd never cross her 
 threshold. And I don't know that I can go back to that quiet 
 life. Anyhow, I'm anathema to her. Do you know, she still 
 swears and curses at me! Why, every Sunday afternoon, 
 regularly, just as I'm having tea in my room, I feel a sudden 
 shudder, and I know it's my mother's swearings and cursings 
 coming at me all the way from the West of Ireland. It's 
 just like a wind suddenly coming into the room, even on a 
 quiet day and the window closed. . . ." 
 
 As Gombarov listened to Kathleen, not only was he fasci- 
 nated by her lively personality, but he also marvelled at the 
 whiteness and smoothness of her skin. And she was child- 
 like in her gaiety and plaj^ulness, and surely there was less 
 real wickedness in her than in many virtuous, respectable per- 
 sons he had known. And her presence comforted him. 
 
 303 
 
ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 JUDITH 
 
 During those weeks of waiting, broken only by a simple 
 acknowledgment from Naples of the receipt of his letters and 
 bracelet, — for Winifred fell in with his suggestion to write 
 only after careful deliberation, from New York — Gombarov 
 had become a frequenter of the restaurant to which Molly 
 had introduced him. Observation of types served his de- 
 tachment, drew his mind from himself and his troubles. He 
 saw that, whatever else may be said of the sadness and sor- 
 didness of the life he observed, it could not be denied that 
 the wretches who lived this life employed not a little courage 
 and fortitude in living it. They were surely, apart from 
 poor artists, the only class in Christian society who followed 
 the Nazarene's injimction to take no thought of the morrow, 
 and that "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." 
 
 He sat there, sometimes hours on a stretch, and watched 
 them coming and going. Tired and cold and wretched, from 
 walking their roimds in the worst of weathers, with bare throats 
 and the thinnest of stockings and shoes, they would come in, 
 hands numbed with cold, to seek a respite in the comfortless 
 fare of poor tea or worse coffee. 
 
 Though he talked to many of them, he seldom heard them 
 complain. They neither asked nor received pity. They were 
 true philosophers, and accepted life stoically. They had their 
 good and their bad days, but whether they were festively gay 
 or sat as symbols of utter dejection and abandonment, their 
 child-like nature was nearly always clearly in evidence. There 
 was irony in the fact that these had been chosen as humanity's 
 sacrifices to the God of virtue in wives, for served they not, 
 these rejected, as safety valves to keep the rest of society 
 respectable? Thus Gombarov reflected, and he found com- 
 
 304 
 
BABEL 
 
 fort here that he could not find among so-called respectable 
 persons. 
 
 Xot that all the girls he met there were of the type of Molly, 
 Anita or Kathleen. They differed, as to class and breeding, 
 even as the rest of humanity differs. And there were lives 
 here inexplicable in their motives even as among other human 
 beings. Such was Judith, a Jewess, who, as he learnt later, 
 was born of a family marked for fatality and misfortune. 
 Judith was a curious, complex type, not to be explained by 
 economics alone, though need may have been the final motive 
 in pushing her into a life of degradation. She did not appear 
 to have a "pal," but usually sat alone, reading a book. She 
 was commonly referred to by the others as "Sarah" or "the 
 Jew girl." She was tall, well-formed, with a wealth of black 
 hair, a skin that seemed tanned by the sun, a slightly drooping 
 aquiline nose and large dark eyes, which at moments lit up 
 with a molten expressiveness, of dreaminess, sadness or pride. 
 Unlike the others, she never appeared openly to solicit a man's 
 acquaintance, and he had seen her refuse to talk to a man 
 she did not like. It was not without hesitation that he 
 addressed her one day, encouraged by the preence at her 
 side of a voliune of selections from Swinburne. They 
 happened to be sitting at the same table, at an angle from one 
 another. 
 
 "Fine poet!" he opened the conversation. 
 
 "Do you know him?" she asked, her astonished eyes light- 
 ing up on finding another curious creature acquainted witl? 
 her favourite poet. 
 
 "Do you know this?" — and to her greater astonishment, 
 he recited the opening lines of "A Forsaken Garden." 
 
 The next two hours passed in a discussion of favourite writ- 
 ers and certain current problems. She was an ardent social- 
 
 30s 
 
ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 ist, but no sufii-agist. Only in short snatches did they touch 
 upon intimades. 
 
 "I'd like to meet you again!" she said, as she rose to go 
 and warmly pressed his hand. 
 
 "Have tea with me here to-morrow." 
 
 They met several times in the course of the next fortnight, 
 but for all his manoeuvring he knew at the end as little of her 
 life as when he first met her. 
 
 "Don't let's talk about trifles, John!" she parried two or 
 three deliberate questions. 
 
 He had a curious feeling that she liked him and wanted to 
 save him the ordeal of painful revelations. He had given up 
 hope of finding out anything about her, when one afternoon 
 she came by appointment to tea and said without sitting 
 down: 
 
 "Come along, and have tea with me in my own little room, 
 that is, if you don't mind going by 'bus all the way to Mile 
 End Road." 
 
 Once on the rear seat on top of the Idus, she said: 
 
 "Youll find my mother a bit queer, but don't mind her. 
 She's had a hard time, poor thing, and it's turned her head, 
 I'm afraid. I suppose I had better tell you something about 
 it. I've already told you that I was bom in Russia, and was 
 a mere kiddie when I left. It was all due to a pogrom in our 
 village. My father, a &ne honest man, a Hebrew tutor by 
 trade, was killed. My mother, then yoimg, pretty and happy, 
 was violated by a brute of a muzhik. Poor mother, gather- 
 ing up what goods she had and selling what she could, scraped 
 enough money together to bring us to England — that is, me 
 and an older sister, Ruth. As a result of mother's misfor- 
 tune, another child was bom when she got here, a little girl, 
 with an imknown muzhik for a father! Fancy my mother's 
 
 306 
 
BABEL 
 
 predicament! She did not know whether to love or hate 
 Haggie, as we called Hagar. There were two bloods in her, 
 and one a hated blood. Poor Hagar! I don't know for 
 whom I was sorrj^ more — mother or Hagar. For, when all is 
 said and done, neither was responsible for what had happened. 
 Who was to blame? It was hard, especially when you had 
 been taught to believe that your God could do no wrong! 
 And mother, as the wife of a Hebrew tutor, had been a great 
 believer in her day. Something had happened to her the 
 day her God had let her down. What was the good of saying 
 in your misfortune, 'Everything is for the best'? What was 
 the good of sasring, 'The Lord will provide,' when she spent 
 the rest of her Ufe in an alien land, slaving for three daughters, 
 one an unwanted one! And she never mentioned the Lord 
 since that imhappy night, the night of the pogrom. There 
 was Hagar to remind her every day of that terrible tragedy 
 in the cold darkness of a Russian winter night. 
 
 "Well, we grew up! Haggie, poor dear, was a very hand- 
 some girl, more Russian than Jewish in feature, but with sad 
 Jewish eyes! You know, you can always tell a Jew by his 
 eyes! You'd have to go a long way to find a handsomer girl 
 than Haggie. She was both gentle and impetuous, extremely 
 sad or extremely gay. In fact, she was extreme in all things. 
 When she was eighteen she foimd a position in a tobacconist's 
 shop in the West End, and it was there, whUe waiting on 
 customers, that she met a gentleman, a racing man, who was 
 greatly taken with her and paid court to her. He was quite 
 gone on her and took her to the best theatres and restaurants 
 and lavished every attention upon her. She also took a great 
 fancy to him, and it was not long before she gave herself up 
 to him, body and soul. There was this to be said for him: 
 he was kindness itself to her. And she was very happy. 
 
 307 
 
ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 Strange to say — or, perhaps, it was not so strange, after all 
 —when Haggie told mother — for Haggle had a very frank na- 
 ture — mother neither said anything nor protested in any way. 
 I suppose she thought: that was to have been expected of 
 a blood tainted with the blood of a Russian savage. Besides, 
 since there was no longer any God — ^her God having died in 
 the cold darkness of that terrible Russian night — ^what did it 
 matter? Stranger stiU, Hagar's own nature, under the influ- 
 ence of her love, seemed to undergo an interesting change. 
 She lost all her impetuousness, and became as gentle and as 
 kind — ^well, simply an angel! Apart from her love, her 
 thoughts seemed to be all for us. Of her own free will she 
 gave mother what money her lover gave her, or bought dresses 
 and presents for me. Only Ruth would have nothing to do 
 with her. Ruth, I may tell you, is the pious member of the 
 family. If you meet her, you will see for yourself. What 
 a family! . . ." 
 
 As if overcome by her memories, Judith paused, and a thin 
 veil of moisture was visible in her eyes. She leaned a little 
 against her companion, and her hand almost automatically 
 slipped into his; she seemed to derive strength from the con- 
 tact. He seized her hand and held it firm, and by an effort 
 of the will experienced the curious consciousness of active 
 strength surging in his blood, downward from his should^ 
 to his finger-tips, infusing the girl with it. He had an in- 
 tense desire to give, give, give, as much as possible of this 
 sudden-born strength, drawn up from unsuspected wells in 
 him by some quality in the girl herself. She must have 
 divined something of what was going on within him, for she 
 smiled faintly, and impulsively seizing his hand kissed it 
 gently and fervently. 
 
 "You are a dear," she said. "I can go on now!" 
 
 308 
 
BABEL 
 
 A moisture crept into his eyes, but he controlled himself, 
 while she resumed: 
 
 "Hagar's affair went on for a full year, at the end of which 
 she was more in love with her Larry than at the beginning. 
 He, too, seemed attached to her. Then one day he told her 
 that at the doctor's orders he must take a month's holiday. 
 He explained that he could not take her with him, as he was 
 going to spend the time with his family in the country. It 
 did break my heart to see her pining away for her Larry. 
 The shock came five weeks later. He wrote her saying that 
 he had just been married and he enclosed a himdred-poimd 
 cheque, adding that he would see that she was not in want. 
 Poor Haggie never touched that cheque, but just pined away. 
 Weakened by insufficient noiu-ishment, she caught a cold, 
 which developed into pneumonia. Even mother, hardened as 
 she was against misfortvme, was touched. Well, some days 
 later mother got me to write a letter to Larry, asking him 
 to call before a certain date, to see Haggie for the last time, 
 as Haggie was going away to a distant country. . . . 
 
 "Larry came and I took him into Haggle's bedroom, where 
 Haggie, all in white like a bride, was lying in her cofGn. 
 Larry stood there, as white as a ghost, looking at her, and 
 I couldn't help saying to him: 'That's your work, Larry!' 
 He said with tears in his voice: 'But I meant to have done 
 things for her. She need never have been in want!' I went 
 to the table and drew an envelope out of a box, in which 
 Haggie kept her few treasures, and handed it to him. He 
 drew out the cheque he had sent her. 'Haggle kept it for 
 you,' said I, 'she wouldn't touch it!' I must say for him 
 that he was badly broken up. He couldn't say a word. He 
 just kept looking at her, then bent down and kissed her lips, 
 and walked out of the room, without even saying good-bye! 
 
 309 
 
BABEL 
 
 A day or two later he wrote to me, begging forgiveness, and 
 saying that he hadn't realised until too late how Haggle had 
 loved him, and how he had loved her. If he had, things 
 would have been different! There it is: that 'Too late!' Life 
 is so full of 'Too lates'! There was also mother who realised 
 too late what a treasure Hagar had been. And she lapsed 
 into a state of melancholia and remorse. Too late! So it is 
 with all of us. We do not miss what treasure there is around 
 us until it is gone. Too late! Too late! Too late!" . . . 
 
 She lapsed into sUence, and Gombarov again pressed her 
 hand and tried to infuse her with his strength, but she rose 
 impetuously and said: 
 
 "Let's walk the rest of the way. It's so difficult to talk 
 here!" 
 
 His hand clutching her arm, they walked for some minutes 
 in sQence, during which she seemed to be gathering herself 
 for the final revelations. 
 
 "Do you know," she said with a fierce outburst, "you, too, 
 in a way, have come too late!" 
 
 "What do you mean?" he asked, seeing that she was silent 
 again. 
 
 "Don't you see," she said, impetuously, "what my home 
 was like and what drove me to this! There was mother 
 getting more and more queer. There was my pious, austere 
 sister. There was the tragedy of Hagar hanging over the 
 house, and all that came before it! Who would come to our 
 house under the circumstances? It was enough to drive the 
 sanest person mad. And there was I, pining for life, for 
 love, for friendship, sometimes just for some one to talk to! 
 I had read a lot, and was burning to do things. Perhaps, if 
 I had remained in Russia I should have been a revolutionary. 
 Who knows, maybe even a bomb-thrower! I chafe imder in- 
 
 310 
 
ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 justice. And here I was shut up in that house, between those 
 two gloomy persons, in the fatalistic atmosphere of tragedy. 
 There's just that something about the house that makes you 
 want to go to the devil, it doesn't matter howl I was all 
 burning up with myself and my desires. I couldn't, like 
 Ruth, stick it in a shop or factory and lead a humdrum exist- 
 ence. Yet one must live, as they say. If there had been 
 only one intelligent person to talk to — someone like yourself 
 • — ^if only you could have come sometimes, then, maybe I 
 should not have chucked myself at the first passer-by. Oh, 
 that house of oiu-s! It was enough to corrupt an angel!" . . . 
 
 Even while she was talking, it suddenly, in a flash, oc- 
 curred to Gombarov that, in telling her story and in taking 
 him to her home, her whole object was to justify herself before 
 him, more than that, to justify herself before herself. She 
 had a moral need of this justification. 
 
 ". . . Why do I talk to you?" she went on. "I don't know. 
 I've never had the chance to talk like this to zmyone. But 
 you remember the first instant you spoke to me. Well, I 
 felt like a wanderer who had wandered for a thousand years 
 and somewhere in this huge desert of our life met just an- 
 other such wanderer, for I knew that you, too, had suffered. 
 I knew it the instant you spoke. . . ." 
 
 "Surely," he interrupted her, "it is not too late for you to 
 b^in a new life. You are young, you are beautiful, and you 
 know so much. . . ." 
 
 "No, no! It is too late. I once hungered for a supe- 
 rior being. I felt I could have inspired an artist!" 
 
 "You still could. You have an imusual, stimulating mind." 
 
 "Xo, no! It's not that I mean at all. I mean with my 
 body, the love and drunkenness of the body. Do you under- 
 stand? With my body. People do not understand the body. 
 
BABEL 
 
 What a wonderful, wonderful thing the body is. But now 
 it's too late, too late! My body is tainted. It is no longer 
 a pure wine, but is a thing mixed up with gall, poison and 
 wormwood. Oh, no, I'm not what you would call a trimmed 
 lamp! Oh, this civilisation!" she cried with fury. "Whai 
 I walk in Piccadilly and see the great herd pass by, I fed 
 as though I'd like to press a button and send it all fls^ng in 
 a billion fragments into space, myself with it!" 
 
 Gombarov had a tight grip on her arm and was silent. He 
 was helpless before this volcano of sputtering fire. He felt 
 a sacredness in her flame, now turned to derision, against 
 herself. Even now there were stray, dear, passionate threads 
 in her flame, which stirred a strange thought in him: "Yk, 
 why shouldn't I take her even now and cut loose from Wini- 
 fred, who doesn't want me? We are, both of us, of the hurt 
 things of the world, and we can soothe one another with the 
 pity of hurt things. Is not pity the greater love, seeking as 
 it does to shdter and protect, giving little thought to self? 
 Is not the thing men call love an imconscious desire to destroy 
 the one they love, even as 1 have often, with my loving, desired 
 to destroy Winifred?" This thought struggled in him, and 
 was smothered by worldly after-thoughts, for he knew his 
 mind to have been tainted and prostituted by the world, even 
 as Judith was conscious of the tainting and prostituting of 
 her body. He said aloud: 
 
 "Judith, why don't you find something to do that would 
 suit your temperament? I have an idea you'd make a fine 
 actress!" 
 
 Judith only laughed. "Do you realise," she said with some 
 vehemence, "what it means to become an actress nowadays? 
 Do you suppose one is chosen just for one's potentialities, 
 however great these may be? You must have a moneyed 
 
 312 
 
ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 backer, and you must be a nice bit of fluff at the service of 
 your benefactor. Not that I'd object to that for the sake of 
 my art, but I'm not the type at all that would appeal to a 
 modem impresario. A mechanical doll is what they want. 
 How many get through to the top, when they can dispose of 
 themselves as they like? How many fall? Well, you've 
 heard .\nita's story! Do you know, I once actually appUed for 
 a small part in legitimate drama. AMiat is more, the manager 
 engaged me. Then the leading lady came along and as soon 
 as she saw me, she got me fired, for no reason at all except 
 that I was too tall and too strikingly dark, and she wanted 
 a few fair-headed wooden figiu-es in the background to set 
 her off!" 
 
 She lapsed into silence, then resumed: 
 
 "Given a man a woman can love, she may, of course, bear 
 chiloien. But that also is too late, even if the right man 
 turned up. For now I am tainted with many bloods. Nature 
 is against the woman all the time. A man may lead the very 
 deuce of a life and in the end find a woman who is his mate, 
 but when a woman tries that sort of thing she's lost! No 
 amount of suffragism will overcome that. The worst of this 
 wanting to live is that if you are thwarted you want to die. 
 That's what drove me out of that accursed house to destroy 
 myself. Forgive me for talking like this. WeU, I have given 
 you an afternoon! You are a dear to listen," and once more 
 she caught up his hand impetuously and kissed it. "Now 
 let's try and be cheerful. We are nearly there now!" 
 
 "Poor little Judith, poor little Judith. ... I wish I could 
 help you!" 
 
 "Here we are!" — emd they paused before a small two- 
 story house. 
 
 As they entered the hall, the kitchen door near the stairs 
 
 313 
 
BABEL 
 
 slightly opened, and a woman's wrinkled face, with strange, 
 half-demented eyes, peered through the opening. 
 
 "It's only me, mother!" said Judith. 
 
 The door opened wider and the woman stepped into the 
 hall, a little, warped figure, whom the ills of a mutilated 
 world had in some way marked as their symbol. And it was 
 hard to tell whether it was malignant or kindly. Two dark 
 eyes, in a prematurely aged face, turned upon the stranger 
 a fixed glitter, accentuated by a drab, ill-fitting wig, the 
 emblem among Orthodox Jews of a married woman, and from 
 the wig emerged the sharp contours of emaciated high cheek- 
 bones and sharp nose and chin. Yet Judith had said that she 
 had been pretty once, had loved husband and children, and 
 had drudged her life away to bring up^three daughters. Where 
 was the nobility of sorrow? Here was but a shrivelled, gar- 
 goylish old woman, who had lost her belief in God and eternity. 
 
 "See that the young man pays well," said she in a dull, 
 hollow voice, in Yiddish. 
 
 "Don't talk like that, mother," said Judith. "This man is 
 not a got. He is a Yid, and a friend." 
 
 She shufBed back into the kitchen, muttering. 
 
 "Poor thing! She can't help herself," said Judith. "Let's 
 go up to my little den." 
 
 "Poor little Judith!" he whispered, pressing her hand, and 
 followed her upstairs. 
 
 "Look in," she said, opening the first door on the landing. 
 "That's Haggle's room. She died there. It's not been occu- 
 pied since." 
 
 Everything was clean and neat here, and the bed was made 
 up as usual, but there was all the mustiness and cheerlessness 
 of a room that had had neither occupant nor fire for some 
 time. Possibly, because he was familiar with Hagar's story, 
 
 314 
 
ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 it assumed a peculiar and poignant emptiness, which brought 
 sadness to the heart. 
 
 Judith's den was next door. This was a larger, a cosier 
 room, containing in one comer a broad divan instead of a 
 bed, covered over with coloured draperies. Familijir por- 
 traits of Shelley, Turgenev, Byron and Tolstoy hung on the 
 walls. There was a shelf of books, mostly poets and novel- 
 ists. Everything in the room showed a measure of refined 
 simplicity, with pleasing feminine touches. 
 
 "What do you think of it?" she asked, drawing her gloves off. 
 
 "It's joUy. Looks almost like a studio." 
 
 "Yes, it helps me to forget the house. Have a cigarette. 
 You 11 find them in the box on the table. Then sit down in 
 the big chair. You might light the fire, if you will." 
 
 All that he saw pleased him, and he was pleased with her. 
 
 "Why not?" he asked himself again. One might do worse 
 than take this girl and make his home with her. That is, 
 not in this house, but elsewhere, away from familiar en- 
 vironment. 
 
 He sat in the big chair and watched the fire in the grate. 
 She sat facing him, on the other side of the grate. Outside, 
 the December daylight died away, and the firelight reflected 
 its warm orange tints in the faces of man and girl, intensifying 
 their expressions, all the rest being more or less lost in dark- 
 ness and shadows. 
 
 "Would you like to have light?" 
 
 "Xo, Judith, I prefer it as it is. And you?" 
 
 "I, too, prefer it." 
 
 She was intently watching his face, immobile with the 
 changeless sadness of eternity. 
 
 "You look like a statue of Grief," she said, a smile in her 
 voice. "What a sad face you have! I fear that I've made 
 
BABEL 
 
 you sad. Don't be sad, honey!" She dropped on her knees 
 on the rug at his feet and looked steadily into his face. "That's 
 right, honey, smile! Let's be happy!" And impetuously she 
 sprang to her feet, as a sudden idea seemed to strike her. 
 "Ill be back in a few moments!" She ran out of the room. 
 
 Presently he heard her movements in Hagar's room. Five 
 minutes elapsed, and she reappeared, dressed in a Japanese 
 kimono, her bare ankles showing above the dainty soft house- 
 slippers, her lovely black hair luxuriantly streaming down her 
 shoulders, and covering her breasts, the V-shaped opening 
 exposing the little valley between. The fire lighted up the 
 beautiful apparition, and her smiling face, catching and re- 
 flecting the orange glow as the tints of some dream sunset, 
 was an island of delight surrounded by a sea of black hair. 
 She stood thus for a few moments facing the fire, then walked 
 to the back of his chair, and bending over him, so that her 
 hair covered his face, whispered: 
 
 "Don't be sad, honey! Would you like to love me — ^just 
 a little? You may if you want to." 
 
 The warm perfimie of her body and her warm whispered 
 words and her hair brushing his face smothered him under 
 their allurements, but that terrible all-comprehending sad- 
 ness, blended of diverse thoughts — thoughts of Hagar, of this 
 tragic house, of the half-demented woman downstairs, of the 
 infinite pathos of this poor, abandoned, life-yearning girl, 
 and of other sad things — ^held his will, and he foimd no an- 
 swer. Again, with that contradictory, conflicting nature of 
 his, reasoning, yet credulous of inscrutable active forces, of 
 those ironic mysteries which dog men's footsteps to their 
 undoing, he was seized with one of those sudden inexplicable 
 forebodings, springing out of nowhere in life's crises, warning 
 him in this instance that upon the present test depended the 
 
 316 
 
ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 nature of Winifred's answer and that if he wished it to be 
 favourable, it was for him, at all hazards, to resist this almost 
 irresistible challenge of the Fates, of which the girl was an 
 instnunent. This feeling arose from past experiences. Again, 
 he wondered: was Judith merely being kind to him? Her 
 impulsive manner before the transformation suggested, per- 
 haps, that she wanted to make amends for having been the 
 cause of his great sadness. And he sat there, fiercely tempted, 
 and made no answer. 
 
 "Don't you want to?" asked the puzzled girl. 
 
 "Judith . . ." he began. 
 
 She stood up and went in front of the fire. She let the 
 kimono slip from her to the rug, and was revealed to him in 
 all her natural beauty, without civilised artifices. She stood 
 up proud and erect, firm-breasted, and there was in her man- 
 ner the pride of the female; and the firelight invested her 
 colouring and contours with a quality of animated alabaster. 
 
 "Am I not sufficiently beautiful?" she asked, turning round 
 as on a pivot. "Don't I please you? Am I incapable of 
 loving or being loved? . . ." 
 
 "Good God!" he exclaimed, and there was something so 
 poignant in his cry that she immediately desisted, and donning 
 the kimono, squatted down on the rug and looked into his 
 face. 
 
 "Judith, put your beautiful head on my knees and let me 
 talk to you." 
 
 She obeyed submissively. 
 
 "Judith," he said as he stroked her hair, "you are, indeed, 
 beautiful; so beautiful that I would willingly and in all 
 humility fall on my knees before your beauty and kiss your 
 dear feet. I am himian. It is all I can do to resist you. 
 I feel a tenderness for you quite apart from that, a sort of 
 
 317 
 
BABEL 
 
 detached tenderness. Please don't think ill of me, but I 
 can't quite tell you why I must resist you; at all events, 
 for the present." He hated himself for having said this. 
 "And I am sad, very sad, you don't know how sad! And vay 
 tired. Wait a little. I may have need of you. I don't know, 
 perhaps I will come to you and take you all for my own, 
 for always. Wait a little. Please do not tempt me now. 
 I can hardly resist you as it is." And he pressed his lips 
 to hers with a fervour that took his strength. He talked 
 a great deal more to her in the same vein, and hated 
 himself for it. Did it sound like cant to her? He wondered. 
 
 "Never mind, darling. You are a queer one, and I like you 
 all the better for it," she hastened to reassure him, seeing 
 that he was in torment. "Read me 'A Forsaken Garden,' 
 but I think you said you knew it by heart." She rose and 
 gracefully curling herself up in her kimono on the divan, 
 fixed her eyes on him and listened. 
 
 He recited the poem with a peculiar intensity. The 
 nerves of his body were as taut strings of a musical instru- 
 ment, and it was with his whole body, with the whole 
 vibrancy of his mad intoxicated, self-thwarted body, that 
 he poured out his pent-up feelings into an already emo- 
 tionally pent-up poem, and each time he raised his eyes 
 he found Judith's intent on him with wonder. When the 
 last line, "Death lies dead," had been said, a supine silence fell 
 upon them, and in the silence slow dragging footsteps were 
 heard on the stairs. There was a knock on the door, given 
 with a foot. 
 
 "Do open the door," said Judith. "Be a dear!" 
 
 It was the old woman, her mother, bringing the tea on a 
 tray. She was a witch in that firelight, and the steady 
 glitter of her eyes was the glitter of the eyes of the damned in 
 
 318 
 
ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 hell. And yet, as before, it was hard to tell whether those eyes 
 were malignant or kindly. As, in that sUence, he took in 
 the whole scene, it seemed to him that the whole tragedy of 
 the world was symbolised in these female figures in the fire- 
 light: all faith lost, mother-love crushed, become a mockery; 
 yoimg creative fires thwarted, turned against that beautiful 
 body for its disintegration. There was himself, too, con- 
 smned with aspirations, yet a mere beggar, a snatcher of 
 Life's dropped crumbs. He watched the grotesque figure 
 shufQe out of the room, and his compassionate thoughts rose 
 and fell in that silence, like sea-birds on the crests of incom- 
 ing waves. 
 
 Judith lay there, without changing the decorative gesture 
 of her body, and watched his face out of her large dark 
 eyes. Then, impetuously, she sprang up and busied herself 
 over the tea tray. She laughed. 
 
 "I do believe mother has taken a fancy to you. Do you 
 know, she has actually brought up some Russian tea, with 
 l«non, and home-made jam and Jewish cookies. She's never 
 done that before when I was entertaining a gentleman. Mother 
 is a good sort at bottom, when she has the chance. Who'd 
 have thought that she'd take a fancy to you? ..." 
 
 Something gave way in Gombarov, for suddenly leaning 
 his elbows on his knees and burying his face in his hands, he 
 wept. 
 
 What was it that made him weep, so suddenly and unex- 
 pectedly? Was it the tragic phantasmagoria, blurredly passing 
 that afternoon before the hidden tears of his soul and suddenly, 
 through those tears, bursting into tragic rainbows of light 
 and colour, overwhelnung the visible body of him and now 
 expressing itself in visible tears? Was it the revealed bodily 
 beauty of that girl, a world so unexpectedly offered up to 
 
 319 
 
BABEL 
 
 him, and for him to command, and his wise or foolish renun- 
 ciation of it? Was it the drunken ecstasy with which he 
 poured himself into that dnmken poem? Was it the imlooked- 
 for and inexpressibly beautiful spark of goodness emanating 
 from so impromising a source as that witch-like old woman? 
 It was all these things — ^and more. Great sorrow weeps from 
 great depths, and the woes of this world may soimd through 
 the tears of but two eyes, or through the music of a blind 
 man's reed, or in the woeful moan of the wind blowing on a 
 winter night through the narrow crevice between two hovels. 
 Suppressed sobs came at intervals, while he thus wept. 
 
 Judith jumped to his side and getting down on one knee, 
 took hold of his head. "Don't cry, honey, don't cry. Now, 
 darling, put your dear head here," and she opened her kimono, 
 and drew his head so that it rested on her bosom, and his 
 tears trickled down the little valley between her breasts. 
 
 He soon felt soothed, and he no longer wept. 
 
 "Here, honey," she .said, as he rested quietly, "111 be a 
 little mother to you." And swajring her body slightly from 
 side to side, she began singing the wordless time of an old 
 Russian lullaby that his mother used to sing in his childhood 
 days, and as he looked up, shamefaced, into her eyes he foimd 
 her smiling happily, with a joy he had not seen m her 
 before. 
 
 "You are an angel! " he said, at last, as she rose to pour out 
 the tea. "Maybe you are a fallen angel, but still an angd. 
 And I suppose," he laughed, "that I must be a fallen devil. 
 I am moved and fascinated by evU, but active good touches 
 me in an imexpected way." 
 
 "There! You've struck the nail on the head. I can't stand 
 goodness, or goody-goody people. Puritans have made goodness 
 a wicked thing, indeed! But active goodness is quite another 
 
 320 
 
ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 thing. Only by becoming active, in the way you mean, can 
 it become more fascinating than evil. Christ was the best 
 example of that. ..." 
 
 Thus they talked on of the m3rsteries of creation, of good 
 and evil, of Ufe and death. . . . 
 
 "I've had a most wonderful afternoon!" said Judith, when 
 he rose to depart. 
 
 "So have I!" 
 
 Spontaneously they embraced, and he kissed her hair and 
 her eyes and hands. 
 
 She led the way downstairs. The door of the front room 
 was open. The room was lit up by a small seven-candled 
 candelabra, and before it, her hands spread across the light 
 of the candles, stood a young woman, like an austere shadow, 
 praying. It was Ruth, blessing the candles, on the eve of 
 Sabbath. 
 
 Judith opened the front door, and, kissing the tips of her 
 finga^ of both hands, he went out. He looked back and saw 
 her standing in the doorway, her eyes following him. Then he 
 disappeared roimd the comer. 
 
 A half hour afterwards he f oimd himself caught up in the 
 traffic of diners and playgoers in Rccadilly. In a lost way 
 he stood on the Shaftesbury side of the Pavilion and watched 
 the slow passage of taxis and huge private cars containing 
 men in evening dress smoking cigars and richly attired women 
 with jewelry in their hair, and as he thought of Judith a 
 wrath rose up within him, and, like Judith, he wished there 
 were a button to press, whereby he could send all this world, 
 himself included, flying in a billion fragments into space. 
 
 He did not see Judith for ten days, when one morning he 
 received a wire from her, saying that her mother was ill and 
 begging him to come in the afternoon. 
 
 321 
 
BABEL 
 
 "Sh-hl Go quietly! " said Judith, unusually pale. "Mother 
 has had a relapse. I think the dear is dying. The doctor 
 just left. He didn't think she'd live through the day. Ruth 
 is with her. Ruth wanted to fetch the Rabbi, but mother 
 refuses to hear of it, and abides her frightfully when she 
 mentions it. She breaks out into queer fits and says the most 
 impossible things. She's quiet just now. Come in, and see 
 her, if you don't mind. Your presence might stop her from 
 saying those awful things. And it will help me to see you there. 
 Please don't mind what she says." 
 
 On tip-toe they made their way to the back room on the 
 ground-floor, and, pushing aside the draperies, Judith peeped 
 in and motioned him to follow. His face was pale, and he 
 tried to control the trembling of his body. She pointed to a 
 seat near the door, at the farthest angle from the bed, and 
 herself sat down between him and the austere but not unat- 
 tractive Ruth, who was sitting at the bedside, watching the 
 pale, immobile face of her mother. The old woman lay on her 
 back, her face upward, and the only sign of life was the mo- 
 tionless glitter of her eyes, fixed on the ceiling. As it presently 
 proved, she was only gathering strength for a new onslaught. 
 Not many minutes elapsed, when with a startling unexpected- 
 ness, she turned full face upon Ruth, and addressed her in 
 virulent Yiddish: 
 
 "What's the good of it, what's the good of it? I ask you. 
 What's the good of toUing the days of one's life, like a slave? 
 Day after day in a wretched workshop! Look at yourself in 
 a mirror! What do you look like? Tell me. And how pale 
 you look! And thin! If you go on, you'll be nothing but 
 skin and bones! Look at your hands! It's a shame for a 
 young girl to have such hard, cut-up hands. Saving yourself 
 up for a young man? What yoimg man will have you? Yoimg 
 
 322 
 
ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 men are not fools! Look at Judith! Judith knows how to 
 live. ..." 
 
 "Don't, mother!" cried Ruth. "Judith has her life, and I 
 have mine!" 
 
 "Look at Judith!" went on the old woman, relentlessly, 
 raising her hoarse voice. "Judith has nice dresses, Judith is 
 gay, Judith has young men come to see her, Judith's cheeks 
 are like two red apples. . . . What's the good of it, I ask you, 
 living like this? Go to the streets, I tell you ... to the 
 streets!" she shouted, raising herself from the pillow. "What 
 are you waiting for? For the Messiah to come? Too long have 
 we Jews waited for the Messiah! Too long! Your own mother 
 tells you to do that! Do you hear? Your own mother! 
 Three daughters your mother has brought into the world . . . 
 three daughters! Oh, woe is me! ... One was brought into 
 the world by a goi and killed by a got/ God was merciful to 
 her! But Judith is clever! Shell let no man kill her. She'll 
 make them pay, too, for a nice living! But you! What are 
 you waiting for? Go into the streets, I tell you. Judith is 
 clever, shell show you how. She'll start you off! Ah, young 
 man!" she appealed, fixing her eyes on Gombarov. "You are 
 a man of the world. You know something about life! 
 Tell her what a little fool she is, to be wearing herself out. 
 To the streets, I say! There are plenty of young men 
 who ..." 
 
 Much to the relief of all, she had exhausted herself and 
 fell back on to the pillow, but she went on faintly muttering: 
 
 "To the streets ... the streets. ..." 
 
 And again a silence fell upon the room. 
 
 Gombjirov, his body trembling, tried to find a ray among 
 his dimmed, confused thoughts that would explain this mystery 
 of the warping of a soul, and at last he found a bright spark 
 
 323 
 
BABEL 
 
 that illumined his whole brain, and thence conveyed its light 
 to the heart. Pathetic and sad as all this was, yet, he reflected, 
 there was something truly magnificent in the blasphemous old 
 woman's dying gesture. That was her way, even in her last 
 gasp, of defying the gods, who had treated her so cruelly. She 
 was hitting out her feeble shrunken fists in the face of her 
 one-time God! What a noble impulse was here, urging her 
 to evil! 
 
 Presently, the old woman showing signs of life again, Judith 
 bent towards her sister, who was holding her face in her hands, 
 and whispered: 
 
 "Tell her yes, when she begins again. It won't cost you 
 anything!" 
 
 Ruth shook her head negatively. 
 
 "You can't fool me!" cried the old woman, raising her head 
 from the pillow. In spite of her half -comatose condition, she 
 seemed to know and hear everj^thing. "To the streets, I say! 
 ... the streets. ..." 
 
 Seized, at last, with a sudden pain, she screwed up her face, 
 curved her body upward, with a violent twist, and her head 
 fell backward, chin up. Her eyes gave a rolling motion, like 
 the eyes of a mechanical doll, a quick, struggling flutter, flashed 
 white and black, and suddenly stood still with a lifeless stare. 
 The mad glitter was gone. 
 
 Judith rose and went over to the bedside. For some moments 
 she stood looking down on her mother, then busied herself in 
 arranging her mother's head and hands, to give the dead an 
 appearance of ultimate decoriun. 
 
 Gombarov left Judith two hours later, after accompanying 
 her to various Jewish dignitaries, associated with the burial of 
 the dead. 
 
 Shaken by the ordeal, a quixotic thought stirred in him. In 
 
 324 
 
ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED 
 
 the event of a n^ative answer from Winifred, he would ask 
 Judith to come away with him; he would reclaim her from 
 the d^radation into which her tragic fate had driven and 
 directed her wiU. 
 
 32s 
 
CHAPTER IX: LIFE'S CHESSBOARD: A YEAR'S 
 MOVES 
 
 "What's the use of being a King 
 without a Queen?" 
 
 — ^Jew (over chessboard) in an 
 American burlesque. 
 
 THE QUEEN STILI, THERE 
 
 No, the Queen on Gombarov's chessboard was not yet lost. 
 He had thought her as good as lost, when she had been merely 
 in jeopardy. Now, one may have pawns and bishops and 
 castles and knights, but there is no comfort for a King without 
 a Queen. Thus it is for a King in life, or for a King on a 
 chessboard. His final move in writing to Winifred at Naples 
 did the trick, saved the Queen. 
 
 One morning in January a letter arrived from New York, 
 conveying Winifred's intention to stand by him. Her surrender 
 was complete and unconditional. The Fates that had driven 
 him to make his desperate move were beneficent, by this move 
 his position was considerably strengthened. 
 
 "I am writing today," her letter ran, "to say that, if you 
 still want me, I give myself entirely to you, John, my own. . . 
 It is a wonderful moment, for I am seeing things finely and 
 dearly. ... I seem to have come out of a horrible mist, and 
 now I know that you are all I have ever wanted. ... I would 
 do anjrthing in the world for you. ... I wonder if we can 
 see enough of one another before we die. . . . There is so 
 much to say to make up for those dreadful months. When we 
 left Paris and wandered through Italy I thought that you 
 
 326 
 
LIFE'S CHESSBOARD: A YEAR'S MOVES 
 
 hated me, and when your letters came in Naples I could hardly 
 adjust mjrself so quickly. I almost wrote then, but thought 
 it would be better to obey you and wait. On the boat I 
 regretted very much that I didn't. . . . Suppose, I thought, 
 the vessel should sink. . . . Then you might never know how 
 much I cared. . . . Pray, forgive me for all the trouble I've 
 given you. . . . And remember that I am married to you 
 now in spirit — ^and from today — if you will have me, my own 
 John! ..." 
 
 The morning the letter arrived was dark with fog, and 
 London, lit up with gas lights, bore the aspect of neither night 
 nor day, but as of some imnatural night, fraught with dual 
 impulses and counter-impulses, waging an invisible war for the 
 city's soul. The sun rose for a short space, red like a goaded 
 moon, and, as if maddened by its hmniliation, sank again into 
 oblivion, its frank, blazing masculinity refusing to compro- 
 mise with the dark temptress. "All or nothing!" it seemed to 
 say, and sank out of sight to allow the dcirk one to have her 
 sway. The unnatural darkness had to be content with the 
 caresses of petty flares of gaslight; a cold, unnatural lover was 
 that motionless darkness, caressed by thousands of petty flares. 
 
 Thus it was with Gombarov's soul, in which day and night 
 struggled, as too much wrought up he went out to seek his 
 breakfast and to adjust himself to the news. He was elated, 
 but was not filled with elation. He had won, but why did not 
 the sun rise on his victory, fill him with its abundant light? 
 That unnatvu-al darkness, caressed by thousands of petty 
 flames, was his own inner self, filled with flaming broodings. 
 It was strange, but half of him almost wished that he had 
 lost. He had been prepared for defeat, he had been making 
 up his mind to join hands with the defeated Judith, and it 
 was curious to reflect that this prospect of defeat and of 
 
 327 
 
BABEL 
 
 joining hands with the defeated held out an attraction hardly 
 less than that of victory. It would have been, in its own way, 
 a victory. It was irritating to be a thinking modem, with a 
 soul floundering in its own many doubts. Sacred and profane 
 love? Indeed! Which was which? 
 
 He went on thinking these thoughts in a gas-lit A. B. C. 
 shop, between mouthfuls of porridge. 
 
 "Damn it!" he said to himself. "What a complexity, what 
 a network of thoughts and impulses and desires civilisation 
 makes of man, puUing him' now in this direction, now in that! 
 What am I at bottom? Which of these things is the real 
 I? What do I want? Where am I going? Which way 
 should I go? . . . Once I knew what I wanted. ..." 
 
 He smiled enigmatically, and resimied his monologue: 
 
 "... To know oneself, to have but one thought, to be 
 fanatical is good. It is to be harnessed to a tiger, to have 
 all the fury and energy of a tiger! To have many thoughts 
 is to divide one's strength. It is to be harnessed to an army 
 of fleas, dragging in different directions. It is to feel oneself 
 falling apart. . . . 
 
 "I had once thought civilisation was Janus-faced. It is 
 really more than that: it is multiple-faced. It is like that 
 multiple-breasted woman, or that multiple-armed man sculp- 
 tiu-ed by the ancients. It is moved by a thousand wills, and 
 a thousand wills are worse than none. They are wills for 
 mutual destruction, self-destruction. ..." 
 
 His thoughts paused before a mental wall, seemed to 
 surmoimt that wall, and went on: 
 
 "Civilisation is Babel, and every civilised man today is a 
 Babel in himself, since he bears all this world in his soul. I 
 am Babel, a fuU-thoughted, tottering modem man, and only 
 the tiger in my soul now and then peeps out of his cage and 
 
 .328 
 
LIFE'S CHESSBOARD: A YEAR'S MOVES 
 
 gazes with pity or hatred at the civilised but godless world 
 that has so caught him and caged him. ..." 
 
 He suddenly observed that the fog was hfting, the lights 
 in the restaurant went out. Outside Gombarov foimd that a 
 fresh breeze had spnmg up. Every vestige of the fog was 
 gone, the air was rosy with sunlight, and full of soft tremors, 
 like a caressed virgin. A sudden and overpowering elation 
 seized him, swept away his doubts, and all his thought went 
 out to Winifred, now his once more. 
 
 It was not astonishing that he should have entertained 
 depressing thoughts, for now, in the reaction following his 
 ordeal and conflict of weeks, he felt a sheer physical weariness, 
 and now and then he pulled up with a sharp pain in his back. 
 For daj^ a hsirdness as of a huge boU or ulcer had been 
 developing at the waist near the spine. "I must see a doctor! " 
 he decided. 
 
 That same afternoon he went to a doctor, recommended to 
 him by Julius. The doctor, a portly, good-natured man, 
 examined the sore sp)ot, and said: 
 
 "It's a bad one! I'm afraid it can't be lanced. It will have 
 to be cut out. It's near the bone. Your blood is in a bad 
 condition. Have you been worrying?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I thought so! A girl, I suppose. ..." 
 
 "Yes, and other things besides." 
 
 "You said you were an author. You have a highly developed 
 nervous sj^tem. You are like a fine, sensitive machine. That 
 means you've got to take good care of it! Oil it properly, 
 and keep the dust off. Can you afford to go to a nursing 
 home, or do you prefer a hospital? If you go to a hospital, it 
 will cost you nothing." 
 
 "Yes, I'd prefer that!" 
 
 329 
 
BABEL 
 
 The doctor sat down at his desk and wrote a note, which he 
 handed to Gombarov. 
 
 "If you will present it at the hospital to which it is 
 addressed, you will be admitted and given a bed. Go 
 tomorrow, and 111 operate the day after. You may have to 
 remain a fortnight or so." 
 
 "I appreciate your kindness. And what do I owe you for 
 this visit?" 
 
 "Nothing!" rephed the doctor, who was an expensive prac- 
 titioner. "Consider me," he laughed, "a patron of the arts. 
 Stni, if you like you can send me a copy of your book, when 
 you write one. I have a weakness for struggling authors." 
 
 A RESPITE FROM THE CHESSBOARD 
 
 "Go ahead, I'm ready for the smelling salts!" exclaimed 
 Gombarov, jocularly, from the operating table. 
 
 Sister Angela, Little Sister of the Poor, held one of his 
 hands, whDe the doctor was attaching a tube, with a contri- 
 vance at one end of it to fit over the patient's nose. 
 
 "Now, breathe in! " said the doctor, in a cheery voice. 
 
 Gombarov breathed in great whiffs of anaesthetic, and soon 
 felt a fierce rushing of blood; it seemed as if he were lying 
 on a battlefield, and a regiment of cavalry dashed across his 
 chest. He felt as if he were d5ring, and curiously enough, he 
 experienced no regrets at leaving the world. His hand, dnmken 
 with a kind of last passion, gripped tighfly the hand of Sister 
 Angela. 
 
 He remembered no more, imtil he quietly opened his eyes 
 in his bed in a large room containing many beds and looked 
 up at the white ceiling with a serenity he had not known before. 
 He did not know how long he had been looking thus, when, 
 closing his eyes for an instant in delicious relaxation, he 
 
 330 
 
LIFE'S CHESSBOARD: A YEAR'S MOVES 
 
 reopened them to find himself gazing into two large grey-blue 
 eyes, the most serene he had ever beheld. They were Sister 
 Angela's, and they faintly smiled at him. 
 
 "How is the poet?" he heard her whisper. She called him 
 the poet, and his bed the poet's comer. 
 
 "He is in love!" he answered, serenely smiling. 
 
 "She is a lucky girll" laughed Sister Angela. 
 
 "No, no, I don't mean that! He is in love with a Queen!" 
 
 "A Queen?" 
 
 "Yes! The Queen who rules over the Seventh Heaven!" 
 
 "You can't have seen her!" 
 
 ''I'm looking at her now! And she is called Sister Angela!" 
 
 "Go on with your blarney! " said Sister Angela, who was an 
 Irishwoman of about thirty-two, chastely attractive, like a 
 Holbein portrait. "So the poet is in love!" she laughed again, 
 and ran her fingers through his longish dark hair, and, still 
 laughing, walked away. 
 
 He watched her tall, austere, hooded figure making the 
 roimds of the beds. She moved with dignity, indeed like a 
 queen not of this earth. There was in her stately movements 
 a kind of serene detachment, a kind of pit)mig aloofness; even 
 in the pursuit of the most menial and disagreeable tasks — 
 tasks which would have made any woman but a lover quail — 
 yet conferring upon them a dignity beside which the dignities 
 of a king's palace were as empty formalities. She might 
 have served as a model for the Pieta, holding the head of 
 Jesus in her lap. With all her aloofness, heightened by the 
 austerity of her robes and the chaste outlines of her face, she 
 was a vessel containing the distilled essences of love, which 
 she dispensed to many, to Jew, Christian and pagan alike, and 
 which diminished not with the giving. There was no false 
 solemnity about her, and, being Irish, she was not above 
 
 331 
 
BABEL 
 
 exchanging a joke. He loved her mere presence, for the 
 serenity it evoked; it stilled all the storms and turbtilences 
 of his soul, which became like a mirrored lake of quiet waters, 
 and not a single movement or gesture of hers but went to 
 the making of his peace. She charmed the latent tiger in him, 
 subjected him, perhaps, to some spiritual anaesthetic of her 
 own. All those weeks of stress now appeared to have occurred 
 years ago, seemed to recede into some vast and distant back- 
 ground, as tides of memories on the shores of life recede into 
 the oblivion of vast seas of forgetfulness. The figures of 
 Molly, Anita, Kathleen and Judith became as non-existent, 
 imagined figures, somewhere lost in the depths of the vast 
 serenity of his unrippled soul. These days in bed were his 
 first holiday in years, and a quiet happiness pervaded him, a 
 happiness he had not knovm before. He smiled at the irony 
 of it. 
 
 There was no boredom in the monotony of his day's routine. 
 He would wake at five or six in the morning and lie in bed, 
 contemplating out of the window the delicate traceries of 
 trees outlined in the grey-blue haze of winter dawn, and these 
 mystic patterns, lovely as the visions of old Chinese paintings, 
 grafted themselves upon his sensitive frame and permeated 
 him with their serene spirit. Voices would rise here and there 
 from the beds, but lost in contemplation, he did not trouble 
 about them. Presently Sister Angela would come in, and 
 everj^thing would grow quiet again. Her hooded form would, 
 in the semi-darkness, drop on its knees in the middle of the 
 room, facing the large crucifix on the distant wall and in a 
 clear vibrant voice pronoimce a Latin formula, only an 
 occasional word of which he imderstood; but, uttered by 
 Sister Angela, it sounded like a mjrsterious incantation, its 
 mere utterance being a blessing in itself, apart from any 
 
 332 
 
LIFE'S CHESSBOARD: A YEAR'S MOVES 
 
 blessing it was doubtless intended to invoke of an invisible deity. 
 
 Then she would rise, and simultaneously the lights would go 
 up. Gombarov's being Bed Number One, she would start her 
 tasks by attending to him, putting up a screen round the bed 
 as a preliminary. Then a colloquy would follow: 
 
 "Good morning. Sister Angela. It's good to see you again!" 
 
 "And how is the poet this morning?" 
 
 "Very sad, Sister Angela!" 
 
 "Sad at seeing me, poet!" 
 
 "Heavens, no! Sad at the prospect of having to leave this 
 bed!" 
 
 "That's something to be sad about!" 
 
 "Of not having Sister Angela to say good-morning to!" 
 
 "There he goes with his blarney! The poet is incorrigible. 
 One might think he was an Irishman! " 
 
 "No, he means it. Don't think him blasphemous, but he'd 
 get down on his knees to her, just as she went down on her 
 knees before the crucifix!" 
 
 "You do say such things!" But she was not angry. "If 
 it's any comfort to you," she added, "you'll be missed, too!" 
 .\nd she playfully and soothingly ran her fingers through his 
 hair. 
 
 Within a week, he was allowed to take short walks round 
 the room and he helped Sister Angela to lift up the blankets 
 and sheets and make up the beds, a task in which, owing to 
 Sister Angela's company, he foimd a curious pleasure, as they 
 blarneyed one another and exchanged jokes. 
 
 There were also \'isits from Julius, and in the course of the 
 fortnight two or three happy letters from Winifred, to whom 
 he wrote as ardently, without telling her of his illness. Alto- 
 gether, he was as happy in the hospital as he had ever been 
 in his life. The conflicts that had raged all his life within 
 
 333 
 
BABEL 
 
 him, and outside, seemed for the time to have receded, to have 
 become lost as in distant horizons. He dimly realised that 
 this was a turning point, a kind of rebirth. Not that he was 
 blind to the fact of his drifting as in a calm, and of life and 
 its storms being yet before him, for he was almost penniless, 
 a stranger in London, and possibly as far from hb unknown 
 goal as he had ever been. Even his love, which was waiting 
 for him to come and claim it as his own, depended so much 
 upon a successful issue of his adventure. Nevertheless, this 
 interval of calm braced him, gave him new life, attuned his 
 mind philosophically to coimter new onslaughts. "I don't 
 know where I'm going, but I'm on my way!" This line 
 from an American popular song occurred to him. It was, 
 in its way, a mystic talisman, a receding light leading him 
 on! 
 
 The day came when he once more got into his own clothes, 
 disinfected and cleansed like his very soul, and took leave of 
 his fortnight's refuge and of Sister Angela, who, the eternal 
 mother he had often dreamt of, had been such a comfort to 
 him, never to be forgotten. 
 
 "I won't forget you. I have prayed for you. I shall pray 
 for you!" were her words of farewell. What delicious irony, 
 he thought, in this devout Catholic woman praying for him, 
 who was half Jew, half Pagan! Why not? Any God would 
 hear Sister Angela, that is, if there were a God, and if He 
 listened to anybody! 
 
 MISERABLE PAWN, OFF THE BOASD! 
 
 It was a cold, damp afternoon when he left the hospital. 
 A fresh breeze blew, and seemed to go to the heart of him. 
 After a fortnight indoors, mostly in bed, he felt weaker than 
 he had realised. It was unpleasant to face life again, on such 
 
 334 
 
LIFE'S CHESSBOARD: A YEAR'S MOVES 
 
 a day. He could not afford a taxi, and directed his footsteps 
 towards the nearest Tjus. As he walked slowly, he saw a 
 familiar figure looking into the window of a bookshop. It 
 was Alfred Welsh, his companion from Naples to Paris. He 
 had written to Welsh only a few days before, telling him of 
 his detention in the hospital, of his need of money on coming 
 out. Couldn't Welsh pay the several pounds he owed him? 
 Welsh did not reply to his letter. Welsh turned his face from 
 the window, to be confronted with Gombarov. They exchanged 
 greetings. 
 
 "Did you get my letter, Welsh?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Why didn't you reply, then?" 
 
 "I haven't any cash to spare." 
 
 "What, nothing? You have a job!" 
 
 "Yes, but . . ." 
 
 "You mean to say, you have a job, and can't spare even a 
 part of what you owe me? I helped you out when you needed 
 it. Consider my position. I am a stranger in London, and 
 am just out of the hospital. And it isn't as if I wanted to 
 borrow money! It's a debt." 
 
 "Look here, Gombarov! I don't consider that I owe you 
 anything. My services as interpreter in Italy were worth 
 something! In fact, I'm not sure that you don't owe me 
 money! " 
 
 "So that's the way you look at it! Good-by, then. And 
 I don't want to see you again!" 
 
 Gombarov reached his miserable lodgings and, greatly 
 fatigued, sat down to rest. He experienced a keen sense of 
 homelessness, and for a while lost heart. He must get out 
 of this, he thought. He must find something more chearful. 
 Perhaps, in Hampstead. He would write to a friend on the 
 
 335 
 
BABEL 
 
 New World for a loan, which had been once offered him, but 
 which he had refused at the time. 
 
 He was not abandoned, as he had thought. The next day 
 he had a visit from Tom Bowles, the young painter, who, 
 curiously enough, had been introduced to him by Welsh; 
 indeed, the same man who had written to him some months 
 before from Holland, telling him of that strange meeting with 
 two of Gombarov's Philadelphia acquaintances in an Amster- 
 dam cafe. Gombarov related his experience to Bowles, who 
 detested Welsh. 
 
 "Just like that blighter!" said the visitor. "But do let me 
 help you out. I've just sold a couple of paintings, and can 
 advance you ten poimds, if you like!" 
 
 "Very good of you, Tom! I will try to repay you as soon 
 as I can — ^not in Welsh's way, I hope!" 
 
 While Bowles was writing out a cheque, Gombarov's face 
 broke into a smile. "Well, well!" he reflected to himself. 
 "I had no idea that Angela's prayers would prove effective so 
 soon. Why, I haven't seen Bowles for months, and here he 
 turns up just as I need him!" 
 
 "Ill tell you something about Welsh that will make you 
 lau^," said Bowles, handing him the cheque. "You remember 
 Rugger, don't you? Well, when he got out of Rugger all 
 that Rugger could stand, he picked up with another art 
 student, Martin by name, and he played the old gag about 
 sharing a studio together. Martin, poor innocent, foimd a 
 studio, and Welsh installed himself there. Of, course, he 
 didn't pay a farthing's rent, and practically lived on Martin. 
 To cap the climax, Martin turned up one day to find Welsh 
 in the studio with a street girl, and would you believe it, the 
 pair were making use not of Welsh's cot, mind you, — ^but 
 Martin's! Did you ever hear the like? That was too much 
 
 336 
 
LIFE'S CHESSBOARD: A YEAR'S MOVES 
 
 even for Martin, who left the studio and all its belonginp 
 in Welsh's possession. . . ." 
 
 "The swine!" Gombarov couldn't help exclaiming. 
 
 "That isn't alll " went on Bowles. "Some weeks afterwards, 
 Martin and a friend, happening to be dead broke, called on 
 Welsh at the studio on the chance of finding a bite to eat. 
 When they broached the subject, Welsh assumed a depressed 
 look and told them that he hadn't had a decent meal in days, 
 until their hearts were touched. So off went Martin and his 
 frioid and got hold of a bit of money. They bought food 
 at a delicatessen shop and trotted back to the studio to share 
 it with Welsh. Imagine their feelings when they found 
 the blighter gorging on a huge sirloin steak — a bottle of 
 vrine, too!" 
 
 "The swine!" repeated Gombarov. 
 
 "But I haven't finished yet! Then Martin and his friend 
 put their heads together, and took the landlady into their 
 confidence. The landlady knew that the furniture of the 
 studio belonged to Martin, and she wasn't any too fond of 
 Welsh. Later in the day, while Welsh was out, they returned 
 with a cart, and practically stripped the studio." 
 
 "I should have given a lot to have seen Welsh's face when 
 he got back." 
 
 Gombarov felt greatly cheered by Bowles's company. He 
 liked this simple fellow, whose nature was that of a country- 
 man. And life wasn't altogether vile, with fellows like him 
 around. 
 
 A MOVE TO HAIfPSTEAD 
 
 By borrowing twenty pounds from his friend on the New 
 World and writing a few articles Gombarov got together a 
 small reserve fimd. 
 
 337 
 
BABEL 
 
 In the early spring he was settled in a large top studio 
 room, overlooking Hampstead Heath, and here he began work- 
 ing in earnest on a book, which was to consist of a series of 
 impressions of America, creative in character, with philosophic 
 speculations as to its artistic future. He showed the opening 
 chapter to a recent acquaintance, who was acting for a large 
 publishing firm, and the readers of this firm were sufficiently 
 enthusiastic for their publishing chief to send for Gombarov. 
 
 "By all means, go on with the book," said Mr. Brooke, of 
 Brooke & Co., "and our firm would be glad to publish it. 
 The terms we offer are not bad, considering that you are still 
 a young man; and the publication of the book would do you 
 such a lot of good! We take the risks, you see. That the 
 readers are enthusiastic does not mean the book will sell. 
 But we like to encourage yoimg men of promise. In our own 
 way, we are philanthropists, I assure you! The imprint of 
 our firm should prove a good advertisement for you. . . ." 
 
 Gombarov left Mr. Brooke, greatly encouraged in spite of 
 the cold water thrown on any expectation he may have had 
 of making money out of his book. If the readers of so famous 
 a firm as Brooke & Co. were enthusiastic, then, surely, he had 
 no reason to feel discouraged. 
 
 For the first time in his life he sat down to his creative work 
 regularly every morning, began to discipline himself to the 
 hard, steady toil, without which no art or craft can be mas- 
 tered. He lived frugally, prepared most of his own meals, 
 shunned bohemianism except on occasion. He was no facile 
 writer, and it astonished him to find what seemingly effortless 
 effects could be obtained with very intense effort. At the 
 end of many days' work he would feel as though he were 
 tottering under the accumulated avalanche of words. DaQy, 
 after a morning's labours, he would fling himself face down- 
 
 338 
 
LIFE'S CHESSBOARD: A YEAR'S MOVES 
 
 ward on the ground of Hampstead Heath and fed a renewal of 
 strength, a new infused warmth from contact with the motherly 
 earth. He would lie for an hour or more, tenderly, passionately 
 clutching at the grass, breathing in the odours of the soil, 
 filling himself with an earthly ardency, and the sap of life 
 would nm up his limbs and body and to his head, as the sap 
 rims up a tree. Almost unwillingly he would tear himself 
 away from the spot and go back to work, and the gathered 
 sap would flow out of him to the paper at the point of the 
 pen. It was hard work. "I work not so much by inspiration 
 as by desperation," he would say to himself. 
 
 .\nd, oh, the sheer physical weariness at the end of the day! 
 No insatiate woman would take so much out of a man after 
 a long debauch. There was sometimes this comfort: the 
 result exceeded one's e^ectations — ^yet how short of one's 
 hopes! A mother, upon seeing a more beautiful baby than 
 her own, could not feel half the anguish an author feels in his 
 knowledge that beauty can go farther than he has taken her, 
 has inde«i no stopping point. The simplest thoughts seem 
 to become complex and involved; language fails one — or worse, 
 one fails language; the frontiers between rhetoric and poetry 
 are often unmarked and indefinable; one keeps on wondering 
 whether one's imagination has sounded false notes; whether 
 here one has pitched one's voice too high, or there has raised 
 it in anger to a note too intimate. There was joy in the 
 conc^tion; doubtless, there would be joy also in the final 
 giving of birth; but between these two points there was the 
 long, painful gestation, with an occasional spark of pleasxire 
 in the dim consciousness of one's fulfillment. 
 
 Fortimately, his relations with Winifred continued to be 
 satisfactory. 
 
 339 
 
BABEL 
 
 BISHOP OFF THE BOASD! 
 
 Julius had moved into the same house as Gombarov, but 
 they saw little of one another. Julius was busy with his own 
 affairs, which included a daily two-hour devotion to an old 
 invalid lady, who had engaged him to read to her. Even 
 philosophers must live! 
 
 "I may be going to Paris!" said Julius one day, looking 
 as solenm as a bishop. 
 
 "Where will you get the money?" 
 
 "You know the old lady, to whom I read every day? She 
 has only a few weeks to live, and I have an idea shell make 
 me some sort of gift before she dies. She's wealthy, and I 
 imagine shell let me have at least fifty pounds." 
 
 "That's a good sum!" 
 
 "I'm hoping," said Julius, "that she'll make it seventy-five. 
 One can do something with seventy-fivel " 
 
 One June morning, some weeks following their conversation, 
 Julius came into Gombarov's room, looking very solenm, a 
 long envelope in his hand. He drew out its contents and, 
 without a word, handed them to Gombarov. It was a cheque 
 for a hundred and fifty pounds, accompanied by a note inform- 
 ing him of the old lady's death. 
 
 "Well, you are in clover. It's twice as much as you had 
 hoped fori" 
 
 "I wish she had made it three hundred! " was all Julius said. 
 
 For even philosophers are only human. 
 
 A fortnight later Julius left London for good. He went to 
 Paris. 
 
 Gombarov felt hurt. While Julius was struggling in Berlin, 
 Gombarov had occasionally helped him with small sums of 
 money, and he thought that Julius, remembering this and 
 
 340 
 
LIFE'S CHESSBOARD: A YEAR'S MOVES 
 
 knowing his straitened circumstances, would come to him and 
 say: "Look here, John, you once helped me when I was down 
 on my luck, and now it's my turn. Well, here is a five-pound 
 note, anyhow 1" Instead, Julius merely said to him before 
 taking his departure: "If you are short within the next few 
 weeks, write to me, and I'll advance you anything up to five 
 poimds!" Gombarov did not avail himself of the offer, for 
 authors, like philosophers, are only human. 
 And the bishop was swept off his chessboard. 
 
 AFTER THE BISHOP — THE KNIGHT 1 
 
 "Leon could never have done thatl" mused Gombarov, 
 mentally comparing his two friends. 
 
 It was only a few days after Julius's departiure that Gom- 
 barov received a letter from Leon Bayliss, who had been his 
 most intimate friend in Philadelphia. Leon was on his way 
 to spend some weeks in Europe to see the paintings of the 
 mod«'ns. He intended spending a fortnight in London. 
 
 Gombarov looked forward to the arrival of his old friend, 
 whom he regarded as a very knight of generosity and chivalry. 
 They had been friends for ten years, and their friendship had 
 withstood every test that would have proved fatal to ordinary 
 loyalties. During the year's separation they kept up a regular 
 and affectionate correspondence. 
 
 Something must have happened to both of them in the year 
 of their separation, something incomprehensible, affecting their 
 relationship. Both of them must have dimly felt this on the 
 very day of Leon's arrival. Looking back on it later, Gom- 
 barov realised that there had been some constraint on both 
 sides, and that while he had felt sad, Leon, so unlike himself, 
 was the first to show sparks of resentment. He read to Leon 
 a chapter or two of his book, and Leon picked flaws at the 
 
 341 
 
BABEL 
 
 least opportunity. It was so unlike Leon to quibble. Only 
 much later did it occur to him that the complexities and 
 subtleties of modern life kill friendships as they kill love and 
 other virtues once highly regarded. They simply entangle 
 them in all kinds of nets. In those earlier years of their 
 friendship, Gombarov, intimidated and crushed by his repres- 
 sions, his family troubles and his continual strife with circum- 
 stance, had leaned greatly on Leon for support and encourage- 
 ment. But during his year in London, in which, solitary 
 and unaided, he had waged a struggle hardly less fierce, if 
 more interesting, he had become, unknown to himself, of 
 sterner metal; he had found something of his own potential 
 soul, such as it was. Leon, apparently, was the first to note 
 this change. His friend's moral dependence gone, Leon could 
 not help but withhold his tenderness also. If all this became 
 clear later, it was painful enough at the time. For his friend 
 showed resentment, and Gombarov resented this resentment. 
 Not a word had been said, but their resentments showed in 
 spite of outward formalities of friendship. 
 
 Just before Leon's departure for Paris, a little scene occurred 
 that clearly showed how things stood between them. 
 
 "Leon," said Gombarov. "You will remember that sk 
 months before my leaving for Europe I let you have a loan 
 of fifty dollars for your parents, who were then passing through 
 financial crisis. You promised that I should have it back in 
 three months, and now eighteen months have gone by. I 
 shouldn't worry you even now, were it not that things are 
 bad with me. I am writing this book, and earning almost 
 nothing." 
 
 Leon looked cold and resentful, but said nothing. 
 
 "Look here, Leon," went on Gombarov, persuasively. "You 
 seem to resent my speaking of this. After all, I am not asking 
 
 342 
 
LIFE'S CHESSBOARD: A YEAR'S MOVES 
 
 for the return of numerous sums I advanced to you as a friend, 
 while you were struggling in London and Philadelphia. There 
 can be no question of money between friends. But this par- 
 ticular sum I advanced to your parents for their business; 
 it is a legitimate debt. And all your brothers have jobs. 
 Consider, too, that for years I sweated to save some money 
 to take me to Europe, and that was part of it, and I let you 
 have it on condition that it was returned in time for use on 
 my journey. My own folks are having a desperate time and 
 I can send them nothing. And I am fighting for my lifel 
 Can't you see that?" 
 
 "I'll send it as soon as I can," said Leon, coldly. 
 
 Gombarov saw the futility of saying more. It was his 
 friend's will to misunderstand. Leon's unfairness made him 
 sad. First Julius, now Leon. It made him see that nothing 
 is certain on this earth, that all things are possible, that one 
 must be astonished at nothing, that one must accept everything. 
 
 "Don't be sentimental ! " said Leon, when Gombarov offered 
 to see him off on his departure for Paris. 
 
 Gombarov flushed with shame, but it was not on his own 
 account. For he had once considered his friend the very 
 soul of generosity and chivalry. 
 
 And his chessboard lost one of its knights. 
 
 CASTLE BROUGHT INTO PLAY 
 
 But new friends and strangers insisted on being kind. What 
 were these but long idle castles on a chessboard, brought last 
 into play, when the early friends, the pawns and the knights 
 and the bishops, have failed you? . 
 
 If some think this a far-fetched analogy, that a chess- 
 board has only forty-eight pieces, whereas the author's char- 
 acters, having their reactions on the "hero," the "king" of 
 
 343 
 
BABEL 
 
 the chessboard, have already exceeded that number, let us 
 draw upon the more generous and intricate chessboard of the 
 Chinese, which can boast of no less than 256 squares, and is 
 doubtless a brother to the famous Chinese puzzle. Life itself! 
 
 This was how Gombarov met Jan Maczishek: 
 
 One day he saw an extraordinary mask on a wall in 
 Douglass's studio. It was huge, modelled out of some sub- 
 stance like clay, and painted red, black and gold. It might 
 have been the image of the god of some African tribe. 
 
 "Where did you get that?" he asked, impressed by the 
 power and strange beauty of the mask. 
 
 "Oh, that!" said Douglass, with some condescension. "It 
 was made by a Polish boy. He's a sculptor, and only 
 twenty-one 1" 
 
 "I'd like to meet him." 
 
 Douglass gave him Maczishek's address. But Gombarov 
 put oft writing to him, until the matter wholly passed from 
 his mind. One day he was astonished to hear from the 
 sculptor, who said that he had heard of Gombarov's desire 
 to make his acquaintance. Would he call at his studio on 
 Thursday afternoon? 
 
 When they met at last in the doorway of Maczishek's studio, 
 they looked at one another with a peculiar intentness, as if 
 they were sizing each other up, and strongly gripped hands. 
 
 "Sit down," said Maczishek. "I won't insult you by offer- 
 ing you tea. Well have some beer. You drink beer?" 
 
 "To be sure!" 
 
 Maczishek poured out two large glasses, then sat down, 
 stretching his feet on a colossal bearded head in Portland 
 stone, which had some remote resemblance to royal heads in 
 Assyrian bas-reliefs. 
 
 "What's that you have your feet on?" asked Gombarov. 
 
 344 
 
LIFE'S CHESSBOARD: A YEAR'S MOVES 
 
 "That's my footstool — the head of Jehovah!" laughed 
 Maczishek. 
 
 They eyed one another with masculine sympathy. Of 
 medium stature like Gombarov, Maczishek had the more lithe 
 and alert figure, and accustomed to handle great chunks of 
 stone and marble, his arms, wrists and hands gave indications 
 of great strength, yet were distinguished by grace. His black, 
 straight hair, like an American Indian's, was combed back; 
 his eyes, wide-parted, were dark and intelligently alert, and 
 between them, curving gracefully downward, was a finely 
 shaped, sensitive yet virile aquiline nose. An eagle! 
 
 Meanwhile his host's eyes were not idle, as became clear 
 by his remark: 
 
 "I'd like to sculpture you. I'd call your head 'The Moun- 
 taineer.' " 
 "Why the Mountaineer? IVe never thought of it!" 
 "Perhaps not. Few of us, nowadays, are doing what we 
 were cut out to do. You may be putting all your moun- 
 taineering into your writing, just as I am putting all my 
 primitive impulses into sculpture!" 
 
 "I should rather have thought of myself as an Arab, travel- 
 ling in a caravan across the sands, from oasis to oasis! " laughed 
 Gombarov. 
 
 "There's not so much difference. They are both nomads. 
 And every artist is a nomad in spirit. He transmutes his 
 desire for adventiure into art. WTiat is Homer's Odyssey, or 
 Don Quixote, or the great continuous pageant of Shakespeare 
 but life seen through the eyes of a man travelling in a caravan? 
 Shakespeare stayed at home, so all his nomadism went into 
 his art, and not a scrap was wasted in travelling!" 
 
 While Maczishek was helping his visitor to more beer, 
 Gombarov rose to look at the sculptures. He eyed a group 
 
 345 
 
BABEL 
 
 of figures, reduced more or less to an abstraction of curves 
 and planes. 
 
 "That's the 'Dancers,' " explained Maczishek. "I had an 
 architectural idea in mind. It's a statue that might decorate 
 the entrance of a factory. Nothing sentimental about that, 
 is there? Why should there be? We are living in an imsenti- 
 mental age. It's a ruthless, pitiless age, and all of man's 
 virility and ferocity goes into his machinery. I have inte- 
 grated and symbolised in this statue the natiu-al savagery of 
 modern man as manifested in his machinery. Fauvists like 
 Matisse are right in their reaction from civilisation towards 
 the primitive. Cubists like Picasso are right in giving us 
 an art that embodies the mechanics of our age. But, after 
 aU, each gives only half the truth. I am trying to give the 
 synthesis of the two, the primitive, savage spirit incarnated 
 in mechanics: cruelty with nuance, which distinction we see 
 in the difference between, say, a Maori spear and the French 
 machine-gim." 
 
 "Don't you hate it?" 
 
 "You mean the civilisation that has contrived the machine- 
 gun? No, not exactly. I am of my time, and I accept it 
 as a new aspect of the eternal adventure. I acc^t it as any 
 artist must accept the material of his time for his art. Modem 
 shapes have their own beauty. There are the grain elevators, 
 gas works, railway engines, sea liners, motor cars, underground 
 trains, giant cranes, all waiting to be adapted to a new art 
 convention. We are creating a new language to express 
 modern man and all the workings of his intricate brain. It's 
 easy enough to do a thing in the Greek manner. Look at this." 
 The sculptor produced from a shelf a small marble, a female 
 torso. "It's one of my earlier works." 
 
 "How gracefully Greek I" exclaimed Gombarov. "But not 
 
 346 
 
LIFE'S CHESSBOARD: A YEAR'S MOVES 
 
 Royal Academy Greek! The real thing, with all the life of 
 the model!" 
 
 "She was alive enough!" said the sculptor. "She was 
 willing to do more than sit for me! But I wouldn't have it. 
 I don't like having to deal with intellectual women. They 
 make such demands on one! They give their bodies only in 
 exchange for what they call one's soul. I keep that for my 
 art! If one must deal intimately with a woman, it were best 
 if one had a Malay or a Maori girl, or one of Gauguin's Tahi- 
 tian women." 
 
 "Yet you accept this machine civilisation, which has pro- 
 duced our neurotic women!" 
 
 'T. accept it for my art, just as Dante accepted his for his 
 art. Dante saw life as a j)ageant in hell. There was devilish 
 beauty in what he saw, and there is devilish beauty in what 
 I see. There is adventure in this!" 
 
 This yoimg man of twenty-one talked with the mature air 
 of one for whom earth and life held no secrets. There was 
 nothing blase in this. He was child-like and lively, natural 
 and joyous, a civUised savage, in his way a god who tried to 
 discern and establish some sort of order in the chaos about 
 him. 
 
 "It's like this," he explained. "If you were to paint a 
 pictin-e of Confusion or Chaos, you'd still have to stick to 
 some laws of composition. Chaos has its own hidden har- 
 mony, without which it cannot exist. Herakleitos, the father 
 of modem philosophy, has said: 'Hidden harmony is better 
 than manifest.' Once you can discover what keeps this modem 
 chaos together, you have the secret of all life and art. For 
 something does keep it together, doesn't it? The artist 
 reduces it all to a single image, a single picture or piece of 
 sculpture, just as in the 'Three Fates' in the Elgin room at 
 
 347 
 
BABEL 
 
 the British Miiseum we have the whole soul of Greece. Picasso 
 binds this modem chaos together by means of mechanics, 
 Matisse by blood arteries. But it is both! Human blood 
 runs through the steel girders made by man, and in them the 
 soul is imprisoned." 
 
 "I am inclined. to side with Matisse," said Gombarov. "I 
 am for daemons as against dynamos." 
 
 'Tfou may be right!" said Maczishek. "Yet may not the 
 daemons of men be twirling in these fierce djmamos? Not 
 that I am always certain that the modems are right, for there 
 are moments of doubt and deq>air when I long to get away 
 from it all. I sometimes long to get back to the Greeks, but 
 one can do that only as a reaction. One's own age holds an 
 artist in chains. Some day I may decide to go to Easter 
 Island or some place like that, live like a native and produce 
 tribal art." 
 
 "Do you manage to sell any of yoiff work?" 
 
 "Only occasionally. Then I only get ten pounds or so 
 for a statue. I earn my living chiefly by doing some com- 
 mercial correspondence in the City, thanks to my knowledge 
 of German, French and Spanish. And you?" 
 
 "I do an occasional article, or translation. Pure hack! 
 One of these days I expect to be chucked out of my room!' 
 
 "Don't you worry about that," said Maczishek with evident 
 concem. "There's a cot! You can come and sleep here if 
 you like. I live at home with my sister. Artists must help 
 one another!" 
 
 Truly, here was a castle brought into play, a castle to the 
 rescue! 
 
 Maczishek was turning over drawing after drawing from a 
 large pile on the table, while Gombarov expressed his admira- 
 tion of their intense sense of life, of their simplicity and 
 
 348 
 
LIFE'S CHESSBOARD: A YEAR'S MOVES 
 
 economy of line, which could go no farther. A single firm 
 line seemed to bound a small imiverse, whether it was a bird, 
 monkey or himian being. Maczishek held an extraordinary 
 facility for drawing animals. 
 
 "You said you liked that one," said the artist, delighted 
 with his visitor's unboimded admiration of the drawing of a 
 stork. "I shall be pleased to give it to youl" 
 
 They could not have been greater friends if they had known 
 each other ten jrears. 
 
 "Now, let's go to Soho and have a bite to eat!" suggested 
 Maczishek. 
 
 It was an extraordinary meal. They went into a delica- 
 tessen shop, where Maczishek bought a half loaf of bread 
 and a half pound of Gruyere cheese, after which they turned 
 into a public house in Old Compton Street and, sitting down 
 before a small table, ordered two mugs of beer. Maczishek 
 pulled out a knife and shared out the bread and the cheese. 
 Gombarov felt as happy as a happy king. The joy of life 
 that was in Maczishek infected him, opened up the rich 
 springs hidden in him under strata of accumulation. 
 
 "I say, Maczishek, what made you come to England?" 
 
 "My father was a Pole, my mother a Frenchwoman. I 
 was bom in France; so strictly speaking, I am a Frenchman. 
 I wasn't going to waste a couple of years in the army. And 
 London is as good a place to work in as any. Nationality 
 and national art are dead, and there's no reason why one 
 shouldn't work anywhere. As I sit here talking to you, I 
 do not feel that I am talkiqg to a Jew, a Russian, or an 
 American, but just to a man, or better, an artist. Art is the 
 only Fatherland, and wherever artists meet they can talk to 
 one another and imderstand one another — ^not at all like diplo- 
 mats, who try to throw dust into each other's eyes!" 
 
 349 
 
BABEL 
 
 "Come to think of it," said Gombarov, "it is astonishing 
 to find London so full of foreign artists. It was not so long 
 ago that all English art was produced by Englishmen. It is 
 odd, too, that here am I, born in a little Ukrainian village 
 and naturalished an American, talking to you, Franco-Pole, 
 here in London!" 
 
 "Do you realise the full significance of that?" 
 "Of the trifling fact that we are talking here together?" 
 "Yes. But it's not such a trifling fact as would seem on 
 the surface. England is ancient Rome all over again. The 
 arts of Rome in her decadence were to a great extent produced 
 by foreigners. Don't you see, it's like this. When a body 
 is young and lusty it is egotistic. When it is old and about 
 to fall apart, it has less resistance and admits all sorts of alien 
 microbes. And an Empire is very much like a himian body. 
 It is a condition that applies to the whole Western world, in 
 particular to France, Germany and England. Morally, the 
 British Empire takes in all that world upon which it has forced 
 machinery and industrialism: in these lie the significance of 
 modern Anglo-Saxon civilisation. All these coimtries com- 
 pose, in a sense, one machine, one Empire. If one part 
 breaks, the whole machine goes out of order. So we have 
 no wars; nevertheless, these coimtries may be just decaying, 
 d3dng of old age, wearing out just as human limbs or parts 
 of machines wear out. We, modern artists, are the first to 
 see this, and so we may be performing a useful function in 
 injecting new life into old bodies! We may be the barbarians, 
 the saviours of decaying humanity!" 
 
 This audacious thinking amazed Gombarov, who began to 
 consider Maczishek the most valuable of his acquaintances. 
 What a curious combination of simplicity and complexity! 
 But Maczishek was more than an acquaintance. He was 
 
 350 
 
LIFE'S CHESSBOARD: A YEAR'S MOVES 
 
 a friend, whose generosity to Gombarov did not stop with 
 his offer of a cot in his studio. A fortnight after their first 
 meeting Maczishek called at Gombarov's and unwrapped a 
 heavy parcel he had brought with him. He drew out a small 
 marble, a standing boy stretciiing himself. 
 
 "Do you like it?" he asked. 
 
 "Magnificent!" said Gombarov, with enthusiasm. 
 
 "Well, you can have it!" 
 
 "What, you give me the statue? I love it, but how can I 
 deprive you of your bread and butter?" 
 
 "Never mind! I want you to have it, because I like 
 you!" 
 
 What could one say after that? It was a great honour to 
 be liked by Maczishek. 
 
 "By the way," said Gombarov, "I've been talking about 
 you to various people. Tobias Bagg wants to meet you. He 
 knows a lot of people who could be useful to you!" 
 
 "I don't want to meet that man," said Maczishek. "I was 
 at the exhibition the other day where I have a couple of 
 statues. I happened to be standing just by them, when a man 
 and a lady stopped in front of them. He pronoimced my 
 name contemptuously, with a kind of sneeze. I walked up 
 to him, and said: 'Sir, that name is pronoimced Jan Mac- 
 zishek! I know the correct pronimciation because it happens 
 to belong to me!' And I walked away. Someone at the 
 gallery told me it was Tobias Bagg." 
 
 A fortnight later Gombarov ^proached him again, with 
 the news that Bagg wanted to buy the two statues at the 
 exhibition. "He is an artist himself," said Gombarov, "and 
 he can't pay much, but if the terms are within his purse he 
 will buy them." 
 
 "Will he give fifteen pounds for the two?" 
 
 351 
 
BABEL 
 
 "I am sure he willl" 
 
 Maczishek was hard up. And he was neither sufficiently 
 well-known nor sufficiently dead to command large prices. 
 And so Bagg had the pleasure of meeting Maczishek. 
 
 AN AUDACIOUS MOVE 
 
 And Gombarov's Queen was still there, not at the King's 
 side, it is true, but at the other end of the board. What piece 
 has fewer liberties than a King? Our Western chess-board 
 is a constitutional monarchy; it is possible that even the 
 chess-board has been influenced by political considerations; 
 the ancient chess-board may have been a wholly different 
 thing. But whether in autocratic days the chess King had 
 powers denied him today, the Queen has remained the flighty, 
 reckless creature she is, and if she be indiscreet she may be 
 bowled over by a bishop, knight or pawn, the latter hardly 
 more than a mere page! And now, imagine, if you can, a 
 King in revolt against all rules of kingdom, flying to his 
 Queen, the better to keep his eye on her, across a whole 
 diagonal of squares! Woe to the King who rebels! 
 
 The new year was approaching; by sticking at it Gombarov 
 had nearly finished his book. He turned his thoughts to 
 crossing the Atlantic to see Winifred. The thought buoyed 
 him up, helped him to persist on the final chapters. A feverish 
 energy sometimes kept him at work both day and night. 
 From the other side of the sea Winifred was clamouring for 
 a sight of him. Passionate letters came two or three times 
 a week, begging, imploring and entreating him to come and 
 see her: 
 
 "If only for one wee little week, one day, one hour, or even 
 five little seconds!" 
 
 352 
 
LIFE'S CHESSBOARD: A YEAR'S MOVES 
 
 "I think I cannot wait much longer — oh, come soon, my 
 dear, my dear I" 
 
 "All this time without you is terrible — ^it has been the moat 
 barren year of my life!" 
 
 "If you come you will not be sorry — ^I am living for this 
 alone — ^I simply must see you!" 
 
 "If you come, I am yours, to do with as jrou please!" 
 
 "Even the terrible, hellish New York would seem like 
 heavoi, if you would only come!" 
 
 "And so you say you are coming, actually coming. What 
 boat, my own dear, when, when, when?" 
 
 A fine lover was he not to respond at once to such tender 
 appeals! It was true that Winifred and her mother were 
 planning to come to EiuDpe again six months hence, but that 
 was a long time to wait, and what with her appeals and his 
 own hunger for a sight of her, he was seized with an all- 
 consuming desire to do the reckless, audacious thing, to go 
 to her at all costs! 
 
 Apart from her appeals and his own desire, he was moved 
 to this decision by a wild, irresistible in^)ulse to do the reck- 
 less, audacious thing for its own sake. He deemed himself 
 over-cautious, and his hard, repressed life — so it seemed to 
 him — ^had paralyzed his will to act on impulse. He must 
 break the qoell that held him, must act just to prove to him- 
 self that he could act. Yet could he forget the barriers to 
 action, the simple lack of money? Why, he had hardly even 
 enough to take him there, to say nothing of the money he 
 would require to stay there a fortnight or a month, and to 
 bring him back. Fine lover, indeed, to think of such trifles! 
 But there would be no audacity in his decision if he were 
 blessed with a fat purse. A multi-millionaire wouldn't think 
 twice of it! In short, the whole thing seemed impossible, 
 
 353 
 
BABEL 
 
 but he wanted to do the impossible because it was the impos- 
 sible; if not exactly impossible, then simply foolish. Many 
 a foolish man has won the Victoria Cross, and from the worldly 
 point of view Don Quixote was something of a fool. His 
 love for her was great, and he felt the need of making a 
 heroic gesture to prove its greatness. He wanted to do some- 
 thing sublimely ridiculous. Considering his position, the 
 action he was contemplating was beautifully foolish. But 
 what a lover's gesture! Three thousand miles just to s6e a 
 girl — then three thousand miles back — ^not bad for a mere 
 beggar! Surely, after that gesture, his Dulcinea could never 
 again assume the garb of Aldonza! Never would Winifred 
 again forsake him! Could she even think of it? 
 
 From his friends Gombarov got together a sufBdent sum 
 to take him third<lass to New York and to keep him frugally 
 there for a month or so. The thought of holding Winifred 
 in his arms again keyed him up to an intense and feverish 
 expectancy. He bought his ticket a fortnight before sailing, 
 and spent the final week in packing his belongings, which he 
 intended depositing with friends. Who knew? — ^he might be 
 under compulsion to remain in New York, and che^ as the 
 room was, he could not afford to keep it. 
 
 HEAL KING, OR ALTER EGO 
 
 Gombarov made a discovery. As long as he had worked by 
 day expressing himself on paper, he slept untroubled; but 
 once he stopped working, he was visited by dreams. 
 
 In that final fortnight, after finishing his book, he had 
 several dreams, and one dream in particular, which was not 
 90 much a dream as an extraordinary symbolic vision, seen at 
 night in a state of wakefulness. For three nights preceding it, 
 he saw heads of children, chubby faces lit up in the dark by a 
 
 354 
 
LIFE'S CHESSBOARD: A YEAR'S MOVES 
 
 mysterious light: the faces of children peered at him from 
 the darkness, and nothing else of them was visible. On the 
 fourth night he awoke, his face turned up toward the ceiling. 
 He felt strangely, keenly awake, his mind intensely clear, 
 super-consdously dear. He lay on his back and did not 
 move. The large, undraped, xmshuttered window at his back 
 let in the first faint light of winter dawn. Without turning 
 his head, he let his eyes stray toward the distant door of the 
 large, high room, which was shut and locked. He saw a 
 strange thing before the door: a tall male figure, at least eight 
 feet in height, dressed in black. Gombarov, wide awake, 
 experienced no fear, only curiosity. His mind analysed the 
 apparition. He said to himself: 
 
 "That must be an illusion. Probably I see it because a 
 certain part of my brain is in contact with creases in the 
 pillow, and if I move ever so little the figure is sure to dis- 
 appear. But I must not move. I do not want it to disappear. 
 I want to see what will happen." 
 
 The tall figmre seemed to linger near the door for a few 
 moments, then moved forward, toward Gombarov. It was 
 some feet away, and was slowly coming forward. Gombarov, 
 l3ang quietly, now observed that over its shoulders it wore a 
 volimiinous black doak, and that its large masculine head, 
 somewhat bowed, had longish thick straight hair. Though 
 he could not see the face, there was a hint of a frown in it, a 
 suggestion of meditation. 
 
 "How like Hamlet! " said Gombarov to himsdf . 
 
 And still nearer the colossal figure approached. It was 
 now at the foot of the bed. It suddenly tinned up its bowed 
 head; a light fell on its face. Gombarov was astonished. It 
 was himsdf! Only a taller, an altogether finer, handsomer 
 self! The face looked down on him and frowned. Its eyes 
 
 355 
 
BABEL 
 
 appeared to regard him critically. Gombarov suddenly under- 
 stood. A thought — a phrase of Emerson's — ^that he remem- 
 bered, shot through his brain: 
 
 "Man is but dwarf of himself!" 
 
 "Rise to your full height, Gombarov!" was what the thought 
 conveyed to him. 
 
 Then, at the very instant that Gombarov understood, his 
 Alter Ego relaxed its frown, seemed to understand that he had 
 imderstood, and began to retreat, backing, still facing him; 
 and when the apparition had thus reached the door, it van- 
 ished, its black hair seeming to lose itself within .Gombarov's 
 broad-brimmed hat hanging on the door. 
 
 Gombarov lay wide awake, overcome with wonder at what 
 he had seen. There was ecstasy in this wonder. What mys- 
 terious powers had sent him this revelation of his potential 
 self, seen with a clear brain and wakeful eyes? How was he 
 to free his cramped, hunch-backed soul, cause it to rise to 
 his vision's height? But he knew even then that it was to 
 be to him as a pillar of light in the darkness of future days, 
 ever receding, ever urging him on. 
 
 And thus he lay thinking, until daylight began to flood the 
 room. 
 
 356 
 
BOOK m 
 BRAIN-STORM 
 
CHAPTER X: BRAIN-STORM 
 
 " . . .itis a tale 
 Told by an idiot, full of sound 
 
 and fury. 
 Signifying nothing." 
 
 — Macbeth. 
 
 quest of the golden fleece 
 
 The huge Cunarder dove a path through the ponderous 
 waters, and hope advanced above the vast deeps of life. Here 
 seemed to be enough water to render everything else insignifi- 
 cant, impotent; enough water to create as immense a despair 
 in the heart of insignficant man; enough water to drown 
 an army of men and all their despair, their hope also, leaving 
 not so much as a ripple to indicate their one-time existence 
 and all the aspirations and illusions of that existence. Yet, 
 steadily and speedily and buoyantly, the sted-riveted, smoke- 
 spouting monster, larger than any lewthan, with erect prow, 
 as with sharp knife, cut through and ploughed up the hillocks 
 of boundless, motionful meadow, and left behind a long, 
 straight line of white foam and, overhead, a trail of black 
 breath. The spray shot up the sides of the ship at a sharp 
 angle and struck the deck in a curve of thin mist. The day 
 was grey, the sea tinged green. The ship faced the wind; 
 nevertheless, Gombarov stood near the prow, eyes fixed on 
 the west. There he was nearer, a full seven hundred feet 
 nearer than at the stem, to the object of his quest. 
 
 The ship was, indeed, over seven hundred feet long, or about 
 a seventh of a mile, and had foiu- funnels; its passengers must 
 
 359 
 
BABEL 
 
 have felt a certain pride when they saw passing ships having 
 only one or two funnels. It was, in its way, a complete world, 
 and within this seventh of a mile, which to distant ships must 
 have seemed no more than a speck, the whole social order 
 of our civilisation, was reconstituted in a form at once concen- 
 trated and mtense. There, below, deep in the hold, were the 
 half naked, begrimed, sweaty stokers, feeding the insatiate, 
 flame-tongued furnaces; Gombarov had seen a stoker carried 
 on deck, overcome by their hot breath. A little higher, also 
 in the hold, were the poorest steerage passengers, of the immi- 
 grant class. These shared the fair sized deck of the fairly 
 respectable if indigent third-class passengers. Gates barred 
 the way to the second-class upper deck, which bdonged, for 
 the most part, to the well-to-do middle classes. Gates barred 
 the second-class passengers from intruding on those of the first- 
 class, who promenaded the highest, finest deck of all. There, 
 lording it over all, were the world's successful men and women. 
 Captains of Industry and their wives and yoimg heiresses, 
 ladies of quality, opera singers and actresses and first-dass 
 courtesans, with excellent purses all. More rarely was a first- 
 class Captain of Art to be found in this company. Indeed, 
 the Irish poet, Raftery, was on board. Gombarov had seen 
 him ascending the gang-board at Liverpool, but could not 
 commimicate with him. Nowhere more than in a ship is 
 society rigidly divided into the haves and the have-nots. 
 Therefore, Gombarov had no love of ocean-liners. Of an 
 evening, gaiety reigned on the upper decks; sounds of instru- 
 mental music and of music from operatic throats strayed 
 below; one felt conscious of the proximity of desired, well- 
 dressed women dancing in intimate contact with their part- 
 ners; it was anno)ring and sad to be shut off from all this. 
 It was not that he wanted them, this gaiety and desirable 
 
 360 
 
BRAIN-STORM 
 
 women; but he wanted the key to all this that he might throw 
 it away. There was no virtue in keeping away from things 
 because you had to. 
 
 The third-class accommodation was far from crowded. 
 There was room for six times the number. Gombarov had a 
 small cabin all to himself. He liked the simple souls on 
 board who had embarked with the hope of finding a home in 
 a new land. He was attracted to the family groups, with 
 their sturdy peasant types, often in native dress (which they 
 would soon be deprived of), huddled together in the evening 
 on deck, laughing and chattering to hide their hope and con- 
 cern, the younger members tripping to a folk time, suddenly 
 struck up by a fiddle and accordion. It was amusing to watch 
 the girls being deftly swimg round like tops, their skirts 
 blowing out like bells, thdr lusty outcries harmoniously min- 
 gling with the hand-clapping and foot-stamping of young 
 men, lost and merged at last in the applause of the dense 
 circle of onlookers. It was old-world gaiety, and sadly Gom- 
 barov reflected that all this would be swallowed up and lost 
 in new world ways. And American tunes, rag and incipient 
 jazz, were beginning to pervade and conquer Europe. 
 
 The huge liner continued to cleave her way through the 
 ponderous wators, and hope to advance above the vast deeps 
 of life. What better symbol of hope was there than a ship 
 steadfastly moving across that vast expanse of imcertain. 
 murderous waters? What bett» symbol of the immensity 
 qf O ilman solitude and despair than that same sea, endless 
 and boundless, full of mysterious, invisible life, eternally 
 surging, eternally, restlessly moving, mirroring quiet blue skies, 
 or tossing with quoichless fury? What but a habitation of 
 hope, a world, a universe of human aspiration, a battle and a 
 challenge to that immense despair, to the treacherous sea, to 
 
 361 
 
BABEL 
 
 death itself, was Noah's Ark, floating, drifting above the deluge, 
 seeking quiet, a refuge from that despair, an isle of content- 
 ment? What was the Argo, Jason's quest of the Golden 
 Fleece, but the human seeking of happiness, in the same sea 
 of eternal de^air — ^had Jason found it? Yes, but — ^there was 
 a string to it, and at the end of the string Medea! 
 
 Then Santa Maria, Christopher Columbus's Ark or Argo, 
 a ship of hope, if ever there was one, and that hope all 
 centred in the heart of one man, fighting the storms of sea 
 and the mutinies of incredulous men, overcoming both. Nor 
 was there a sea of disparity between the historic Italian 
 and the fictitious but none the less real Nantucketer, Captain 
 Ahab, of the ship Pequod, seeking the elusive Moby Dick, the 
 White Whale, which, like a white light, lured him on, him and 
 his crew, and wrecked him, once he had caught up with his 
 hope, his white light. Woe to him, then, who overtakes his 
 hope, catches up with the White Whale, the White Light, or 
 the White Girl, the eternal aspiration of one's heart! Yet 
 who is immune from the emotion that awakens ra the human 
 heart at the time-old cry of "Land! Land! Land!" What, if 
 like Columbus, we sail to find the East Indies, and after a 
 woful journey, inadvertently discover the Indies of the West? 
 
 Gombarov, facing the wind, stood near the ship's prow and 
 continued to look westward through the deepening twilight. 
 The sky was overcast, but there was a strip of clear white 
 light on the horizon, between the black sea line and the black 
 cloud, and into this curtain of black cloud mystic shafts of 
 light penetrated divergently upward like the spokes of a fan, 
 and were interlaced with it in varying degrees of intensity, 
 like white ribbons running through the slits of a diaphanous 
 grey-black material of an intense softness. That white strip 
 of light was of enticing loveliness, translucent and radiant, 
 
 362 
 
BRAINSTORM 
 
 and, the cloud descending on either side, it slowly assumed 
 the rounded shape of a woman's white shoulders, peeping 
 from imder a grey-purple coverlet, the heaving sea. And this 
 light shone, leading him on. 
 
 And suddenly, directly ahead in the distance, a four-masted 
 schooner emerged from the shadows of the cloud, and hove 
 in sight, in full sail, crossing the line of that strip of light, 
 a beautiful winged silhouette as of some dark phantom ship, 
 depending for flight on its own wings and God's vnnd. Like 
 a bird on the crest of a wave, it rocked gently, dipping now 
 its head, now its tail, in the radiance of the dying light. 
 
 Wingless, the lino: advanced ^>eedily and unswervingly, 
 a symbol of a new conquering world. What a contrast was 
 here! Wings were needless, winds also. No favours from 
 God! Man had installed an iron stomach in the ship, and 
 he fed that stomach with fuel, and the ship flew along on 
 its belly, like the wingless serpent of the Garden of Eden 
 which had defied God. Finite and dispossessed, man had, 
 nevertheless, made use of his having tasted of the fruit of 
 the tree of knowledge to become a god unto himself! The 
 soul of man was in the belly of that monster ship, pushing 
 it on, other ships also, to goals innumerable. The ship's wings 
 were in its stomach. Somewhere a thousand men were digging 
 into the deep insides of the earth for food wherewith to feed 
 this insatiate stomach. Her four funnels were belching forth 
 excrement into the pure air, challenging heaven. 
 
 .\n army marched on its stomach, said Napoleon; a ship, 
 too, nowadays, glided swiftly on its belly. And love? — ^how 
 was love to resich its goal? He would have that to think of 
 whoi he reached New York. Eager and impatient as he was, 
 he knew that certain practical problems would have to be 
 faced, could not long be deferred. 
 
 363 
 
BABEL 
 
 That morning, he reflected, a Swede, young and robust, 
 six feet two in height, had hanged himself in his cabin, while 
 breakfast was being served. Yet he, too, must have hoped; 
 otherwise he would not have booked passage on the ship. It 
 was possible, of course, that he had been running to not so 
 much as from a place. He might have hanged himself on land, 
 without paying a fare. Poor man! Not that whole immense 
 ship could save the hope he had had and lost. His White 
 Whale, White Light or White Girl he must have left behind! 
 
 But the thought of seeing Winifred again banished every 
 other thought, and Gombarov gave himself up to it as he 
 watched the white light on the horizon narrowing and narrow- 
 ing, tmtll it disappeared and there was but a wall of darkness 
 in front of him. He felt cold, and he walked along the deck 
 until he foimd a sheltered comer. Here his huddled figure 
 rsted, while inside of him a white light burned, and in this 
 light was the face he loved. 
 
 END OF THE QUEST 
 
 The ship slowly crept up to New York's broad waterway, 
 in the winter twilight, past innumerable tall towers, generously 
 besprinkled with light, glimmering in the evening mist. It was 
 as if man had said: "No favours from God! Ill have a Milky 
 Way of my own!" And he poured out this bounty of glim- 
 mers from his electro-mechanical cornucopia. There was this 
 immense glimmering wall stretching along the banks of the 
 stream, where not so long ago the Red Indian glided swiftly 
 in his canoe, while his squaw on shore attended to the papoose. 
 God's stars were obscured, man's stars shone brilliantly. It 
 was as if man had unscrewed the firmament above, pressed 
 it flat, and stood it up on end. There was writing on this 
 wall, too — letters of li^t. Man was taking no chances. If 
 
 364 
 
BRAINSTORM 
 
 there was to be handwriting on his wall, he'd not wait for 
 God's hand to put it there, especially as his fellows were willing 
 to take the space — at so much per square inch! Gombarov 
 read some of the signs: 
 
 "Lokiun's Balsam is Best for Corns I" 
 "Curvo Corsets Preserve the Shapel" 
 "Drink Bolo-Moko! You Won't Like It At Firstl" 
 "Jupp's Whiskey Makes the World Go Round!" 
 Later, when he passed a Salvation Army place and read 
 the electric sign over the door: "Come in, and get nearer 
 to God!" he realised that God had an equal chance with 
 anyone else, provided His representatives paid for the space, 
 which was only fair. 
 
 For the time being, standing on deck there, he was not so 
 near as to note all the details of this extraordinary illumina- 
 tion; but there was the beauty of this immense jagged wall 
 and its towers, which in that twilight mist were as the battle- 
 ments of some fabulous casde, erected and inhabited, surely, 
 by a race of mythical giants. The wonder of it was greater 
 when he reflected that these towers had been planned and 
 built by a race relatively Lilliputian, "by men no larger 
 than I!" 
 
 "There is a tower in the soul of man," he mused, "and this 
 tow^ often becomes a reality, whether it be in the form of 
 a pagoda, a pyramid, a skyscraper, that beautiful bridge weVe 
 just passed, or a play by Shakespeare. That tower topples 
 in the end, surefy; alwa3rs to be rebuilt in a new form. What 
 was the original Babel?" he suddenly asked himself. "Not a 
 tower, litoally, but a condition, a state of mind, a state of 
 civilisation . . . perhaps, a finished civilisation, an Empire, 
 ready to topple . . . like a child's house of blocks, when it's 
 finished, and the child is weary of it. All things and all 
 
 365 
 
BABEL 
 
 aspirations seem to come to this toppling point, to perish 
 when our brain has become filled with hiunan knowledge and 
 we have become old men and realised the foUy of being gods 
 without eternity. Time alone is the best judge ... so hav- 
 ing no eternity, we make our instants eternal. Just as at 
 this instant, I appear to be living for one thing, to see 
 Winifred. . . ." 
 
 And at the thought of her name, everything else became 
 obliterated, his other thoughts as well as these immense 
 towers, and he burned with the ecstasy of his hope, with the 
 sense of the nearness of the object of his quest. 
 
 "Third-class citizens only!" shouted a uniformed ofBcial, 
 walking along the deck. 
 
 American citizens were to be allowed to land at once. The 
 immigrants would be kept over night, to be subjected next day 
 to a severe scrutiny from officials on Ellis Island. They were 
 in a state of suppressed excitement. They were so near the 
 goal of their hopes, yet tomorrow — ^who knew? The rejected 
 ones would have to travel the whole distance back, some of 
 them four thousand miles or more. Hard luck! An increased 
 knowledge of the earth did not make for an increased earth 
 and an increase in the fruits thereof. They were seeking but 
 food and opportunity. The earth was overcrowded. A secret 
 terror was in the hearts of these men and women as they 
 waited for the morrow. Suppose even one of a large family 
 were rejected, what were they to do? To enter the United 
 States, a country of three million square miles, you had to 
 walk through a series of narrow stiles, just wide enough to 
 allow a single man, woman or child to pass at a time. Th^ 
 looked enviously to the small group that responded to the cry: 
 
 "Third-class citizens only!" 
 
 But the third-class citizens growled: 
 
 366 
 
BRAIN-STORM 
 
 "We may be third-class passengers, but we are not third- 
 class citizens!" 
 
 All because the official had left a comma out! But the 
 immigrants would have been only too glad to be admitted as 
 "third-class citizens." 
 
 Gombarov, lugging his leather bag, the same he had carried 
 from Victoria Station to Russell Square, was soon travelling 
 in a trolley towards Washington Square, where the Gwynnes 
 had a studio apartment. 
 
 He found their names on the door among other names, and 
 in answer to his ring of their bell, the door gave a slight click 
 and opened as of itself. He ascended one flight of stairs, and 
 once on the landing, heard a familiar, timid voice from above: 
 
 "Is that you, John?" 
 
 Another moment, and they were in each other's arms. 
 
 "Is it really you?" she said. 
 
 "Pinch me, and see!" 
 
 "I had better pinch myself to see that I'm alive and awake. 
 I can't believe it. How I have wanted you!" 
 
 She hid her head in his coat and was shy, as if she had 
 not known a man's kisses before. 
 
 '"I'll never let you out of my sight again!" she whispered. 
 
 Gombarov was happy. 
 
 Hct mother emerged from the next room, effusive in greet- 
 ing, and he felt as if he had come home after long wandering. 
 It was a delicious feeling for one who had had a wretched 
 childhood and youth. The three of them talked, then went 
 out to dinner together, Winifred's hand in her lover's. 
 
 It was strange to be in New York after London. London 
 sprawled. New York stood up. London rumbled. New York 
 screeched. London had a purring softness, a roundness of 
 featiu-e under a veU; New York's aural radiance was clear 
 
 367 
 
BABEL 
 
 and hard, and in it her features were seen to be hard and 
 angular and decisive, like a Red Indian's. No windings of 
 streets to lure a stranger round a curve. Skies were abolished. 
 One walked in rectilinear ravines between erect perpendicular 
 cliffs which resembled real cliffs only in the degree that pyra- 
 mids resemble moimtains. It was not to be denied that there 
 was a fierce, austere beauty here, cruel if you like, but cruel 
 only as youth is cruel. 
 
 Walking arm in arm, they turned a sharp comer and were 
 in Broadway, the Great White Way, the Milky Way of a 
 man-created universe. Lights, lights, lightsl Twinkling, 
 glimmering, dancing, antic-performing lights. An animatBd 
 jovial figure, constructed out of Ughts, pouring himself a glass 
 of Jupp's Whiskey and saying, "Gee, it's goodi " grinning out 
 of his electric Q^es. A lithe electric cat jumping on to a 
 sewiqg machine and getting entangled in a mass of thread, 
 only to jump down ageun in a desperate effort to extricate 
 itself. Impossible I The thread was too strong. "Bvy no 
 other!" An electric yomig lady, in her electric boudoir, in 
 deshabille, brushing her electric teeth with an electric tooth- 
 brush, dipped in Delictum Tooth Paste, which "Assures a 
 Sweet Breath! " An electric ballet girl gyrating on her electric 
 legs, proclaiming Manhattan Foxtrot Hall to be "the place 
 to dance in." Myriads of lights, twinkling, glimmering, 
 revolving, quivering, performing "stunts" in plenty. Vulgar 
 some of them, yet very wonderful. 
 "Perfectly diabolic, don't you think?" asked Wmifred. 
 He laughed and answered enigmatically: 
 "What would be the glory of God without Satan?" 
 "But Satan has it all his own way here, let me assure you. 
 If you had been here as long as we, you'd think so too!" 
 "I don't deny it. Only sometimes it is hard to tell one 
 
 368 
 
BRAINSTORM 
 
 from the other. There is so much bad in what is called good, 
 and so much good in what is called bad." 
 
 "Motho-, he hasn't changed at all. He is the same old 
 philosopher!" Winifred added: "But I don't want him to 
 change." 
 
 "I've changed more than you know," he replied. "But I 
 haven't changed with regard to you." 
 
 She tenderly pressed his arm. 
 
 Seated in an Italian restaurant, they exchanged e^ierl- 
 ences, talked over the things that had happened since their 
 last meeting. 
 
 They decided to surprise the Rone3rs in their flat, five 
 minutes' distance by the subway. Roney, a good fellow, was 
 one of Gombarov's oldest friends. He had been a student at 
 the Art School, and in his work his leanings were half towards 
 Phil May, half towards Forain. At the time they knew each 
 other in Philadelphia, the conservative editors catering for 
 a conservative public considered his drawings outrageously 
 revolutionary. Gombarov had fought with the editors of the 
 Xew World to get Roney's drawings in, and now the same 
 Roney was a great success and three big New York dailies 
 had contested for his services as cartoonist. The world did 
 move! 
 
 The Roneys were, indeed, surprised to see Gombarov, of 
 whose coming they had no inkling, and Roney at once sug- 
 gested taking them all to a late supper and cocktails in the 
 combined dance and dining hall of a famous hotel. The five 
 of them crowded into a taxi, and Roney directed the driver 
 to drive first to a certain point in Broadway just beyond 
 Forty-second Street. 
 
 "Look!" said Roney, pointing upward, as the taxi stopped. 
 
 Gombarov looked out of the taxi window, and read the 
 
 369 
 
BABEL 
 
 large sprawling electric letters: "See Roney's Cartoon in 
 Today's Chronicler!" 
 
 "Well, you are getting on, Roney! What do you draw 
 now?" 
 
 "A hundred and fifty simoleons per week. But New York 
 takes it all." 
 
 Gombarov felt insignificant, and not a little alarmed. His 
 entire borrowed fortune did not amount to a hundred dollars. 
 How was he to exist, give Winifred a good time, go to Phila- 
 delphia to see his family, and get back to London? The 
 lightness of his purse weighed him down. But he thought: 
 he had made a great sacrifice in coming, and Winifred must 
 love him for it! 
 
 JAZZ DRINKS, JAZZ MUSIC, JAZZ DANCING ! 
 
 He revived from his temporary depression under the influ- 
 ence of cocktails, the music of the jazz band and the sight of 
 fox-trotting couples. 
 
 He marvelled at the antics of the band. There, on a small 
 platform, were three negroes, in dazzlingly white shirts and 
 white collars, making enough noise for ten. What extraordi- 
 nary instruments! An out-of-tune piano, a banjo and a drum 
 and mmierous subsidiary instruments, such as a triangle, a 
 hanging bottle, a rattle, a battered sauce-pan, a string of 
 bells, a cymbal, a flute so arranged over the drum that the 
 drummer could put his mouth on it without ceasing to func- 
 tion with his hands; and two or three other strange instruments 
 newly invented; and the collection was manipulated by this 
 active black trio, who often reinforced the instrumental noises 
 with their own voices, whfle their black faces, their big-lipped 
 red mouths arranged into quarter-moons, grinned. What was 
 more extraordinary, the players managed to extricate a tune, 
 
 370 
 
BRAIN-STORM 
 
 even a distinct tune, from this multiplicity of cacophonous 
 instruments, out of this chaos of rasping, jangling noises; 
 indeed, they played the hidden melody of primordial chaos, a 
 melody clear enough for dancers to dance to it. 
 
 That was strange: the spectacle of civilised society, well- 
 groomed men and exquisite, refined-ankled, delicately turned 
 women, responding to the most primitive essences in the arts: 
 tribal music and steps and movements richly symbolic of sex. 
 Life, nature itself, long repressed, was breaking through the 
 puritan shell, and there was no puritan law that could pre- 
 vent it. Books were censored: there was no censoring music! 
 And odd it was, that the Congo should be conquering America, 
 and that in her turn, America should be conquering Europe. 
 This new music would soon be heard from San Francisco to 
 Moscow. 
 
 He looked on wistfully, for he could not dance, as he saw 
 his Winifred borne across the floor in the embrace of Roney, 
 their tall slender bodies and their legs moving sensually and 
 rhythmically against each other's, with an intimacy like that 
 of barbaric lovers. At the neighbouring table he saw a pretty 
 girl sitting alone, her thin, frail garments outlining her flowing 
 form, and wistfully he looked at her with the eyes of one who 
 wished to dance, but could not. He wanted to feel her limbs 
 moving against his as Winifred's were agciinst Roney's, and 
 with the second cocktail, the jazz among drinks, his desire 
 grew. Roney soon returned, and Winifred was claimed by a 
 stranger: her hair brushed the stranger's face, her bosom lay 
 against the stranger's, and her limbs pressed and moved 
 against the stranger's. She appeared to be enjojdng herself: 
 Gombarov felt sad. She returned, pressed his hand, his 
 spirits revived. 
 
 It was not until after one o'clock that they returned to 
 
 371 
 
BABEL 
 
 the apartment. Mrs. Gwynne went into the kitchen to prepare 
 tea, while the lovers exchanged tendernesses. In his happiness 
 he forgot everything. 
 
 The Gwynnes had no accommodation for him, and so about 
 two o'clock, taking a few articles with him, he set out to find a 
 hotel. The night was cold, and he took the first place he 
 could find. He felt that the charge of one dollar and a half 
 was more than he could afford. Tomorrow he would look for 
 cheaper lodgings. 
 
 "After all," he reflected, as he curled up under the sheets, 
 "it has been a miracle, in my circumstances, to have come at 
 all this three thousand miles. Audacity should bring luck! 
 Oh, God, help me! And make Winifred keep on loving me!" 
 
 He prayed like a credulous child to suppress his fears, and 
 tired after his big day was soon asleep. 
 
 He had breakfast with the Gwynnes. It was not imtil the 
 fourth day that he found a suitable lodging in Greenwich 
 Village in a house that sheltered artists and students. He 
 secured a small room, which was equipped with neither a 
 grate nor a radiator. It was only fit for sleeping in. As it 
 was, he spent the rest of his time with Winifred or in seeing 
 editors. He wanted to do a weekly art and literary letter from 
 London. His London address on his visiting card admitted 
 him to the editors of newspapers and periodicals. They were 
 all polite and willing to consider articles sent in the usual 
 manner, but did not want to bind themselves to any regular 
 feature. He was not a facile writer, and this did not appeal 
 to him. He wanted to be forced to turn out an article by a 
 given date; otherwise his interest might flag. He succeeded 
 in interesting the editor of Roney's paper, to whom at lunch 
 he proposed writing a weekly letter dealing with the newer 
 aspects of art and literature. The idea appealed to the editor, 
 
 372 
 
BRAIN-STORM 
 
 who, on consulting, however, the editor of the Art and Litera- 
 ture Section, found him hotly opposed to "advertising madmen 
 and notoriety seekers." He was an old man, well known in 
 the art world as a deep-dyed puritan and conservative. 
 
 Gombarov spent many days in the futile quest of editors. 
 The weather was intensely cold, and if he stopped in some light 
 lunch place for a coffee and to get rest and warmth, the waiters 
 and proprietor would look askance at him if he continued 
 sitting too long. He was occupying valuable space. Their 
 place was kept to sell food and drink and not to have loafers 
 hanging about. It was not as in England or on the Continent, 
 where if you paid for a coffee you took a lease on a chair for 
 as long as you liked. And he would resume his idle quest of 
 editors. It was discouraging. There was something in the 
 phrase of an American writer: "A job is, but Art ain't!" 
 SureIJ^ There was the inevitable reaction in the evening, when 
 he called on Winifred, without a crumb of good news, and 
 tacitly looked for consoling caresses. 
 
 The first week passed happily, even ecstatically. While 
 on the steamer he had made the resolution that if, by a 
 tenacious effort, he could secure something tangible in the 
 nature of a regular correspondence from London, he would 
 ask her to marry him there and then. The three of them 
 could always manage to keep the wolf from the door, while he 
 worked to improve his condition. VThat was the good of wait- 
 ing imtil you grew too old to enjoy the best of life and love? 
 He could better concentrate on his work if he did not have 
 this hanging uncertainty of Winifred to trouble him; this 
 imcertainty would continue as long as their love should remain 
 imconsummated. This consummation alone could free him, 
 release his energies for the coping with the network of prob- 
 lems which beset the modem Occidental man. He needed, first 
 
 373 
 
BABEL 
 
 of all, this fiilfiUment of himself in a woman, to make his fulfill- 
 ment in other things possible, and life worth while. He wished 
 she could see this. He had thought on the steamer that his 
 own audacious move would provoke her into making a counter 
 move; that of her own will and impulse she would suggest such 
 a course, the only course, even if he should fail to secure an 
 immediate profitable living. Was not love love, knowing 
 neither shame nor barriers? He had need of such encourage- 
 ment, even if he failed to take advantage of it: he simply 
 could not imderstand a love which failed in misfortune, which 
 did not offer all unconditionally. Love was a full measure, 
 or it was nothing I 
 
 After a long day's trudging of the cold, wet streets and of 
 interviewing useless editors, he would call in the evening ready 
 to cheer up at the sight of her, only to find her depressed. 
 He was sensitively aware that if he could have but come in, 
 bringing news of luck, the whole complexion of things would 
 have changed, but inwardly, deep within him, he was discon- 
 certed at his discovery. Poor is the love that waits upon luckl 
 He waited for but a single cheering, consoling word. It would 
 have filled him with new courage. But she would not say it. 
 Perhaps she could not. Still, she might try. He had come 
 three thousand miles for her, because she clamoured for him. 
 She might try to remember that. 
 
 Of course, there were also cheerful evenings. He could not 
 afford to ask her to the theatre. But they called on friends, 
 and friends called on them. 
 
 NEW LAMPS FOR OLD! 
 
 One evening they visited Mrs. Van Dingen's salon, where 
 they amusedly watched poor artists greedily helping themselves 
 to legs of chicken, which they held up with their fingers and 
 
 374 
 
BRAIN-STORM 
 
 gnawed from the bone, as, standing in small groups, they 
 discussed "patterns," "life-urges" and "dynamics" between 
 mouthfuls. It was the same as in London, except that the food 
 here was better and the manners worse. Goodness knew, the 
 poor devils needed the food, especially as the opportunity to 
 receive it gratis came but once a week. 
 
 Gombarov was introduced to the hostess, a large amiable 
 woman, who wrote a kind of jazz poetry, full of thumping 
 nouns and no verbs. "I am so fond of the Russians!" she 
 said — he had heard that from a London hostess before — and 
 straightway passed on to speak to an Irishman. "Why do I 
 feel out of place everywhere, a perfect Ishmael, and especially 
 here, in New York?" Gombarov asked himself. Every nation- 
 ality and race was represented here, and English was spoken 
 in a variety of exotic accents and intonations. The feature 
 of the evening was the reading of a poem by a female disciple 
 of an American woman poet residing in Budapest. The poem 
 was called "Fanciful Frying-pans," and ran £is follows: 
 
 Crumbs screwed on narrow shoulderSj 
 
 Crumbs full of maggotSj 
 
 Crumbs falling apart. 
 
 Ripe Camembert is a brother. 
 
 Lid off, no hat, a pleasant surprise, life teems. 
 
 Medlar apples too case in point 
 
 Sponge absorbing life, sponge squeezed out, 
 
 Joy of ooze, joy of squeeze, joy of doubt 
 
 Suggesting universes 
 
 In fulfillment. 
 
 Crumbs crumble. 
 
 Narrow shoulders fall in. 
 
 Life goes on. 
 
 Maggots, fierce, eternal. 
 
 At end of tether 
 
 Infect the dead. 
 
BABEL 
 
 A sponge increasing. 
 
 Trousers filled out, 
 
 A balloon in the mist. 
 
 An unhappy life-preserver, 
 
 A thing throttling. 
 
 Better off — 
 
 Better on if you can save it . . . 
 
 A slant, a zig-zag, a spiral. 
 
 A plunge through space, 
 
 A pin-point seeking salvation, 
 
 A joy swimming, 
 
 A minnow, a whale. 
 
 Any minnow, any whale, 
 
 A reverberating laughter. 
 
 The cry of a woman in labour 
 
 Searching for an island. . . . 
 
 And so on, and so on. It took a full fifteen minutes to read 
 the whole poem. At the end there was applause. Someone 
 behind Gombarov leaned over his shoulder and asked him: 
 
 "What do you think of it?" 
 
 Gombarov recognised him as a young painter he had met 
 a few days before. He replied: 
 
 "I hardly know what to say. She seems to hint at dis- 
 integration of society." 
 
 "There's something in it," said the painter. "It is an 
 Ejcpressionist poem. She is trying to do in words what we 
 painters are doing in paint, to eliminate perspective, false senti- 
 ment and trivialities. Some think she is too conservative, leans 
 too much to the right. Anyhow, she is doing something to 
 destroy old forms and create new ones, which is all to the 
 good!" 
 
 After that the company rose, and there was more gnawing 
 of chicken bones. Gombarov talked with the poetess and 
 found her extremely sane in conversation. Indeed, he foimd 
 
 376 
 
BRAIN-STORM 
 
 all modern artists quite reasonable in their theories, which 
 they usually expressed with great clarity. It was only their 
 practice that he sometimes failed to grasp. 
 
 They left at one o'clock. It was bitterly cold, so that he 
 felt as if he hadn't a stitch of clothing on him, and Winifred 
 swore because they could not afford a taxi. 
 
 Back in his lodgings, he felt cold, wretched and alone. The 
 evening at Mrs. Van Dingen's left an ineffable impression of 
 chaos and dissolution. Such was the effect these groups of 
 ultra-moderns nearly always exercised on him. Yet he had 
 made such an effort to be modern, even ultra-modern. 
 
 "I wonder," he asked himself, not for the first time, "whether 
 I am old-fashioned? But that cannot be, for I detest the old 
 and the old-fashioned as much as they! They would ridicule 
 my love affair if they knew of it! What, then, is wrong with 
 me that I can find a place neither with the old nor the new?" 
 One thing was certain: the impulse of revolt was working in 
 them all against the world and its decadent institutions, against 
 the whole meaninglessness of life. Yet was not this revolt, 
 this intense desire to return to the primitive, in itself an indi- 
 cation of the decadence of the world? If that was true of the 
 artists, always the pulse-feelers of any age, was it not also 
 true that a phenomenon such as modern music and dancing 
 exhibited a similar temper among the people? 
 
 EIFT WITHIN THE LUTE 
 
 Next evening Gombarov arrived at the Gwynnes' in a cheer- 
 ful mood. He had disposed of three chapters from his book 
 for serial publication to a very "high-brow" magazine, which, 
 imfortunately, like all periodicals of that class, did not pay 
 well. Still, it looked like a turn of luck, and he felt pleased 
 with himself. Winifred, however, showed only a slight degree 
 
 377 
 
BABEL 
 
 of pleasure. She belonged to a more realistic world,. Why, 
 thu-ty dollars, the sum he would receive for those articles, 
 would keep the wolf from a New York door for just one week, 
 provided there were only one person behind that door. If 
 she were only a little more encouraging! 
 
 Even during that second week there were passionate inter- 
 vals, when she clung to him tenderly and craved a mutual 
 nakedness and fulfillment. He wanted her, yet had had 
 enough of snatching at life. He did not want to take what 
 was his own like a sneak-thief during her mother's brief 
 absences. He wanted the peace of a blue chamber, inviolate 
 agamst intrusion, the leisured delights of a king in his palace, 
 be that palace no more than a room several feet square. He 
 was afraid to hazard the future by ineffectual snatching, for 
 she was a virgin, and he knew what she did not know, that 
 a virgin was not to be taken as in novels, even in first-class 
 novels: that is, if the stories he had heard from husbands 
 were to be believed. In these passionate moments, when she 
 clung to him and they mutually craved one another, he felt 
 like one utterly lost. There they were, those two beings in 
 him, accursedly antithetic: the impulsive barbarian and the 
 responsible, calculating, civilised man, and the latter was the 
 stronger. Surely, he was between the devil and the sea. He 
 was aware of his losing in her eyes, yet should he hazard the 
 future for the instant? Once when, in passion, he was kissing 
 her, she turned to him and asked: 
 
 "Have you ever been with a woman?" 
 
 He was silent. 
 
 She went on: "You know what I mean!" 
 
 He had been preparing for the question, yet it took him 
 by surprise. On the steamer he had resolved to tell her every- 
 thing should the occasion arise. He wanted to keep nothing 
 
 378 
 
BRAIN-STORM 
 
 from her. He argued that she would forgive him everything 
 after the many trials of his love, his persistent devotion, and 
 his final sacrifice. 
 
 "Yes," he replied. 
 
 "Where?" She sat up suddenly and looked at him. 
 
 "Florence. That was when I thought you had given me up. 
 I had no idea then that you would return to me!" 
 
 "You mean to say that you were as dose as that to a 
 woman?" 
 
 He was silent. 
 
 "What sort of a woman was she? Tell me about her!" she 
 went on relentlessly, in a hard, cold voice, so unlike the warm, 
 passionate voice a few moments before. 
 
 "What is there to tell? She was just a woman, whom I 
 didn't love." 
 
 "But you were close to her, a woman of the streets, so close. 
 She was a woman of the streets, wasn't she? . . . And I 
 thought I was to be your first! . . . Another illusion gone. 
 So they go, one by one. . . ." 
 
 "Look here, Winnie, don't you understand? I was longing 
 for you. It wasn't my fault that you had left me. I was 
 alone and in utter despair. It was dark. ... I tried to 
 imagine it was you. I was sick with myself afterward. I have 
 not ceased loving you for an instant, and I have suffered. I 
 had made up my mind to tell you in any case. I have given up 
 everything to come and see you. After that, I thought nothing 
 could keep us apart. ... Do you want me to go?" he asked 
 suddenly. 
 
 "It seems to me that I ought to feel offended, not you!" 
 she replied. 
 
 For some time she sat like a stone, and said not a word. 
 He took her cold hand, and covered it with kisses. 
 
 379 
 
BABEL 
 
 "I suppose," she said at last, "I must accustom myself to 
 the idea . . . that I am to be second to a street woman. I 
 think," she added, "111 go and give myself to the first man 
 that wants me, before giving myself to you. That would be 
 only just!" 
 
 "Don't say thati" he exclaimed in misery, but in his heart: 
 "111 never tell the truth to a woman again!" 
 
 After two days they were reconciled, and just before his 
 departure for Philadelphia, she fastened her arms around his 
 neck and said with a great tenderness: 
 
 "I don't feel like letting you go, not even for a few days. 
 I never want to let you out of my sight again. I love you so! " 
 
 CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE AGAIN 
 
 He spent a week in Philadelphia, and he afterwards re- 
 membered it as a series of bitter and fragmentary impressions. 
 There were the leagues of erect sleepy streets with rows of 
 little red brick houses stretching into infinity. The same 
 sense of apathy and futOity hung over the town, in which he 
 had spent the best part of his life, as when he had left it. 
 There was the same frozen figure of William Penn on the tall 
 tower of the ugly City Hall, with new snow on the brim of 
 his hat. There were the same slow-moving yellow trolleys 
 and the same intermittent, depressing clank of their gongs. 
 His soul and body froze in the city of his unhappiness. 
 
 The same pall of doom hung over the Gombarov household, 
 and as in other days it caused his limbs to grow numb, robbed 
 him of his will. Stepfather Gombarov stood over the same 
 slant reading desk and went on collecting material for his 
 colossal History of Comparative Cultures, Ancient and Mod- 
 em, Oriental and Occidental, of which he was yet to do a line 
 of actual writmg. He had withered, had become but a shadow 
 
 380 
 
BRAIN-STORM 
 
 of himself. His deafness had grown worse; you had to shout 
 in his ear to make him hear. It was pitiful to see what had 
 become of his once sturdy, energetic frame. He was a broken, 
 a wasted man. Only his brain lived on, the dream of himself 
 had lived on. And as Gombarov looked at his stepfather, who 
 had caused such havoc in all their lives, he could no longer 
 hate him, only pity him. After all, he too had been a victim. 
 Natiure had endowed him with rich gifts, which other places 
 and other times might have made use of. Simply wasted 1 
 
 The two years had also greatly aged his mother, but as 
 before she was brave and all-enduring. Mother and son imder- 
 stood one another for the first time. He understood the love 
 she had given that strange, gifted, now broken man. Like- 
 wise he understood that it was such as she, capable of such 
 love as hers, that he had sought in his ovm love, and that such 
 love was a rare, rare thing, to be foimd only beyond the seven 
 fairy kingdoms. 
 
 As for the rest, Dimya was the same affectionate Dunya, 
 helping the family all she could in spite of her own two 
 young ones; Raya was the same old Raya, with a heart of 
 pure gold, working at artificial flowers by day and helping 
 evenings at home, a frustrate soul. There was Sonya an 
 invalid, and there was Katya suffering from imaginary illnesses. 
 The integrally honest Absalom, who had given up Art after 
 a four yejirs' infatuation because he saw no place for it in 
 a mechanised society, was a bookkeeper, admired and beloved 
 by all who came in contact with him for the chastity of his 
 soul. Misha was home on a visit. He was working in a 
 Government scientific institution in Detroit, and he sent all 
 his earnings home, all but what he required for his bare neces- 
 sities. He was a mathematical genius, in character like his 
 father, an eternal child. Margaret, the youngest, now a 
 
 381 
 
BABEL 
 
 pretty girl of seventeen, was, with the exception of Dunya, 
 the most cheerful of the Gombarovs, but child-like and guile- 
 less like the rest. All the Gombarovs had gifts, but curiously 
 they remained misfits in an industrial society, anachronisms 
 in an age of machines. In this new world they were like 
 flowers clinging desperately to the side of a rock, which had not 
 sufficient earthiness for them to dig their roots deep in. 
 
 His last vision, as he caught the trolley for the raUway 
 station, was that of his mother, a small, somewhat hunched 
 figure, standing on the snowed-up sidewalk and looking 
 towards him in an attitude of imutterably tender wistfulness. 
 
 One thing he afterwards remembered of his visit to the City 
 of Brotherly Love with a peculiar satisfaction, and that was 
 his call on the New World. His old colleagues were all there. 
 They immediately surrounded him with the curiosity that 
 practical, sensible men, frustrate in their hearts, had for a 
 nomad and adventurer, who had dared to cast off his chains 
 of sloth and comfort. His old chief and friend, Mr. Clarke, 
 came in and extended him a hearty welcome with both hands, 
 exclaiming: 
 
 "Have you come back to us? Are you ready to roll up your 
 sleeves and join the boys?" 
 
 Gombarov looked quizzical. 
 
 "I am not joking," said Mr. Clarke, catching his look. "I 
 promised to keep the job open for you a year. You've been 
 away two. But I won't hold that up against you. We miss 
 you here!" 
 
 Gombarov's thoughts for an instant concentrated on the 
 slimness of his purse and on the hopelessness of his outlook. 
 Here was a chance to obtain material security. The tempta- 
 tion was great. His hesitation lasted some seconds, but a wave 
 of pride and defiance sweeping over him, he answered firmly: 
 
 382 
 
BRAIN-STORM 
 
 "No, I haven't come for thatl" 
 
 He, a penniless beggar, was defjring the cruel gods. It was 
 good to defy the godsl 
 
 THICK, AND FASTEKI 
 
 He returned to New York with a little over fifty dollars in 
 his pocket. This was to pay for his subsistence there and 
 for a ticket to take him back to London. And then? The 
 heaviness of his heart increased in ratio to the lightening of his 
 purse. And in his week's absence he had received but one 
 brief note from Winifred. Considering the fervency of their 
 parting, this note was as the breath from an ice chest. It 
 caused him not a little misgiving. 
 
 He went direct to the Gwynnes, investing a dollar on the 
 way in violets, which Winifred loved. He greeted her affection- 
 ately, but to his chagrin, she turned her head so that his kiss 
 intended for the lips miscarried to the cheek. His heart went 
 numb. She seemed cold and indifferent. He decided to be 
 patient. Women were sometimes like that. Two days passed, 
 and her mood did not change. 
 
 "Do you realise," he asked her one evening, "that in a few 
 days I shall be returning to London?" 
 
 She made no reply. 
 
 "Perhaps," he continued, "I shouldn't have come!" 
 
 "Why did you?" 
 
 "As if you didn't know! You yourself begged me to come. 
 And I have given up everything to please you." 
 
 "It isn't nice of you to harp on that. You wanted to come, 
 didn't you? You did it to please yourself!" 
 
 What could he say after that? It would be futile to remind 
 her of those clamorous letters, entreating him to come over, 
 "if only for one wee little instant!" 
 
 383 
 
BABEL 
 
 "I suppose you and yoin: mother have talked me over in my 
 absence and decided that it won't do to tie yourself up with 
 a failure?" 
 
 "You always blame mother I She is the dearest soul in the 
 world. But you are not the same John that I once knew. 
 You are somehow different. Can't we be friends?" 
 
 "I see it is iime for me to gol" He rose. He began wrap- 
 ping up some things he had there, prolonging the operation to 
 give her a chance to think over the course she was pursuing. 
 
 "You are not going? Like that?" 
 
 "How should I go? Rejoicing? I know when I'm not 
 wanted!" 
 
 "But you are expected with us at Roneys' tomorrow night. 
 They've asked some people to meet you!" 
 
 "You can give them my apologies. Give them any excuse 
 you like! Good-byl" 
 
 She started weeping. 
 
 "What is the use of that? It is your will, not mine. It 
 is for me to weep. Good-by ! " 
 
 And he walked out. 
 
 A fine snow was falling, and melted as it fell. The ground 
 was covered with sleet, and his feet sagged in it as if they 
 were walking over wet sponges, which oozed their cold moisture 
 into his low English shoes, not made for coping with a New 
 York winter. He felt empty, poignantly empty, as a shell 
 walking, only conscious of his extremities, numbed feet and 
 hands and a numbed brain. He did not want to go back to 
 his cold empty room. Where should he go? He wanted 
 warmth, the warm contact of a male presence. He decided 
 he would look up Roney at his office. He hoped he would 
 be in. He could not bear a disappointment. He ascended 
 the nearest elevated station. Ascending, there was the im- 
 
 384 
 
BRAINSTORM 
 
 comfortable feeling of cold, wet drops dripping. As he held 
 on to the cold, iron banister, one drop struck his nose, another 
 went down his neck. The station platform was deserted. 
 The lights of the train approached, precipitately. There was 
 an impulse to jximp, to end it all, this ridiculous farce of life. 
 The train pulled up with a harsh, grating sound. He took a 
 seat A row of sallow, tortured faces seemed to gape at him. 
 He felt an Ishmael, a Pariah, a Wandering Jew. 
 
 He got out near Park Row, once more trudged over wet 
 sponges. Thank God, Roney was in! 
 
 "^Tiat's the matter, John?" Roney looked at his friend's 
 ashen-green face, and guessed the truth. "Anyhow, let's go to 
 the Press Club. We can have a drink and a chat there 1 " And 
 he took Gombarov affectionately under the arm. 
 
 "I have come to offer apologies," said Gombarov, once they 
 were comfortably seated near the radiator over drinks. "I 
 can't come to your party tomorrow. I want you to know why." 
 And Gombarov told him. 
 
 Roney whistled. ''1 call it a bit thick to bring you all the 
 way over for this. A real dirty trick!" He put a hand on 
 Gombarov's shoulder. "Are they coming tomorrow?" 
 
 "I believe so!" 
 
 "\\'ell, leave it to me! Ill tell them what I think of it, 
 you may bet on that!" 
 
 They parted at one. Gombarov went to his lodgings. To 
 sle^P Was it likely? 
 
 The snow wait on falling. 
 
 BRAIN jazz! 
 
 His head on the pillow, his body curled up between the 
 sheets, his numbed brain began to thaw and to release all 
 manner of thoughts, harsh, jangling, full of contrariety, like 
 
 38s 
 
BABEL 
 
 the tunes of the band he had heard on the evening of his 
 arrival. His mind was in a state of jazz, was jazz. 
 
 Three Gombarovs sat somewhere in his brain and manipu- 
 lated the instruments of his mind and soul. One played the 
 harsh notes, another the soft, the third was neutral and punc- 
 tuated the antithetical tune with the inevitable drum beat: 
 "It had to be!" 
 
 "Serve you right! " said the hard, jeering one. 
 
 "You have done the best that was in you!" said the soft- 
 voiced one. 
 
 "It had to be!" staccatoed the neutral one, on his dnun. 
 
 "Three times she has fooled you! Hal Ha!" 
 
 "You couldn't have done differently. Greater ones than you 
 have been fooled! It was always thus!" 
 
 "It had to be! It had to be! " 
 
 "Remember on the ship? What did you call her then? 
 Your one hope, your white girl, your eternity! What now?" 
 
 "I was not wrong. She is not to blame. It's the worldl 
 Her mother! Poor purse! Circimistance!" 
 
 "It had to be! Thump! Thump!" and three voices, to- 
 gether, cried, "Hey, huh-h!" 
 
 The jazz band of three Gombarovs played a tune in his 
 brain. It was a tune of dissolution, a time of chaos, and to 
 this tune, his being, drawn and held by the sensuous allure 
 of Death, and gripped by her invisible, passionate, tender 
 fingers, danced with her, limb to limb, breaths mingling, the 
 jazz of dissolution, the jazz of death. Gombarov wanted to 
 die. He had nothing to live for. He felt so poor, so empty, 
 so alone. And his mind went on playing its jazz tune. 
 
 "You've had your chance! You should have taken her, 
 possessed her, filled her with yourself! And she would have 
 been yours!" 
 
 386 
 
BRAIN-STORM 
 
 "I did not want to hazard the future! I did not think that 
 she could possibly desert me, not after my loving her so, not 
 after my coming three thousand miles to see her!" 
 
 "It had to be 1 It had to be 1" 
 
 "Fool! Are you a man? You should have possessed her! 
 Had you come thrice three thousand miles, it would have been 
 the same! Not by the length of his joum^rs does a woman 
 judge a man!" 
 
 "I thought to conquer her by civilised means, by great love, 
 by stiffering, by sacrifice!" 
 
 "It had to be! It had to be!" 
 
 "Nonsense, man! Woman is primitive, man is a savage! 
 They deceive, seduce one another, by putting on veils of 
 illusion. But in the end, man? They strip off their veils, 
 tear their illusions into tatters, leap at one another like 
 savages!" 
 
 "That is not the whole truth. I cannot believe it. I will 
 not believe it! I will be myself, if I am to lose everything! 
 I want a beyond-love! I admit, present facts are against me I 
 I also know that there are others who believe as I do, and 
 that there is great happiness for men and women if they could 
 only will to find it! " 
 
 "It had to be! It had to be! " 
 
 "Bah I You are a greater fool than I had thought! A 
 romantic fool! As foolish as Don Quixote! Anyhow, it 
 do^n't matter! Your Dulcinea was only Aldonza!" 
 
 "No! No! I shall persist in thinking her Dulcinea! 
 There's something fine in her! But she could not stand up 
 against a practical, mercenary world. Besides, I am sure 
 her mother had a finger in the pie!" 
 
 "It had to be!" 
 
 "You make me sick! You should have caught her by the 
 
 387 
 
BABEL 
 
 throat, and beaten her, had your will of her! She would have 
 liked that! And she would have been yours!" 
 
 "I wonder. . . . But even if it is true. ... I wanted to 
 win her in a different way! If I have no power to win but 
 by arrogance and force, then I have no power. That is what 
 is hardest to bear! I have failed. I have not enough inner 
 power! And I needed just that to conquer the outer world! 
 I am weak! I have failed! There's but to die, or to bear one's 
 cross! That, too, requires power!" 
 
 "It had to be! It had to be!" 
 
 "Die? No, j'ouTl not die. Need I remind you that it is 
 not the first time you have wished to die? Every time she 
 forsook you, you wished to die. Yet you are alive! You may 
 consider yourself lucky one day. . . ." 
 
 "No! No! No! I cannot believe it! I caimot believe iti 
 She cannot be so cruel! She will regret this, she will be sorry. 
 She will send for me! She loves me! She, no more than I, 
 can live without love!" 
 
 "It had to be! It had to be! It had to be!" 
 
 He rose from his bed, lit the gas, and looked in the mirror. 
 The arteries on his temples throbbed, stood out windingly like 
 twin Jordans. It hurt him when he put his fingers there. He 
 remembered what the doctor had told him when Winifred had 
 forsaken him the first time, two years before. He must not 
 worry! He must not be wrought up to such a point that the 
 arteries stood out. Oh, yes, he must try and keep cool! Cool! 
 But he felt more like breaking things. If he could only throw 
 something out of the window, hear the crash of glass! He 
 walked up and down the room, and cursed and blasphemed. 
 It was a great relief. 
 
 He managed to get two hours' sleep towards morning. It 
 was warm and there was no vestige of last night's snow. At 
 ten he went out to breakfast, and before eleven returned to 
 
 388 
 
BRAIN-STORM 
 
 his room to get a handkerchief. He was planniBg to walk, 
 his one panacea. But he no sooner reached his room than 
 with astonishing suddenness a high wind rose and huge snow- 
 fiakes began to fall. They fell thick and fast and persistently, 
 and the \'iolent gusts taking them up swept them in eddies like 
 withered leaves. -^ hoxir passed, and neither the snow nor 
 the wind showed signs of abating. The wind, indeed, had 
 increased in velocity, and the flakes fell huger and faster. It 
 was a real blizzard. Gombarov, pacing the room, suddenly 
 remembered that it was his birthday. He muttered, half 
 automatically: 
 
 "Cursed be the day on which I was bom. . . ." 
 
 Then he laughed aloud. He was feeling like an actor in 
 a play, and that made matters easier. 
 
 'Fall, snow! Fall faster! Fall furiously! Bury me! Oh, 
 gods, do your worst!" 
 
 It was good to feel ever5rthing against one. It exhilarated 
 him, made him feel defiant. It was good to stand with one's 
 back to the wall and hit out with one's fists. 
 
 "Oh, gods!" he cried again, with a fury that vied with 
 theirs, "Oh, gods! Do your worst, and damn you!" 
 
 He walked up and down the room, fierce and exultant. If 
 only he could have a fire in the room. His feet felt unpleas- 
 antly cold. But his head was hot with fury and defiance. 
 Only with falling twilight, his previous evening's mood of 
 mental jazz returned and tormented him with its diabolic, 
 vari^ated tune. The snow went on falling. He had not gone 
 out all that day, but had the landlady bring him up some 
 bread, butter and cheese and a pot of tea. And he continued 
 pacing up and down the room. Several times the telephone 
 bell rang in the hall below, and he wondered whether it 
 was from her. Hope was constantly reborn, and as constantly 
 died. 
 
 389 
 
BABEL 
 
 woman's PRIVrLEGE 
 
 It was the worst blizzard New York had had in twenty 
 years. In some places the drifts were several feet high. Motor 
 cars sometimes skirted round the cleared sidewalks, and motor 
 'buses had to be dug out in Fifth Avenue. Armies of men 
 were at work, and the snow was being piled up in huge banks, 
 behind which a tall man could hide. In the dimly lit cross- 
 town streets several hold-ups had occurred. 
 
 Bravely, Gombarov went on interviewing editors, but with 
 ill success. He also saw Roney, who told him what happened 
 at the party. Mrs. Gwynne tried to get him aside to explain 
 the causes of Gombarov's absence. But Roney cut her short 
 and told her that the way Gombarov was being treated was 
 "a mean shame." Moreover, he had proposed a toast to his 
 absent friend, which made the Gwynnes uncomfortable. 
 
 Evidently, they were still uncomfortable, for on the third 
 day after their parting he had a telephone call before break- 
 fast. 
 
 "Come over. I want to see you! " said Winifred. 
 
 "What do you want to see me about?" 
 
 "I want to talk to you about that little London shop." 
 
 This was in reference to a modem art shop that Mrs. 
 Gwynne proposed to start in London. She was giving up her 
 job, and Gombarov had suggested the scheme, which made 
 possible their going to London. He knew the artists person- 
 ally and could secure their co-operation. 
 
 "Is that all?" he laughed. "The shop doesn't interest me! 
 Good-by ! " And he hung up the receiver. 
 
 Next day at the same hour the telephone bell rang again. 
 
 "Do come over," pleaded Winifred. "You won't be 
 sorry!" 
 
 390 
 
BRAINSTORM 
 
 "Are you sure of that?" 
 
 "I mean it! Do, please!" 
 
 He went over. He entered and stood still. She approached 
 him somewhat shamefacedly, put her arms on his shoulders, 
 hid her face in his bosom. 
 
 "I can't do without you," she munnured. "Love is every- 
 thing, life nothing without love. Forgive me for making you 
 suffer. You mustn't mind me if I get into one of those moods. 
 We women sometimes can't help oiu- moods! " 
 
 She appeared chastened. They sat down on the couch and 
 talked quietly. 
 
 "I must be leaving for London in a few days," he said. 
 "Anyhow, you and your mother are planning to come over in 
 a month or so, so the parting won't be a long one. It will be 
 good to meet over there. I cannot say that I feel at home 
 in New York. You'll find me more cheerful over there. And 
 it will be jolly to show you round. In London, too, you can 
 live more cheaply, and amuse yourself without being a multi- 
 miUionairel" 
 
 "I do not feel like letting you out of my sight, not for an 
 instant, John!" 
 
 The day was fine, there was a thaw in the air. They went 
 walking through Central Park, and were happy. 
 
 Next day he bought his ticket for London, third-class, on a 
 sister liner to the one on which he had arrived. It was to sail 
 nine days hence. 
 
 Three days went by fairly happily. Then again she be^n 
 to cool. Remembering her injunction not to mind her 
 woman's moods, he tried patience and silence. He let two 
 da\-s pass. But four days remained of his stay. She might 
 consider that. She might try to look cheerful. He did not 
 want to leave for London, consumed by doubts. And he let 
 
 391 
 
BABEL 
 
 another day pass, without change in her mood. In the evening 
 he had some words with her. 
 
 All next day he spent in walking the streets and in sitting 
 in cafes, deliberating. He was moved inwardly as by some 
 impersonal spirit, detached and compelling, urging and lashing 
 him on, fiercely, inevitably, not to be turned aside by any 
 intimate will. That evening the final test would come. 
 Moved by this greater will he would force it, though he lose 
 his kingdom. He hardened himself. He might have to pay 
 the full price to retain his manhood. 
 
 He disregarded the telephone message left at the house for 
 him to join them at dinner. He knew this was an overture 
 to peace, but he disregarded it. He came after dinner. 
 
 "Hello, John!" she said softly, as she opened the door to 
 him, dressed in a frock he loved her best in. 
 
 "Hello!" he greeted her with constrained coolness. "I want 
 to talk to you!" And she looked so sweet and conciliatory 
 that he felt the need of fiu^ther hardening himself. 
 
 They sat down on the couch. She was very dose to him, 
 nestled her head up against him. But he disregarded this. 
 For some moments neither spoke. It was hard for him to 
 speak, with her so close to him, nestling up to him. His cour- 
 age wavered, but only for an instant. He went on hardening 
 himself. 
 
 "How intuitive women are!" he thought. "She is very nice 
 tonight because she knows what's coming! But if she really 
 loves me, she will cling to me, surely not let me go even after 
 what I have to tell her. If she doesn't, then it doesn't matter. 
 I must have all or nothing, and in the final analysis this is 
 the test!" 
 
 He hardened himself, held himself taut, at last cleared his 
 throat, and said without glancing at her: 
 
 392 
 
BRAINSTORM 
 
 "I have been thinking matters over. Things can't go on 
 like this. I can't have you loving me every other day. You 
 asked me to overlook your moods, and I have tried to. But 
 when you consider that I've only another three or four days' 
 stay, such moods become wholly incomprehensible. I simply 
 cant grasp them. I don't want to leave for London tortured 
 with doubts as to whether you love me. . , . Perhaps, it is 
 better we should part for good. . . ." His voice broke. He 
 waited for the words that would settle his fate. 
 
 She edged away from him somewhat before she spoke. 
 
 "So you think the same as I do!" came from her, in a voice 
 without a tremor. 
 
 Gombarov felt fcunt at these words, and his heart was filled 
 with hollow echoes of the irrevocable. She went on: 
 
 "I am so glad we are of the same opinion. I thought possi- 
 bly I might be in the wrong!" 
 
 These were hard words, words of doom. He had made 
 his gambler's throw, and he had lost. He said nothing. 
 He heard her voice, sounding muffled as from behind a 
 wall: 
 
 "Our temperaments are not suited to one smother. Anyhow, 
 you haven't enough money to support a wife. . . ." 
 
 That roused him. "VHiy not put the last first? Well, it's 
 time to clear out!" He rose. 
 
 "Don't go yet!" She gave a little agitated cry, and put a 
 hand on his arm. 
 
 "WTiat now? Why shouldn't I go?" 
 
 "There's the little shop to talk over." 
 
 He faced her. "The little shop?" 
 
 "Yes, the little art shop in London. Motho:, you know, 
 has given up her job, because you promised yom- help with 
 the little shop. She can't do it without you! " 
 
 393 
 
BABEL 
 
 He was dumbfounded. He had not counted on this. It 
 wa« not on his programme. 
 
 "Is that why you came back to me the last time?" he asked 
 fiercely. 
 
 "No! No! That wasn't it at all!" She gave again her 
 agitated little cry. 
 
 "It seems to me," he went on, "that your instinct of self- 
 preservation is pretty weU developed, if your love isn't. Have 
 you no consideration for my feelings at all that you expect 
 me to work with you two after this? Must you add insult 
 to injury? Isn't it enough that I have crossed the sea on a 
 wild goose chase, and spent every red cent I had and bor- 
 rowed in doing it?" 
 
 "There, you go harping on that!" 
 
 "Surely, it is too much. . . ." 
 
 Winifred sat down, burying her face in hex hands, and 
 began to weep. 
 
 "Good-by!" said Gombarov, stretching out his hand. 
 
 "Mother!" sobbed Winifred, rising and going to the door of 
 the next room. "He is going!" 
 
 Mrs. Gwynne entered. 
 
 "Mother, he refuses to help you with the little shop!" 
 
 "How can I?" he asked, looking and feeling helpless. 
 "Winifred doesn't want me, so what is there for me to do but 
 go? Put yourself in my place!" 
 
 "And I've given up my job because you. . . . " — and 
 the elder woman picked up a handkerchief to wipe her 
 tears. 
 
 Gombarov felt helpless between these two sobbing women, 
 as he stood irresolutely fingering his hat, certain that no 
 knight errant ever found himself in so embarrassing a position 
 as this. Women's tears had a way of unmanning him, though 
 
 394 
 
BRAIN-STORM 
 
 he could be unflinching in circumstances more tragic. He 
 fought with himself. 
 
 "You must let me think it over I" he said at last, seeking 
 some excuse to get away. 
 
 But the two women went on sobbing. 
 
 "All right!" he said, in desperation. "Ill help you, if you 
 insist on it!" The words were wnmg out of him by his old 
 pity, which reasserted itself. Who knew: perhaps he had 
 really taken the bread out of their mouths? He did not want 
 anyone to suffer on his account. 
 
 They dried their tears and exchanged irrelevancies with 
 him, which he later did not remember. They were as frag- 
 ments of conversation one hears in nightmares and which 
 escape on waking. He only remembered Winifred sajring: 
 
 "You'll see us before you go, won't you? Tomorrow is 
 Sunday, and you'll not be having any business. Why not 
 come round, and if the day is nice we can take a walk through 
 the Park?" 
 
 "Thank you. You had better not expect me. Good-bye! " 
 
 Next day he wrote and said that after thinking matters 
 over he had decided that it was impossible for him to assist 
 them in London. 
 
 "it is you, O HAItLOT CITY!" 
 
 Two days later he sailed. Roney was there to see him off. 
 Roney said: 
 
 "Look here, I don't want you to be short when you get to 
 London. I got my pay today. I propose to lend you twenty- 
 five dollars. Don't say, No!" 
 
 Roney was a brick. He stayed with Gombaxov until he 
 boarded the ship. There was a long friendly pressure of 
 hands, and impulsively they kissed one another. Gombarov 
 
 395 
 
BABEL 
 
 ascended the gang-board, waved a farewell from deck, and 
 sought his berth. 
 
 He had an upper berth in a four-berth cabin, which was 
 quite an international affair, his fellow inmates consisting of 
 an Irishman, an Englishman and a Czech. The last, a pon- 
 derous, globular mass of flesh and entrails, weighing twenty 
 stone or more, slept in the berth imder Gombarov's. He in- 
 variably lay on his back, and the apex of his paunch reached 
 half way towards the upper berth. He loved Isdng down, 
 and once he lay down he slept, and once he slept he snored. 
 When he did not whistle or play the flute, he hummed like a 
 kettle before coming to a boil or made hoarse noises like a 
 seal, or blew on the trumpet, or imitated a fog horn, or drew a 
 deep note as from a bass viol, or simply groaned and moaned, 
 often achieving extraordinary combinations and contra-puntal 
 effects; and all the while his globular shape heaved audibly, 
 and to Gombarov's distress, pumped great volimies of breath 
 upward. He was like a imiverse in himself, obscene and dis- 
 gusting, and his emanations overwhelmed one, there was no 
 escaping them. And Gombarov, unhappy and distraught over 
 the ways of the world, perceived in him a symbol of xmuttor- 
 able things then stirring across the face of the earth. For in 
 speaking to him, Gombarov discovered that the man was a 
 good citizen, had a house in Springfield, Illinois, was the father 
 of eight children, loved comfort, had two bath-tubs and one 
 gramophone, and always voted the straight Republican ticket. 
 He had achieved all this and more by his own efforts, and now 
 he was "coming home" for a spell "to see the old folks." 
 
 The Irishman in the opposite upper berth brought three 
 bottles of whiskey on board with him, was indeed drunk when 
 he came on board, and when Gombarov entered the cabin of- 
 fered drinks all around. The Englishman was a sturdy young 
 
 396 
 
BRAIN-STORM 
 
 sailor, who took to Gombarov at once, and within a day or 
 so affectionately addressed him as "Jim." He offered to find 
 him a job as a stoker on that ship if he wanted one, and 
 Gombarov felt flattered at being credited by a human bull- 
 dog with such high masculine attributes. 
 
 Owing to the rate war between German and British lines, 
 the ship was tmcomfortably crowded, twelve hundred third- 
 class passengers going to Eiu-ope as against two hundred odd 
 who had sailed for America on the sister-liner. But among 
 the two hundred he remembered the simple faces, the brilliant 
 peasant costumes, the half dozen fiddles, the spirited merry- 
 making and dances. Among these twelve hundred he noted 
 the complacent faces of the do-wells, the drab standard suits, 
 three wretched mouth-organs, and furtive groups of males 
 sniggering over smutty stories. 
 
 Hope was the name of the ship he had sailed on from 
 England, and the name of this ship was Resignation. But 
 there were six dajrs of fine weather, thank God for that! He 
 basked on deck all day long, like a cat, and the sky and the 
 sun and the sea absorbed the poison of his discontent. Only 
 when he had left New York, just as the ship pulled out and 
 he watched the receding buildings from the stem did he expe- 
 rience tempestuous emotion, active sorrow and fmy. But 
 there were many passengers on board, and he concealed all 
 that strove within for dramatic expression. He shook a mental 
 fist at the receding city and her towers of stone and steel. 
 
 "It is you, O harlot city!" he cried in his soul, "who are 
 responsible! For all! For all! It is you who have thwarted 
 and corrupted the hmnan soul! It is you who have robbed 
 me of my own! Go on, then, dancing round your golden 
 calf! For your doom is coming some day! Or there is no 
 justice, and no God!" 
 
 397 
 
BOOK IV 
 BEFORE THE FALL 
 
CHAPTER XI: LOVE'S METAMORPHOSIS 
 
 "Without Contraries is no progres- 
 sion. Attraction and Repulsion, 
 Reason and Energy, Love and 
 Hate, are necessary to Human 
 existence. From these Contraries 
 spring what the religious call 
 Good and Evil. Good is the pas- 
 sion that obeys Reason. Evil is 
 the active springing from Energy. 
 . . . Energy is Eternal Delight." 
 — Blake. 
 
 It was good to be back in London. On an evening late 
 in March he arrived at Paddington from Fishguard. It was 
 warm, a fine rain was falling. He did not mind the wet. So 
 glad was he to feel the stones of London under his feet that 
 he could have bent down and kissed them. He boarded the 
 undergroimd train for West Kensington, where he knew a 
 young cheerful couple, the Carltons, Phil and Moll, a strug- 
 gling author and his wife, living in a modest apartment. He 
 had been of some assistance to them in various ways, and it 
 occurred to him that he might find temporary "digs" in the 
 same house. 
 
 Moll, with a baby in her arms, opened the door to him. 
 
 "You don't look the same man at all!" she said in North 
 of England accents. "What do you think, Phil?" This to 
 her husband, who suddenly appeared in the door. "What's 
 happened to you, man?" 
 
 401 
 
BABEL 
 
 "A lot of things!" he said enigmatically. "Do you think 
 I can have a room in the house?" 
 
 The landlady was called, and he was accommodated on 
 the top floor. 
 
 The top floor, a large one, was occupied by suffragettes, 
 save for his own small room, which was no wider than a cor- 
 ridor. He prepared his own breakfast. There was a small 
 kitchen at the back, which he shared with the suf&agettes, 
 much to the annoyance of one or two of them. They belonged 
 to the militant section of the movement, and some of them 
 had been in Holloway; in talking with them and in studying 
 their demeanoiur he was not long in coming to the conclusion 
 that they were moved by an intense, consuming hatred of 
 men, for no reason than that men were men. 
 
 His immediate neighbour, Mrs. Thomas, had deserted or 
 been deserted by her husband, who had used her "as a chat- 
 tel" until she revolted and refused him access; he was now 
 living with a barmaid. Mrs. Thomas was small and femi- 
 nine, and she shared rooms with a Miss Clackton, who was 
 tall and masculine and walked with the firm gait of a grena- 
 dier. All day Miss Clackton was away at the suffrage head- 
 quarters. In the evening she retiimed to a meal prepared 
 by Mrs. Thomas. Through the wall he could hear their 
 voices, endearments and muffled supplications. They "dar- 
 linged" one another a great deal. 
 
 The back room, next to the kitchen, was occupied by two 
 girls, one pretty and lively, whom he tried to talk to, only 
 to be rebuffed in a way that seemed to imply: "Men are be- 
 neath me!" But when he was in the kitchen in the evening 
 preparing a cup of tea, he could hear her sensual, hysterical 
 laughter, as of a girl in a man's embrace. For some time he 
 could not understand this contradiction. 
 
 402 
 
LOVE'S METAMORPHOSIS 
 
 He knew they resented his being there; intuitively they 
 must have sensed his being a male with definitely male feel- 
 ings. They maintained, however, an outward friendliness, 
 and once or twice in the kitchen Mrs. Thomas condescended 
 to exchange views with him on the sex question, and revealed 
 herself as utterly opposed to any bodily surrender of woman 
 to man, lea\'ing him to imply that if there were no other way 
 to breed, the human race had better die out. She harped on 
 the "ugliness" of the contact, the hatefulness of "Love's con- 
 summation," "the clmnsy method" — borrowing a phrase from 
 John Stuart Mill — Nature had devised for bringing children 
 into the world. She was eaten up with hatred of Nature and 
 God and Man for having things all their own way, a wicked 
 way I 
 
 "I agree with you," he said, with moderation, "that women 
 ought to have the vote if they want it, that is, on economic 
 grounds. But there is no use merely doubling the vote, for 
 I take it that there are as many shades of opinion among 
 women as among men. The question of women voting would 
 never have come up but for the iovention of the machine and 
 the mechanisation of society. In fact, all modern problems 
 have arisen with the machine!" 
 
 "I don't see that at all! Women were before machines!" 
 
 "Don't you see," he went on, "the origin of woman suffrage 
 dates from the introduction of the spindle and the loom, when 
 women and children went to work for the first time and be- 
 came separate and distinct economic imits, and the old fam- 
 ily unit was broken. And there are other problems for which 
 the machine is responsible. You complain of England's over- 
 population, but it is the machine that has enabled England 
 to receive food from abroad in exchange for manufactured 
 products, and so the population has multiplied. You com- 
 
 403 
 
BABEL 
 
 plain of what you call the 'man-made world,' as being dull, 
 ugly and uninteresting, and again you have the machine to 
 blame, for it has killed craftsmanship and all the joy of indi- 
 vidual creating. . . . And so I, personally, caimot but regard 
 woman suffrage as an evil in itself, but a necessary evil in 
 our complicated, mechanised age. It is but another cog in 
 the machine of society, necessary in the machine, but as 
 useless, really, as are the other cogs, or the whole machine, 
 for that matter. If one cog goes wrong, the whole machine 
 goes wrong — and the cogs are always going wrong!" 
 
 Mrs. Thomas demurred. She called his "a man's point of 
 view." She liked the machine and all the comforts it brought, 
 and if it was responsible for woman coming to her conscious- 
 ness, then she liked it the more! 
 
 "But don't you see," argued Gombarov, "it hasn't changed 
 the fundamental problems at all, and a woman's surrendo: 
 to a man can no more be a matter for bargaining than it was 
 before. It can be neither a question of money, nor of law 
 or equaUty. It is a question of love, which is above all 
 these!" 
 
 "But how can there be love without equality?" 
 
 "Love is not a tacit understanding between equals," asserted 
 Gombarov, by this time exasperated. "It is quite usually, as a 
 matter of fact, an unreasoning and ultimate reconcOement 
 between violent antitheses. It is a fusion of elements as 
 widely opposed as fire and water!" 
 
 "Very likely!" said Mrs. Thomas, with a caustic smile. 
 "And what happens? Fire makes water boil, water puts fire 
 out!" 
 
 She scored, and knew it. Gombarov, usually ready with 
 his answer, was flustered, a little enraged, too, at having been 
 
 404 
 
LOVE'S METAMORPHOSIS 
 
 bested by a woman. All the same, he said to himself, he was 
 right, and she a miserable "man-hater"! 
 
 He had enough problems of his own to worry about. The 
 needs of his stomach generated an energy, and he rose every 
 morning early to work on articles. When he heard the scrap- 
 ing of toast in the kitchen — for the masculine Miss Clackton 
 invariably allowed it to bum, kitchen-work being beneath her 
 dignity — he knew it was time to get up. Within a fortnight 
 of his return he had half a dozen articles going the rounds, 
 so far without luck. He was in a bad way. His money was 
 running low. One day, lying on his cot, he said to himself: 
 
 "If nothing comes tomorrow, I shall go tramping. Do 
 odd farm jobs until something tiuns up!" 
 
 That very evening a small cheque arrived. The next 
 morning another. 
 
 "Curious! " he thought. "Things always seem to tiun when 
 they are at their worst. Is it accident? But as a fatalist 
 and something of a predestinarian I cannot quite believe in 
 accident! Of cotu"se, these ideas do not exclude accident as 
 a deliberate part of the process!" And, as at other times, 
 he was moved by a strange faith, which defied and challenged 
 all reason. 
 
 He was starved for a woman. For awhile his mind turned 
 to Judith, whom he had not seen since that imforgettable day 
 of her mother's death. He made a search for her in the cafes 
 of the West End, and finally visited the house in MDe End 
 Road. Other people lived there. "So it is always," he re- 
 flected, as he departed, crestfallen. "Too late! Too late!" 
 
 Among the visiting suffragettes was a quiet, little, blue- 
 eyed, fair-haired woman, a Mrs. Lucy Reval, who alone ap- 
 peared friendly to him. When his door was open, she would 
 
 40s 
 
BABEL 
 
 sometimes walk in, glance with respect at the scattered pages 
 of manuscript and engage in talk with him. Despite her out- 
 ward quiet she had a reputation for being fiercely militant. 
 She had seen the inside of Holloway, where she went on a 
 hunger-strike. He sensed in her a fondness for him. She 
 had attractions, and he liked her. 
 
 One day, when she entered the room in her casual way, he 
 suddenly drew her to him and kissed her. She did not pro- 
 test, but merely asked: 
 
 "Do you like me? You know, I am very fond of you." 
 
 They made aji appointment for tea the next day at her 
 flat. 
 
 "Do bring some of yoxu: writings, and read to me," she said. 
 
 It was a warm April day, and she was dressed in white 
 summery garments when he called. Her slender arms were 
 visible through the thin material. She placed him in a com- 
 fortable chair and arranged a cushion at his head, then went 
 to the kitchen and returned with a tray containing sand- 
 wiches, cakes and tea. She sat down opposite him and they 
 talked over the tea like two old pals. 
 
 "How do you get on with your neighbours?" she asked. 
 
 "Not very well. I have the misfortime to be a man, and 
 I can't conceal the fact from them." 
 
 "They are rather fanatical about men. Now, I don't object 
 to men as individuals. It's their system I detest. Not that 
 I blame Mrs. Thomas. Poor thing, she's had a dreadful 
 time with her husband I And there are ever so many women 
 in the same fix. Your English husband today uses his wife 
 just as he would a steak and kidney pie, to satisfy his appe- 
 tite! There's no flavour, no fiaesse in the relation. I myself 
 had to chuck my husband, because he didn't know how to 
 treat a woman." 
 
 406 
 
LOVE'S METAMORPHOSIS 
 
 "What I don't understand is how those two women can 
 stand one another." 
 
 "You mean Mrs. Thomas and Miss Clackton." 
 
 "They are such antitheses! And the Clackton girl is too 
 much of a man to suit me!" 
 
 Mrs. Reval smiled, seemed about to speak, but said nothing. 
 
 "What made you become a suffragette? You don't seem 
 like the others!" 
 
 Again she laughed. "A psychoanalyst was indirectly to 
 blame!" She paused. 
 
 "How could that be?" 
 
 "It was like this. I was at a loose end for some time after 
 I left my husband. Didn't know what to do with mjredf. 
 I tried a millinery shop for a while, but got sick of it. I 
 tried other things, but everything tired me. I wanted to do 
 things that meant something. It was too late for me to 
 dabble in the arts. I grew quite sick of myself, worried 
 myself almost into a breakdown. Then I heard of psycho- 
 analysis, which is becoming all the rage just now. And I 
 went to an analyist. After several visits — at a couple of 
 guineas per — I received the information that I had a surfeit 
 of unused creative energy, and that I must divert it into some 
 channel, do something that would really interest me. As it 
 happened, I met Mrs. Thomas at the time, who had also just 
 left her husband, and she drew me into the movement. It 
 was what I wanted, plenty of action and mental excitement. 
 Besides that, I felt that I was really doing something to help 
 my sisters! " 
 
 "In other words," said Gombarov, explaining matters half 
 to himself, "not being able to find love or the creative life, 
 you set out to destroy, break windows and the like!" 
 
 "But surely," she tirged, "in destroying, I am creating in 
 
 407 
 
BABEL 
 
 a way. Making room for new creation, perhaps. Clearing 
 ground for a better future for the race!" 
 
 "Maybe you are right. What I can't tmderstand is your 
 destroying masterpieces of art. You cannot replace the 
 Rokeby Venus. . . ." 
 
 They went on threshing out the matter. He liked her 
 frankness. She was as frank as a Russian revolutionary. 
 He saw that she was pleased when he told her so. 
 
 "We are revolutionaries!" she said. "We are sacrificing 
 ourselves to create a new world!" 
 
 She removed the tea things, the tea-table also. She drew 
 the curtains, lit the fire in the grate, and they moved their 
 chairs closer. As they talked, their hands sometimes touched, 
 found themselves at last clasped. In the flickering firelight 
 their eyes shone with a strange, passionate lustre. The flames 
 in their eyes leapt toward one another. He moved his chair 
 closer, their knees touched. His right arm stole round her 
 shoulder, gathered her in. Her head slowly, gently, reclined 
 against him. They had ended their discussion of ptoblans, 
 and they sat in happy silence, which th^ feared to break. 
 At last, she looked up at him and asked: 
 
 "Are you by any chance a hypnotist?" 
 
 He laughed. "Not that I know of! What makes you 
 ask?" 
 
 "Because I dont understand your power over me. I fed 
 as if I have been hypnotised. I've never been drawn to a 
 man since my husband failed me, yet here you come along 
 and do what you like with me! I simply cannot explain it!" 
 
 She suddenly released her hand from his, shook her head 
 free, and her fingers dived into hec bosom. She pulled some- 
 thing out, and held it up against the light. It was a little 
 whip. 
 
 408 
 
LOVE'S METAMORPHOSIS 
 
 "Do you see this?" she asked, laughing nervously. 
 
 "It's a whip! What an extraordinary thing to keep in 
 so charming a bosom! If it were a serpent, it couldn't have 
 astonished me more." 
 
 "I always keep it there! I use it at meetings, to make a 
 way for speakers when men in the audience become obstrep- 
 erous!" 
 
 "What a terrible person!" 
 
 "You may well think so, after what I shall say to you!" 
 
 He waited breathlessly. He knew that something unex- 
 pected was coming, but was not prepared for what came. 
 
 "Do you see this little whip? ... Do you see it? It is a 
 whip, isn't it?" 
 
 "Yes . . ." he murmured. 
 
 "Well, I surrender it to you — as a symbol! You can do 
 what you like with me!" 
 
 He suddenly thought of Nietzsche's saying: "When you go 
 to see a woman, bring a little whip with you!" But here 
 was a woman actually offering him the little whip, that he 
 might do as he liked with her. 
 
 He took hold of the whip, and at the first contact with it 
 his whole body felt an infusion of energy, and moved by a 
 sudden savage impulse he flung it aside, and lifting the little 
 woman in his arms bore her into the next room. 
 
 THE WHIRLPOOL 
 
 It was a summer not to be forgotten by Gombarov. 
 
 His intimacy with Lucy did not cause him to forget Wini- 
 fred, whom, in spite of his better judgment, he desired more 
 ardently than ever, but his desire now had few of the 
 old attributes. If she had been attainable and within his 
 reach, she would with her body have provided the holocaust 
 
 409 
 
BABEL 
 
 so necessary for his deliverance from the wrath of the gods. 
 His sensual being, like Moses' mystic bush, flared and flared 
 with a fierce flame, which would not abate. He had Lucy, but 
 he needed yet other outlets for his savage energy. 
 
 He foxmd one such outlet in the militant, anarchic arts of 
 the day. Fierce, defiant and contemptuous, they were in 
 accord with his new mood. They challenged the whole dull 
 fabric of the old world, flaunted their violent flaming colours 
 against the surrounding drabness, defied decrepit convention, 
 violated complacency, comfort and boredom, and flung their 
 jeering, semi-barbaric malice in the face of the bourgeois 
 respectabilities. The artists were avenging themselves on the 
 Nineteenth Century for its deposition of Beauty, creative life, 
 from the covmcils of humanity, and for the usurpation of its 
 place by sprawling, flabby, amorphous Suburbia. Not that 
 all artists were conscious of social revolt; some of them were 
 genuinely striving to break new groimd, to create new living 
 forms, but in their indifference and nonchalance was a gesture 
 of revolt even greater than that of the writers of manifestoes. 
 
 In spite of the international character of the new art, an 
 extraordinary spirit of nationalism broke out in the leading 
 group of English ultra-modems. These declared that they 
 were tired of French self-appointed domination in the arts, 
 and asserted that Paris was a usurper, inasmuch as modem 
 art was fovmded on the principles of the machine, brought 
 into being by the Anglo-Saxon. In a series of manifestoes 
 they proclaimed the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon, and Lon- 
 don the natural Capital of modem art. They published these 
 manifestoes in large flaunting types in the Dynamo, a huge 
 periodical, exceeding a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica 
 in format and exposing a cover having all the colours of the 
 rainbow. This group called themselves the Dynamists. "The 
 
 410 
 
LOVE'S METAMORPHOSIS 
 
 Anglo-Saxon world," they declared, "is the beneficent dynamo 
 scattering light to France and the benighted, decadent Latins, 
 as well as to other nations." Strange to say, among the lead- 
 ing members of this pro-English group were Tobias Bagg, an 
 American; Jan Maczishek, a Pole; and Rafael Guggenheim, 
 a Jew. This group militantly entrenched itself, and now and 
 then sallied out to subvert the depredations of the "decadent, 
 feminine Latins." They laughed to scorn the attempts of the 
 leading Italian Futurist to make propaganda in England by 
 advocating football in the home of sport and chanting the 
 praises of trains, motor cars and aeroplanes in the home of 
 the machine. But they made no effort to controvert his cry 
 of "The glory of war and contempt of women!" 
 
 Gombarov saw a great deal of Tobias Bagg in those days. 
 Bagg, who had so often declared marriage to be against his 
 principles, had lately married, and on his return from the 
 honeymoon was very busy on Dynamist manifestoes, when 
 he was not engaged in translating Arabic love poems. Like 
 other artists of the day, in order to live he had to lead, so 
 to speak, a "double life." A Yiddish proverb goes, "You 
 can't dance at two weddings!" — but Bagg accomplished this 
 seemingly impossible miracle, at the risk of being called in- 
 consistent in one camp, a passeiste in the other. 
 
 Gombarov himg on the edge of this group, and without 
 actually being one of them drew from them a kind of blind 
 energy, which he applied in his own way against the com- 
 placency of the academicians. He sympathised with the 
 Dynamists in the d^ree that he rea>gnised them as thwarted 
 creators who were manufacturing a kind of spiritual djmamite 
 wherewith to shake the world out of its smugness. More 
 than they knew they were feeling the pulse of a sick, weary 
 world and presaged a catastrophe for the good of its thwarted 
 
 411 
 
BABEL 
 
 soul. But London was amused at the antics of the revolu- 
 tionaries. Lady So-and-So and Lady So-and-So were in the 
 fashion by becoming their patronesses. The comic and even 
 the serious journals had good sport. A great sensation was 
 caused by a poet who came to a Futurist lecture attired in 
 violet trousers, dark red jacket and red shoes. What would 
 th^ be up to next? 
 
 The will to live and the will to die, the will to create and 
 the will to destroy, went hand in hand. The most extraordi- 
 nary happenings were reported in the press: suffragist 
 "atrocities," piquant divorce cases, murders, Irish home rule, 
 Mormon agitation, threats of a universal strike, the assassina- 
 tion of the Austrian Archduke, etc., etc. No individual but 
 seemed touched and infected by the hectic spirit of the day. 
 The old looked on askance, the academies passed resolutions 
 condemning the new tendencies, which was like King Canute 
 commanding the sea-tides to stop. 
 
 A great tidal wave was sweeping up old illusions and roman- 
 tic impulses, old pities, too! Little of pity remained in 
 Gombarov after the blows that had been inflicted on him; 
 they filled him with rancour and malice and these he some- 
 times vented on poor Lucy. But once having surrendered the 
 little whip to him, Lucy submitted, indeed seemed to love him 
 the more, though she continued her suffragist activities and 
 constantly warned him that she was being watched by the 
 police. 
 
 One evening at the flat, Lucy, her long hair down, attired 
 in an attractive night-dress, nestled up to him like a small, 
 fond child. But he was thinking of Winifred. Unaware of 
 the cause of his tortured abstraction, she caressed his body 
 and limbs with warm hands, drunken with loving. 
 
 "My pet!" she murmured. "Please don't worry. Don't 
 
 412 
 
LOVE'S METAMORPHOSIS 
 
 think of the outside world. Just think of the world as this 
 spot, and you and I, just you and I! The other world 
 doesn't exist, simply doesn't exist! Just get closer to me, 
 pet, closer to me! You can't be too dose to me. If I could 
 only get into your head, and your heart, and put my hand 
 on what's troubling you, I should willingly, oh, how willingly, 
 take it all upon mjrself! If I only could!" 
 
 "If you only could!" he echoed her, thinking of Winifred. 
 "I dont deserve you, really!" 
 
 "Tut! Tut! Darling. You don't know yourself. I only 
 feel that you are being thwarted, warped by something. But 
 you dont know your own strength. You have such potentiali- 
 ties, if you only knew! You have been crushed by your suf- 
 ferings. Yet some day you may see clearly, then I shall 
 expect great things of you. . . ." 
 
 She talked and talked, caressing all the while his body 
 and limbs, with warm, dnmken fingers, until she warmed his 
 malice, his thought of Winifred, out of him, and he gathered 
 h^ to him with a great tenderness, until he no longer felt 
 that either he or she existed, but was conscious only of a single 
 stream of flame flowing through a cohesive indeterminate 
 oneness, without source or goal. But in the very midst of 
 their oneness, total obliteration of self, a thought, an accursed 
 thought, leapt through his mind, flaunting the image of her 
 whom he once had loved with all his soul and iu the ecstasy 
 of their oneness he taunted Lucy: 
 
 'Well, my little suffragette, where's your suffrage now?" 
 
 And she, passionate and humble, indeterminate component 
 of a oneness, replied: 
 
 "Don't think of it, my love. I only care for you. What 
 else matters? Only to be destroyed utterly!" 
 
 He felt ashamed, and wholly disarmed by her words. He 
 
 413 
 
BABEL 
 
 nestled against her like a child, silently imploring her com- 
 passion. He dropped off to sleep, her fingers running through 
 his hair. 
 
 Next morning she prepared breakfast for them both, then, 
 after turning up her face for a kiss, departed for the Suffrage 
 headquarters, where onerous tasks awaited her. 
 
 "Do you know," she said to him one evening, "my heart has 
 been less and less in my work since I have known you? I seem 
 to Uve almost entirely for you. I have become quite an ordinary 
 woman. If they only knew at the headquarters, I believe they 
 would excommunicate me!" She laughed at the thought. 
 
 "Why don't you quit it?" 
 
 "I can't leave them in the lurch! Not just now. They de- 
 pend on me so! Who knows?" she said, gravely, "within a 
 week I may be deprived of you! " 
 
 "What do you mean?" he said, with alarm. 
 
 "You dear!" she said, kissing him. "You see, pet, we are 
 organising a deputation to the King. And it's hardly likely 
 that they'll let us get as far as the Palace gates. That means 
 there will be a scrinunage, and some of us will be spending 
 the night at Holloway." 
 
 "Can't I dissuade you from going?" 
 
 She shook her head. "I don't know that it isn't better 
 to go." There was a wistful note in her voice. "Don't you 
 see, my love, if I go on loving you, you may get sick of me. 
 But a holiday in Holloway may make you gladder to see me 
 when I get out." She laughed. "I am more far-seeing than 
 you. I've been so happy with you that I often think it can't 
 last. It's more than I had ever expected. And when I think 
 of all those women who have had nothing in their lives, my 
 heart goes out to them. . . ." 
 
 "Think it over!" he urged. 
 
 414 
 
LOVE'S METAMORPHOSIS 
 
 FATE AT HER OLD TRICKS 
 
 She could not see him on the evening before the demon- 
 stration. There were so many arrangements to make. That 
 very evening, as he wandered abstractedly and alone in Pic- 
 cadilly, he felt some one touch him on the shoulder, and was 
 dimly conscious of two tall feminine figures confronting him. 
 He looked up. 
 
 "You here!" he exclaimed. 
 
 It was Winifred and her mother. 
 
 "Are you going anywhere in particular?" asked Mrs. 
 Gwynne. 
 
 "Cafe de I'Empire," he said, the idea coming into his mind, 
 without forethought. 
 
 "Oh, weVe heard of it! Do you mind taking us there?" 
 asked Winifred, after an embarrassing silence. 
 
 What could he do but consent? After all, it was fate. 
 And he knew the folly of trying to controvert fate. Besides, 
 he was really a little sorry for them, wandering about in Lon- 
 don, without knowing a soul. 
 
 'Have you been here long?" he asked, as they walked 
 along. 
 
 "About a week!" 
 
 This fact sank in deeply. They had been in London and 
 had not looked him up. 
 
 As if she had guessed what was passing in his mind, Mrs. 
 Gwynne made haste to say: 
 
 "We had thought of looking you up, but could not make 
 up our minds. As a matter of fact, we got your address 
 only yesterday from Douglass." 
 
 "Are you settling in London?" 
 
 "We haven't decided. That depends largelj- on whether we 
 
 415 
 
BABEL 
 
 can make a living here. We may go to Paris, where we know 
 the ropes." 
 
 A thin flame of hope, like a small worm, wriggled up m his 
 heart. 
 
 They secured a good comer seat, from which they could 
 survey the large cafe. The hour was creeping on towards 
 ten, and newcomers began pouring in. By eleven o'clock there 
 was hardly a vacant seat. The miuinur of voices, faint at first, 
 gathered momentimi, became a tumult, which rose and fell in 
 undulating cadences, broken only by woman's shrill laughter 
 and the sudden shufQe of dominoes across a marble table. 
 The smoke hung in great clouds and obscured the half-faded 
 frescoes of cupids and nudes, it embraced the old walls and 
 the dingy gilt decoration, and dulled the mirrors into opaque 
 surfaces. Gombarov reflected upon the singular fact that in 
 this haze, at once hectic and tense and fantastic, one did not 
 see whole faces or individuak, but rather, as in a Futiffist 
 picture, spots and fragments of persons and faces, for the 
 most part grinning, pieced together along with bits of dingy 
 red plush, to make a modem design, the very soid of disinte- 
 gration, like a crumb of Camembert imder a microscope. 
 
 There was a group of Futurists at the next table. They 
 were carrying on a heated discussion. 
 
 "We ought to support the sxiffragettes," one was sa3dng, 
 "in their campaign of destroying passeiste masterpieces. We 
 don't want any cemeteries in our midst. We have our own 
 lives to live, and all that hinders us — the old, the decrepit 
 and the traditional — ought to go. They are a good ally!" 
 
 "The suffragettes may be on our side, but we are surely 
 not on theirs, George!" put in another, who was called Tom. 
 "For incidentally, we are out to kill woman worship, and 
 don't you forget it! We don't want any petticoat goven- 
 
 416 
 
LOVE'S METAMORPHOSIS 
 
 ment, or petticoat art, or petticoat morality. What is more, 
 in their heart of hearts the women don't want it, either!" 
 
 "I agree with Tom," said a third. "We can support the 
 suffragettes in their destruction, but we cannot support them 
 In principle. . . ." 
 
 "Principles, old chap, are a cliche I" said the first speaker. 
 "The only good principles are dead principles! I say, we 
 really ought to pass a vote of thanks to those suffragettes! 
 Really, we ought to!" 
 
 "Say, boys!" put in Tom. "What do you say to making 
 up a party to see tomorrow's demonstration before Bucking- 
 ham Palace? It would be jolly to see the bout between the 
 Amazons and the bobbies! It will be a grand hugging time, 
 and I put my money on the bobbies!" 
 
 Gombarov explained matters to the Gwynnes, and asked 
 them whether they woidd like to see the demonstration. They 
 eagerly accepted, and he promised to call for them. 
 
 "Yes, those bobbies will put them in their place, you bet!" 
 said Tom. "In a man's arms, I mean!" He grinned at his 
 own poor joke, but suddenly his face unaccoimtably straight- 
 ened out, assumed a grave look. The reason for this startling 
 change of countenance was soon explained. A little woman 
 was mafcing her way up the aisle and stopped at the table. 
 
 "Tom!" she said in a manner which left no doubt as to 
 who was mastor of the menage, "isn't it time you went home? 
 Come along at once!" 
 
 Tom meekly rose, bade his companions good-night, and fol- 
 lowed the little woman out. Tom's fellow Futurists and 
 masterers of woman grinned at the fire-eater's humiliating 
 exit. 
 
 "Nell is not the girl to stand nonsense from a man! " said 
 George. 
 
 417 
 
BABEL 
 
 "No!" said the other. "Though Tom is pretty strong on 
 that 'glory of war and contempt of woman' stuff!" 
 
 "It all goes into his work!" suggested George. 
 
 They laughed. 
 
 Gombarov passed a sleepless night. He was wrought up 
 over Winifred's reappearance. He determined to keep cool 
 and await developments. He had the fatalistic feeling that 
 Lucy's premonition of her landing in HoUoway was a correct 
 one, and that he had seen the last of her. And so Winifred's 
 reappearance seemed all the more significant! Why should 
 these two females be always crossing and recrossing his path? 
 Surely, the gods were playing cat and mouse with himl 
 
 It was a perfect day in early summer, and from all direc- 
 tions people were drifting towards the Palace, to see the funl 
 Gombarov, with the Gwyimes, took up a position in the 
 neighbourhood of the Queen Victoria monument. It was fitting, 
 perhaps, that this marble image of the late Queen, who 
 reigned supreme in an age when women were not supposed 
 "to do things," much less think of possessing a vote, should 
 be present to witness the reactions her repressive morality 
 and policies had produced. But her ungainly back was turned 
 on the scene. They stood for some time waiting, until shouts 
 and the scramble of the police toward one of the gates of 
 Green Park indicated that the demonstrators were approach- 
 ing from the direction of Constitution Hill. It was hard to 
 tell from where they stood what was happening; only now 
 and then they caught sight of a woman bolting, making fran- 
 tically for the Palace gates, a half dozen bobbies in piu-suit. 
 They might have been children playing tag. It was "great 
 fun" seeing a woman caught by a smart, fleet-footed bobby 
 and kicking her legs and struggling, while he held her in his 
 arms tight, so tight! "It ain't offen she 'as the chancel" as 
 
 418 
 
LOVE'S METAMORPHOSIS 
 
 Gombarov heard a cockney wit put it. A strange sight, surely, 
 for the Capital of the world, the hub of modern civilisation! 
 They saw many a woman, her clothes torn, hair dishevelled, 
 led by policemen, who, once their charges ceased struggling, 
 were courteous and gentle. Doubtless, some of them had 
 wives with suffragist sympathies, but duty is duty, and one 
 must live. The sjnmpathies of the onlookers were divided. 
 The more fervent "Pros" cheered the women and booed the 
 police, the "Antis" reversed the procedure. The neutrals 
 looked on with mere curiosity. Many saw it as a hiunorous 
 spectacle and saved themselves the price of a matinee. 
 
 "There's an attractive little woman!" exclaimed Winifred, 
 pulling Gombarov by the sleeve. "What a shame!" 
 
 Gombarov's heart thumped. It was Lucy being led be- 
 tween two policemen. Her long, lovely hair, parted in the 
 middle, hung loose down her back and over her bosom: it 
 was thus she disarrayed herself for him in hours of tender- 
 ness. The torn hem of her skirt dragged behind her. At the 
 sight of her, Gombarov felt all pity and fury: what could he 
 do? Her head erect, she looked straight before her; he tried 
 to catch her eye, but she did not see him. 
 
 "I know that woman," said Gombarov, dully, trying to con- 
 trol his emotion. 
 
 They looked at him curiously; he wondered whether they 
 suspected. 
 
 They went to tea. 
 
 He sulked, and was mostly silent. He was undergomg 
 muced emotions, the emotions of an intellectual-emotional man 
 in our complex civilisation. He was not proud of his thoughts 
 and emotions, but there they were, cutting capers in him. 
 Whether he liked them or not, he had to live with them. Lucy 
 was gone, she had been so passionately fond of him. If only 
 
 419 
 
BABEL 
 
 he could have returned it in full measure! Oh, yes, he was 
 fond of her, but not half so much. It was not that her en- 
 forced separation from him by a few days, or even months, 
 in jail must end their relations; indeed the thought of her 
 suffering softened him. But fond as he was of her he knew 
 that their ways led in different directions; the episode of her 
 arrest had merely happened to take place at the fork in the 
 road. 
 
 Winifred he had loved with a fabulous love, and what had 
 she given him in return? His fabulous love was gone, but he 
 still wanted her, wanted her with all the intensity that hatred 
 could give, wanted her that he might wreak his revenge for 
 what she had robbed him of, his fabulous love. He wanted 
 to rob her of something, though that were a poor return for 
 what he had lost. He had no scruples left, and he had had 
 so many! "Too late! Too late! You fool!" he muttered 
 to himself. 
 
 The Gwynnes decided to go on to Paris. Gombarov's cour- 
 tesy and patience failed him. He was rude, and there was a 
 little scene in St. James's Park. 
 
 He said to her: "You will regret everything!" 
 
 "In other words," intervened her mother, "you pronounce 
 an Oriental curse, is that it?" 
 
 Such an idea had never occurred to him, but moved by 
 wrath, he replied: 
 
 "Yes, if you like!" 
 
 But there was something in the idea Mrs. Gwynne had 
 implanted in him, and in his utter loneliness it took possession 
 of him. And, thereafter, often, when he was sleepless in the 
 long nights, he would pour forth, on the imagined electric 
 currents of the air, akin to waves of wireless, his maledictions 
 against her who had treated him so grievously. He helped 
 
 420 
 
LOVE'S METAMORPHOSIS 
 
 his curses upon her with the intensity of one who was equally 
 capable of intense loving. 
 
 After that, with all the contriteness of the hiunan heart, 
 he would express his regrets to Adonai and Allah and all the 
 gods he could think of and pray to them to save him from the 
 perdition of his own curses. He was in the intoisity of his 
 forlomness like one of those impossible heroes of the Arabian 
 Nights, lost among the maladjustments of the Occident. 
 
 421 
 
CHAPTER XII: IT HAD TO BE 
 
 "You have built a tower of terri- 
 ble questionings, and you have 
 climbed to its summit and gased 
 at your earth below. And you 
 are proud to have risen »n the 
 world, and would lift up other 
 old nations to your height. But 
 I fear you have built upon sand, 
 and your tower is settling . . ." 
 — Hard Sayings, by Edwakd J. 
 O'Bmen. 
 
 the reckoning 
 
 TowAEDS the end of July, a bored, thwarted world was rap- 
 idly heading toward destruction and chaos. It was rich, and 
 to die. 
 
 The proud tower was tottering, tottering. The prophecies 
 of the artists and soothsayers were coming to pass. 
 
 Austrian troops had advanced against Belgrade: that was 
 the beginning. Germany and France and Russia had mobi- 
 lised. The British navy stood in readiness. And during 
 those final, irrevocable days in July, Gombarov had seen ar- 
 tillery passing down Piccadilly after midnight. 
 
 Then August. Orators in Hyde Park and in Trafalgar 
 Square were busy denouncing war. The people were not with 
 them. The speakers were heckled. In France Jaures had 
 been shot. It could not escape the honest observer that the 
 great masses in the European Capitals — in London, as well 
 as in Paris and Berlin — ^wanted war, wanted it not super- 
 ficially, but in their heart of hearts, with a deep inwardness, 
 full of knowledge, and proud of its Progress, yet it wanted 
 
 422 
 
IT HAD TO BE 
 
 the causes of which were inexfJicable even to themselves. 
 Only a few philosophers who, having as it were, psycho- 
 analysed the world, and studied the world's mask as it was 
 shaping, and all the repressed activities and malignant stirrings 
 under the mask, had an inkling of a possible reckoning. 
 
 Gombarov, too, felt strange stirrings within himself as the 
 war fever swept Europe. He felt intensely patriotic, intensely 
 pro-English, he, an alien in any coimtryl He did not realise 
 until much later, years later, that it was not war with Ger- 
 many that he wanted, but war with any country, war in the 
 abstract. The others, too, wanted war in the abstract, though 
 they knew it not. For he, like the others, had been warped 
 and thwarted by a mechanised world which allowed no free- 
 dom for creative faculties. The world had wealth and knowl- 
 edge and all that went imder the name of Progress, but no 
 love. It was not a girl who had thwarted him, but the whole 
 of civilisation: he and a million others had been caught and 
 entangled in a complex network, he and a million others had 
 been rendered as impotent as if they had been so many flies 
 caught and held on sticky fly-paper. 
 
 The machine, supposed to ease the lot of mankind, had 
 enslaved it, had warped and thwarted human beings by taking 
 the creating out of their hands and made them mere parts, 
 mere cogs of itself. It took the colour and romance out of 
 life, reduced man to a mechanism of service, an instnunent of 
 "efficiency," and enthroned Suburbia, Bourgeoisie and mock 
 Democracy, gods of Philistia. It was natxu-al that the chief 
 reaction, the intensest desire for war, should come from Ger- 
 many, where mechanical efficiency and standardisation had 
 reached greatest perfection. It was above all there that 
 Hatred, long enchanted and asleep under the influence of the 
 hypnotic eyes of Progress, shovdd have at last opened her 
 
 423 
 
BABEL 
 
 eyes and stared belligerently. That her neighbours should 
 have returned that stare was natural, for they were brothers 
 and they understood one another, and for the great love they 
 bore the other ibey were to become fratricides; their sub- 
 conscious eyes, the eyes of God in them, saw that it was better 
 to die than to live in chains. 
 
 The historian would be making a profound mistake if he 
 should derive his conclusions from diplomatic documents; 
 diplomats are the instruments of fate, not its arbiters. 
 Granted that Germany was the Judas among the disciples 
 of Progress, let the historian remember the inevitability of 
 Judas, his historical necessity: without him, there could have 
 been no Crucifixion, and therefore no Resurrection, no salva- 
 tion for mankind. Not in diplomatic documents, then, but 
 in the social conditions, above all, in the arts of the time, the 
 real secret of Armageddon is to be foimd. The artists were the 
 prophets: they were the first to express the hidden mystery 
 that lived and grew in the subconscious soul of the multi- 
 tudes: hence, the reaction towards primitivism, excess of bright 
 colour, orgiastic sensation, militancy and revolt Theirs, if 
 one but knew it, was the handwriting on the wall of Babd, 
 built out of the excess of knowledge, honeycombed with dun- 
 geons for the imprisonment of the simplest impidses and the 
 imaginative faculties. And they set forth the doom of the 
 Empire of the Machine, an end to yet another civilisati^i. 
 The handwriting was not only the handwriting but also the 
 first fissure in the wall. 
 
 "If only something would happen 1" This longing of man 
 nurtured on Dead Sea fruit seemed in those early days in 
 August in a fair way to be realised. An intense excitement 
 possessed the people, as they bought up the many editions 
 of newspapers and scanned tiieir headlines: 
 
 424 
 
IT HAD TO BE 
 
 "Bdgium Invaded!" 
 
 "Huns Cross Belgian Frontier!" 
 
 "Von Kluck Marching on Liege!" 
 
 "The Rape of Belgium!" 
 
 No more than this was needed to settle whatever doubts 
 existed in the minds of the people. In vain did orators in 
 Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square try to stem the tides of 
 loosed passion that swept the land of Nelson and Wellington. 
 A religious apostle at Marble Arch reminded the heckling 
 crowd that war was unthinkable because parts of the Gospel 
 had been translated into at least four hundred and fifty tongues 
 and that the com[dete Bible was now to be had in over a 
 himdred languages. But a sceptic shouted: 
 
 "But there are jdenty of wars in that, Governor!" 
 
 On the steps of the Nelson column an independent poli- 
 tician and litterateur, a man beloved and of great distinction, 
 an aristocrat in stature and manner, eagle-eyed, blazed at a 
 small crowd. 
 
 "Let us not forget!" he cried, "that if we go into this war, 
 we shall be allied with the most tyrannic pown in Europe, a 
 Government which for centuries has existed and still exists 
 by oppressing the people. Not even the Middle Ages could 
 show a greater deqmtism, a more foul oppression! Shall we 
 forget the rule of the Romanoffs, the corrupt (fynasty that 
 has shamed our civilisation? Shall we forget the thousands 
 upon thousands of its noble victims, the revolutionaries, friends 
 of the people, who have filled and still fill her foul dungeons? 
 Shall we forget the splendid men and women and noble strip- 
 lings against whom the Autocrats of All Russias have sent 
 the Coiacks and their whips? Shall we forget the pogroms 
 of Jews their und^lings have instigated? Shall we shake the 
 blood-stained hand of a murderer? . . ." 
 
 425 
 
BABEL 
 
 "What about poor Bel'jum?" shouted a man in the crowd. 
 
 The people, indeed, were greatly exercised over Bdgium. 
 Their feelings were generous and genuine, a trump card in 
 the hands of the Government. It was the subject of the ulti- 
 matum to Germany. The people waited tensely and ex- 
 pectantly. 
 
 It was thought that war would be declared by Parliament 
 at its sitting on the evening of the second. Crowds thronged 
 WTiitehall and Parliament Square. They cheered the states- 
 men whom they recognised in their limousines, some with 
 their wives, going to the House of Commons or to Downing 
 Street. Otherwise a tense, expectant silence prevailed. Gom- 
 barov stood on the kerb and with others kept vigil before the 
 Parliament gates. Every instant he expected someone to 
 usher forth with a cry of "War!" After eleven the politicians 
 began to come out of the House. They walked in couples, 
 looked grave and spoke in low voices. The people watched 
 them as gravely and as quietly. There was no war that 
 night. 
 
 On the evening of the third the crowds were even greater. 
 Gombarov stood in front of Buckingham Palace. The King, 
 Queen and Princess came out repeatedly on the balcony in 
 response to the clamor, and were cheered each time. Cock- 
 ney wits came with their girls and made merry. 
 
 "Shall we eat German sassingers?" cried one in a voice that 
 carried a great distance. 
 
 There was a loud guffaw, and the crowd responded with a 
 long drawn out "No-oo-h!" 
 
 "Three cheers for Kaiser Bill!" shouted someone, ironically. 
 
 Catcalls and hisses greeted this sally. 
 
 "Where's Kaiser Bill goin' to 'ave 'is Christmas dinner?" 
 
 "In the Tower!" came the reply from another throat. 
 
 426 
 
IT HAD TO BE 
 
 "And we'll stuff his turkey for him with grape-shot!" 
 
 "Aye, that we will, lad!" put in a North countryman. 
 
 This went on a good part of the evening. 
 
 Gombarov went round to the barracks near by, and glanced 
 through the railings. Here, in the large open space, the sol- 
 diers, grasping each other's shoulders in pairs, danced round 
 wildly and hysterically, and raised savage outcries. 
 
 "on to bekxin!" 
 
 After eleven o'clock word passed round that war was cer- 
 tain. A considerable portion of the crowd, suddenly detach- 
 ing themselves from the rest, with boisterous shouts surged 
 down the ^lall. Gombarov, drawn into the precipitous move- 
 ment, was pushed on from behind. The crowd cheered hys- 
 terically, and men who had women with them embraced and 
 seized them, where and how they willed. The cause of this 
 outburst was soon apparent. Just ahead was an open taxi, 
 advancing slowly. Standing up on the rear seat was a tall, 
 well-dressed, yoimg woman in scarlet, furiously shouting, and 
 waving a flag with both hands. One foot she had raised on 
 to the folded hood of the taxi, and her action in swinging 
 her body and shoulders caused her short skirts to pull up, and 
 there she stood exposing the somewhat voluminous pink ribbon 
 garters above her round, white-stockinged knees and just above 
 these there emerged a wealth of lace on her white under- 
 garments. She seemed to be perfectly oblivious to the expo- 
 sure; not so the cheering, agitated males, three or four of 
 whom himg on to the rear of the taxi and with large eyes 
 contemplated the blood-maddening spectacle. At one comer 
 of the taxi a large flag-shaped placard, supported on a sta£f, 
 bore the legend: "On to Berlin!" 
 
 "Come on, boys, on to Berlin!" shouted the yoimg woman 
 
BABEL 
 
 in scarlet, working herself up into a state of sensual fury. 
 "Join up, boysl" 
 
 "We will! We will! You bet we will!" 
 
 "What will you do to them, boys?" 
 
 "Well cut their gizzards out!" 
 
 "Gizzards, nothing!" cried another, uttering an obscenity. 
 
 The crowd poured down the Mall, uttering cries, rude witti- 
 cisms, obscenities; a turgid stream, pressing in excitement like 
 blood in an artery, long asleep and now throbbing with an 
 overwhelming passion, and transcendent as the love of the 
 Bride of Life on the point of consummating her marri^e with 
 the Bridegroom Death. 
 
 They were within sight of the Admiralty Arch, yrhea the 
 woman in scarlet in a fierce contralto struck up: 
 
 "Rule, Britannial Britannia ride the wavest" 
 and hundreds of voices at once took it up: 
 
 "Britons never, never, never shall be skives t" 
 The tune ran in Gombarov's blood, and he sang with the rest. 
 
 The cortege disbanded in Trafalgar Square, owing to the 
 density of the crowd there. Gombarov turned into White- 
 hall. Late editions of the evening papers were on sale, an- 
 noxmcing Great Britain's declaration of war. He bought and 
 read the headlines: 
 
 ARMAGEDDON: SEVEN GREAT NATIONS AT WAR 
 
 Gkeat Britain, France, Russia, Serbia and Belgiuic 
 Against Germany and Austro-Hungary 
 
 OTHER nations TO COME IN 
 
 BRITISH FLEET READY FOR ACTION 
 
 As with the crowd surging round him he read this news, 
 he was seized with both fear and rejoicing. What should he 
 
 428 
 
IT HAD TO BE 
 
 fear? Why should he rejoice? No doubt, there were others 
 in the crowd who both feared and rejoiced. Why should they 
 rejoice at a calamity so dreadful and evil? Why should they 
 be glad at the possible fall of walls that Civilisation had taken 
 so long to build up? 
 
 His own fears were dear and determinate. They were 
 purely personal fears. His existence had been precarious 
 enough, it would become more precarious, perhaps even im- 
 possible. For he was a poor man, bereft of kin and love 
 and money, a castaway in an alien land, which was about to 
 become an armed camp, with as little thought of the friendly 
 stranger as of the enemy. But his rejoicing was abstract, 
 secret, mysterious, with a total disregard of his person or 
 safety. It was the joy, perhaps, that came with the dun, as 
 yet subconscious realisation that here, at all events, was an 
 end to boredom and a beginning to epic events, above all, 
 that strange, curiously cosmic, processes of justice were at 
 work. For, surely, if a great civilisation, which has boasted 
 of having made war impossible, lapses into barbarism, that 
 barbarism must have been there in its heart all the time; and 
 having suspected its being there, he now felt justified in his 
 long held supposition of it all having been a delusion and a 
 mockery! Well, it was something to know that; if there 
 was no pity, at least there was some sort of justice. And in 
 the satisfaction of his discovery, he lost his personal fears. 
 
 "After all," he said to himself, "what does life matter? The 
 life that is! What do I matter? When it comes to that, I 
 can join up. It may not be a bad idea at alll If I lose my 
 life, what of it? Only I'd like to see it a clean job. I 
 shouldn't like to be mutilated, lose a leg or an arm or the 
 sight of my eyesl" 
 
 But why did these others, these great multitudes, rejoice: 
 
 429 
 
BABEL 
 
 the shopkeepers, the comfortable job holders, the factory em- 
 ployes, the well-to-do young bloods, above all the women? 
 Were these, who had everything to lose, also exhilarated by 
 some abstract, secret, mysterious, even mystical purpose with- 
 held from their consciousness, but nevertheless deep-rooted as 
 are all original so-called divine impulses in men? If so, there 
 was hope, and life was, indeed, a divine adventure, eternally 
 pendulating between aspirings and burrowings. 
 
 Worn out by his strenuous day, he was in bed by half -past 
 one. He did not close his eyes imtil about six, then only to 
 dream. 
 
 Once more Gombarov dreamt the old, ever-recurring cor- 
 ridor dream, which came to him at irregular intervals since 
 childhood, always in a new variation. 
 
 It was almost an exact repetition of the dream he had had 
 two years before at Paris. Again, he groped through a 
 labyrinth of dimly lit passages of what seemed to be a tall, 
 tottering, many-roomed house, and on each side of him walked 
 a shadowy being: one a grave, quiet presence, the other fierce 
 and domineering. They walked thus for a long time, then 
 the two presences seemed to merge into one, lau^iing and 
 weeping by turns. And sounds of laughter and weeping came 
 also from behind the shut doors of innumerable m3rsterious 
 cells, and Gombarov was also seized with laughter and weeping, 
 and thus, laughing and weeping, he awoke, and real tears 
 ran down his cheeks in the broad daylight. 
 
 The church bells were ringing, and a newsboy in the street 
 below was shouting: 
 
 "War-rl War-r! The latest extry about the war-r!" 
 
 Moved by excitement, he jumped out of bed, washed and 
 dressed, and walked out of doors. 
 
 Around the comer a group of pleasant, chubby-faced boys 
 
 430 
 
IT HAD TO BE 
 
 in the uniform of scouts stood beating the drums and blowing 
 the bugles. In the background was a shop, and in the window 
 of the shop a placard, and on the placard the legend: 
 
 "Business as usual!" 
 
 Thus, it must have been also, when Nineveh fell and 
 Rome fell. 
 
 THE END 
 
 431