As Leonard was kicking off his boots he jarred the three-legged table,and a photograph frame,honourably poised upon it,slid sideways,fell off into the fireplace,and smashed.He swore in a colourless sort of way,and picked the photograph up.It represented a young lady called Jacky,and had been taken at the time when young ladies called Jacky were often photographed with their mouths open.Teeth of dazzling whiteness extended along either of Jacky's jaws,and positively weighted her head sideways,so large were they and so numerous.Take my word for it,that smile was simply stunning,and it is only you and I who will be fastidious,and complain that true joy begins in the eyes,and that the eyes of Jacky did not accord with her smile,but were anxious and hungry.
Leonard tried to pull out the fragments of glass,and cut his fingers and swore again.A drop of blood fell on the frame,another followed,spilling over on to the exposed photograph.
He swore more vigorously,and dashed to the kitchen,where he bathed his hands.The kitchen was the same size as the sitting room;through it was a bedroom.This completed his home.He was renting the flat furnished:of all the objects that encumbered it none were his own except the photograph frame,the Cupids,and the books.
"Damn,damn,damnation!"he murmured,together with such other words as he had learnt from older men.Then he raised his hand to his forehead and said,"Oh,damn it all--"which meant something different.He pulled himself together.He drank a little tea,black and silent,that still survived upon an upper shelf.He swallowed some dusty crumbs of cake.Then he went back to the sitting-room,settled himself anew,and began to read a volume of Ruskin.
"Seven miles to the north of Venice--"
How perfectly the famous chapter opens!How supreme its command of admonition and of poetry!The rich man is speaking to us from his gondola.
"Seven miles to the north of Venice the banks of sand which nearer the city rise little above low-water mark attain by degrees a higher level,and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass,raised here and there into shapeless mounds,and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea."Leonard was trying to form his style on Ruskin:
he understood him to be the greatest master of English Prose.He read forward steadily,occasionally making a few notes.
"Let us consider a little each of these characters in succession,and first (for of the shafts enough has been said already),what is very peculiar to this church--its luminousness."Was there anything to be learnt from this fine sentence?
Could he adapt it to the needs of daily life?Could he introduce it,with modifications,when he next wrote a letter to his brother,the lay-reader?For example--"Let us consider a little each of these characters in succession,and first (for of the absence of ventilation enough has been said already),what is very peculiar to this flat--its obscurity.
"Something told him that the modifications would not do;and that something,had he known it,was the spirit of English Prose."My flat is dark as well as stuffy."Those were the words for him.
And the voice in the gondola rolled on,piping melodiously of Effort and Self-Sacrifice,full of high purpose,full of beauty,full even of sympathy and the love of men,yet somehow eluding all that was actual and insistent in Leonard's life.For it was the voice of one who had never been dirty or hungry,and had not guessed successfully what dirt and hunger are.
Leonard listened to it with reverence.He felt that he was being done good to,and that if he kept on with Ruskin,and the Queen's Hall Concerts,and some pictures by Watts,he would one day push his head out of the grey waters and see the universe.He believed in sudden conversion,a belief which may be right,but which is peculiarly attractive to a half-baked mind.It is the bias of much popular religion:in the domain of business it dominates the Stock Exchange,and becomes that "bit of luck"by which all successes and failures are explained."If only I had a bit of luck,the whole thing would come straight.He's got a most magnificent place down at Streatham and a 20h.-p.Fiat,but then,mind you,he's had luck.I'm sorry the wife's so late,but she never has any luck over catching trains."Leonard was superior to these people;he did believe in effort and in a steady preparation for the change that he desired.But of a heritage that may expand gradually,he had no conception:he hoped to come to Culture suddenly,much as the Revivalist hopes to come to Jesus.Those Miss Schlegels had come to it;they had done the trick;their hands were upon the ropes,once and for all.And meanwhile,his flat was dark,as well as stuffy.
Presently there was a noise on the staircase.
He shut up Margaret's card in the pages of Ruskin,and opened the door.
A woman entered,of whom it is simplest to say that she was not respectable.
