Up and Down

SEPTEMBER, 1915

I do not suppose that there is any literal truth in that remarkable piece of natural history which tells us that eels get used to being skinned. It may have been invented by those who like eating that execrable worm, or, more probably, it is a proverbial simile which is meant to convey a most unquestionable truth, namely, that however unpleasant a thing may be, in time we get adjusted to it. It would be an ill thing for the human race if they did not, and argues no callousness on their part. It is simply one of Nature's arrangements, an example of the recuperative power which enables us to throw off colds, and mends the skin when we have cut ourselves shaving. If every wound, physical and moral alike, remained raw, the race could not continue, but would speedily expire from loss of blood and gangrene. And if in process of time we did not rally from staggering blows, we should all of us, at an early age lie prone on our backs, squealing, till death mercifully put an end to our troubles. But all our lives we are receiving wounds and blows, and we recuperate. Only once during this mortal existence do we fail to recover, more or less, from things that at first seemed intolerable, and then we die.

This invariable rule applies to the position in which we find ourselves after thirteen months of war. Most of us have suffered intimate losses; there is scarcely a man or woman in England whom death has not robbed of some friend or relation. But we are not as a nation bewildered and all abroad, as we were thirteen months ago. We do not wake every morning with the sense that after the oblivion of the night we are roused to a nightmare existence. We have somehow adjusted ourselves to what is happening, and this adjustment argues no callousness or insensibility; it is just the result of the natural process by virtue of which we are enabled to continue living. Also, the need that Francis felt when he said, "One must do something," has come to the aid of those who in general, before the days of the war, never did anything particular beyond amusing themselves. This really implied that other people had got to amuse them by giving them dinner-parties and concerts and what not, and since these had no time to attend to them now, a remarkably large percentage of the drones, finding that nobody was providing for them, set to work for once in their lives, and slaved away at funds or hospitals or soup-kitchens, and found that to do something for other people was not half so tedious as they had supposed before they gave it a trial. This was a very salutary piece of natural adjustment, and they all felt much the better for it. A certain number of confirmed drones I suppose there will always be, but certainly London has become a much more industrious hive than it ever used to be.

Another process has contributed to the recuperative process, for the details of life have been much simplified. When your income is ruthlessly cut down, as has happened to most of us, it is clear that something must be done. The first thing we all did, naturally, was to raise a wild chorus of asserting that we were ruined. But when these minor strains did not seem to mend matters much, most people, under the recuperative force, began to consider and make catalogues of all the things which they could quite well do without. It is astonishing how voluminous these catalogues were. Those who had footmen who went to the war, like proper young men, suddenly found out that there were such things as parlour-maids. Those who rolled about in motor-cars discovered that there were taxicabs, and it was even hinted in more advanced circles that 'buses plied upon the London streets and tubes underneath them. There was some vague element of sport about it: it was something new to lie in ambush at a street corner and pounce on No. 19 that went up Sloane Street and along Shaftesbury Avenue, or get hopelessly befogged in the stupefying rabbit warrens that are excavated below Piccadilly Circus.

In spite, then, of the huge tragedies, the cruel bereavements, the distress among those whose economies were in no way a game, but a grinding necessity, we have adjusted ourselves, and are alive to the amazing fact that the day of little things, the small ordinary caresses and pleasures of life, is not over. For a while it was utterly darkened, the sun stood in full-orbed eclipse, but now (not callously) we can take pleasure in our little amusements and festas and fusses, though, owing to more useful occupations, we have not so much time for them. To compare a small affair with these great ones, I remember how a few years ago I suddenly had to face a serious operation. The moment at which I was told this was one of black horror. There the doctor sat opposite me, looking prosperous and comfortable, and said: "You must make up your mind to it; have it done at once." Being a profound physical coward, the thing seemed quite unfaceable, an impossibility. But before an hour was up, the adjustment had come, and once more the savour of the world stole back. The sun that day was just as warm as it had ever been, food was good, the faces of friends were dear, and the night before it was to take place I slept well, and when finally I was told it was time to go along the passage to where the operation was to be done, I remember turning down the page of the book I was reading and wondering less what was going to happen to me than to the characters of the novel. Nothing, in fact, is unfaceable when you have to face it; nothing entirely robs the eye and the ear of its little accustomed pleasures.

But what is much more important than the fact that the little things of life have put forth their buds again is that as a nation our eyes, half closed in dreamy contentment, have been opened to the day of great things. The outbreak of war in August last year was an earthquake inconceivable and overwhelming; but it has become one of the things that is, an austere majestic fact. Among its débris and scarred surfaces, not only has the mantle of growth with which Nature always clothes her upheavals begun to spring up, but the smoke of its ruin, like the cloud of ash over Vesuvius, has soared into high places, and its deepest shadows are lit with splendours that irradiate and transfigure them. It is not of terror alone that tragedy is compounded; there is pity in it as well, the pity that enlightens and purges, the unsealing of the human heart. God knows what still lies in the womb of the future, but already there has come to us a certain steadfastness that lay dormant, waiting for the trumpet to awaken it. We are, it is to be hoped, a little simpler, a little more serious, a little busier over doing obvious duties, a little less set on amusements and extravagancies. And I do not think we are the worse for that. The faith in which we entered the war, that ours was a righteous quarrel, has proved itself unshakeable; the need to stand firm has knitted the nation together.

Of our necessities, our failures, our endeavours and our rewards in these great matters, it is not possible to speak, for they are among the sacred things that dwell in silence. But there are, you may say, certain condiments in life which can be spoken of. First and foremost among them is a sense of humour, which has been extremely useful. Without losing sight of the main issue, or wanting to forget the tragic gravity of it all, it would be ridiculous to behave like pessimists and pacifists, and with distorted faces of gloom and pain, to shudder at the notion of finding anything to smile at. Even while we are aghast at the profanity with which the German Emperor regards himself as a Moses of the New Dispensation, and steps down from the thunderclouds of Sinai with the tables that have been personally entrusted to him, on the strength of which he orders his submarines to torpedo peaceful merchant vessels, we cannot (or should not) help smiling at this Imperial buffoon. Or why waste a shudder on his idiot son, when a smile would not be wasted, since it would do us good? Surely there are bright spots in the blackness. Or again, though hate is a most hellish emotion, and it is, of course, dreadful to think of one white nation being taught to hate another, yet when people compose a hymn of hate for the English, words and music, and have it printed and sold at a loss all over the German Empire in order to root more firmly yet the invincible resolve of the Teuton to strafe England, is it reasonable not to feel cheered up by the ludicrousness of these proceedings? Certainly it is a pity to hate anybody; but, given that, may we not treasure tenderly this crowning instance of the thoroughness of the frightful German race? I am glad they did that; it does me good. When I think of that, my food, as Walt Whitman says, nourishes me more. I like to think of Prince Oscar sending a telegram to his father, saying that he has had the overpowering happiness to be wounded for the sake of the Fatherland. I am glad his father sent for a Press agent and had those precious words published in every paper in the Fatherland, and I trust that Prince Oscar, since he likes being wounded so much, will get well quickly and go back and be wounded again. I am pleased that when Russia was sending hundreds of thousands of troops through England to join the Western battle-line, the fact was put beyond a doubt by somebody's gamekeeper seeing bearded men getting out of a train at Swindon on a hot day and stamping the snow from their boots, which proved they had come from Archangel… It all helps. Queen Elizabeth was a wise woman when she said that we have need of mirth in England. God knows we have.

I have been a year in London, hardly stirring from it by reason of things to do; but a fortnight ago I escaped into Norfolk for a breathing-space of air and sea. It was a good sea, in the manner of northern seas, and though it was impossible not to contrast it with the hot beach and lucid waters of the Palazzo a mare, I would not have exchanged it for that delectable spot. High, sheer sand-cliffs lined the coast, and on their edges were dug trenches with parapets of sandbags, while here and there, where the cliffs were broken away, there were lines of barbed wire entanglements. These, I must hope, were only, so to speak, practice efforts, for I found it saved time, when going down to bathe early, to step through these, with an eye to pyjama legs, rather than walk an extra hundred yards to a gap in those coast defences. But it all gave one a sense that this was England, alert and at war, and the sea itself aided the realization. For there every day would pass cruisers or torpedo-boats, no longer in peaceful manoeuvres, but engaged, swift and watchful, on their real business. Sometimes one would be running parallel with the coast, and then turn and roar seawards, till only a track of smoke on the horizon marked its passage. But that was the real thing; the armour of England was buckled on; it was no longer just being polished and made ready. The whole coast was patrolled, and all was part of one organized plan of defence, and when the moment came, of offence; somewhere out there the Grand Fleet waited, as it had waited more than a year; these ships that passed and went seaward again were the sentries that walked round the forts of the ocean.

A week on the coast was followed by a few days at a country house inland before I returned to London, and once again the realization of war had a vivid moment. The house where I was staying was surrounded by pheasant covers that came close up to the garden, where one night after dinner I was straying with a friend. It was warm and still; the odour of the night-blooming stocks hung on the air; the sky was windless and slightly overclouded, so that the stars burned as if through frosted glass, and we were in the dark of the moon. Then suddenly from the sleeping woods arose an inexplicable clamour of pheasant's cries; the place was more resonant with them than at the hour when they retired to roost. Every moment fresh crowings were added to the tumult. I have never heard so strange an alarum. It did not die down again, but went on and on. Then presently through it, faintly at first, but with growing distinctness, came a birring rhythmical beat, heavy and sonorous. It came beyond doubt from the air, not from the land, and was far more solid, more heavy in tone, than any aeroplanes I had ever heard. Then my friend pointed. "Look!" he said. There, a little to the east, a black shape, long and cylindrical, sped across the greyness of the shrouded sky, moving very rapidly westward. Soon it was over our heads; before long it had passed into indistinctness again. But long after its beat had become inaudible to our ears, the screams of the pheasants continued, as they yelled at the murderer on the way to the scene of his crime.

For half an hour after that some stir of uneasiness went on in the woods; the furred and feathered creatures were aware, by some sixth sense, that there was danger in the air. Then muffled and distant came the noise of explosions and the uneasiness of the woodland grew to panic again, with rustlings in the brushwood of hares seeking cover, and the cries of birds seeking each other, and asking what was this terror by night. Presently afterwards the beat of the propellers was again audible to human ears, and the Zeppelin passed over us once more, flying invisible at a great height, going eastwards again. It was moving much faster now, for its deadly work was over, and, flushed with its triumph, it was bearing home the news of its glorious exploit. Those intrepid crusaders, Lohengrins of the air, had taken their toll of smashed cottages, slain children and murdered mothers, and the anointed of the Lord next morning, hearing of their great valour above a small Norfolk hamlet, would congratulate them on their glorious exploit and decorate them with iron crosses to mark his shameful approval of their deed.

London at night has become a dim Joseph's coat of many colours. The authorities are experimenting in broken rainbows for the sake of our safety from above, and for our vastly increased peril on the ground. Instead of the great white flame of electric lights, and the hot orange of the gas, we have a hundred hues of veiled colour. What exactly all the decrees are which produce these rainbows, I do not know; but the effect, particularly on a wet night when the colours are reflected on wet wood pavements and asphalte, is perfectly charming, and we hope that, in compensation for the multiplied dangers of the streets, we shall be immune from the flames and fumes of incendiary and asphyxiating shells. The prudent householder – I am afraid I am not one – has had a good deal of pleasant occupation in fitting up his cellar as a place to flee unto when we are threatened with Zeppelins, and one night, shortly after my return, I had the pleasure of inspecting one of these. It lay deep in the bowels of the earth, and if the absence of air would not asphyxiate you, I am sure its refugees need fear no other cause of suffocation. There were several deck-chairs, and at a slightly withdrawn distance a serviceable wooden form on which the servants would sit, while the bombardment was going on, in a respectful row. There was a spirit-lamp on which to make tea, a tin of highly nutritious biscuits, and a variety of books to read by the light of electric torches. Upstairs the same thoroughness prevailed. Nightly, on retiring to bed, the lady of the house had on a table close at hand a bag containing the most valuable of her jewellery, and a becoming dressing-gown much padded. Her husband's Zeppelin suit, the sort of suit you might expect to find in opulent Esquimaux houses, lay on another chair, and outside in the hall was a large washing basin filled with some kind of soda-solution, and on the rim of it, hung like glasses on the top of a punch-bowl, were arranged half a dozen amazing masks, goggle-eyed and cotton-wooled, which, on the first sign of an asphyxiating bomb, would be dipped in the solution of soda and tied over the face. To provide against incendiary bombs there was a pail of sand and a pail of water at every corner, while below the cellar beckoned a welcome in case of explosions. Given a moment for preparation, this house was a fortress against which Zeppelins might furiously rage together without hurting anybody. Whether they sought to suffocate or to burn, or to blow to atoms, this thoughtful householder was prepared for any of their nasty tricks.

All this was perfectly entrancing to my flippant mind, and after dinner, when the servants had washed up, we had, at my particular request, a rehearsal of the Zeppelin game to see how it all worked. The servants and my host and hostess retired to their respective bedrooms, and we put out all the lights. As guest, I had no duty assigned to me, I was just going to be a passenger in the Ark of safety, so I remained in the hall. When I judged I had given them enough time to lie fairly down on their beds, I sounded the gong with great vigour, which denoted that a Zeppelin had begun dropping bombs in the neighbourhood. Then the house responded splendidly: in an incredibly short space of time my hostess came out of her room, with the bag containing the regalia in her hand, and her beautiful padded dressing-gown on; my host came from his with the Esquimaux suit over his dress-clothes – looking precisely like Tweedledum arrayed for battle – and the servants, with shrill giggles, waited near the basin of soda-solution. Then we all put on masks (there was one to spare, which was given me), and, omitting the ceremony of dipping them in the soda, my host caught up the basin, and we all trooped downstairs into the cellar. The servants plumped themselves down on the bench, we sat in the deck-chairs, and there we all were. The time from the sounding of the gong to the moment when the cellar door was banged, and we were safe from explosives and asphyxiating bombs, was just three minutes and five seconds. The only thing unprovided for was the event of the Zeppelin dropping incendiary bombs after we had all gone into the Ark, for in that case the house would be burned above us, and we should be slowly roasted. But that cruel contingency we settled to disregard. It would be the kind of bad luck against which it is hopeless to take precautions. So then, as it was a hot evening, my host took off his Zeppelin suit again, and after testing the nutritive biscuits, which were quite delicious, we went upstairs again with shouts of laughter. No doubt their provision had a solid base of reason, for it certainly would be very annoying to be asphyxiated in your room, when such simple arrangements as these would have resulted in your having a cup of tea in the comfortable cellar instead; but there was this added bonus of sport about it all. It was the greatest fun.

This house where I had been dining was in the neighbourhood of Bedford Square, and I left about half-past ten, with the intention of walking as far as Charing Cross, and there embarking on the underground. I had hardly gone a hundred yards from the house, when on to the quiet night there came a report so appalling that it seemed like some catastrophic noise heard in a dream. It was quite close to me, somewhere on the left, and I ran as hard as I could round the corner of a block of houses to be able to look eastwards, for there was no doubt in my mind that a Zeppelin, nearly overhead, had dropped a bomb. Before I got to the corner there was another report as loud as the first, and, looking up, I saw that the searchlights, like pencils of light, were madly scribbling about over the sky. Suddenly one caught the Zeppelin, then another, and next moment it was in the meeting focus of half a dozen of them, hanging high above my head, serene and gilded with the rays of light, a fairy creation of the air. Then began the sound of guns, one shell exploded in front of it, another far below it. Disregarding all the regulations for their protection, people ran out of their houses, and, like me, stood gaping up at it, for the excitement of it was irresistible. I noticed that one man near me put up the collar of his coat whenever there was a loud explosion, just as if a slight shower was falling, and then quite gravely and seriously put it down again. Others stepped into porches, or flattened themselves against the walls, but none did as they were told by the police regulations. A special constable was there too, who should have herded us all into cover; instead, he stared with the rest, and put the lighted end of his cigarette into his mouth. For, indeed, this was not a thing you could see every day, a Zeppelin hanging above you, and the shells from guns in London exploding round it. It fired the imagination; here was the Real Thing, which we had been reading about for a year and never seen. The air had been invaded by the enemy, and guns in the heart of the securest city in the world were belching shells at it.

Then came the end of this amazing sight: a shell burst close to that serene swimmer, and it stuck its nose in the air, and ascending with extraordinary speed, like a bubble going upwards through water, got out of the focus of searchlights and disappeared.

By this time the eastern horizon was glowing with a light that grew steadily more vivid. The airship had dropped incendiary bombs in the City, and fire-engines were racing along Oxford Street, with gleam of helmets, clanging of bells and hoarse shouts from the firemen. But there was no getting near the seat of the fire, for a cordon of police had closed all streets near it, and I walked homewards along the Embankment, with eyes fixed on the sky, and cannoning into other passengers, because I did not look where I was going, as you may see ladies doing when they gaze in a hypnotized manner into hat-shops, as they walk along the street.

Apart from the actual thrill of the adventure, there was a most interesting psychological point, which I considered as I went homewards. There were we, the crowd in the street, just average folk, just average cowards in the face of danger, and not one, as far as I could see, gave a single thought to the risk of dropped bombs or falling pieces of shrapnel. We might any or all of us be wiped out next moment, but we didn't care, not in the least because we were brave, but because the interest of what was happening utterly extinguished any other feeling. Probably the majority of the crowd had passed gloomy and uncomfortable moments imagining that very situation, namely, of having a murderous Zeppelin just above them; but when once the murderous Zeppelin was there, they all forgot it was murderous, and were merely interested in the real live Zeppelin. Just in the same way, in minute matters, we all find that ringing the dentist's bell is about the worst part of the tiresome business.

The sequel as concerns the house in which I had dined so few hours before delighted me when I was told it next day. I suppose the realistic character of our rehearsal preyed on the servants' minds, for they groped their way downstairs to the cellar in the dark, and none thought to turn on the electric light. My hostess picked up her jewel-case and groped her way after them, forgetting about the soda-solution and the masks, and my host threw open the window and gazed ecstatically at the Zeppelin till it vanished. Then he turned on the lights and fetched his household back from the cellar, since the raid was over… It is but another instance of how, when faced with a situation, we diverge from the lines of conduct we have so carefully laid down for ourselves. I once knew a family that practised fire-drill very industriously in case that one day there might be an outbreak in the house. There were patent extinguishers to put it out with, and ropes to let yourself out of window all over the place, and everyone knew exactly what he was to do. Then the opportunity so long expected came, and a serious outbreak occurred. On which the owner forgot everything that he had learned himself and taught everybody else, and after throwing a quantity of his valuable Oriental china on to the stone terrace, he performed prodigies of single-handed valour in saving a very old piano which nobody wanted at all… (I think this pathetic story contradicts my theory about the calmness of the crowd on the Zeppelin night, but who wants to be consistent?)

I had arrived this September at a break in the lease of my house, and six months before (see page two of the lease in question) I had given notice to the owner in writing that I should evacuate. Consequently for the last few months I had been an assiduous frequenter of house-agents' offices, and the God of addition sums alone knows how many houses I had seen over from garret to basement. The extraordinary thing about all these was that they were all exceptional bargains, such as the agent had never before known, and that in almost every case another gentleman was in negotiation for them. In spite of that, however, if I chose at once and firmly to offer the price asked, there was a strong probability of my securing one of these marvellous bargains, and thwarting the ambitions of the other gentleman. This opportunity to thwart the other gentleman was certainly an appeal to the more villainous side of human nature, and often, if a house seemed to me the sort of habitation I was on the look-out for, the thought of the other gentleman getting it was an incentive to take it myself. But never before did I realize how hopelessly traditional is that section of the human race which designs our houses for us. The type, in the modest species of abode I was looking for, never varied. There was a narrow passage inside the front door, with a dining-room and a back room opening out of it, and a staircase up to the first floor, where lay two sitting-rooms, invariably knocked into one. There was a bath on a half-landing, there were front bedrooms and back bedrooms higher up, all exactly alike, and for a long time I looked in vain for any house that was not precisely like any other house. In fact, this became a sine qua non with me, and ceasing to care whether I thwarted the other gentleman or not, I think if I had found a house where the bath-room was in the basement, or there was no staircase, so that you had to go upstairs in a basket with a rope, I should have taken it. I almost despaired of finding what I wanted, and thought of revoking, if possible, my notice of quitting, for in my present house there is something which is not quite like other houses, for some inspired tenant threw down the wall between the dining-room and the entrance passage, making a sort of hall of it, in the middle of which I dine. That there are inconveniences attaching to it I don't deny, for the guest sitting nearest the front door occasionally jumps out of his skin when the postman thunders with the evening post close by his ear; but the house isn't quite like other houses of its type, which is precisely the reason why ten years ago I took it.

With a pocket full of "orders to view," and plenty of shillings for the patient caretakers who mournfully conducted me over their charge, I used on most days to set out on these explorations after lunch, returning discouraged at tea-time. I could not see myself in any of the houses I saw, or imagine going to sleep in any of those front bedrooms, or spending the evening in the back-room behind the dining-room, or in the two sitting-rooms knocked into one. But then, though it lingered long, came the Mecca of my quest. Even at the front door I had some premonition of success, for the knocker was not like other knockers, and when the door opened, I saw, with a beating heart, that the staircase was not like other staircases. Some four feet from the ground it turned at right angles towards where the dreadful little back room should be. It couldn't go into the door of the little back room, or if it did, it would be very odd. You would have to pass through the dining-room in order to get to the bottom of the staircase… Then advancing I saw: the staircase turned into a little hall (originally, no doubt, the dreadful little back room). Beyond lay a broad passage, and the dining-room was built out at the end. Through the open door of it I saw the windows looking out, not on to a street at all, but on to full-foliaged trees that grew in a disused graveyard. Between it and the house ran a way for foot-passengers only. Something in my brain exulted, crying out "This is it!" and simultaneously I felt a soft stroking on my shin. Looking down I saw a grave black cat rubbing against me. Was there ever such an omen? I had already settled in my mind that this must be the house intended for me (it was), and here was the bringer of good luck congratulating me on my discovery.

I made the usual grand tour, but in how different a mood, and as I mounted my spirits rose ever higher. In front was a square (so-called though it was an oblong) closed at the top end where my house was situated, so that no traffic came through it, and at the back was this big graveyard, with its church, and the dome of the Brompton Oratory (concealment is useless) rising over its shoulder like the Salute at Venice. Literally not a house was in sight; there was but the faintest sound of traffic from the Brompton Road; I might have been a country parson in his vicarage. I went straight to the house-agent's, made an offer, and didn't care one atom whether I thwarted anybody or not. Naturally I hoped I did, but it made no difference.

A little genteel chaffering ensued, for I felt so certain that I was going to live in that house, that I felt I was running no risks, and in a week it was mine, with possession at this quarter-day of September. Then having got my desire, I began to feel regretful about the house I was leaving. I had spent ten jolly years in it, and now for the first time I became aware how I had taken root there, how our tendrils, those of the house and of me, had got intertwined. The roots consisted of all kinds of memories, some sad, some pleasant, some ludicrous, but all dear. I was digging myself up like a plant, and these fibres had to be disentangled, for I could not bear to break them. For though memories are immaterial things, they knit themselves into rooms or gardens, the scenes where they were laid, and those scenes become part of them and they of those scenes. Just as a house where some deed of horror has been done retains for sensitives some impression of it, and we say the house is haunted, so even for those who are not sensitives in this psychical sense the rooms they have lived in, where there has been the talk and laughter of those they have loved, and maybe lost, have got knit into them, and must be treated tenderly if parting comes. And I imagined, when I came home after definitely settling to leave this month, that the house knew about it, and looked at me with silent reproach. For we had suited each other very well, we had been very friendly and happy together, and now I was deserting the home in the making of which we had both been ingredients, and the spirit of the house I was betraying was full of mute appeal. It did not want to be left alone, or, still worse, to be mated with people who did not suit it. But what could I do? I was going away; there was no doubt about that, and I could hardly give it a present of fresh paint or paper some of its rooms to please it. That would have been ridiculous. But I would leave it all the bulbs I had planted year by year in the garden. There would be a great show of them next spring… Poor dear little old house!

I had got possession of my new house "as from" (this is legal phraseology, and means "on") the first of September, when the front door-key was given me; and thus I had four weeks for decoration, and took a header into the delightful sea of paints and papers and distempers. The most altruistic of friends, whom I will call Kino (which has something to do with his name but not much), vowed himself to me for the whole of that month, to give advice in the matter of colours, and not to mind if I rejected it, to come backwards and forwards for ever and ever from one house to the other, with a pencil, a memorandum-book and a yard measure incessantly in his pocket. For when you go into a new house you have to measure all that you possess to see if it fits. It never does, but you can't help believing it is going to. You have to measure curtains and curtain rods to see where they will go (the idea of leaving a lovely brass curtain rod behind was an idea before which my happiness shrivelled like a parched scroll); you have to measure brass stair-rods and count them; you have to measure blinds, and carpets and rugs and grand pianos and beds and tables and cupboards. Then with the dimensions written down in Kino's memorandum-book, we hurried across to the new house, and measured the heights of rooms by tying the tape on to the end of a walking-stick, and the spaces between the eyelets on stairs which in favourable circumstances retain the carpet rods in place, the widths of recesses, comparing them with the measurements of the articles we hoped to establish there. Also with sinkings of the heart I surreptitiously took the size of an awkward angle of the staircase (up which my grand piano must pass), and came to the conclusion that it wouldn't. I said nothing about it to Kino, because it is no use to anticipate trouble. But later in the day, when we were back in Oakley Street again, I came unexpectedly into the drawing-room and caught him measuring the piano. Of course I pretended not to see.

The previous tenant of the new house had taken away most of the fixtures, but was willing to leave certain degraded blinds, which on my side I did not want. On the other hand, I had not long ago got a quantity of new blinds for my old house, which I should have liked to use if possible, and the question of blinds became a nightmare. I had before now deplored the awful uniformity of architects in matters of building; now I raged over their amazing irregularities with regard to windows. In an insane anxiety for originality, they seemed to make every window of a different size; my drawing-room blinds were three inches too narrow for my new drawing-room, and two inches too broad for the front bedroom. Then Kino would have a marvellous inspiration, and, running downstairs, discovered that the hall window was of precisely the same width as the drawing-room windows in the old house, so that a home was found for one of the blinds. So he measured all the other windows in the new house, to find a home for the other drawing-room blind. Then we lost the measurements of the windows in my old bedroom, and I went back to Oakley Street, to measure these again and telephone the dimensions to him. On going to the telephone "the intermittent buzzing sound" awaited me, and after agitating discussions between me and the exchange, I found that Kino was simultaneously ringing me up to say he had found the list in question, and by a wonderful stroke of good luck my bedroom blinds fitted the back bedroom on the second floor. There was only one window there, so we had left over (at present) one drawing-room blind and one bedroom blind… That night I dreamed that Kino was dead, and that I, as undertaker, was trying to fit a bedroom blind on to him as a shroud; but his feet, shod in Wellington boots, protruded, and I cut a piece off the dining-room blind to cover them up.

But through all these disturbances the work of painting and distempering went swiftly on, and the house began to gleam with the colours I loved. For a mottled wall-paper in the hall and passage which resembled brawn that had seen its best days, there shone a blue in which there met the dark velvet of the starry sky and the flare of the Italian noon. Black woodwork with panels of white framed the window, and of black and white was the staircase; a yellow ceiling made sunshine in the dining-room. The drawing-room was fawn-grey, and on the black floor would gleam the sober sunsets of Bokhara; even blinds that would not fit and brass curtain-rods that there was no use for had, so to speak, a silver lining. Marvellous to relate, there seemed every prospect of the work being finished by the twenty-ninth of the month, and with an optimism pathetically misplaced, I supposed that it was the simplest thing in the world to put the furniture of a small house into a larger one. I knew exactly where everything was to go; what could be simpler than with a smiling face to indicate to the workmen the position of each article as it emerged from the van? It is true that the thought of the grand piano still occasionally croaked raven-like in my mind, but I pretended, like Romeo, that it was only the nightingale.

I suppose everybody, however lightly enchained to possessions, has some few objects of art (or otherwise) to which he is profoundly attached. In my case there were certain wreaths and festoons of gilded wood-carving by Kent, and before the actual move took place, Kino and I had a halcyon day in fixing these up to the walls of the blue hall, where they would be safe from the danger of having wardrobes and other trifles dumped down on them. So on a certain Sunday we set off from Oakley Street in a taxicab piled high with these treasures and with hammer and nails, and with a bottle of wine, sandwiches of toast and chicken, apples and two kitchen chairs. Disembarking with care, we ate the first meal in the house, and did not neglect a most important ceremony, that of making friends with the Penates, or gods of the home, who, like my strega in Alatri and the fairies of Midsummer Night's Dream, police the passages when all are asleep and drive far from the house all doubtful presences. There on the earth we made burnt offering of the crumbs of chicken sandwiches and apple-rind, building an oven of the paper in which our lunch was wrapped, and at the end pouring on the ashes a libation from the bottle of wine. All was right that day; the nails went smoothly home into the walls, we did not hammer our fingers, and the gold wreaths arranged themselves as by magic.

The great manoeuvre began next day, when at an early hour the vans arrived to begin taking my furniture. That day they moved dispensable things, leaving the apparatus of bedrooms, which was to be transferred on the morrow, at the close of which I was to sleep in the new house. Dining-room furniture went on the first day, and when I came back that evening to sleep in the old house for the last time, I found it dishevelled and mournful. Canvas-packing strewed the floor, pictures were gone, and on the walls where they had hung were squares and oblongs of unfaded paper. The beauty and the amenity of the house were departed; I felt as if I had been stripping the robes off it, and its spirit shivering and in rags went silently with me as I visited the denuded rooms, with eyes of silent reproach. I was taking away from it all that it had reckoned as its own; to-morrow I, too, should desert it, and it would stand lonely and companionless. Never in those ten years had it been so pleasant to live with as in that last week; it was as if it were putting forth shy advances, making itself so kind and agreeable, in order to detain the tenants with whom it had passed such happy years. One by one I turned out the lights, and its spirit followed me up to my bedroom. But to-night it would not come in, and when I entered the sense of home was gone from my room.

All next day the chaos in the new house grew more and more abysmal as the vans were unloaded. The plan of putting everything instantly and firmly into its place failed to come off; for how could you put anything firmly or otherwise into the dining-room when for two hours the refrigerator blocked access to it? Meantime books were stacked on the floor, layers of pictures leaned against the walls; the hall got packed with tables and piles of curtains, and finally, about five of the afternoon, arrived the grand piano. The foreman gave but one glance at the staircase, and declared that it was quite impossible for it to go up, and pending some fresh plan for its ascension, it must needs stop in the hall too, where it stood on its side like the coffin of some enormous skate. By making yourself tall and thin you could just get by it.

Trouble increased; soon after nightfall a policeman rang at the door to tell me I had an unshaded light in a front room. So I had, and, abjectly apologizing, I explained the circumstance and quenched the light. Hardly had he gone, when another came and said I had a very bright light in a back room. That seemed to be true also, and since there were neither blinds nor curtains in that room, where I was trying to produce some semblance of order, my labours there must be abandoned. But the more we tidied, the more we attempted to put pieces of furniture into their places, the worse grew the confusion, and the more the floors got carpeted with china and pictures and books. It was as when you eat an artichoke, and, behold, the more you eat, the higher on your plate rises the débris.

About midnight Kino went home; the servants had gone to bed, and I was alone in this nightmare of unutterable confusion. Till one I toiled on, wondering why I had ever left the old house, where the spirit of home was now left lonely. No spirit of home had arrived here yet, and I did not wonder. But just before I went to bed I visited the kitchen to see how they had been getting on downstairs, and for a moment hope gleamed on the horizon. For sitting in the middle of the best dinner-service, which was on the floor, was Cyrus, my blue Persian cat, purring loudly. His topaz eye gleamed, and he rose up, clawing at the hay as I entered. He liked the new house; he thought it would suit him, and came upstairs with me, arching his back and rubbing himself against the corners.