Eight o’clock of a fine spring morning in the hamlet of Kezzal Predy Peter, great horses with chains clinking down the road, and Alexander Finkle rising from his bed singing: “O lah soh doh, soh lah me doh,” timing his notes to the ching of his neighbour’s anvil. He boils a cupful of water on an oil stove, his shaving brush stands (where it always stands) upon the window-ledge (“Soh lah soh do-o-o-oh, soh doh soh la-a-a-ah!”) but as he addresses himself to his toilet the clamour of the anvil ceases and then Finkle too becomes silent, for the unresting cares of his life begin again to afflict him.

“This cottage is no good,” he mumbles, “and I’m no good. Literature is no good when you live too much on porridge. Your writing’s no good, sir, you can’t get any glow out of oatmeal. Why did you ever come here? It’s a hopeless job and you know it!” Stropping his razor petulantly as if the soul of that frustrating oatmeal lay there between the leather and the blade, he continues: “But it isn’t the cottage, it isn’t me, it isn’t the writing—it’s the privation. I must give it up and get a job as a railway porter.”

And indeed he was very impoverished, the living he derived from his writings was meagre; the cottage had many imperfections, both its rooms were gloomy, and to obviate the inconvenience arising from its defective roof he always slept downstairs.

Two years ago he had been working for a wall-paper manufacturer in Bethnal Green. He was not poor then, not so very poor, he had the clothes he stood up in (they were good clothes) and fifty pounds in the bank besides. But although he had served the wall-paper man for fifteen years that fifty pounds had not been derived from clerking, he had earned it by means of his hobby, a little knack of writing things for provincial newspapers. On his thirty-first birthday Finkle argued—for he had a habit of conducting long and not unsatisfactory discussions between himself and a self that apparently wasn’t him—that what he could do reasonably well in his scanty leisure could be multiplied exceedingly if he had time and opportunity, lived in the country, somewhere where he could go into a garden to smell the roses or whatever was blooming and draw deep draughts of happiness, think his profound thoughts and realize the goodness of God, and then sit and read right through some long and difficult book about Napoleon or Mahomet. Bursting with literary ambition Finkle had hesitated no longer: he could live on nothing in the country—for a time. He had the fifty pounds, he had saved it, it had taken him seven years, but he had made it and saved it. He handed in his notice. That was very astonishing to his master, who esteemed him, but more astonishing to Finkle was the parting gift of ten pounds which the master had given him. The workmen, too, had collected more money for him, and bought for him a clock, a monster, it weighed twelve pounds and had a brass figure of Lohengrin on the top, while the serene old messenger man who cleaned the windows and bought surreptitious beer for the clerks gave him a prescription for the instantaneous relief of a painful stomach ailment. “It might come in handy,” he had said. That was two years ago, and now just think! He had bought himself an inkpot of crystalline glass—a large one, it held nearly half a pint—and two pens, one for red ink and one for black, besides a quill for signing his name with. Here he was at “Pretty Peter” and the devil himself was in it! Nothing had ever been right, the hamlet itself was poor. Like all places near the chalk hills its roads were of flint, the church was of flint, the farms and cots of flint with brick corners. There was an old milestone outside his cot, he was pleased with that, it gave the miles to London and the miles to Winchester, it was nice to have a milestone there like that—your very own.

He finished shaving and threw open the cottage door; the scent of wallflowers and lilac came to him as sweet almost as a wedge of newly cut cake. The may bloom on his hedge drooped over the branches like crudded cream, and the dew in the gritty road smelled of harsh dust in a way that was pleasant. Well, if the cottage wasn’t much good, the bit of a garden was all right.

There was a rosebush too, a little vagrant in its growth. He leaned over his garden gate; there was no one in sight. He took out the fire shovel and scooped up a clot of manure that lay in the road adjacent to his cottage and trotted back to place it in a little heap at the root of those scatter-brained roses, pink and bulging, that never seemed to do very well and yet were so satisfactory.

“Nicish day,” remarked Finkle, lolling against his doorpost, “but it’s always nice if you are doing a good day’s work. The garden is all right, and literature is all right, and life’s all right—only I live too much on porridge. It isn’t the privation itself, it’s the things privation makes a man do. It makes a man do things he ought not want to do, it makes him mean, it makes him feel mean, I tell you, and if he feels mean and thinks mean he writes meanly, that’s how it is.”

He had written topical notes and articles, stories of gay life (of which he knew nothing), of sport (of which he knew less), a poem about “hope,” and some cheerful pieces for a girls’ weekly paper. And yet his outgoings still exceeded his income, painfully and perversely after two years. It was terrifying. He wanted success, he had come to conquer—not to find what he had found. But he would be content with encouragement now even if he did not win success; it was absolutely necessary, he had not sold a thing for six months, his public would forget him, his connection would be gone.

“There’s no use though,” mused Finkle, as he scrutinized his worn boots, “in looking at things in detail, that’s mean; a large view is the thing. Whatever is isolated is bound to look alarming.”

But he continued to lean against the doorpost in the full blaze of the stark, almost gritty sunlight, thinking mournfully until he heard the porridge in the saucepan begin to bubble. Turning into the room he felt giddy, and scarlet spots and other phantasmagoria waved in the air before him.

Without an appetite he swallowed the porridge and ate some bread and cheese and watercress. Watercress, at least, was plentiful there, for the little runnels that came down from the big hills expanded in the Predy Peter fields and in their shallow bottoms the cress flourished.

He finished his breakfast, cleared the things away, and sat down to see if he could write, but it was in vain—he could not write. He could think, but his mind would embrace no subject, it just teetered about with the objects within sight, the empty, disconsolate grate, the pattern of the rug, and the black butterfly that had hung dead upon the wall for so many months. Then he thought of the books he intended to read but could never procure, the books he had procured but did not like, the books he had liked but was already, so soon, forgetting. Smoking would have helped and he wanted to smoke, but he could not afford it now. If ever he had a real good windfall he intended to buy a tub, a little tub it would have to be of course, and he would fill it to the bung with cigarettes, full to the bung, if it cost him pounds. And he would help himself to one whenever he had a mind to do so.

“Bah, you fool!” he murmured, “you think you have the whole world against you, that you are fighting it, keeping up your end with heroism! Idiot! What does it all amount to? You’ve withdrawn yourself from the world, run away from it, and here you sit making futile dabs at it, like a child sticking pins into a pudding and wondering why nothing happens. What could happen? What? The world doesn’t know about you, or care, you are useless. It isn’t aware of you any more than a chain of mountains is aware of a gnat. And whose fault is that—is it the mountains’ fault? Idiot! But I can’t starve and I must go and get a job as a railway porter, it’s all I’m fit for.”

Two farmers paused outside Finkle’s garden and began a solid conversation upon a topic that made him feel hungry indeed. He listened, fascinated, though he was scarcely aware of it.

“Six-stone lambs,” said one, “are fetching three pounds apiece.”

“Ah!”

“I shall fat some.”

“Myself I don’t care for lamb, never did care.”

“It’s good eating.”

“Ah, but I don’t care for it. Now we had a bit of spare rib last night off an old pig. ’Twas cold, you know, but beautiful. I said to my dame: ‘What can mortal man want better than spare rib off an old pig? Tender and white, ate like lard.’”

“Yes, it’s good eating.”

“Nor veal, I don’t like—nothing that’s young.”

“Veal’s good eating.”

“Don’t care for it, never did, it eats short to my mind.”

Then the school bell began to ring so loudly that Finkle could hear no more, but his mind continued to hover over the choice of lamb or veal or old pork until he was angry. Why had he done this foolish thing, thrown away his comfortable job, reasonable food, ease of mind, friendship, pocket money, tobacco? Even his girl had forgotten him. Why had he done this impudent thing, it was insanity surely? But he knew that man has instinctive reasons that transcend logic, what a parson would call the superior reason of the heart.

“I wanted a change, and I got it. Now I want another change, but what shall I get? Chance and change, they are the sweet features of existence. Chance and change, and not too much prosperity. If I were an idealist I could live from my hair upwards.”

The two farmers separated. Finkle staring haplessly from his window saw them go. Some schoolboys were playing a game of marbles in the road there. Another boy sat on the green bank quietly singing, while one in spectacles knelt slyly behind him trying to burn a hole in the singer’s breeches with a magnifying glass. Finkle’s thoughts still hovered over the flavours and satisfactions of veal and lamb and pig until, like mother Hubbard, he turned and opened his larder.

There, to his surprise, he saw four bananas lying on a saucer. Bought from a travelling hawker a couple of days ago they had cost him threepence halfpenny. And he had forgotten them! He could not afford another luxury like that for a week at least, and he stood looking at them, full of doubt. He debated whether he should take one now, he would still have one left for Wednesday, one for Thursday, and one for Friday. But he thought he would not, he had had his breakfast and he had not remembered them. He grew suddenly and absurdly angry again. That was the worst of poverty, not what it made you endure, but what it made you want to endure. Why shouldn’t he eat a banana—why shouldn’t he eat all of them? And yet bananas always seemed to him such luxuriant, expensive things, so much peel, and then two, or not more than three, delicious bites. But if he fancied a banana—there it was. No, he did not want to destroy the blasted thing! No reason at all why he should not, but that was what continuous hardship did for you, nothing could stop this miserable feeling for economy now. If he had a thousand pounds at this moment he knew he would be careful about bananas and about butter and about sugar and things like that; but he would never have a thousand pounds, nobody had ever had it, it was impossible to believe that anyone had ever had wholly and entirely to themselves a thousand pounds. It could not be believed. He was like a man dreaming that he had the hangman’s noose around his neck; yet the drop did not take place, it did not take place, and it would not take place. But the noose was still there. He picked up the bananas one by one, the four bananas, the whole four. No other man in the world, surely, had ever had four such fine bananas as that and not wanted to eat them? O, why had such stupid, mean scruples seized him again? It was disgusting and ungenerous to himself, it made him feel mean, it was mean! Rushing to his cottage door he cried: “Here y’are!” to the playing schoolboys and flung two of the bananas into the midst of them. Then he flung another. He hesitated at the fourth, and tearing the peel from it he crammed the fruit into his own mouth, wolfing it down and gasping: “So perish all such traitors.”

When he had completely absorbed its savour, he stared like a fool at the empty saucer. It was empty, the bananas were gone, all four irrecoverably gone.

“Damned pig!” cried Finkle.

But then he sat down and wrote all this, just as it appears.

LONDON: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND GRIGGS (PRINTERS), LTD.
CHISWICK PRESS, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.