The Island Pharisees

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THE ISLAND PHARISEES


By John Galsworthy

"But this is a worshipful society"
KING JOHN




PREFACE

Each man born into the world is born like Shelton in this book--to go a
journey, and for the most part he is born on the high road. At first
he sits there in the dust, with his little chubby hands reaching at
nothing, and his little solemn eyes staring into space. As soon as he
can toddle, he moves, by the queer instinct we call the love of life,
straight along this road, looking neither to the right nor left, so
pleased is he to walk. And he is charmed with everything--with the nice
flat road, all broad and white, with his own feet, and with the prospect
he can see on either hand. The sun shines, and he finds the road a
little hot and dusty; the rain falls, and he splashes through the muddy
puddles. It makes no matter--all is pleasant; his fathers went this way
before him; they made this road for him to tread, and, when they bred
him, passed into his fibre the love of doing things as they themselves
had done them. So he walks on and on, resting comfortably at nights
under the roofs that have been raised to shelter him, by those who went
before.

Suddenly one day, without intending to, he notices a path or opening
in the hedge, leading to right or left, and he stands, looking at the
undiscovered. After that he stops at all the openings in the hedge; one
day, with a beating heart, he tries one.

And this is where the fun begins.

Out of ten of him that try the narrow path, nine of him come back to
the broad road, and, when they pass the next gap in the hedge, they say:
"No, no, my friend, I found you pleasant for a while, but after that-ah!
after that! The way my fathers went is good enough for me, and it is
obviously the proper one; for nine of me came back, and that poor silly
tenth--I really pity him!"

And when he comes to the next inn, and snuggles in his well-warmed, bed,
he thinks of the wild waste of heather where he might have had to spend
the night alone beneath the stars; nor does it, I think, occur to him
that the broad road he treads all day was once a trackless heath itself.

But the poor silly tenth is faring on. It is a windy night that he
is travelling through a windy night, with all things new around, and
nothing to help him but his courage. Nine times out of ten that courage
fails, and he goes down into the bog. He has seen the undiscovered,
and--like Ferrand in this book--the undiscovered has engulfed him; his
spirit, tougher than the spirit of the nine that burned back to sleep
in inns, was yet not tough enough. The tenth time he wins across, and on
the traces he has left others follow slowly, cautiously--a new road is
opened to mankind! A true saying goes: Whatever is, is right! And if all
men from the world's beginning had said that, the world would never have
begun--at all. Not even the protoplasmic jelly could have commenced its
journey; there would have been no motive force to make it start.

And so, that other saying had to be devised before the world could set
up business: Whatever is, is wrong! But since the Cosmic Spirit found
that matters moved too fast if those that felt "All things that are,
are wrong" equalled in number those that felt "All things that are, are
right," It solemnly devised polygamy (all, be it said, in a spiritual
way of speaking); and to each male spirit crowing "All things that are,
are wrong" It decreed nine female spirits clucking "All things that are,
are right." The Cosmic Spirit, who was very much an artist, knew its
work, and had previously devised a quality called courage, and divided
it in three, naming the parts spiritual, moral, physical. To all the
male-bird spirits, but to no female (spiritually, not corporeally
speaking), It gave courage that was spiritual; to nearly all, both male
and female, It gave courage that was physical; to very many hen-bird
spirits It gave moral courage too. But, because It knew that if all the
male-bird spirits were complete, the proportion of male to female--one
to ten--would be too great, and cause upheavals, It so arranged that
only one in ten male-bird spirits should have all three kinds of
courage; so that the other nine, having spiritual courage, but lacking
either in moral or in physical, should fail in their extensions of the
poultry-run. And having started them upon these lines, it left them to
get along as best they might.

Thus, in the subdivision of the poultry-run that we call England, the
proportion of the others to the complete male-bird spirit, who, of
course, is not infrequently a woman, is ninety-nine to one; and
with every Island Pharisee, when he or she starts out in life, the
interesting question ought to be, "Am I that one?" Ninety very soon
find out that they are not, and, having found it out, lest others should
discover, they say they are. Nine of the other ten, blinded by their
spiritual courage, are harder to convince; but one by one they sink,
still proclaiming their virility. The hundredth Pharisee alone sits out
the play.

Now, the journey of this young man Shelton, who is surely not the
hundredth Pharisee, is but a ragged effort to present the working of the
truth "All things that are, are wrong," upon the truth "All things that
are, are right."

The Institutions of this country, like the Institutions of all other
countries, are but half-truths; they are the working daily clothing of
the nation; no more the body's permanent dress than is a baby's frock.
Slowly but surely they wear out, or are outgrown; and in their fashion
they are always thirty years at least behind the fashions of those
spirits who are concerned with what shall take their place. The
conditions that dictate our education, the distribution of our property,
our marriage laws, amusements, worship, prisons, and all other things,
change imperceptibly from hour to hour; the moulds containing them,
being inelastic, do not change, but hold on to the point of bursting,
and then are hastily, often clumsily, enlarged. The ninety desiring
peace and comfort for their spirit, the ninety of the well-warmed beds,
will have it that the fashions need not change, that morality is fixed,
that all is ordered and immutable, that every one will always marry,
play, and worship in the way that they themselves are marrying, playing,
worshipping. They have no speculation, and they hate with a deep hatred
those who speculate with thought. This is the function they were made
for. They are the dough, and they dislike that yeasty stuff of life
which comes and works about in them. The Yeasty Stuff--the other
ten--chafed by all things that are, desirous ever of new forms and
moulds, hate in their turn the comfortable ninety. Each party has
invented for the other the hardest names that it can think of:
Philistines, Bourgeois, Mrs. Grundy, Rebels, Anarchists, and
Ne'er-do-weels. So we go on! And so, as each of us is born to go his
journey, he finds himself in time ranged on one side or on the other,
and joins the choruses of name-slingers.

But now and then--ah! very seldom--we find ourselves so near that thing
which has no breadth, the middle line, that we can watch them both, and
positively smile to see the fun.

When this book was published first, many of its critics found that
Shelton was the only Pharisee, and a most unsatisfactory young man--and
so, no doubt, he is. Belonging to the comfortable ninety, they felt, in
fact, the need of slinging names at one who obviously was of the ten.
Others of its critics, belonging to the ten, wielded their epithets upon
Antonia, and the serried ranks behind her, and called them Pharisees; as
dull as ditch-water--and so, I fear, they are.

One of the greatest charms of authorship is the privilege it gives
the author of studying the secret springs of many unseen persons,
of analysing human nature through the criticism that his work
evokes--criticism welling out of the instinctive likings or aversions,
out of the very fibre of the human being who delivers it; criticism that
often seems to leap out against the critic's will, startled like a fawn
from some deep bed, of sympathy or of antipathy. And so, all authors
love to be abused--as any man can see.

In the little matter of the title of this book, we are all Pharisees,
whether of the ninety or the ten, and we certainly do live upon an
Island. JOHN GALSWORTHY.

January 1, 1908




PART I

THE TOWN




CHAPTER I

SOCIETY

A quiet, well-dressed man named Shelton, with a brown face and a short,
fair beard, stood by the bookstall at Dover Station. He was about
to journey up to London, and had placed his bag in the corner of a
third-class carriage.

After his long travel, the flat-vowelled voice of the bookstall clerk
offering the latest novel sounded pleasant--pleasant the independent
answers of a bearded guard, and the stodgy farewell sayings of a man and
wife. The limber porters trundling their barrows, the greyness of the
station and the good stolid humour clinging to the people, air, and
voices, all brought to him the sense of home. Meanwhile he wavered
between purchasing a book called Market Hayborough, which he had
read and would certainly enjoy a second time, and Carlyle's French
Revolution, which he had not read and was doubtful of enjoying; he felt
that he ought to buy the latter, but he did not relish giving up the
former. While he hesitated thus, his carriage was beginning to fill
up; so, quickly buying both, he took up a position from which he
could defend his rights. "Nothing," he thought, "shows people up like
travelling."

The carriage was almost full, and, putting his bag, up in the rack, he
took his seat. At the moment of starting yet another passenger, a girl
with a pale face, scrambled in.

"I was a fool to go third," thought Shelton, taking in his neighbours
from behind his journal.

They were seven. A grizzled rustic sat in the far corner; his empty
pipe, bowl downwards, jutted like a handle from his face, all bleared
with the smear of nothingness that grows on those who pass their lives
in the current of hard facts. Next to him, a ruddy, heavy-shouldered man
was discussing with a grey-haired, hatchet-visaged person the condition
of their gardens; and Shelton watched their eyes till it occurred to
him how curious a look was in them--a watchful friendliness, an allied
distrust--and that their voices, cheerful, even jovial, seemed to be
cautious all the time. His glance strayed off, and almost rebounded from
the semi-Roman, slightly cross, and wholly self-complacent face of a
stout lady in a black-and-white costume, who was reading the Strand
Magazine, while her other, sleek, plump hand, freed from its black
glove, and ornamented with a thick watch-bracelet, rested on her lap. A
younger, bright-cheeked, and self-conscious female was sitting next her,
looking at the pale girl who had just got in.

"There's something about that girl," thought Shelton, "they don't
like." Her brown eyes certainly looked frightened, her clothes were of
a foreign cut. Suddenly he met the glance of another pair of eyes; these
eyes, prominent and blue, stared with a sort of subtle roguery from
above a thin, lopsided nose, and were at once averted. They gave Shelton
the impression that he was being judged, and mocked, enticed, initiated.
His own gaze did not fall; this sanguine face, with its two-day growth
of reddish beard, long nose, full lips, and irony, puzzled him. "A
cynical face!" he thought, and then, "but sensitive!" and then, "too
cynical," again.

The young man who owned it sat with his legs parted at the knees, his
dusty trouser-ends and boots slanting back beneath the seat, his
yellow finger-tips crisped as if rolling cigarettes. A strange air of
detachment was about that youthful, shabby figure, and not a scrap of
luggage filled the rack above his head.

The frightened girl was sitting next this pagan personality; it was
possibly the lack of fashion in his looks that caused, her to select him
for her confidence.

"Monsieur," she asked, "do you speak French?"

"Perfectly."

"Then can you tell me where they take the tickets?

"The young man shook his head.

"No," said he, "I am a foreigner."

The girl sighed.

"But what is the matter, ma'moiselle?"

The girl did not reply, twisting her hands on an old bag in her lap.
Silence had stolen on the carriage--a silence such as steals on animals
at the first approach of danger; all eyes were turned towards the
figures of the foreigners.

"Yes," broke out the red-faced man, "he was a bit squiffy that
evening--old Tom."

"Ah!" replied his neighbour, "he would be."

Something seemed to have destroyed their look of mutual distrust. The
plump, sleek hand of the lady with the Roman nose curved convulsively;
and this movement corresponded to the feeling agitating Shelton's heart.
It was almost as if hand and heart feared to be asked for something.

"Monsieur," said the girl, with a tremble in her voice, "I am very
unhappy; can you tell me what to do? I had no money for a ticket."

The foreign youth's face flickered.

"Yes?" he said; "that might happen to anyone, of course."

"What will they do to me?" sighed the girl.

"Don't lose courage, ma'moiselle." The young man slid his eyes from left
to right, and rested them on Shelton. "Although I don't as yet see your
way out."

"Oh, monsieur!" sighed the girl, and, though it was clear that none but
Shelton understood what they were saying, there was a chilly feeling in
the carriage.

"I wish I could assist you," said the foreign youth; "unfortunately----"
he shrugged his shoulders, and again his eyes returned to Shelton.

The latter thrust his hand into his pocket.

"Can I be of any use?" he asked in English.

"Certainly, sir; you could render this young lady the greatest possible
service by lending her the money for a ticket."

Shelton produced a sovereign, which the young man took. Passing it to
the girl, he said:

"A thousand thanks--'voila une belle action'!"

The misgivings which attend on casual charity crowded up in Shelton's
mind; he was ashamed of having them and of not having them, and he stole
covert looks at this young foreigner, who was now talking to the girl in
a language that he did not understand. Though vagabond in essence, the
fellow's face showed subtle spirit, a fortitude and irony not found upon
the face of normal man, and in turning from it to the other passengers
Shelton was conscious of revolt, contempt, and questioning, that he
could not define. Leaning back with half-closed eyes, he tried to
diagnose this new sensation. He found it disconcerting that the faces
and behaviour of his neighbours lacked anything he could grasp and
secretly abuse. They continued to converse with admirable and slightly
conscious phlegm, yet he knew, as well as if each one had whispered
to him privately, that this shady incident had shaken them. Something
unsettling to their notions of propriety-something dangerous and
destructive of complacency--had occurred, and this was unforgivable.
Each had a different way, humorous or philosophic, contemptuous, sour,
or sly, of showing this resentment. But by a flash of insight Shelton
saw that at the bottom of their minds and of his own the feeling was the
same. Because he shared in their resentment he was enraged with them and
with himself. He looked at the plump, sleek hand of the woman with the
Roman nose. The insulation and complacency of its pale skin, the passive
righteousness about its curve, the prim separation from the others of
the fat little finger, had acquired a wholly unaccountable importance.
It embodied the verdict of his fellow-passengers, the verdict of
Society; for he knew that, whether or no repugnant to the well-bred
mind, each assemblage of eight persons, even in a third-class carriage,
contains the kernel of Society.

But being in love, and recently engaged, Shelton had a right to be
immune from discontent of any kind, and he reverted to his mental image
of the cool, fair face, quick movements, and the brilliant smile that
now in his probationary exile haunted his imagination; he took out his
fiancee's last letter, but the voice of the young foreigner addressing
him in rapid French caused him to put it back abruptly.

"From what she tells me, sir," he said, bending forward to be out of
hearing of the girl, "hers is an unhappy case. I should have been only
too glad to help her, but, as you see"--and he made a gesture by which
Shelton observed that he had parted from his waistcoat--"I am not
Rothschild. She has been abandoned by the man who brought her over to
Dover under promise of marriage. Look"--and by a subtle flicker of his
eyes he marked how the two ladies had edged away from the French girl
"they take good care not to let their garments touch her. They are
virtuous women. How fine a thing is virtue, sir! and finer to know you
have it, especially when you are never likely to be tempted."

Shelton was unable to repress a smile; and when he smiled his face grew
soft.

"Haven't you observed," went on the youthful foreigner, "that those who
by temperament and circumstance are worst fitted to pronounce judgment
are usually the first to judge? The judgments of Society are always
childish, seeing that it's composed for the most part of individuals who
have never smelt the fire. And look at this: they who have money run too
great a risk of parting with it if they don't accuse the penniless of
being rogues and imbeciles."

Shelton was startled, and not only by an outburst of philosophy from an
utter stranger in poor clothes, but at this singular wording of his
own private thoughts. Stifling his sense of the unusual for the queer
attraction this young man inspired, he said:

"I suppose you're a stranger over here?"

"I've been in England seven months, but not yet in London," replied
the other. "I count on doing some good there--it is time!" A bitter and
pathetic smile showed for a second on his lips. "It won't be my fault if
I fail. You are English, Sir?"

Shelton nodded.

"Forgive my asking; your voice lacks something I've nearly
always noticed in the English a kind of--'comment cela
s'appelle'--cocksureness, coming from your nation's greatest quality."

"And what is that?" asked Shelton with a smile.

"Complacency," replied the youthful foreigner.

"Complacency!" repeated Shelton; "do you call that a great quality?"

"I should rather say, monsieur, a great defect in what is always a great
people. You are certainly the most highly-civilised nation on the earth;
you suffer a little from the fact. If I were an English preacher my
desire would be to prick the heart of your complacency."

Shelton, leaning back, considered this impertinent suggestion.

"Hum!" he said at last, "you'd be unpopular; I don't know that we're any
cockier than other nations."

The young foreigner made a sign as though confirming this opinion.

"In effect," said he, "it is a sufficiently widespread disease. Look at
these people here"--and with a rapid glance he pointed to the inmates
of the carnage,--"very average persons! What have they done to warrant
their making a virtuous nose at those who do not walk as they do? That
old rustic, perhaps, is different--he never thinks at all--but look at
those two occupied with their stupidities about the price of hops, the
prospects of potatoes, what George is doing, a thousand things all of
that sort--look at their faces; I come of the bourgeoisie myself--have
they ever shown proof of any quality that gives them the right to pat
themselves upon the back? No fear! Outside potatoes they know nothing,
and what they do not understand they dread and they despise--there
are millions of that breed. 'Voila la Societe'! The sole quality
these people have shown they have is cowardice. I was educated by the
Jesuits," he concluded; "it has given me a way of thinking."

Under ordinary circumstances Shelton would have murmured in a well-bred
voice, "Ah! quite so," and taken refuge in the columns of the Daily
Telegraph. In place of this, for some reason that he did not understand,
he looked at the young foreigner, and asked,

"Why do you say all this to me?"

The tramp--for by his boots he could hardly have been better--hesitated.

"When you've travelled like me," he said, as if resolved to speak the
truth, "you acquire an instinct in choosing to whom and how you speak.
It is necessity that makes the law; if you want to live you must learn
all that sort of thing to make face against life."

Shelton, who himself possessed a certain subtlety, could not but observe
the complimentary nature of these words. It was like saying "I'm not
afraid of you misunderstanding me, and thinking me a rascal just because
I study human nature."

"But is there nothing to be done for that poor girl?"

His new acquaintance shrugged his shoulders.

"A broken jug," said he; "--you'll never mend her. She's going to a
cousin in London to see if she can get help; you've given her the means
of getting there--it's all that you can do. One knows too well what'll
become of her."

Shelton said gravely,

"Oh! that's horrible! Could n't she be induced to go back home? I should
be glad--"

The foreign vagrant shook his head.

"Mon cher monsieur," he said, "you evidently have not yet had occasion
to know what the 'family' is like. 'The family' does not like damaged
goods; it will have nothing to say to sons whose hands have dipped into
the till or daughters no longer to be married. What the devil would
they do with her? Better put a stone about her neck and let her drown at
once. All the world is Christian, but Christian and good Samaritan are
not quite the same."

Shelton looked at the girl, who was sitting motionless, with her hands
crossed on her bag, and a revolt against the unfair ways of life arose
within him.

"Yes," said the young foreigner, as if reading all his thoughts, "what's
called virtue is nearly always only luck." He rolled his eyes as though
to say: "Ah! La, Conventions? Have them by all means--but don't look
like peacocks because you are preserving them; it is but cowardice and
luck, my friends--but cowardice and luck!"

"Look here," said Shelton, "I'll give her my address, and if she wants
to go back to her family she can write to me."

"She'll never go back; she won't have the courage."

Shelton caught the cringing glance of the girl's eyes; in the droop of
her lip there was something sensuous, and the conviction that the young
man's words were true came over him.

"I had better not give them my private address," he thought, glancing
at the faces opposite; and he wrote down the following: "Richard Paramor
Shelton, c/o Paramor and Herring, Lincoln's Inn Fields."

"You're very good, sir. My name is Louis Ferrand; no address at present.
I'll make her understand; she's half stupefied just now."

Shelton returned to the perusal of his paper, too disturbed to read; the
young vagrant's words kept sounding in his ears. He raised his eyes. The
plump hand of the lady with the Roman nose still rested on her lap;
it had been recased in its black glove with large white stitching. Her
frowning gaze was fixed on him suspiciously, as if he had outraged her
sense of decency.

"He did n't get anything from me," said the voice of the red-faced man,
ending a talk on tax-gatherers. The train whistled loudly, and Shelton
reverted to his paper. This time he crossed his legs, determined to
enjoy the latest murder; once more he found himself looking at the
vagrant's long-nosed, mocking face. "That fellow," he thought, "has seen
and felt ten times as much as I, although he must be ten years younger."

He turned for distraction to the landscape, with its April clouds, trim
hedgerows, homely coverts. But strange ideas would come, and he was
discontented with himself; the conversation he had had, the personality
of this young foreigner, disturbed him. It was all as though he had made
a start in some fresh journey through the fields of thought.




CHAPTER II

ANTONIA

Five years before the journey just described Shelton had stood one
afternoon on the barge of his old college at the end of the summer
races. He had been "down" from Oxford for some years, but these Olympian
contests still attracted him.

The boats were passing, and in the usual rush to the barge side his arm
came in contact with a soft young shoulder. He saw close to him a young
girl with fair hair knotted in a ribbon, whose face was eager with
excitement. The pointed chin, long neck, the fluffy hair, quick
gestures, and the calm strenuousness of her grey-blue eyes, impressed
him vividly.

"Oh, we must bump them!" he heard her sigh.

"Do you know my people, Shelton?" said a voice behind his back; and
he was granted a touch from the girl's shy, impatient hand, the
warmer fingers of a lady with kindly eyes resembling a hare's, the dry
hand-clasp of a gentleman with a thin, arched nose, and a quizzical
brown face.

"Are you the Mr. Shelton who used to play the 'bones' at Eton?" said the
lady. "Oh; we so often heard of you from Bernard! He was your fag, was
n't he? How distressin' it is to see these poor boys in the boats!"