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A Guide to Electronic Maintenance and Repairs

A.M. Yusufu and Yunusa Ali S.

Copyright © 2014 by A.M. Yusufu and Yunusa Ali Sai'd.

ISBN: Softcover 9
78-1-4828-9046-4
eBook
978-1-4828-9047-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or

reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information
storage retrieval system without the written permission of the
publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses

or links contained in this book may have changed since
publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in
this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby
disclaims any responsibility for them.

Toll Free 800 101 2657 (Singapore)

Toll Free 1 800 81 7340 (Malaysia)

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 Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Overview

Chapter One
Function and Values of Resistors

Chapter Two
Rating and Applications of A Capacitor

Chapter Three
The Coils and Transformers

Chapter Four
Types of Transistors andTheir Application

Chapter Five
Semicondutor Diode Types and Application

Chapter Six
Sample of Thyristors, triacs, diacs

Chapter Seven
Integrated circuits(IC)

Chapter Eight
Dynamic Speakers, Microphones and headphones

Chapter Nine
Components Opto-electronics

References

About the Author

 Dedication

This book is dedicated to Kaduna Polytechnic, Kaduna and

Hussaini Adamu Fedearal Polytechnic Kazaure.
 Acknowledgements

The Authors gratefully acknowledge Departments of Electrical and

Electronics Engineering of Kaduna Polytechnic and Hussaini Adamu
Federal Polytechnic Kazaure for their support and cooperation.
 Overview

The book offers a good overview of Electronics maintenance and

repairs within the curricular, particularly for Diplomas, Higher
National Diplomas (HND) and Engineers, who wish to undertake
cleaning, basic maintenance, and minor repairs of Electronics
devices. This book covers devices and components related to
equipment like test instruments and digital equipment. The reader
will quickly learn the systematic procedures for identifying causes
of faults and the practical methods of repairing them. The content
is according to the National curriculum standard (NBTE and NUC)
Though most Engineers may still find extensive repairs beyond
their interest and ability, this books can help them in maintenance
and will teach them more about Electronics maintenance. The
book is comprehensive, which takes care of Electronic components
and its practical applications. New trend information about
components is included. Readers will find the indexes and
illustrations (both photos and diagrams) very useful.
 Chapter One

FUNCTION AND VALUES OF RESISTORS

1.1 RESISTOR

This chapter gives the basic and fundamentals about resistors as passive components. Resistors are
among the general purpose components used in the electronics functional circuitry. They are two-
terminal passive electrical components that implement electrical resistance as a circuit element. They
act to reduce current flow, while acting to lower voltage levels within circuits. Resistors such as those
found in thermistors, varistors, trimmers, photo resistors and potentiometers may have fixed
resistances or variable resistances.

The current through a resistor is directly proportional to the voltage across its terminals as
represented by Ohm’s law:

In such a way that; I is the current through the conductor in units of amperes, V is the potential
difference measured across the conductor in units of volts, and R is the resistance of the conductor
in units of ohms (symbol: Ω).

The resistance of a resistor is the ratio of the voltage applied across its terminals to the intensity of
current in the circuit, and this can be assumed to be a constant (independent of the voltage) for
ordinary resistors working within their ratings given during manufacture. Different values of resistors
are identified by means of color coding normally indicated on their surface.

Resistors provide specific values of current and voltage in a circuit prepared to work in current control
field. Different designs are available depending on the manufacturer but ratings differ according to
application. The significant work done by resistors is to create specified values of current and voltage
in a circuit. Figure 1.1 below displayed assorted resistors. The resistors are on millimeter paper, with
1cm spacing to give some idea of the dimensions. Here, figure 1.1a shows some low-power resistors,
with power dissipation below 5 watt. Most are cylindrical in shape with a wire protruding from each
end for connection to circuit while figure 1.1b shows some higher-power resistors with power
dissipation above 5 watt.
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
Yes, it was very satisfactory. And now he could get on with the poem
about "Chivalry." He sat down at his table and pulled out the
scribbled muddle of manuscript. But he wrote no word that night. He
sat for a long time staring at the paper, thinking of the chivalry of
John Egerton. And it brought no inspiration.
 XI
John went home thinking pitifully of Margery Byrne and vowing hotly
that he would sacrifice himself for her sake. In the hall he found a
letter from Miss Muriel Tarrant. The neat round writing on the
envelope stirred him deliciously where it stared up from the floor.
Almost reverently he picked it up and fingered it and turned it over
and examined it with the fond and foolish deliberation of a lover for
whom custom has not staled these little blisses. The letter was an
invitation to a dance. The Tarrants had just come home and they
were taking a party to the Buxton Galleries on Saturday. And they
were very anxious for John to go. It was clear, then, that they had
declined to join the faction of Mrs. Vincent, though they must have
heard the story, numbers of stories, by this time. And John, as he
argued thus, was almost overwhelmed with pride and tenderness
and exultation. He felt then that he had known always that Muriel
was different from the malicious sheep who were her mother's
friends. And this letter, coming at this moment, seemed like some
glorious sign of approbation from Heaven, an acknowledgment and a
reward for the deed of sacrifice to which he had but just devoted
himself. It was an inspiration to go on with it—though it made the
sacrifice itself seem easy.
He took the letter to his bed and laid it on the table beside him. And
for a long time he pondered in the dark the old vague dreams of
Muriel and marriage which, since the coming of the letter, had
presented themselves with such startling clearness. He had not seen
her for many weeks, but this letter was like a first meeting; it was a
revelation. He knew she was not clever, perhaps not even very
intelligent; but she was young and lovely and kind; and she should
be the simple companion of his simple heart. He was very lonely in
this dark house, very silent and alone. He wanted some one who
would bring voices and colour into his home, would make it a
glowing and intimate place, like Margery Byrne's. Poor Margery! And
Muriel would do this.
But he would have hard work to bring this about. He knew very little
what she thought of him. He would be very accomplished and
winning at this dance. Probably there would be four of them—Muriel
and himself and her young brother George and some flame of his.
They would dance together most of the evening, and he would
dance with Muriel. And he must not be awkward—slide about or
tread on her toes. He was not "keen on dancing," and he was not
good at dancing. But he could "get round"; and Muriel would teach
him the rest. She loved teaching people.
But the party was to be a larger affair than John had imagined it.
There were to be at least six, if the men could be found. And in the
morning Muriel Tarrant came herself to the Byrnes' house and asked
if Stephen would come. It was a bold suggestion, for she did not
know him very well, and she knew that he seldom danced, seldom
indeed "went out" at all in the evenings. But such boldness became
a virtue in the post-war code of decorum, and she was a bold
person, Muriel Tarrant. This morning she looked very fresh and
alluring, with her fair hair creeping in calculated abandon from a
small blue hat and a cluster of tiny black feathers fastened at the
side of it—tiny feathers, but somehow inexpressibly naughty. They
wandered downwards over the little curls at the side of her head and
nestled delicately against her face.
Margery was yet in bed, and Stephen took his visitor out into the hot
garden, where little Joan was wheeling sedately a small pram and
the rabbits lay panting in dark corners. And first he said that he
would not go to the dance. He was busy and he did not love
dancing; and anyhow Margery could not go. But Muriel perched
herself on the low wall over the river, and leaned forward with her
blue eyes on his, and a little pout about her lips; and she said, "Oh,
do, Mr. Byrne." And there was a kind of personal appeal in her voice
and her eagerness and her steady smiling eyes that woke up his
vanity and his admiration. He thought, "She really thinks it is
important that I should go; she likes me." And then, "And I like her."
And then he said that he would go. They talked a little in the sun
before she went, and when she was gone Stephen felt as if some
secret had passed between them. Also he wondered why he had
thought so little of her existence before. And Muriel went down The
Chase, smiling at some secret thought.
They dined hurriedly at Brierleys' that Saturday. Muriel and her
brother and Stephen and John, and two young sisters of the name
of Atholl, to whom George Tarrant owed an apparently impartial
allegiance. They were equally plump and unintelligent, and neither
was exciting to the outward eye, but it seemed that they danced
well. But to young George this was the grand criterion of fitness for
the purpose of a dance. John's idea of a dance—and Stephen's—was
a social function at which you encountered pleasant people with
whom, because there was dancing, one danced. But it was soon
made clear to him that these were the withered memories of an
obsolete age. For this was the time of the Great Craze. A dance now
was no social affair; it was a semi-gladiatorial display to which one
went to perform a purely physical operation with those who were
physically most fitted to perform it. Dancing had passed out of the
"party" stage; it was no longer even a difficult, but agreeable and
universal pastime; it was practically a profession. It was entirely
impossible, except for the very highly gifted, even to approximate to
the correct standards of style and manner without spending
considerable sums of money on their own tuition. And when they
had finished their elaborate and laborious training, and were
deemed worthy to take the floor at the Buxton Galleries at all, they
found that their new efficiency was a thin and ephemeral growth.
The steps and rhythms and dances which they had but yesterday
acquired, at how much trouble and expense, passed today into the
contemptible limbo of the unfashionable, like the hats of last spring;
and so the life of the devotee was one long struggle to keep himself
abreast of the latest invention of the astute but commercially-
minded professional teachers. "For ever climbing up the climbing
wave," for ever studying, yet for ever out-of-date, he oscillated
hopefully between the Buxton Galleries and his chosen priest; and so
swift and ruthless were the changes of fashion and the whims of the
priesthood, that in order to get your money's worth of the last trick
you had learned, it was necessary, during its brief life of
respectability, to dance at every available opportunity. You danced as
many nights a week as was physically or financially possible; you
danced on week-days, and you danced on Sundays; you began
dancing in the afternoon, and you danced during tea in the coffee-
rooms of expensive restaurants, whirling your precarious way
through littered and abandoned tea-tables; and at dinner-time you
leapt up madly before the fish and danced like variety artistes in a
highly polished arena before a crowd of complete strangers eating
their food; or, as if seized with an uncontrollable craving for the
dance, you flung out after the joint for one wild gallop in an outer
room, from which you returned, sweating and dyspeptic, to the
consumption of an iced pudding, before dashing forth to the final
orgy at a night-club, or a gallery, or the mansion of an earl. But it
was seldom that you danced at anybody's mansion. The days of
private and hospitable dances were practically dead. Nobody could
afford to give as many dances as the dancing cult required.
Moreover, at private dances there were old-fashioned conventions
and hampering politenesses to be observed. You might have to
dance occasionally out of mere courtesy with some person who was
three weeks behind the times, who could not do the Jimble or the
Double-Jazz Glide, or might even have an attachment for the
degrading and obsolete Waltz. On the other hand, you would not be
allowed to dance the entire evening with "the one woman in the
room who can do the Straddle properly," and there was a prejudice
against positive indecency. So it was better from all points of view to
pay a few guineas and go to a gallery or a restaurant or a night-club
with a small number of selected women, dragooned by long practice
into a slavish harmony with the niceties of your particular style and
favourite steps. And after all, what with the dancing lessons, and the
dance-dinners, and the dance-teas, and the taxis to dances, and the
taxis away from dances, and the tickets for dances, and the
subscriptions to night-clubs, and the life-memberships of night-clubs
which perished after two years, you had so much capital invested in
the industry that you simply could not afford to have a moment's
pleasure placed in jeopardy by deficiencies of technique in your
guests. Away, then, with mere Beauty and mere Charm and mere
Intelligence and mere Company! Bring out the Prize Mares and show
us their steps and their stamina, their powers of endurance and
harmonious submission, before we consent to appear with them in
the public and costly arena.
A party selected on these lines, however suitable for the serious
business of the evening, could be infinitely wearisome for the
purposes of dinner. Stephen thought he had never beheld two young
women so little entertaining as the two Misses Atholl. All they talked
of and all that George Tarrant talked of was the dances they had
been to, and were going to, and could not go to, and the
comparative values of various mutual friends, considered solely as
dancers. It was like the tedious "shop" of the more fanatical golfers;
and indeed at any moment Stephen expected to hear that some
brave or other had a handicap of three at the Buxton Galleries, or
had become stale from over-training, or ruined his form by ordinary
walking. Stephen (or Muriel) had taken care that they should be
sitting together, but though she was very lively and charming, and
though her talk was less restricted in range than the talk of the
Atholls, Stephen began to wish intensely that he had not come. And
he thought of Margery, and was sorry that he had left her alone in
the house to come and listen to this futile jabbering. She had
approved enthusiastically of his coming, for she thought that he
went out too little; but she had looked rather wistful, he thought,
when he left. She liked dancing herself.
To John, too, the talk at dinner and the personality (if any) of the
Misses Atholl was inexpressibly dull; and since he was as far away
from Muriel as it was possible for him to be, and since she scarcely
spoke a word to any one but Stephen, he had nothing to console
him but a few provocative glances and the hope of seeing more of
her at the dance. And even this hope was dimmed by the presence
of Stephen and the intimidating technicalities of the conversation. He
did not understand why Stephen had come, and he rather resented
his coming. Wherever Stephen was one of the company, he always
felt himself closing up socially like an awed anemone in the presence
of a large fish. And tonight in that dominating presence he could not
see in himself the brilliant and romantic figure which he had
determined to be at this party. It was far from being the kind of
party he had expected.
The amazing language of young George and the Misses Atholl made
it still less likely that that figure would be achieved at the dance.
What were these "Rolls" and "Buzzes" and "Slides," he wondered.
And how did one do them? The art of dancing seemed to have
acquired strange complexities since he had last attempted it
eighteen months ago. Then with a faint pride he had mastered the
Fox Trot and something they called a Boston. They had seemed very
daring and difficult then, but already it seemed they were dead. At
any rate they were never mentioned. John foresaw some hideous
embarrassments, and he too wished fervently that he had not come.
But Muriel at least was enjoying herself. She was feeling unusually
mischievous and irresponsible. She twinkled mischief at John's glum
face, and she twinkled mischief into Stephen's eyes. Only they were
different kinds of mischief. She had long been fond of John "in a kind
of way"; she was still fond of him "in a kind of way." But he was a
slow and indefinite suitor, old John, and he was undeniably not
exciting. However, there was no one she liked better, and if he
should ever bring himself to the pitch of suggesting it, she had little
doubt that she would take him. His income would not be large, but it
would be certain.
But it was slow work waiting, and this evening she had Stephen
Byrne; and Stephen Byrne was undeniably exciting. Not simply
because he was a great poet,—for though she liked "poitry" in a
vague way, she did not like any one poet or one piece of poetry
much better than another—but because he had made a success of
poetry, a worldly success. He had made a name, he had even made
money; he was a well-known man. And he was handsome and
young, and his hair was black, and that morning in the garden he
had admired her. She knew that. And she knew that she had
touched his vanity by her urgency and his senses by her charm, and
something naughty had stirred in her, and that too he had seen and
enjoyed with a sympathetic naughtiness. And she had thought to
herself that it would be an amusing thing to captivate this famous
young man, this married, respectable, delightful youth; it would be
interesting to see how powerful she could be. And at least she might
waken John Egerton into activity.
They went on to the dance in two taxis. John found himself on one
of the small seats with his back to the driver, with Stephen and
Muriel chattering aloofly together in the gloom of the larger seat.
The small seat in a taxi is, at the best of times, a position of moral
and strategic inferiority, and tonight John felt this keenly. He screwed
his head round uncomfortably in his sharp collar and pretended to
be profoundly interested in the wet and hurrying streets. But he
heard every word they said; and they said no word to him.
From the door of the galleries where the dancing was done, a
confused uproar overflowed into the passages, as if several men of
powerful physique were banging a number of pokers against a
number of saucepans, and blowing whistles, and occasional catcalls,
and now and then beating a drum and several sets of huge cymbals,
and ceaselessly twanging at innumerable banjos, and at the same
time singing in a foreign language, and shouting curses or
exhortations or street-cries, or imitating hunting-calls or the cry of
the hyena, or uniting suddenly in the final war-whoop of some
pitiless Indian tribe. It was a really terrible noise. It hit you like the
breath of an explosion as you entered the room. There was no
distinguishable tune. It was simply an enormous noise. But there
was a kind of savage rhythm about it, which made John think
immediately of Indians and fierce men and the native camps which
he had visited at the Earl's Court Exhibition. And this was not
surprising; for the musicians included one genuine negro and three
men with their faces blacked; and the noise and the rhythm were
the authentic music of a negro village in South America; and the
words which some genius had once set to the noise were an
exhortation to go to the place where the negroes dwelt.
To judge by their movements, John thought, many of the dancers
had in fact been there, and carefully studied the best indigenous
models. They were doing some quite extraordinary things. No two
couples were doing quite the same thing for more than a few
seconds; so that there was an endless variety of extraordinary
motions and extraordinary postures. Some of them shuffled secretly
along the edge of the room, their faces tense, their shoulders
swaying faintly like reeds in a light wind, their progress almost
imperceptible; they did not rotate, they did not speak, but
sometimes the tremor of a skirt or the slight stirring of a patent
leather shoe showed that they were indeed alive and in motion,
though that motion was as the motion of a glacier, not to be
measured in minutes or yards. And some, in a kind of fever, rushed
hither and thither among the thick crowd, avoiding disaster with
marvellous dexterity; and sometimes they revolved slowly and
sometimes quickly, and sometimes spun giddily round for a moment
like gyroscopic tops. Then they too would be seized with a kind of
trance, or, it may be, with sheer shortness of breath, and hung
motionless for a little in the centre of the room, while the mad
throng jostled and flowed about them like the leaves in autumn
round a dead bird. And some did not revolve at all, but charged
straightly up and down; and some of these thrust their loves for ever
before them, as the Prussians thrust the villagers in the face of the
enemy, and some for ever navigated themselves backwards like
moving breakwaters to protect their darlings from the rough seas of
tangled women and precipitate men. Some of them kept themselves
as upright as possible, swaying gracefully like willows from the hips,
and some of them contorted themselves into hideous and angular
shapes, now leaning perilously forward till they were practically lying
upon their terrified partners, and now bending sideways as a man
bends who has water in one ear after bathing. All of them clutched
each other in a close and intimate manner, but some, as if by
separation to intensify the joy of their union, or perhaps to secure
greater freedom for some particularly spacious manœuvre, would
part suddenly in the middle of the room and, clinging distantly with
their hands, execute a number of complicated side-steps in opposite
directions, or aim a series of vicious kicks at each other, after which
they would reunite in a passionate embrace, and gallop in a frenzy
round the room, or fall into a trance, or simply fall down; if they fell
down they lay still for a moment in the fearful expectation of death,
as men lie who fall under a horse; and then they would creep on
hands and knees to the shore through the mobile and indifferent
crowd.
Watching them you could not tell what any one couple would do
next. The most placid and dignified among them might at any
moment fling a leg out behind them and almost kneel in mutual
adoration, and then, as if nothing unusual had happened, shuffle
solemnly onward through the press; or, as though some electric
mechanism had been set in motion, they would suddenly lift a foot
sideways and stand on one leg, reminding the observer irresistibly of
a dog out for a walk; or, with the suggestion of an acrobat nerving
himself for the final effort of daring, the male would plant himself
firmly on both feet while his maiden laboriously leapt a half-circle
through the air about the tense figure of her swain. It was
marvellous with what unanimity these eccentricities were performed.
So marvellous, John thought, that it was impossible to think of them
as spontaneous, joyous expressions of art. He imagined the male
issuing his orders during the long minutes of shuffling motion,
carefully manœuvring into position, sizing up like a general the
strategic situation, and then hoarsely whispering the final "Now!"
And after that they moved on with all the nonchalance of extreme
self-consciousness, thinking, no doubt, "It cost me a lot to learn that
—but it was worth it."
The look of their faces confirmed this view, for nearly all were set
and purposeful and strained, as men who have serious work in
hand; not soulful, not tense with emotion, but simply expressive of
concentration. With few exceptions there was nothing of the joy of
life in those faces, the rapture of music or of motion. They meant
business. And this was the only thing that could absolve many of
them from the charge of public indecency; for it was clear that their
motions and the manner of their embraces were not the expression
of licence or affection so much as matters of technique.
Upon this whirlpool John Egerton embarked with the gravest
misgivings, especially as he was conscious of a strange Miss Atholl
clinging to his person. Young George Tarrant had immediately
plunged into the storm with her sister, and his fair head was to be
seen far off, gleaming and motionless like a lighthouse above the
tossing heads and undulant shoulders. Stephen had secured Muriel
Tarrant, and poor John was very miserable. If he had been less shy,
or more intimate with Miss Atholl, he might have comforted himself
with the comedy of it all. And if he had been more ruthless he might
have bent Miss Atholl to his will and declined to attempt anything
but his own primitive two-step. But he became solemn and panic-
stricken, and surrendered his hegemony to her, suffering her to give
him intricate advice in a language which was meaningless to him,
and to direct him with ineffectual tugs and pushes which only made
his bewilderment worse. The noise was deafening, the atmosphere
stifling, the floor incredibly slippery. The four black men were now all
shouting at once, and playing all their instruments at once, working
up to the inconceivable uproar of the finale, and all the dancers
began to dance with a last desperate fury and velocity. Bodies
buffeted John from behind, and while he was yet looking round in
apology or anger, other bodies buffeted him from the flank, and
more bodies buffeted his partner and pressed her against his
reluctant frame. It was like swimming in a choppy sea, where there
is no time to recover from the slap and buffets of one wave before
the next one smites you.
Miss Atholl whispered, "Hold me tighter," and John, blushing faintly
at these unnatural advances, tightened a little his ineffectual grip.
The result of this was that he kicked her more often on the ankle
and trod more often on her toes. Close beside him a couple fell
down with a crash and a curse and the harsh tearing of satin. John
glanced at them in concern, but was swept swiftly onward with the
tide. He was dimly aware now that the black men were standing on
their chairs bellowing, and fancied the end must be near. And with
this thought he found himself surprisingly in a quiet backwater, a
corner between two rows of chairs, from which he determined never
to issue till the Last Banjo should indeed sound. And here he sidled
and shuffled vaguely for a little, hoping that he gave the impression
of a man preparing himself for some vast culminating feat, a
sidestep, or a "buzz," or a double-Jazzspin, or whatever these
wonders might be.
Then the noise suddenly ceased; there was a burst of perfunctory
clapping, and the company became conscious of the sweat of their
bodies. John looked round longingly for Muriel.
But Muriel was happily chattering to Stephen Byrne in a deep sofa
surrounded by palms. Stephen, like John, had surveyed the new
dancing with dismay, but his dismay was more artistic than personal.
He was as much amused as disgusted, and he did not intend, for
any woman, to make himself ridiculous by attempting any of the
more recent monstrosities.
But, unlike John, he had the natural spirit of dancing in his soul; so
that he was able to ignore the freakish stupidities of the scene, and
extract an artistic elemental pleasure of his own from the light and
the colour and excitement, from the barbaric rhythm of the noise
and the seductive contact of Muriel Tarrant. So he took her and
swung her defiantly round in an ordinary old-fashioned waltz; and
she, because it was the great Stephen Byrne, felt no shame at this
sacrilege.
When they had come to the sofa, she talked for a little the idle
foolishness which is somehow inseparable from the intervals
between dances, and he thought, "I wonder whether she always
talks like this. I wonder if she reads my poems. I wonder if she likes
them." He began to wish that she would pay him a compliment
about them, even an unintelligent compliment. It might jar upon him
intellectually, but, coming from her, it would still be pleasing. For it is
a mistake to suppose that great artists are so remote from the
weaknesses of other men that they are not sometimes ready to have
their vanity tickled by a charming girl at the expense of their
professional sensibilities.
But she only said, "It's a ripping band here. I hope you'll come here
again, Mr. Byrne." And he thought, "What a conversation!" How
could one live permanently with a conversation like this? But old
John could!
But as she said it she looked him in the eyes very directly and
delightfully, and once again there was the sense of a secret passing
between them.

Then they went to look for John, and Muriel determined that she
would be very nice to him. The next dance was, nominally, a waltz,
and that was a rare event. John asked if he might waltz in the
ancient fashion, and though she was being conscientiously sweet
and gracious to him, and though she had made no murmur when
Stephen had done as John would like to do, some devil within her
made her refuse. She said that he must do the Hesitation Waltz as
other people were doing. The chief point of this seemed to be that
you imitated the dog, not by spasms, but consistently. Even the
most expert practitioner failed to invest this feat with elegance and
dignity, and the remainder, poising themselves pathetically with one
leg in the air, as if waiting for the happy signal when they might put
it down, would have looked ridiculous if they had not looked so sad.
Stephen, revolving wearily with the younger Miss Atholl, wished that
the Medusa's head might be smuggled into the room for the
attitudes of this dance to be imperishably recorded in cold stone.
Then he caught sight of the unhappy John, and was smitten with an
amused sympathy. John's study of the habits of dogs had evidently
been superficial, and he did not greatly enjoy his first dance with his
love. He held her very reverently and loosely, though dimly aware
that this made things much more difficult, but he could not bring
himself to seize that soft and altogether sacred form in the kind of
intimate clutch which the other men affected—Stephen, he noticed,
included. It was a maddening complexity of emotion, that dance—
the incredible awe and rapture of holding his adored, however
lightly, in his arms, the intoxication of her nearness the fragrance of
her dress, and the touch of her hair upon his face—and all this
ruined by the exasperating futility of the actual dance, the vile
necessity of thinking whether he was in time with the music and in
time with Muriel, and if he was going to run into the couple ahead,
and if there was room to reverse in that corner, and whether he
should cock his leg up farther, or not so far, or not at all. He envied
bitterly the easy accomplishment of the circling youths about him,
who, for all the earnestness of their expressions, had each of them,
no doubt, time to appreciate the fact that they held on their arms
some warm and lovely girl.
Yet Muriel was very kind and forbearing and instructive, and at the
end of it he did feel that he had made some progress, both with his
hesitating and his suit. They sat in the interval on the same sofa,
and Muriel was still gracious. She told him that he would pick it up
very quickly, that it was all knack, that it was all balance, that it was
all practice, that no practice was needed. And John believed
everything and was much excited and pleased. He thanked her for
her advice, and vowed that he would take lessons and become an
expert. And Muriel thought, "He will never be able to dance; could I
live permanently with a man like that?" She thought what a prim,
funny "old boy" he was. But he was a nice "old boy," and that
rumour about the maid-servant was positively ridiculous.
The next dance she had promised to Stephen. The four black men
were playing a wild and precipitate tune. A certain melody was
distinguishable, and it had less of the lunacies of extravagant
syncopation than most of their repertoire. But it was a wicked tune,
a hot, provocative, passionate tune, that fired a man with a kind of
fever of motion. Faster and faster, and louder and louder, the black
men played; and though it was impossible for the dancers to move
much faster because of the press, their entranced souls responded
to the gathering urgency of the music, and they clutched their
partners more tightly, and they were conscious no more of the sweat
upon their bodies, of their sore toes, or disordered dresses, they
forgot for a moment the technical details of the movements of their
feet, and they were whirled helplessly on in a savage crescendo of
noise and motion and physical rapture towards the final Elysium of
licence to which this dance must surely lead them.
Stephen Byrne felt the fever and enjoyed it. He enjoyed it equally as
a personal indulgence and as an artistic experience. He held Muriel
very close, and found himself dancing with an eager pleasure which
surprised him. Yet as he danced, he was noticing his own sensations
and the faces of the people about him, the intense faces of the men,
the drugged expressions of the women. He saw oldish men looking
horribly young in their animal excitement, and oldish women looking
horrible in their coquettishness. And he saw them all as literary
material. He thought, "This is good copy."
Muriel, he knew, was enjoying it too. Her eyes were half-closed, her
face, a little pale, had the aspect of absolute surrender which can be
seen in churches. But sometimes she opened her eyes wide and
smiled at Stephen. And this excited him very much, so that he
watched for it; and when she saw that she blushed. Then he was
swept with a hot gust of feeling, and he realized that he was
dangerously attracted by this girl. He thought of Margery and the
late vows he had made, and he was ashamed. But the mad dance
went on, with ever-increasing fury, and the black men returned with
a vast tempestuous chord and a shattering crash of cymbals to the
original melody, and all those men and women braced themselves to
snatch the last moment of this intoxication. Those who were dancing
with bad partners or dull partners were filled with bitterness because
they were not getting the full measure of the dance; and those who
held the perfect partners in their arms foresaw with sorrow the near
end of their rapture, and began, if they had not already begun, to
conceive for each other a certain sentimental regard. Stephen
thought no more of Margery, but he thought tenderly of Muriel and
the moment when the dance must end. For when it ended all would
be over; he might not hold her in his arms any more, he might not
enjoy her loveliness in any way, because he was married, and she
was dedicated to John. She was too good for John. But because he
was married he must stand aside and see her sacrificed to John or
to somebody like John. He must not interfere with that. But he
would like to interfere. He would like to kiss her at the end of the
dance.
The dance was finished at last, and while they sat together
afterwards, hot and exhausted, Muriel said suddenly, "What's all this
about Mr. Egerton—and—that maid of yours—? There are some
horrid stories going round—Mrs. Vincent—Mother said she wouldn't
listen to any of them."
Stephen was silent for a little. Then he said, in a doubtful, deliberate
manner:
"Well, I've known John as long as anybody in The Chase, and I know
he's a jolly good fellow, but—but—It was an extraordinary affair,
that, altogether. I don't know what to make of it." He finished with a
sigh of perplexity.
Then he sat silent again, marvelling at himself, and Muriel said no
more.
John came up and stood awkwardly before them. He wanted to ask
Muriel for the next dance, but he was too shy to begin. His dress-
suit was ill-fitting and old, his hair ruffled, his tie crooked, and as she
lay back on the sofa Muriel could see a glimpse of shirt between the
top of his trousers and the bottom of the shrunken and dingy white
waistcoat, where any pronounced movement of his body caused a
spasmodic but definite hiatus. His shirt front had buckled into a wide
dent. Of all these things poor John was acutely conscious as he
stood uncertainly before the two.
Stephen said heartily, "Hallo, old John, you look a bit the worse for
wear. How did you get on that time?"
John stammered, "Not very well—I want Miss Tarrant to give me
some more—some more instruction." And he looked at Muriel, an
appealing, pathetic look. He wished very fiercely that Stephen was
not there—so easy and dashing, and certain of himself.
And Muriel had no smile for him. She glanced inquiringly at Stephen,
and said, with the hard face of a statue, "I'm sorry, I'm doing the
next with Mr. Byrne." And Stephen nodded.
She danced no more with John that night. Sometimes as he sat out
disconsolately with one of the Atholl women, she brushed him with
her skirt, or he saw her distantly among the crowd. And he looked
now with a new longing at the adorable poise of her head upon her
shoulders, at the sheen and texture of her hair, at the grace and
lightness of her movements, as she swam past with Stephen. He
looked after her till she was lost in the press, trying to catch her eye,
hoping that she might see him and smile at him. But if she saw him
she never smiled. And when he was sick with love and sadness, and
hated the Atholls with a bitter hatred, he left the building alone, and
went home miserably by the Underground.
 XII
July drew on to a sultry end. In the little gardens of Hammerton the
thin lawns grew yellow and bare: and there, by the river-wall, the
people of The Chase took their teas and their suppers, and rested
gratefully in the evening cool. One week after the dance the Byrnes
were to go away into the country, and Margery had looked forward
eagerly to the 27th of July. But Stephen said on the 25th that he
could not come: he had nearly finished the poem "Chivalry," and he
wanted to finish it before he went away; and he had much business
to settle with publishers and so on: he was publishing a volume of
Collected Poems, and there were questions of type and paper and
cover to be determined; and he had a long article for The Epoch to
do. All these things might take a week or they might take a
fortnight; but he would follow Margery as soon as he might—she
could feel sure of that.
Against this portentous aggregate of excuses Margery argued gently
and sorrowfully but vainly. And sorrowfully she went away with
Nurse and Joan and Michael Hilary. She went away to Hampshire, to
the house of an old friend—a lovely place on the shore of the Solent.
You drove there from Brockenhurst through the fringes of the New
Forest, through marvellous regiments of ancient trees, and wild
stretches of heathery waste, and startling patches of hedge and
pasture, where villages with splendid names lurked slyly in
unexpected hollows, and cows stood sleepily by the rich banks of
little brooks. And when you came to the house, you saw suddenly
the deep blue band of the Solent, coloured like the Dardanelles, and
quiet like a lake. Beyond it rose the green foothills of the Island,
patched with the brown of ploughlands and landslides by the sea,
and far-off the faint outline of Mottistone Down and Brightstone
Down, little heights that had the colour and dignity of great
mountains when the light caught them in the early morning or in the
evening or after the rain. On the water small white boats with red
sails and green sails shot about like butterflies, and small black
fishing-craft prowled methodically near the shore. And sometimes in
the evening a great liner stole out of Southampton Water and crept
enormously along the farther shore, her hull a beautiful grey, her
funnel an indescribable tint, that was neither pink nor scarlet nor
red, but fitted perfectly in the bright picture of the land and the sea.
And all day there were ships passing, battleships and aged tramps
and dredgers and destroyers, and sometimes a tall sailing-ship that
looked like an old engraving, and big yachts with sails like snow, and
little yachts with sails like cinnamon or the skin of an Arab boy. At
low tide there were long stretches of mudflats and irregular pools,
before the house and far away to the west; and these at sunset
were places of great beauty. For the sunset colours of the tumbled
clouds, and the subtle green of the lower sky and the bold blue of
the cloudless spaces above were in these pools and in the near
shallows of the sea perfectly recaptured. In this delicate mosaic of
golden pools and rose pools and nameless lights herons moved with
a majestic stealth or stood like ebony images watching for fish; and
little companies of swans swam up and down with the arrogant
beauty of all swans and the unique beauty of swans in sea water:
and all the sea-birds of England circled and swooped against the sun
or clustered chattering on the purple mud and saffron patches of
sand, with a strange quietness, as if they, too, must do their
reverence to the stillness and the splendour of that hour.
The sun went down and all those colours departed, but for a sad
glow over Dorsetshire and the deep green of the Needles Light that
shot along the still surface almost to your feet as you stood in the
thick grass above the shore.
Then you went with the sensation of awe into the house; and the
house was old and comforting and spacious, with a mellow roof of
gentle red; and it was rich with the timber of Hampshire trees. There
was a lawn in front of it and a tangled screen of low shrubs and
sallow trees; and when Margery stood in the wide window of her
room there was nothing but these between herself and the sea; and
there was no building to be seen nor the work of any man, only the
friendly ships and their lights, and the far smoke of a farm upon the
Island, and at night the blinking lamp of a buoy-light in the Channel.
To Margery it would have been the perfect haven of contentment
and rest—if Stephen had come with her. But he had not come. At
night the curlews flew past the windows with the long and sweet
and musical cry which no other bird can utter and no man imitate,
nor even interpret—for who can say from the sound of it if it be a
cry of melancholy or a song of hope or rejoicing or love? But to
Margery in those weeks it was a song of absolute sadness, of lost
possibilities and shattered dreams, and it was the very voice of her
disappointment, her protest against the exquisite tantalization of her
coming to this exquisite retreat—and coming alone.
And Stephen in London worked on at "Chivalry." He was beginning
to be tired of it now as the end of it came in sight, and it was true
that he wanted to be able to leave the whole burden of it behind
him when he went away. But that was not the whole reason of his
staying at home, and what the whole reason was he had not
consciously determined; but faintly he knew that Muriel Tarrant was
part of it.
He was tired of the poem now, and was eager to be done—eager to
be done with the long labour of execution of an idea no longer fresh
with the first fury of inspiration. And now that so much was achieved
he was urgent to finish it quickly and give it to the world, lest some
other be before him. For poets and all authors suffer something of
the terrors of inventors and scientific creators, toiling feverishly at
the latest child of their imagination, while who knows what other
man may not already have stolen their darling, may not this very
hour be hurrying to the Patent Office, filching rights and the
patronage of rich men, ruining perhaps for ever by their folly or
avarice or imperfection the whole glory of the conception.
Stephen had this sort of secret fear. They seemed so obvious now,
his idea and his scheme of execution, though at their birth they had
seemed so strange and bold and original. Surely some other man
had long since thought of writing a poem like his, was even now
correcting his proofs, some mean and barren artist who could never
do justice to the theme, but would make it for ever a stale and
tawdry thing. Or maybe in the winter there would be a paper
shortage or a printers' strike or a revolution, and if his masterpiece
had not seen the light by then it would never see the light at all; or
at best there would be long months of intolerable waiting, and it
would be given to the world at the wrong season, when the world
was no longer inspired with the sense of chivalry, when the critics
were bored with chivalry, at Christmas time when men looked for
lighter fare, or in the spring, when men wanted nothing but the
spring.
So all that August he worked, thinking little of Margery, thinking little
of any one. But though there was this fever of purpose and anxiety
driving him on, day by day the labour grew more wearisome and
difficult. Men who go out to offices or factories to do their work think
enviously sometimes of the gentler lot of the author, bound by no
regulations or hours or personal entanglements, but able to sit down
at his own time at his own desk and put down without physical
labour or nervous strain the easy promptings of his brain. They do
not know with how much terror and distaste he may have to drag
himself to that desk, with what agony of mind he sits there. The
nervous weariness of writing, the physical weariness of writing, the
mental incubus of a great conception that must be carried unformed
in the heavy mind month after weary month, for ever growing and
swelling and bursting to be born, yet not able to be born, because
this labour of writing is so long, the hideous labour of writing and
rewriting and correcting, of futile erasions and vacillations and
doubt, of endless worryings over little words and tragic sacrifices
and fresh starts and rearrangements—these are terrible things. An
author is to his work as a rejected lover his love, for ever drawn yet
for ever repelled. Stephen sometimes in the morning would almost
long to be transformed into a clerk, or a railway porter, some one
who need ask little of himself since little is asked of him but the
simple observance of a routine; he would have to force himself to sit
on at his work, as a man forces himself to face danger or bear pain;
he would even welcome interruptions, yet bitterly resent them; for
when the words would not come or would not arrange themselves,
when nothing went absolutely right, any distraction was sweet which
legitimately for a single hour released him from the drudgery of
thought; and yet it was hateful, for it postponed yet another hour
the end of that drudgery, and in that precious hour—who knows?—
the divine ease and assurance might have returned, the maddening
difficulties melted away, so strange and fitful are the springs of
inspiration.
So all these weeks he worked and saw nobody; he did not see
Muriel, though the Tarrants were still at home, and he did not see
John, who had gone away to Devonshire with a fellow Civil Servant.
But at last in the third week the labour was finished. It was finished
at sunset on a breathless evening; he finished it with a glowing
sense of contentment with good work done. Then he read it over,
from beginning to end. And as he read the glow faded, the
contentment departed. The mournful disillusion of achievement
began. Here and there were phrases which stirred, passages which
satisfied; but for the most part he read his work with a sort of sick
shame and disappointment. Who in the wide world could read these
stale and wearisome lines? Each of them at one time had seemed
the fresh and perfect expression of a fine thought; each of them was
the final choice of numberless alternatives; but so often he had read
them, so often written them, so often in his head endlessly recited
them, in the streets and on the river or in the dark night, that they
were all old now, old and dull.
He had learned by long experience to discount a little this gloomy
and inevitable reaction, and now as he turned over the final page of
spidery manuscript, he tried hard to restore his faith, reminding
himself that the world would see his work as he saw it first himself,
and not as he saw it now. Anyhow, it was done, and could not be
mended any more. Perhaps it would be better when it was typed.
But then the drudgery would begin again—the reading and re-
reading and alteration and doubt, the weary numbering of pages,
the weary correction of typist's lunacies. And after that there would
be proofs and the correcting of proofs; then new doubts would
discover themselves, and the old doubts would live again; and he
would hate it. Yet it would be better then—it would be better in
print. Now he was tired of it and would forget it. He felt the impulse
to relaxation and indulgence and rest which drives athletes to
excesses when their race is run, their long discipline over. He went
out into the garden and into the boat, and paddled gently upstream
with the tide, under the bank. It was nearly ten and the sun was
long down. There was no moon and it was dark on the river with the
brilliant darkness of a starry night. He paddled gently past John's
house, scarcely moving the oars; past Mr. Farraday's and the two
moored barges at the Bakery wharf. He drifted under the fig-tree by
the Whittakers', and came near to the house of the Tarrants. The
Tarrants' house, like his own, was on the river side of the road, and
their garden ran down to a low wall over the water. As he came out
from under the fig-tree he looked up over his shoulder at the house;
and Muriel Tarrant was in his mind. There was a figure in a white
dress leaning motionless over the wall, and as he looked up the
figure stirred sharply. Then he began to tremble with a curious
excitement, for he saw that it was Muriel herself. He dipped the oars
in the water and stopped the boat under the wall.
She said, very softly, "Mr. Byrne?"
He said, "Muriel," and his voice was no more than a whisper. But she
heard.
Then there was an intolerable silence, and they stared at each other
through the gloom; and nothing moved anywhere but the smooth,
hurrying water chuckling faintly round the boat and against the oars
and along the wall. They were silent, and their hearts beat with a
guilty urgency; and in the thoughts of both was the same riot of
doubt and scruple and exquisite excitement.
Stephen said at last,—and in his voice there was again that stealthy
hoarseness,—"Come out in the boat!"
She hesitated. She looked quickly over her shoulder at the house,
which was quite dark, because her mother and their only servant
had gone early to bed. Then without a word she came down the
steps. She gave him a hot hand that quivered in his as he helped her
down. Quietly he pushed off the boat; but on the Island a swan
heard them and flew away with a startling clatter, looking very large
against the stars. Still in silence they drifted away under the trees
past the Tathams' and past the brewery, and past the Petways' and
the ferry and the church. There was something in this silence very
suggestive of wrong, making them already confessed conspirators.
Muriel somehow felt this, and said at last:
"Mother's gone to bed. I mustn't be long."
Her voice and her words and her low delightful laugh broke the spell
of self-conscious wickedness which had held them. They felt at last
that they really were in this boat with each other under the stars; it
was no fantastic dream but an amusing and, after all, quite ordinary
adventure, nothing to be ashamed of or furtive about—a gentleman
and a lady boating in the evening on the Thames.
So Stephen steered out into mid-stream and pulled more strongly
now, away past the empty meadows, and the first low houses of
Barnes, and under the big black bridge, and round the bend by the
silent factories. Then there were a few last houses, very old and
dignified, and you came out suddenly into a wide reach where there
moved against the stars a long procession of old elms, and the
banks were clothed with an endless tangle of willows and young
shrubs, drooping and dipping in the water. The tide lapped among
thick reeds, and there was no murmur of London to be heard, and
no houses to be seen nor the lights of houses. It was a corner of
startling solitude, forgotten somehow in the urge of civilization; as if
none had had a heart to build a factory there or a brewery or a
wharf, but had built them resolutely to the east or to the west and
all around, determined, if they could, to spare this little relic of the
old country Thames.
And here Stephen stopped rowing, and tied his boat to a willow
branch; and Muriel watched him, saying nothing. Then he sat down
beside her in the wide stern-seat. She turned her head and looked at
him, very pale against the trees. And he put his arm about her and
kissed her.
It was very hot in that quiet place, and the night lay over them like a
velvet covering, heavy and sensuous and still. In each of them there
was the sense that this had been inevitable. They had known that it
must happen in that breathless moment at the garden wall. And this
was somehow comforting to the conscience.
So they sat there for a little longer, clinging tremorously in an
ecstasy of passion. A tug thrashed by; there was a sudden tumult of
splashing in the willows and in the reeds and the boat rocked
violently against the branches. Stephen fended her off.
Then they sat whispering and looking at the stars. It was a clear and
wonderful sky and no star was missing. Stephen told her the names
of stars and the stories about them. And she murmured dreamily
that she saw and understood; but she saw nothing and understood
nothing but the marvellous completeness of her conquest of this
man, and the frightening completeness of his conquest of her. She
had never meant that things should go so far.
And he, as he looked at the stars and the freckled gleam upon the
waters and the hot white face of the girl at his side, thought also, "I
did not mean it to go so far. But it is romance, this—it is poetry, and
rich experience—so it is justified." And what he meant was, "It is
copy."
The tide turned at last, and they drifted softly and luxuriously down
to Hammerton Reach, and stole at midnight under the hushed
gardens of The Chase to the Tarrants' wall. And there again they
kissed upon the steps. He whispered hotly, "Tomorrow!" and she
whispered, "Yes—if I can—" and was gone.
In the morning there came a letter from Margery, beseeching him to
come to her as soon as he could—a pathetic, gentle little letter. She
drew a picture of the peace and beauty of the place, and ended
acutely by emphasizing its possibilities as an inspiration to poetry.
"Do come down, my darling, as soon as you can. I do want you to
be here with me for a bit. I know you want to finish the poem, but
this is such a heavenly place, I'm sure it would help you to finish it; I
sometimes feel like writing poetry myself here! Joan says that Daddy
must come quick!"
Stephen wrote back, with a bewildered wonder at himself, that he
had nearly finished, but could not get away for at least a week. That
day he wrote a love-song—dedicated "To M." He had never written
anything of the kind before, and it excited him as nothing in
"Chivalry" had ever excited him.
All that week the tide was high in the evenings, and on the third day
the moon began. And every night, when all Hammerton had gone to
their early beds, he paddled secretly to the Tarrants' steps, still
drunk with amorous excitement and the sense of stealthy adventure.
Every night Muriel was waiting on the wall, slim and tremulous and
pale; and they slipped away under the bank to the open spaces
where none could see. And each day they said to themselves that
this must be the last evening, for disaster must surely come of these
meetings and these kisses; and each day looked forward with a hot
expectancy to the evening that was to come, that must be the end
of this delicious madness. Yet every night he whispered,
"Tomorrow?" and every night she whispered, "If I can." And each
day he wrote a new love-song—dedicated "To M."
On the seventh day young George came down to see his sister, and,
greatly daring, Stephen proposed a long expedition down the river in
his motor-boat. So those three set out at noon and travelled down
river in the noisy boat through the whole of London. They saw the
heart of London as it can only be seen from London's river, the
beauty of Westminster from Vauxhall and the beauty of the City from
Westminster. And as a man walks eastward through Aldgate into a
different world, they left behind them the sleek dignity of Parliament
and the Temple and the Embankment and shot under Blackfriars
Bridge into a different world—a world of clustering, untidy bridges
and sheer warehouses and endless wharves. They felt very small in
the little boat that spun sideways in the bewildering eddies round
the bridges and was pulled under them at breathless speed by the
confined and tremendous tide. They came through London Bridge
into a heavy sea, where the boat pitched and wallowed and tossed
her head and plunged suddenly with frightening violence in the large
waves that ran not one way only but rolled back obliquely from the
massed barges by the banks, and dashed at each other and made a
tumult of water, very difficult for a small boat to weather. Tugs
dashed up and down and across the river with the disquieting
quickness and inconsequence of taxi-cabs in the narrow space
between the barges and the big steamers huddled against the
wharves. The men in them looked out and laughed at the puny
white boat plunging sideways under Tower Bridge. There was then
an ocean-going steamer moving portentously out, and Muriel was
frightened by the size of the ship, and the noise and racket of the
wharves, and the hooting tugs, and the mad water splashing and
heaving about them. But they came soon past Wapping into a wide
and quieter reach; and here there were many ships and many
barges, some anchored and some slowly moving, like ships in a
dream. All of them were bright with colour against the sky and
against the steel-blue water and the towering muddle of wharves
and tall chimneys and warehouses upon the banks. The sails of the
barges stood out far off in lovely patches of warm brown, and their
masts shone like copper in the sun. Tucked away among the
wharves and cranes were old, mysterious houses, balconies and
lady-like windows looking incongruously over coal-barges.
But it was all mysterious and all beautiful, Stephen thought, in this
sunny market of the Thames. He liked the strange old names of the
places they passed, and told them lovingly to Muriel—Limehouse
Causeway, the Wapping Old Stairs, and Shadwell Basin, and Cherry
Garden Pier; and he loved to see through inlets here and there the
high forests of masts, and know that yonder were the special
mysteries of great docks; for for such things he had the romantic
reverence of a boy. But Muriel saw no romance and little beauty in
the Pool of London, and her brother George saw less. She saw it
only as a strange muddle of dirty vessels and ugly buildings, strongly
suggestive of slums and the East End. It was noisy sometimes, and
she had been splashed with water which she knew was dirty and
probably infected; she felt that she preferred the westward stretches
of the Thames, where navigation was less anxious and Stephen was
not so preoccupied with his surroundings.
Stephen perceived this and was aware of a faint disappointment.
Only when they rounded a bend and saw suddenly the gleaming pile
of Greenwich Hospital, brilliant against the green hill behind, did
Muriel definitely admire. And then, Stephen thought, it was not
because she saw that the building was so beautiful from that angle
and in that light, but because it had such an air of cleanliness and
austere respectability after the orgy of raffish and commercial
scenery which she had been compelled to endure. Or perhaps it was
because at Greenwich Pier they were going to get out of the boat.
 XIII
They came home in the gathering dusk on the young flood. And
because of this and because it was Saturday evening they had the
river to themselves, and moved almost alone through the silent and
deserted Pool. They followed slowly after the sun and saw the Tower
Bridge as a black scaffolding framing the last glow of yellow and
gold. All the undiscovered colours of sunset and half-darkness lay
upon the water, smooth now and velvety, and they fled away in front
of the boat as the glow departed. At Blackfriars the moon had not
yet come, and Nature had made thick darkness; but man had made
a marvel of light and beauty upon the water that left Stephen silent
with wonder. The high trams swam along the Embankment, palaces
of light, and they swam yet more admirably in the water. There were
the scattered lights of houses, and the brilliant lights of theatres,
and the opulent lights of hotels, and the regimented lights of street-
lamps, and the sudden little lights of matches on the banks, and the
tiny lights of cigarettes, where men hung smoking on the
Embankment wall, and sometimes a bright, inexplicable light high up
among the roofs; and the lights of Parliament, and at last the light of
the young moon peeping shyly over a Lambeth brewery—and all
these lights were different and beautiful in the dark, and made a
glory of the muddy water. The small boat travelled on in the lonely
darkness of mid-stream, and to Stephen it seemed a wonderful thing
that no other but he and Muriel and her brother George could look
as they could upon those magical lights and the magical patterns
that the water had made of them. He had a sense of remoteness, of
privileged remoteness from the world; yet he had a yearning for
pleasant companionship, and itched for the moment when young
George was to leave them to go to his Club.
Young George left them at Westminster Pier, and those two went on
together in the boat. The lights of Chelsea were as beautiful as the
lights of Westminster, and Stephen thought suddenly of Margery's
description of evening by the Solent. It was hardly necessary to go
so far for loveliness, he thought. He was glad that Muriel was with
him, because she too was lovely, but when she clung to him in the
old passionate way he kissed her very gently and without fire. For
the poetry of all that he had seen that day had somehow purged
him of the extravagant fever of the previous nights; and he
imagined, unreasonably, that she too would be ready for this
refinement of their relations. But she was not. She was tired with the
long day, with trying to share an enthusiasm which she did not
understand, for colours which she did not see, and lights which after
all were only the ordinary lights she saw in the streets on the way to
dances; she wanted to have done with that kind of thing now that
they were alone again; she wanted to be hotly embraced and hotly
kissed. For the end of this adventure was terribly near now. After
tomorrow her brother was coming to live at home again; after that
there would be no more safety. Tomorrow would be the last night.
Of all this Stephen was but vaguely sensible. She was still a sweet
and adorable companion, and his soul was still bursting with poetry
and romance, but it was the poetry of the moonlit Thames rather
than the poetry of a furtive passion. And because of this, and
because he was dimly conscious that she looked for some more
violent demonstration than he was able in the flesh to give, he
thought suddenly of the Love-Songs which he had made to her, but
never mentioned: and he wondered if they would please her. He
stopped the engine and let the boat drift. Then, very softly, in a
voice timid at first with self-consciousness, but gathering body and
feeling as he went on, he spoke for her the words of his Love-Songs.
At the end he felt that they were very good, better than he had
thought, and waited anxiously to hear what she would say. And she
listened in bewilderment. She was flattered in her vanity that a poet
should have written them for her; but she did not understand them,
and she was not moved or deeply interested.
She said at last: "How nice, Stephen! Did you really make up all that
about me?"
And at that the last flicker of the fire which had burned in him for so
many days went out. He saw clearly for the first time the insane
unfitness of their intimacy. In the first fascination of his senses, in
the voluptuous secrecy of their meetings under the moon, he had
asked nothing of her intellect; he had been content with the touch of
her hands, with the warm seduction of her kisses. And these, too,
were still precious, but they were not enough. They were not
enough to a poet on a night of poetry now that his senses were
almost satisfied.
So all the way home he held her gently and talked to her tenderly,
as he might have talked to Margery. And Muriel saw that she must
be content with that for this night, and was happy and quiet beside
him.
But when they parted under the wall it was she who whispered,
"Tomorrow—the last time," and it was he who whispered, "Yes."
In the morning he woke with a vague sense of distaste for
something that he had to do. All that day he had this restless,
dissatisfied feeling. And this was in part the first stirring of the
impulse to write which came always when he had no work in
progress and no great effort forming in his mind.
The weary reaction from the finishing of "Chivalry" was over, and the
creative itch was upon him, which could not be satisfied by the
making of little Love-Songs. And he felt no more like the making of
Love-Songs.
He wished almost that he might hurry immediately down to
Hampshire. But his promise for the evening prevented that.
He sat down in the sunny window-seat and thought, pondering
gloomily the wild events of these summer months. And as he
brooded over them with regret and sadness, and the beginnings of
new resolutions, there flashed from them, with the electric
suddenness of genuine inspiration, the bright spark of a new idea, a
new idea for the new work which he was aching to begin. Thereon
his mood of repentance faded away, and the moral aspect of the
things he had done dissolved into the background—like fairies at a
pantomime; and there was left the glowing vision of a work of art.
He was excited by this vision, and immediately was busy with a
sheet of paper—like a painter capturing a first impression—jotting
down in undecipherable half-words and initials the rough outline of
his plan, even the names of his characters and a few odd phrases.
There moved in his mind a seductive first line for the opening of this
poem, and that line determined in the end the whole question of
metre; for it was an inspired line, and it was in exactly the right
metre.
All the afternoon he sat in the shady corner of the garden over the
river, dreaming over the structure of this poem. In the evening he
began to work upon it; and all the evening he worked, with a
feverish concentration and excitement. At about ten o'clock the
moon was well up, and the rising tide was lapping and murmuring
already about the wall and about the boats. And he did not forget
Muriel; he did not forget his promise. He knew that she was waiting
for him, silent on the wall. He knew that he was bound in honour, or
in dishonour, to go to her. But he did not go. He had done with that.
And he had better things to do tonight.
So Muriel leaned lonely over the wall, looking down the river past
the fig-tree and the barges, looking and listening. The moon rose
high over Wimbledon, and the twin red lights of the Stork were lit,
and the yellow lights twinkled in the houses and bobbed along the
bridge, and the great tide rolled up with a rich suggestion of
fulfilment and hope. Quiet couples drifted by in hired boats and were
happy. But Stephen did not come. And Muriel waited.
St. Peter's clock struck eleven, and still she waited, in a flame of
longing and impatience. The dew came down, and she was cold; the
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