Not George Washington | Page 8

Of the play and its reception by the public there is no need to speak.
The criticisms were all favourable.
Neither the praise of the critics nor the applause of the public aroused
any trace of jealousy in James. Their unanimous note of praise has been
a source of pride to him. He is proud--ah, joy!--that I am to be his wife.
I have blotted the last page of this commonplace love-story of mine.
The moon has come out from behind a cloud, and the whole bay is one
vast sheet of silver. I could sit here at my bedroom window and look at
it all night. But then I should be sure to oversleep myself and be late for
breakfast. I shall read what I have written once more, and then I shall
go to bed.
I think I shall wear my white muslin tomorrow.
_(End of Miss Margaret Goodwin's narrative.)_

PART TWO
James Orlebar Cloyster's Narrative


CHAPTER 1
THE INVASION OF BOHEMIA
It is curious to reflect that my marriage (which takes place today week)
destroys once and for all my life's ambition. I have never won through
to the goal I longed for, and now I never shall.
Ever since I can remember I have yearned to be known as a Bohemian.

That was my ambition. I have ceased to struggle now. Married
Bohemians live in Oakley Street, King's Road, Chelsea. We are to rent
a house in Halkett Place.
Three years have passed since the excellent, but unsteady, steamship
Ibex brought me from Guernsey to Southampton. It was a sleepy, hot,
and sticky wreck that answered to the name of James Orlebar Cloyster
that morning; but I had my first youth and forty pounds, so that soap
and water, followed by coffee and an omelette, soon restored me.
The journey to Waterloo gave me opportunity for tobacco and
reflection.
What chiefly exercised me, I remember, was the problem whether it
was possible to be a Bohemian, and at the same time to be in love.
Bohemia I looked on as a region where one became inevitably
entangled with women of unquestionable charm, but doubtful morality.
There were supper parties.... Festive gatherings in the old studio....
Babette.... Lucille.... The artists' ball.... Were these things possible for a
man with an honest, earnest, whole-hearted affection?
The problem engaged me tensely till my ticket was collected at
Vauxhall. Just there the solution came. I would be a Bohemian, but a
misogynist. People would say, "Dear old Jimmy Cloyster. How he
hates women!" It would add to my character a pleasant touch of dignity
and reserve which would rather accentuate my otherwise irresponsible
way of living.
Little did the good Bohemians of the metropolis know how keen a
recruit the boat train was bringing to them.
* * * * *
As a _pied-à-terre_ I selected a cheap and dingy hotel in York Street,
and from this base I determined to locate my proper sphere.
Chelsea was the first place that occurred to me. There was St. John's
Wood, of course, but that was such a long way off. Chelsea was

comparatively near to the heart of things, and I had heard that one
might find there artistic people whose hand-to-mouth, Saturnalian
existence was redolent of that exquisite gaiety which so attracted my
own casual temperament.
Sallying out next morning into the brilliant sunshine and the dusty
rattle of York Street, I felt a sense of elation at the thought that the time
for action had come. I was in London. London! The home of the
fragrant motor-omnibus and the night-blooming Hooligan. London, the
battlefield of the literary aspirant since Caxton invented the printing
press. It seemed to me, as I walked firmly across Westminster Bridge,
that Margie gazed at me with the lovelight in her eyes, and that a
species of amorous telepathy from Guernsey was girding me for the
fight.
Manresa Road I had once heard mentioned as being the heart of
Bohemian Chelsea. To Manresa Road, accordingly, I went, by way of
St. James's Park, Buckingham Palace Road, and Lower Sloane Street.
Thence to Sloane Square. Here I paused, for I knew that I had reached
the last outpost of respectable, inartistic London.
"How sudden," I soliloquised, "is the change. Here I am in Sloane
Square, regular, business-like, and unimaginative; while, a few hundred
yards away, King's Road leads me into the very midst of genius,
starvation, and possibly Free Love."
Sloane Square, indeed, gave me the impression, not so much of a
suburb as of the suburban portion of a great London railway terminus.
It was positively pretty. People were shopping with comparative leisure,
omnibus horses were being rubbed down and watered on the west side
of the Square, out of the way of the