DATCHERD’S RETURN.
On the last day of April, Eddy procured an Irish Nationalist to address
the Club on Home Rule. He was a hot-tempered person, and despised
English people and said so; which was foolish in a speaker, and rather
discounted his other remarks, because the Club young men preferred to be
liked, even by those who made speeches to them. His cause, put no doubt
over-vehemently, was on the whole approved of by the Club, Radically
inclined as it in the main was; but it is a noticeable fact that this
particular subject is apt to fall dead on English working-class
audiences, who have, presumably, a deeply-rooted feeling that it does
not seriously affect them either way. Anyhow, this Nationalist hardly
evoked the sympathy he deserved in the Club. Also they were inclined to
be amused at his accent, which was unmodified Wexford. Probably Eddy
appreciated him and his arguments more than anyone else did.
So, when on the second day of May Eddy introduced an Orangeman to speak
on the same subject from another point of view, the audience was
inclined to receive him favourably. The Orangeman was young, much
younger than the Nationalist, and equally Irish, though from another
region, both geographically and socially. His accent, what he had of it,
is best described as polite North of Ireland, and he had been at
Cambridge with Eddy. Though capable of fierceness, and with an
Ulster-will-fight look in the eye, the fierceness was directed rather
against his disloyal compatriots than against his audience, which was
more satisfactory to the audience. And whenever he liked he could make
them laugh, which was more satisfactory still. From his face you might,
before he spoke, guess him to be a Nationalist, so essentially and
indubitably south-west Irish was the look of it. To avert so distressing
an error he did speak, as a rule, quite a lot.
He spoke this evening with energy, lucidity, humour, and vehemence, and
the Club listened appreciatively. Gradually he worked them up from
personal approval of himself to partial approval of, or at least
sympathy with, his cause. He went into the financial question with an
imposing production of figures. He began several times, “The
Nationalists will tell you,” and then proceeded to repeat precisely what
the Nationalist the other night _had_ told them, only to knock it down
with an argument that was sometimes conclusive, often would just do, and
occasionally just wouldn’t; and the Club cheered the first sort,
accepted the second as ingenious, and said “Oh,” good-humouredly, to
the third. Altogether it was an excellent speech, full of profound
conviction, with some incontrovertible sense, and a smattering of
intelligent nonsense. Not a word was dull, and not a word was unkind to
the Pope of Rome or his adherents, as is usual, and perhaps essential,
in such speeches when produced in Ireland, and necessitates their
careful expurgating before they are delivered to English audiences, who
have a tolerant, if supercilious, feeling towards that misguided Church.
The young man spoke for half an hour, and held his audience. He held
them even when he said, drawing to the end, “I wonder do any of you here
know anything at all about Ireland and Irish politics, or do you get it
all second-hand from the English Radical papers? Do you know at all what
you’re talking about? Bad government, incompetent economy, partiality,
prejudice, injustice, tyranny--that’s what the English Radicals want to
hand us over to. And that is what they will not hand us over to, because
we in Ulster, the most truly and nationally Irish part of Ireland, have
signed this.” He produced from his breast-pocket the Covenant, and held
it up before them, so that they all saw the Red Hand that blazed out on
it. He read it through to them, and sat down. Cheers broke out, stamping
of feet, clapping of hands; it was the most enthusiastic reception a
speaker had ever had at the Club.
Someone began singing “Rule Britannia,” as the nearest expression that
occurred to him of the patriotic and anti-disruptive sentiments that
filled him, and it was taken up and shouted all over the room. It was as
if the insidious influence of Kipling, the National Service League, the
Invasion Pictures, the Primrose League, and the Blue Water School, which
had been eating with gradual corruption into the sound heart of the
Club, was breaking out at last, under the finishing poison of Orangeism,
into an eruption which could only be eased by song and shout. So they
sang and shouted, some from enthusiasm, some for fun, and Eddy said to
his friend the speaker, “You’ve fairly fetched them this time,” and
looked smiling over the jubilant crowd, from the front chairs to the
back, and, at the back of all, met the eyes of Datcherd. He stood
leaning against the door, unjubilant, songless, morose, his hands in his
pockets, a cynical smile faintly touching his lips. At his side was
Sidney Pollard, with very bright eyes in a white face, and a “There, you
see for yourself” air about him.
Eddy hadn’t known Datcherd was coming down to the Club to-night, though
he knew he had arrived in England, three weeks before he had planned.
Seeing him, he rose to his feet and smiled, and the audience, following
his eyes, turned round and saw their returned president and master. Upon
that they cheered again, louder if possible than before. Datcherd’s
acknowledgment was of the faintest. He stood there for a moment longer,
then turned and left the room.
The meeting ended, after the usual courtesies and votes of thanks, and
Eddy took his friend away.
“You must come and be introduced to Datcherd,” he said. “I wonder where
he’s got to.”
His friend looked doubtful. “He could have come and spoken to me in the
room if he’d wanted. Perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps he’d be tired after his
journey. He didn’t look extraordinarily cheery, somehow. I think I’ll
not bother him.”
“Oh, he’s all right. He only looked like a Home Ruler listening to
Orange cheering. I expect they don’t, as a rule, look very radiant, do
they?”
“They do not. But you don’t mean he’d mind my coming to speak, surely?
Because, if he does, I ought never to have come. You told me they had
lectures from all sorts of people on all sorts of things.”
“So they do. No, of course he wouldn’t mind. But that’s the way he’s
bound to look in public, as a manifesto, don’t you see. Like a clergyman
listening to a Nonconformist preacher. He has to assert his principles.”
“But a Church clergyman probably wouldn’t get a Nonconformist to preach
in his church. They don’t, I believe, as a rule.”
Eddy was forced to admit that, unfortunately, they didn’t.
His friend, a person of good manners, was a little cross. “We’ve had him
offended now, and I don’t blame him. You should have told me. I should
never have come. It’s such rustic manners, to break into a person’s Club
and preach things he hates. I could tell he hated it, by the look in his
eye. He kept the other end of the room, the way he wouldn’t break out at
me and say anything ferocious. No, I’m not coming to look for him; I
wouldn’t dare look him in the face; you can go by yourself. You’ve
fairly let me in, Oliver. I hate being rude to the wrong side, it gives
them such an advantage. They’re rude enough to us, as a rule, to do for
the two. _I_ don’t want to have anything to do with his little Radical
Club; if he wants to keep it to himself and his Radical friends, he’s
welcome.”
“You’re talking nonsense,” Eddy said. “Did it behave like a Radical club
to-night?”
“It did not. Which is exactly why Datcherd has every reason to be
annoyed. Well, you can tell him from me that it was no one’s fault but
your own. Good-night.”
He departed, more in anger than in sorrow--(it had really been rather
fun to-night, though rude)--and Eddy went to find Datcherd.
But he didn’t find Datcherd. He was told that Datcherd had left the Club
and gone home. His friend’s remark came back to him. “He kept the other
end of the room, the way he wouldn’t break out at me and say anything
ferocious.” Was that what Datcherd was doing to him, or was he tired
after his journey? Eddy hoped for the best, but felt forebodings.
Datcherd certainly had not looked cordial or cheerful. The way he had
looked had disappointed and rather hurt the Club. They felt that another
expression, after three months absence, would have been more suitable.
After all, for pleasantness of demeanour, Mr. Datcherd, even at the best
of times (which this, it seemed, hardly was) wasn’t a patch on Mr.
Oliver.
These events occurred on a Friday evening. It so happened that Eddy was
going out of town next morning for a Cambridge week-end, so he would not
see Datcherd till Monday evening. He and Arnold spent the week-end at
Arnold’s home. Whenever Eddy visited the Denisons he was struck afresh
by the extreme and rarefied refinement of their atmosphere; they (except
Arnold, who had been coarsened, like himself, by contact with the world)
were academic in the best sense; theoretical, philosophical, idealistic,
serenely sure of truth, making up in breeding what, possibly, they a
little lacked (at least Mrs. Denison and her daughter lacked) in humour;
never swerving from the political, religious, and economic position they
had taken up once and for all. A trifle impenetrable and closed to new
issues, they were; the sort of Liberal one felt would never, however
changed the circumstances, become Conservative. A valuable type,
representing breeding and conscience in a rough-and-tumble world; if
Christian and Anglican, it often belongs to the Christian Social Union;
if not, like the Denisons, it will surely belong to some other
well-intentioned and high-principled society for bettering the poor.
They are, in brief, gentlemen and ladies. Life in the country is too
sleepy for them and their progressive ideas; London is quite too wide
awake; so they flourish like exquisite flowers in our older Universities
and in Manchester, and visit Greece and Italy in the vacations.
Eddy found it peaceful to be with the Denisons. To come back to London
on Monday morning was a little disturbing. He could not help a slight
feeling of anxiety about his meeting with Datcherd. Perhaps it was just
as well, he thought, to have given Datcherd two days to recover from the
shock of the Unionist meeting. He hoped that Datcherd, when he met him,
would look less like a Home Ruler listening to Orange cheering (a very
unpleasant expression of countenance) than he had on Friday evening.
Thinking that he might as well find out about this as soon as possible,
he called at Datcherd’s house that afternoon.
Datcherd was in his library, as usual, writing. He got up and shook
hands with Eddy, and said, “I was coming round to see you,” which
relieved Eddy. But he spoke rather gravely, and added, “There are some
things I want to talk to you about,” and sat down and nursed his gaunt
knee in his thin hands and gnawed his lips.
Eddy asked him if he was much better, thinking he didn’t look it, and if
he had had a good time. Datcherd scarcely answered; he was one of those
people who only think of one thing at once, and he was thinking just
now of something other than his health or his good time.
He said, after a moment’s silence, “It’s been extremely kind of you to
manage the Club all this time.”
Eddy, with a wan smile, said apologetically, “You know, we really did
have a Home Ruler to speak on Wednesday.”
Datcherd relaxed a little, and smiled in his turn.
“I know. In fact, I gather that there are very few representatives of
any causes whatever whom you have _not_ had to speak.”
“I see,” said Eddy, “that Pollard has told you all.”
“Pollard has told me some things. And you must remember that I spent
both Saturday and Sunday evenings at the Club.”
“What,” inquired Eddy hopefully, “did you think of it?”
Datcherd was silent for a moment. Perhaps he was remembering again how
kind it had been of Eddy to manage the Club all this time. When he
spoke, it was with admirable moderation.
“It hardly,” he said, “seems quite on the lines I left it on. I was a
little surprised, I must own. We had a very small Club on Sunday night,
because a lot of them had gone off to some service in church. That
surprised me rather. They never used to do that. Of course I don’t mind,
but----”
“That’s Traherne,” said Eddy. “He got a tremendous hold on some of them
when he came down to speak. He’s always popular, you know, with men and
lads.”
“I daresay. What made you get him?”
“Oh, to speak about rents and wages and things. He’s very good. They
liked him.”
“That is apparent. He’s dragged some of them into the Church Socialist
League, and more to church after him. Well, it’s their own business, of
course; if they like the sort of thing, I’ve no objection. They’ll get
tired of it soon, I expect.... But, if you’ll excuse my asking, why on
earth have you been corrupting their minds with lectures on Tariff
Reform, National Service, Ulsterism and Dreadnoughts? Didn’t you realise
that one can’t let in that sort of influence without endangering the
sanity of a set of half-educated lads? I left them reading Mill; I find
them reading Kipling. Upon my word, anyone would think you belonged to
the Primrose League, from the way you’ve been going on.”
“I do,” said Eddy simply.
Datcherd stared at him, utterly taken aback.
“You _what_?”
“I belong to the Primrose League,” Eddy repeated. “Why shouldn’t I?”
Datcherd pulled his startled wits together, and laughed shortly.
“I beg your pardon. The mistake, I suppose, was mine. I had somehow got
it into my head that you were a Fabian.”
“So I am,” said Eddy, patiently explaining. “All those old things, you
know. And most of the new ones as well. I’m sorry if you didn’t know; I
suppose I ought to have mentioned it, but I never thought about it. Does
it matter?”
Datcherd was gazing at him with grave, startled eyes, as at a maniac.
“Matter? Well, I don’t know. Yes, I suppose it would have mattered, from
my point of view, if I’d known. Because it just means that you’ve been
playing when I thought you were in earnest; that, whereas I supposed you
took your convictions and mine seriously and meant to act on them,
really they’re just a game to you. You take no cause seriously, I
suppose.”
“I take all causes seriously,” Eddy corrected him quickly. He got up,
and walked about the room, his hands deep in his pockets, frowning a
little because life was so serious.
“You see,” he explained, stopping in front of Datcherd and frowning down
on him, “truth is so pervasive; it gets everywhere; leaks into
everything. Like cod-liver oil spilt in a trunk of clothes; everything’s
saturated with it. (Is that a nasty comparison? I thought of it because
it happened to me the other day.) The clothes are all different from
each other, but the cod-liver oil is in all of them for ever and ever.
Truth is like that--pervasive. Isn’t it?”
“No,” said Datcherd, with vehemence. “No. Truth is _not_ like that. If
it were, it would mean that one thing was no better and no worse than
another; that all progress, moral and otherwise, was illusive. We should
all become fatalists, torpid, uncaring, dead, sitting with our hands
before us and drifting with the tide. There’d be an end of all fight,
all improvement, all life. But truth is _not_ like that. One thing _is_
better than another, and always will be. Democracy _is_ a better aim
than oligarchy; freedom _is_ better than tyranny; work _is_ better than
idleness. And, because it fights, however slowly and hesitatingly, on
the side of those better things, Liberalism is better than Toryism, the
League of Young Liberals a better thing to encourage among the young men
of the country than the Primrose League. You say truth is everywhere.
Frankly, I look at the Primrose League, and all your Tory Associations,
and I can’t find it. I see only a monumental tissue of lies. Lying to
the people for their good--that’s what all honest Tories would admit
they do. Lying to them for their harm--that’s what we say they do.
Truth! It isn’t named among them. They’ve not got minds that can know
truth when they see it. It’s not their fault. They’re mostly good men
warped by a bad creed. And you say one creed is as good as another.”
“I say there’s truth in all of them,” said Eddy. “Can’t you see the
truth in Toryism? I can, so clearly. It’s all so hackneyed, so often
repeated, but it’s true in spite of that. Isn’t there truth in
government by the best for the others? If that isn’t good what is? If
it’s not true that one man’s more fitted by nature and training to
manage difficult political affairs than another, nothing’s true. And
it’s true that he can do it best without a mass of ignorant,
uninstructed, sentimental people for ever jerking at the reins. Put the
best on top--that’s the gist of Toryism.” Datcherd was looking at him
cynically.
“And yet--you belong to the Young Liberals’ League.”
“Of course I do. Do you want me to enlarge on the gist and the beauties
of Liberalism too? I could, only I won’t, because you’ve just done so
yourself. All that you’ve said about its making for freedom and
enlightenment is profoundly true, and is why I am a Liberal. I insist on
my right to be both. I am both. I hope I shall always be both.”
Datcherd said, after a thoughtful moment, “I wish we had had this
conversation three months ago. We didn’t; I was reckless and hasty, and
so we’ve made this mess of things.”
“_Is_ it a mess?” asked Eddy. “I’m sorry if so. It hasn’t struck me in
that light all this time.”
“Don’t think me ungrateful, Oliver,” said Datcherd, quickly. “I’m not.
Looking at things as you do, I suppose it was natural that you should
have done as you have. Perhaps you might have let me a little more into
your views beforehand than you did--but never mind that now. The fact
that matters is that I find the Club in a state of mental confusion that
I never expected, and it will take some time to settle it again, if we
ever do. We want, as you know, to make the Club the nucleus of a sound
Radical constituency. Well, upon my word, if there was an election now,
I couldn’t say which way some of them would vote. You may answer that it
doesn’t matter, as so few are voters yet; but it does. It’s what I call
a mess; and a silly mess, too. They’ve been playing the fool with things
they ought to be keen enough about to take in deadly earnest. That’s
your doing. You seem to have become pretty popular, I must say; which is
just the mischief of it. All I can do now is to try and straighten
things out by degrees.”
“You’d rather I didn’t come and help any more, I suppose,” said Eddy.
“To be quite frank, I would. In fact, I wouldn’t have you at any price.
You don’t mind my speaking plainly? The mistake’s been mine; but it
_has_ been a pretty idiotic mistake, and we mustn’t have any more of
it.... I ought never to have gone away. I shan’t again, whatever any
fools of doctors say.”
Eddy held out his hand. “Goodbye. I’m really very sorry, Datcherd. I
suppose I ought to have guessed what you would feel about all this.”
“Honestly, I think you ought. But thank you very much, all the same, for
all the trouble you’ve taken.... You’re doing some reviewing work now,
aren’t you?” His tone implied that Eddy had better go on doing reviewing
work, and desist from doing anything else.
Eddy left the house. He was sorry, and rather angry, and badly
disappointed. He had been keen on the Club; he had hoped to go on
helping with it. It seemed that he was not considered fit by anyone to
have anything to do with clubs and such philanthropic enterprises. First
the Vicar of St. Gregory’s had turned him out because he had too many
interests besides (Datcherd being one), and now Datcherd turned him out
because he had tried to give the Club too many interests (the cause the
vicar stood for being one). Nowhere did he seem to be wanted. He was a
failure and an outcast. Besides which, Datcherd thought he had behaved
dishonourably. Perhaps he had. Here he saw Datcherd’s point of view.
Even his friend the Ulsterman had obviously had the same thought about
that. Eddy ruefully admitted that he had been an idiot not to know just
how Datcherd would feel. But he was angry with Datcherd for feeling like
that. Datcherd was narrow, opinionated, and unfair. So many people are,
in an unfair world.
He went home and told Arnold, who said, “Of course. I can’t think why
you didn’t know how it would be. I always told you you were being
absurd, with your Blue Water lunatics, and your Food Tax ante-diluvians,
and your conscription captains. (No, don’t tell me about it’s not being
conscription; now is not the moment. You are down, and it is for me to
talk.) You had better try your hand at no more good works, but stick to
earning an honest livelihood, as long as they will give you any money
for what you do. I daresay from a rumour I heard from Innes to-day, that
it won’t be long. I believe the _Daily Post_ are contemplating a
reduction in their literary staff, and they will very probably begin
with you, unless you learn to restrain your redundant appreciations a
little. No paper could bear up under that weight of indiscriminate
enthusiasm for long.”
“Hulbert told me I was to criticize more severely,” said Eddy. “So I try
to now. It’s difficult, when I like a thing, to be severe about it. I
wonder if one ought.”
But he was really wondering more what Eileen Le Moine thought and would
say about his difference with Datcherd.
He didn’t discover this for a week. He called at 3, Campden Hill Road,
and found both its occupants out. They did not write, as he had half
expected, to ask him to come again, or to meet them anywhere. At last he
met Eileen alone, coming out of an exhibition of Max Beerbohm cartoons.
He had been going in, but he turned back on seeing her. She looked
somehow altered, and grave, and she was more beautiful even than he had
known, but tired, and with shadowed eyes of fire and softness; to him
she seemed, vaguely, less of a child, and more of a woman. Perhaps it
was Greece.... Somehow Greece, and all the worlds old and new, and all
the seas, seemed between them as she looked at him with hardening eyes.
An observer would have said from that look that she didn’t like him;
yet she had always liked him a good deal. A capricious person she was;
all her friends knew that.
He turned back from the entrance door to walk with her, though she said,
“Aren’t you going in?”
“No,” he said. “I’ve seen them once already. I’d rather see you now, if
you don’t mind. I suppose you’re going somewhere? You wouldn’t come and
have tea with me first?”
She hesitated a moment, as if wondering whether she would, then said,
“No; I’m going to tea with Billy’s grandmother; she wants to hear about
Greece. Then Billy and I are taking Jane to the Academy, to broaden her
mind. She’s never seen it yet, and it’s time her education was
completed.”
She said it coldly, even the little familiar mockery of Jane and the
Academy, and Eddy knew that she was angry with him. That he did not
like, and he said quickly, “May I go with you as far as Gordon Place?”
(which was where Billy’s grandmother lived), and she answered with
childish sullenness, “If we’re going the one way at the one time I
suppose we will be together,” and said no more till he broke the silence
as they crossed Leicester Square in the sunshine with, “Please, is
anything the matter, Eileen?”
She turned and looked at him, her face hard in the shadow of the
sweeping hat-brim, and flung back ironically, “It is not. Of course not;
how would it be?”
Eddy made a gesture of despair with his hands.
“You’re angry too. I knew it. You’re all angry, because I had Tariff
Reformers and Orangemen to lecture to the Club.”
“D’you tell me so?” She still spoke in uncomfortable irony. “I expect
you hoped we would be grateful and delighted at being dragged back from
Greece just when Hugh was beginning to be better, and to enjoy things,
by a letter from that miserable Pollard all about the way you had the
Club spoilt. Why, we hadn’t been to Olympia yet. We were just going
there when Hugh insisted on calling for letters at Athens and got this.
Letters indeed! Bridget and I didn’t ask were there any for us; but Hugh
always will. And of course, when he’d read it nothing would hold him; he
must tear off home by the next train and arrive in London three weeks
sooner than we’d planned. Now why, if you felt you had to go to spoil
Hugh’s club, couldn’t you have had Pollard strangled first, the way he
wouldn’t be writing letters?”
“I wish I had,” said Eddy, with bitter fervour. “I was a fool.”
“And worse than that, so you were,” said Eileen, unsparingly. “You were
unprincipled, and then so wanting foresight that you wrecked your own
schemes. Three weeks more, and you might have had twenty-one more
captains and clergymen and young men from Ulster to complete the
education of Hugh’s young Liberals. As it is, Hugh thinks you’ve not
done them much harm, though you did your best, and he’s slaving away to
put sense into them again. The good of Greece is all gone from him
already; worry was just what he wasn’t to do, and you’ve made him do it.
He’s living already again at top speed, and over-working, and being sad
because it’s all in such a silly mess. Hugh cares for his work more than
for anything in the world,” her voice softened to the protective cadence
familiar to Eddy, “and you’ve hurt him in it. No one should hurt Hugh in
his work, even a little. Didn’t you know that?”
She looked at him now with eyes less hostile but more sad, as if her
thoughts had left him and wandered to some other application of this
principle. Indeed, as she said it, it had the effect of a creed, a
statement of a governing principle of life, that must somehow be
preserved intact while all else broke.
“Could I have known it would have hurt him--a few lectures?” Eddy
protested against the unfairness of it, losing his temper a little. “You
all talk as if Datcherd was the mistress of a girls’ school, who is
expected to protect her pupils from the contamination of degrading
influences and finds they have been reading Nietsche or _Tom Jones_.”
It was a mistake to say that. He might have known it. Eileen flushed
pink with a new rush of anger.
“Is that so? Is that the way we speak of Hugh? I’ll tell him you said
so. No, I wouldn’t trouble his ears with anything so paltry. I wonder do
you know the way he speaks of you? He thinks you must be weak in the
head, and he makes excuses for you, so he does; he never says an unkind
word against you, only how you ought to be locked up and not let loose
like ordinary people, and how he ought to have known you were like that
and explained to you in so many words beforehand the principles he
wanted maintained. As if he hadn’t been too ill to explain anything, and
as if any baby wouldn’t have known, and as if any honourable person
wouldn’t have taken particular care, just when he was ill and away, to
run things just the way he would like. And after that you call him a
girls’ school mistress....”
“On the contrary,” said Eddy, crossly, “I said he wasn’t. You are
horribly unfair. Is it any use continuing this conversation?”
“It is not. Nor any other.”
So, in her excitement, she got into a bus that was not going to Billy’s
grandmother, and he swallowed his pride and told her so, but she would
not swallow hers and listen to him, but climbed on to the top, and was
carried down Piccadilly, and would have to change at Hyde Park Corner.
Eileen was singularly poor at buses, Eddy reflected bitterly. He walked
down to the Embankment, too crushed and unhappy to go home and risk
meeting Arnold. He had been rude and ill-tempered to Eileen, and sneered
at Datcherd to her, and she had been rude and ill-tempered to him, and
would never forgive him, because it had been about Datcherd, her friend,
loyalty to whom was the mainspring of her life. All her other friends
might go by the board, if Datcherd but prospered. How much she cared,
Eddy reflected, his anger fast fading into a pity and regret that hurt.
For all her bitter words to him had that basis--a poignant caring for
Datcherd, with his wrecked health, and his wrecked home, and his
hopeless, unsatisfied love for her--a love which would never be
satisfied, because he had principles which forbade it, and she had a
love for him which would always preserve his principles and his life’s
work intact. And they were growing to care so much--Eddy had seen that
in Eileen’s face when first he met her at the Leicester Galleries--with
such intensity, such absorbing flame, that it hurt and burnt.... Eddy
did not want to watch it.
But one thing it had done for him; it had killed in him the last
vestiges of that absurd emotion he had had for her, an emotion which had
always been so hopeless, and for that very reason had never become, and
never would become, love.
But he wanted to be friends. However much she had been the aggressor in
the quarrel, however unfair, and unjust, and unkind she had been, still
he was minded to write and say he was sorry, and would she please come
to lunch and go on being friends.
He turned into Soho Square, and went back to his rooms. There he found a
letter from his editor telling him that his services on the _Daily Post_
would not be required after the end of May. It was not unexpected. The
_Post_ was economising in its literary staff, and starting on him. It
was very natural, even inevitable, that they should; for his reviewing
lacked discrimination, and his interest in the Club had often made him
careless about his own job. He threw the letter at Arnold, who had just
come in.
Arnold said, “I feared as much.”
“What now, I wonder?” said Eddy, not caring particularly.
Arnold looked at him thoughtfully.
“Really, it’s very difficult. I don’t know.... You do so muddle things
up, don’t you? I wish you’d learn to do only one job at once and stick
to it.”
Eddy said bitterly, “It won’t stick to me, unfortunately.”
Arnold said, “If Uncle Wilfred would have you, would you come to us?”
Eddy supposed he would. Only probably Uncle Wilfred wouldn’t have him.
Later in the evening he got a telegram to say that his father had had a
stroke, and could he come home at once. He caught a train at half-past
eight, and was at Welchester by ten.