a laugh. Her gentlemen and ladies did not know that she was looking
upon them with eyes of farewell. Miss Lois Drake, for instance, that
daring and adventurous type of the modern girl about whose future
Fanny was always speculating with trembling excitement, she did not
notice anything at all. But then she thought of very little save
herself. "However she _can_ do the things she does!" was Fanny's
awed comment--and now, alas, she would never see the climax to her
daring--never, never, never!
She said nothing to Aggie of her troubles, and Aggie said nothing to
her. The days passed. Then just before Christmas came the marvellous
news.
By this time all the girl valets had been dismissed and men had taken
their places. They would congregate in the hall of a morning, coming on
approval, and Fanny would speculate about them. Mr. Nix even asked her
advice. "I like that one," she would say; "I wouldn't trust that man
a yard," she would decide. Then one day Albert Edward came. There was
no doubt about him at all. He was almost as good as the late lamented
James. Handsome, although short--but Fanny liked the "stocky" kind,
and with _such_ a laugh! Fanny delighted in his jet-black hair cut
tight about his head, his smiling black eyes, his round, rosy cheeks.
She admired him quite in the abstract. He was far too grand for any
personal feeling.... At once, when he had been in the place two days,
she allotted him to Mrs. Mellish's maid, Annette, _such_ a handsome
girl, so bold and clever! They were made for one another.
Albert Edward was valet on the second floor; he shared that floor with
Bacon. Fanny did not like Bacon, the one mistake she thought that Mr.
Nix had made.
Well, just before Christmas the wonderful hour arrived.
"Fanny," said Mr. Nix one evening. "Do you realise that you're the only
woman left in a man's job?"
"Yes," said Fanny, her heart beating horribly.
"Well," said Mr. Nix, "you're going to continue to be the only woman
unless you've any objection."
"Oh, Mr. Nix," said Fanny, "I'm sure I've always tried----"
"Yes, I know," said Mr. Nix, "that's why I want you to stay--for ever
if you like--or at any rate so long as I'm here."
"Oh, Mr. Nix," said Fanny again. Tears were in her eyes; the familiar
green staircase, the palm and the grandfather's clock swam before her
eyes.
It was Aggie, of course, who killed her happiness almost as soon as it
was born.
"And what about the demobilised men?" Aggie had asked with her cold,
acid smile. "I should have thought that if there were any jobs going a
patriotic girl like you would have been the first to stand aside."
Fanny's heart seemed to leap into the air and then fall--stone dead at
her feet. Men! Demobilised men! She had not thought of that. But for
the moment th e only thing she could see was Aggie's spite--her old,
eternal spite.... She felt the tears rising. In a moment they would
break out.
"You would like to spoil it if you could!" she cried. "Yes, you would.
It's what you've always done--spoilt everything. Yes, you have--since
we were children. Any little bit of happiness...."
"Happiness!" interrupted Aggie; "that's what you call it? Selfishness!
cruel selfishness, that's what some would name it."
"You don't care," cried Fanny, her words now choked with sobs. "You
don't care as long as I'm hurt and wounded--that's all you mind!...
always ... tried to hurt me ... always!" The tears had conquered her.
She rushed from the room.
She escaped--but she was haunted. It was not because Aggie had said it
that she minded--no, she did not care for Aggie--it was because there
was truth in what Aggie had said. Fanny was precisely the girl to feel
such a charge, as Aggie well knew. All her life her conscience had been
her trouble, acute, vivid, lifting its voice when there was no need,
never satisfied with the prizes and splendours thrown it. In ordinary
times Fanny surrendered at once to its hideous demands--this time she
fought.
Aggie herself helped in the fight. Having succeeded in making Fanny
miserable, it was by no means her intention that the silly child
should really surrender the job. That did not at all suit her own idle
selfishness. So she mocked at her for staying where she was, but made
it plain that having given her word, she must stick to it. "You've made
your bed and must lie on it," was her phrase.
Fanny said nothing. The light had gone from her eyes, the colour
from her cheeks. She was fighting the sternest battle of her life.
Everywhere she saw, or fancied she saw, demobilised men. Every man in
the street with a little shining disc fastened to his coat was in her
eyes a demobilised man starving and hungry because she was so wicked.
And yet why should she give it up? She had proved her worth--shown that
she was _better_ than a man in that particular business. Would Mr. Nix
have kept her had she not been better? Kind though he was, he was not a
philanthropist.... And to give it up, to be tied for life to Aggie, to
be idle, to be unwanted, to see no more of Hortons, to see no more--of
Albert Edward. Yes, the secret was out. She loved Albert Edward. Not
with any thought of herself--dear me, no.... She knew that she was far
too plain, too dull. She need only compare herself for an instant with
Mrs. Mellish's Annette, and she could see where she stood. No, romance
was not for her. But she liked his company. He was so kind to her. He
would stand, again and again, in her little hutch and chatter, laughing
and making silly jokes.
She amused him, and he admired her capacity for business. "You _are_
a one!" was his way of putting it. "You'd be something like running a
restaurant--business side, you know."
How proud she was when he said these things! After all, everybody had
something. Annette, for all her bows and ribbons, was probably poor at
business.
However, she included Albert Edward in the general life of Hortons, and
refused to look any closer. So day and night the struggle continued.
She could not sleep, she could not eat, everyone told her that she
was looking ill and needed a holiday. She was most truly a haunted
woman, and her ghosts were on every side of her, pressing in upon her,
reproaching her with starving, dark-rimmed eyes. She struggled, she
fought, she clung with bleeding hands to the stones and rafters and
walls of Hortons.
Conscience had her way--Fanny was beaten. The decision was taken one
night after a horrible dream--a dream in which she had been pursued by
a menacing, sinister procession of men, some without arms and legs, who
floated about her, beating her in the face with their soft boneless
hands....
She awoke screaming. Next morning she went to Mr. Nix.
"I'm afraid I must give you my notice, Mr. Nix," she said.
Of course he laughed at her when she offered her reason. But she was
firm.
"You've been terribly good to me, Mr. Nix," she said, "but I must go."
She was firm. It was all that she could do not to cry. He submitted,
saying that he would leave her a day or so to reconsider it.
She went into her hut and stared in front of her, in stony
wretchedness. That was the worst day of her life. She felt like a dead
woman. Worst of all was the temptation to run back to Mr. Nix and tell
him that it was not true, that she _had_ reconsidered it....
All day she saw Aggie in her green stuff dress, her eyes close to the
paper, the room so close, so close....
In the afternoon, about five, she felt that she could bear it no longer.
She would get the hall-boy to take her place and would go home.
Albert Edward came in for a chat. She told him what she had done.
"Well," he said, "that's fine."
She stared at him.
"I want you to marry me," he said; "I've been wanting it a long time.
I like you. You're just the companion for me, sense of humour and all
that. And a business head. I'm past the sentimental stuff. What I want
is a pal. What do you say to the little restaurant?"
The grandfather's clock rose up and struck Fanny in the face. She could
have endured that had not the green and white staircase done the same.
So strange was the world that she was compelled to put her hand on
Albert Edward's arm.
Behind the swimming, dazzling splendour of her happiness was the
knowledge that she had secured a job from which no man in the world
would have the right to oust her.
III
THE HON. CLIVE TORBY
He was now the only son of old Lord Dronda; his elder brother had been
killed at Mons early in the war. He had been aware of his good looks
ever since he was a week old. Tom, the elder brother, had been fat
and plain; everyone had told him so. He did not mind now, being dead.
Clive was the happiest fellow possible, even though he had lost an
arm late in '17. He had not minded that. It was his left arm, and he
could already do almost everything quite well without it; women liked
him all the better for having lost it. He had always been perfectly
satisfied with himself, his looks, his home, his relations--everything.
His critics said that he was completely selfish, and had horrible
manners or no manners at all, but it wa s difficult to underline his
happy unconscious young innocence so heavily. Certainly if, in the days
before the war, you stayed with his people, you found his indifference
to your personal needs rather galling--but "Tom looked after all that,"
although Tom often did not because he was absent-minded by nature
and fond of fishing. The fact is that poor Lady Dronda was to blame.
She had educated her children very badly, being so fond of them and
so proud of them that she gave in to them on every opportunity. She
was known amongst her friends as "Poor Lady Dronda" because, being a
sentimentalist and rather stupid, life was perpetually disappointing
her. People never came up to her expectations, so she put all her
future into the hands of her sons, who, it seemed, might in the end
also prove disappointing. The favourite word on her lips was, "Now
tell me the truth. The one thing I want to hear from my friends is the
truth." However, the truth was exactly what she never did get, because
it upset her so seriously and made her so angry with the person who
gave it her. Tom being dead, she transformed him into an angel, and
told sympathetic acquaintances so often that she never spoke of him
that his name was rarely off her lips. Nevertheless she was able to
devote a great deal of her time to Clive, who was now "All Her Life."
The results of this were two: first, that Clive, although retaining all
his original simple charm, was more sure than ever before that he was
perfect; secondly, that he found his mother tiresome and, having been
brought up to think of nobody but himself, was naturally as little
home as possible.
He took up his abode at Hortons, finding a little flat, No. 11, on the
second floor, that suited him exactly. Into it he put his "few sticks
of things," and the result was a charming confusion of soda-water
syphons and silver photograph frames.
He very happily throughout the whole of 1918 resided there, receiving
innumerable young women to meals of different kinds, throwing the rooms
open to all his male acquaintances, and generally turning night into
day--with the caution that he must not annoy Mr. Nix, the manager,
for whom he had the very greatest respect. The odd thing was that
with all his conceit and bad manners, he was something of a hero. He
had received both the M.C. and the D.S.O., and was as good an officer
as the Guards could boast. This sounds conventional and in the good
old Ouida tradition, but his heroism lay rather in the fact that he
had positively loathed the war. He hated the dirt, the blood, the
confusion, the losing of friends, what he called "the general Hell." No
one was more amusing and amiable during his stay out there, and, to be
Ouidaesque again for a moment, he was adored by his men.
Nevertheless it was perhaps the happiest moment of his life when he
knew he was to lose his arm. "No more going back to jolly old France
for me, old bean," he wrote to a friend. "Now I'm going to enjoy
myself."
That was his rooted determination. He had not gone through all that and
been maimed for life for nothing. He was going to enjoy himself. Yes,
after the war he would show them....
He showed them mainly at present by dancing all hours of the day and
night. He had danced before the war like any other human being, and
had faithfully attended at Murray's and the Four Hundred and the
other places. But he did not know that he had very greatly enjoyed
it; he had gone in the main because Miss Poppy Darling, who had just
then caught his attention, commanded him to do so. Now it was quite
another matter--he went simply for the dance itself. He was not by
nature a very introspective young man, and he did not think of himself
as strange or odd or indeed as anything definite at all; but it was
perhaps a little strange that he, who had been so carefully brought up
by his fond mother, should surrender to a passion for tom-toms and tin
kettles more completely than he had ever surrendered to any woman. He
did not care with whom it was that he danced; a man would have done as
well. The point was that, when those harsh and jarring noises began
to beat and battle through the air, his body should move and gyrate
in sympathy just as at that very moment perhaps, somewhere in Central
Africa, a grim and glistening savage was turning monotonously beneath
the glories of a full moon. He danced all night and most of the day,
with the result that he had very little time for anything else. Lady
Dronda complained that he never wrote to her. "Dear Mother," he replied
on a postcard, "jolly busy. Ever so much to do. See you soon."
Young men and young women came to luncheon and dinner. He was happy and
merry with them all. Even Fanny, the portress downstairs, adored him.
His smile was irresistible.
The strangest fact of all, perhaps, was that the war had really taught
him nothing. He had for three years been face to face with Reality,
stared into her eyes, studied her features, seeing her for quite the
first time.
And his vision of her had made no difference to him at all. He came
back into this false world to find it just exactly as he had left it.
Reality slipped away from him, and it was as though she had never been.
He was as sure as he had been four years before that the world was
made only for him and his--and not so much for his as for him. Had you
asked he would not have told you, because he was an Englishman and
didn't think it decent to boast--but you would have seen it in his eyes
that he really did believe that he was vastly superior to more than
three-quarters of the rest of humanity--and this although he had gone
to Eton and had received therefore no education, although he knew no
foreign language, knew nothing about the literature of his own or any
other country, was trained for no business and no profession, and could
only spell with a good deal of hit-and-miss result.
Moreover, when you faced him and thought of these things, you
yourself were not sure whether, after all, he were not right. He was
so handsome, so self-confident, so fearless, so touching with his
youth and his armless sleeve, that you could not but wonder whether
the world, after all, was not made for such as he. The old world
perhaps--but the new one?...
Meanwhile Clive danced.
He flung himself into such an atmosphere of dancing that he seemed to
dance all his relations and acquaintances into it with him. He could
not believe that everyone was not spending the time in dancing. Albert
Edward, whose official name was Banks, assured him that he had no time
for dancing.
"No time!" said Clive, greatly concerned. "Poor devil! I don't know how
you get along."
Albert Edward, who approved of the Hon. Clive because of his pluck, his
birth, his good looks, and his generosity, only smiled.
"Got to earn my living, sir," he said.
"Really, must you?" Clive was concerned. "Well, it's a damned shame
after all you've done over there."
"Someone's got to work still, I suppose, sir," said Albert Edward; "and
it's my belief that it's them that works hardest now will reap the
'arvest soonest--that's my belief."
"Really!" said Clive in politely interested tone. "Well, Banks, if
you want to know my idea, it is that it's about time that some of us
enjoyed ourselves--after all we've been through. Let the old un's
who've stayed at home do the work."
"Yes, sir," said Albert Edward.
It did indeed seem a shame to Clive that anyone should have to work at
all--that nice girl Fanny, for instance, who was portress downstairs,
or that poor old decrepit-looking thing who was night-porter and opened
the door for Clive at four in the morning.
He told Fanny what he thought. Fanny laughed. "I love my work, sir,"
she said; "I wouldn't be without it for anything."
"Wouldn't you really, now?" said Clive, staring at her.
Dimly he perceived that these months after the Armistice and during the
early months of 1919 were a queer time--no one seemed to know what was
going to happen. The state of the world was very uncomfortable did one
look into it too closely; even into the chaste and decorous quarter
of St. James's rumours of impending revolution penetrated. People
were unhappy--had not enough to eat, had no roof over their heads,
always one thing or another. The papers were beastly, so Clive gave up
looking at them, save only the _Sporting Times_, and devoted his hours
that were saved from dancing to a little gentle betting, to wondering
whether Joe Beckett would beat Goddard, and when he had beaten him to
wondering whether he would beat Georges Carpentier, and to playing a
rubber or two of auction bridge at White's, and to entertaining the
ladies and gentlemen already mentioned.
He was not, during this period, worrying at all about money. He very
seldom saw his old father, who never came up to town and never wrote
letters. Old Lord Dronda, who was now nearly seventy, stayed at the
place in Hertfordshire--he loved cows and pigs and horses, and Clive
imagined him perfectly happy in the midst of these animals.
He had an ample allowance, but was compelled to reinforce it by writing
cheques on his mother's account. She had, when he lost his arm, given
him an open cheque-book on her bank. There was nothing too good for
such a hero. He did not naturally think about money, he did not like to
be bothered about it, but he was vaguely rather proud of himself for
keeping out of the money-lenders' hands and not gambling more deeply
at bridge. Luckily, dancing left one little time for that--"Keeps me
out of mischief, jazzing does," he told his friends. He had, in his
room, a photograph of his father--an old photograph, but like the old
man still. Lord Dronda was squarely built and had side-whiskers and
pepper-and-salt trousers. He looked like a prosperous farmer. His
thighs were thick, his nose square, and he wore a billycock a little
on one side of his head. Clive had not seen his father for so long a
time that it gave him quite a shock to come in one afternoon and find
the old man sitting under his photograph, a thick stick in his hand and
large gaiters above his enormous boots. He was looking about him with a
lost and bewildered air and sitting on the very edge of the sofa. His
grey bowler was on the back of his head.
"Hullo, Guv'nor!" Clive cried. Clive was a little bewildered at the
sight of the old man. His plan had been a nap before dressing for
dinner. He had been dancing until six that morning, and was naturally
tired, but he was a kindly man, and therefore nice to his father.
"I'm delighted to see you!" he said. "But whatever are you doing up
here?"
The old man was not apparently greatly delighted to see Clive. He was
lost and bewildered, and seemed to have trouble in finding his words.
He stammered and looked helplessly about him.
His son asked him whether he'd have any tea. No, he wouldn't have any
tea--no, nothing at all.
"The fact is," he brought out at last, "that Dronda's to be sold, and I
thought you ought to know."
Dronda to be sold! The words switched back before Clive's eyes that
figure of Reality that recently he had forgotten. Dronda to be sold! He
saw his own youth coloured with the green of the lawns, the silver of
the lake, the deep red brick of the old house. Dronda to be sold!
"But that's impossible, father!" he cried.
He found, however, that a great deal more than that was possible. He
had never possessed, as he had been used sometimes proudly to boast, a
very good head for figures, and the old man had not a great talent for
making things clear, but the final point was that the Income Tax and
the general increased expenses of living had made Dronda impossible.
"Also, my boy," Lord Dronda added, "all the money you've been spending
lately--your mother only confessed to me last week. You'll have to get
some work and settle down at it. I'm sorry, but the old days are gone."
I'm quite aware that this is not a very original story. On how many
occasions in how many novels has the young heir to the entails been
suddenly faced with poverty and been compelled to sit down and work?
Nine times out of ten most nobly has he done it, and ten times out of
ten he has won the girl of his heart by so doing.
The only novelty here is the moment of the catastrophe. Here was the
very period towards which, through years and years of discomfort and
horror in France, young Clive had been looking. "After the war he would
have the time of his life"; "after the war" had arrived and Dronda
was to be sold! His first impulse was to abuse fate generally and his
father in particular. One glance at the old man checked that. How funny
he looked, sitting there on the edge of the sofa, his thick stick
between his knees, his hat tilted back, and that air of bewildered
perplexity on his round face as of a baby confronted with his first
thunder-storm. His thick-set, rather stout body, his side-whiskers,
his rough red hands--all seemed to remove him completely from the
smart, slim, dark young man who sat opposite him. Nevertheless Clive
felt the bond. He was suddenly in unison with his father as he had
never been, in all his life, with his mother. His father and he had
never had what one would call a "heart-to-heart" conversation in
their lives--they did not have one now. They would have been bitterly
distressed at such an idea. All Clive said was:
"What a bore! I didn't know things were like that. You ought to have
told me."
To which Dronda replied, his eyes wistfully on his son's empty sleeve:
"I didn't think it would get so bad. You'll have to find some work. No
need for us to bother your mother about it."
The old man got up to go. His eyes moved uncomfortably from one
photograph to another. He pulled at his high collar as though he felt
the room close.
"Sure you won't have anything?" said Clive.
"No, thanks," said his father.
"Well, don't you worry. I'll get some work all right. I'll have to pull
my horns in a bit, though."
And that was positively all that was said. Dronda went away, that
puzzled, bewildered look still hovering between his mouth and his eyes,
his grey bowler still a little to one side.
After he was gone Clive considered the matter. Once the first shock was
over things were really not so bad. The loss of Dronda was horrible,
of course, and Clive thought of that as little as might be, but even
there the war had made a difference, having shaken everything, in its
tempestuous course, to the ground, so that one looked on nothing now
as permanent. As to work, Clive would not mind that at all. There was
quite a number of things that he would like to do. There were all these
new Ministries, for instance; he thought of various friends that he
had. He wrote down the names of one or two. Or there was the City. He
had often fancied that he would like to go into the City. You made
money there, he understood, in simply no time at all. And you needed no
education.... He thought of one or two City men whom he knew and wrote
down their names.
One or two other things occurred to him. Before he went out to dine he
had written a dozen notes. He liked to think that he could be prompt
and business-like when there was need.
During the next day or two he had quite a merry time with his friends
about the affair. He laughingly depicted himself as a serious man of
business, one of those men whom you see in the cinemas, men who sit
at enormous desks and have big fists and Rolls-Royces. He spent one
especially jolly evening, first at Claridge's, then "As you Were" at
the Pavilion (Sir Billion de Boost was what _he_ would shortly be, he
told his laughing companion), then dancing. Oh, a delightful evening!
"My last kick!" he called it; and looking back afterwards, he found
that he had spoken more truly than he knew.