in the general confusion. He told what he could to his sister. It must
have been a strange meeting: the shabby old man sitting in one of those
gaudy chairs trying to rid himself of his horror and terror and, above
all, of his loneliness. Here was the only relation, the only link, the
only hope of something human to comfort him in his darkness; and he did
not know her, could not see how to appeal to her or to touch her ...
she was as strange to him as a bird of paradise. She on her side, as I
now can see, had her own horror to fight. Here at last was the thing
that throughout the war she had struggled to keep away from her. She
knew, and she alone, how susceptible she was! But she could not turn
him away; he was her brother, and she hated him for coming--shabby old
man--but she must hear him out.
She sat there, the dog clutched, shivering to her skinny breast. I
don't suppose that she said very much, but she listened. Against her
will she listened, and it must have been with her as it is with some
traveller when, in the distance, he hears the rushing of the avalanche
that threatens to overwhelm him. But she didn't close her ears. From
what she said afterwards one knows that she must have heard everything
that he said.
He very quickly, I expect, forgot that he had an audience at all. The
words poured out. There was some German officer who had been described
to him and he had grown, in his mind, to be the very devil himself. He
was a brute, I daresay, but there are brutes in every country....
"He had done simply nothing--just spoken back when they insulted him.
They took his clothes off him--everything. He was quite naked. And
they mocked him like that, pricking him with their swords.... They put
him into darkness ... a filthy place, no sanitation, nothing.... They
twisted his arms. They made him imagine things, horrible things. When
he had dysentery they just left him.... They made him drink ... forced
it down his throat...."
How much of it was true? Very little, I daresay. Even as the old man
told it details gathered and piled up. "He had always been such a good
boy. Very gentle and quiet--never any trouble at school.... I was
hoping that he would be ordained, as you know, Dahlia. He always loved
life ... one of the happiest boys. What did they do it for? He hadn't
done them any harm. They must have made him very angry for him to say
what he did--and he didn't say very much.... And he was all alone.
He hadn't any of his friends with him. And they kept his parcels and
letters from him. I'd just sent him one or two little things...."
This, more than anything else, distressed the old man: that they'd kept
the letters from the boy. It was the loneliness that seemed to him the
most horrible of all.
"He had always hated to be alone. Even as a very little boy he didn't
like to be left in the dark. He used to beg us.... Night-lights, we
always left night-lights in his room.... But what had he done? Nothing.
He had never been a bad boy. There was nothing to punish him for."
The old man didn't cry. He sniffed and rubbed his eyes with the back of
his hand, and once he brought out a dirty handkerchief. The thing that
he couldn't understand was why this had happened to the boy at all.
Also he was persecuted by the thought that there was something still
that he could do. He didn't know what it might be, but there must be
something. He had no vindictiveness. He didn't want revenge. He didn't
blame the Germans. He didn't blame anybody. He only felt that he should
"make it up to his boy" somehow. "You know, Dahlia," he said, "there
were times when one was irritated by the boy. I haven't a very equable
temper. No, I never have had. I used to have my headaches, and he was
noisy sometimes. And I'm afraid I spoke sharply. I'm sorry enough for
it now--indeed, I am. Oh, yes! But, of course, one didn't know at the
time...."
Then he went back to the horrors. They would not leave him, they buzzed
about his brain like flies. The darkness, the smell ... the smell, the
filth, the darkness. And then the end! He could not forget that. What
the boy must have suffered to come to that! Such a happy boy!... Why
had it happened? And what was to be done now?
He stopped at last and said that he must go and catch his train. He was
glad to have talked about it. It had done him good. It was kindly of
Dahlia to listen to him. He hoped that Dahlia would come down one day
and see him at Little Roseberry. It wasn't much that he could offer
her. It was a quiet little place, and he was alone, but he would be
glad to see her. He kissed her, gave her a dim bewildered smile, and
went.
Soon after his departure Mrs. Mellish arrived. It is significant of
Mrs. Mellish's general egotism and ignorance that she perceived nothing
odd in Miss Morganhurst! Just the same as she always was. They talked
bridge the next afternoon. Bridge. Four women. What about Norah Pope?
Poor player. That's the worst of it. Doesn't see properly and won't
wear glasses. Simply conceit. But still, who else is there? To-morrow
afternoon. Very difficult. Mrs. Mellish admits that on that particular
day she was preoccupied about a dress that she couldn't get back from
the dressmakers. These days. What has come to the working-classes? They
don't care. +They don't care.+ Money simply of no importance to them.
That's the strange thing. In the old days you could have done simply
everything by offering them a little more.... But not now. Oh, dear
no!... She admits that she was preoccupied about the dress, and wasn't
noticing Dahlia Morganhurst as she might have done. She saw nothing
odd. It's my belief that she'll see nothing odd at the last trump. She
went away.
Agatha is the other witness. After Mrs. Mellish's departure she came in
to her mistress. The only thing that she remarked about her was that
"she was very quiet." Tired, I supposed, after talking to that Mrs.
Mellish. And then her old brother and all. Enough to upset anyone.
Miss Morganhurst sat on the edge of her gaudy sofa looking in front of
her. When Agatha came in she said that she would not dress just yet.
Agatha had better take the dog out for a quarter of an hour. The maid
wondered at that because that was a thing that she was never allowed to
do. She hated the animal. However, she pushed its monstrous little head
inside its absurd little muzzle, put on her hat and went out.
I don't know what Miss Morganhurst thought about during that quarter
of an hour, but when at the end of that time Agatha returned, scared
out of her life with the dog dead in her arms, the old lady was sitting
in the same spot as before. She can't have moved. She must have been
fighting, I fancy, against the last barrier--the last barrier that kept
all the wild beasts back from leaping on her imagination.
Well, that slaughtered morsel of skin and bone finished it. The
slaughtering had been the most natural thing in the world. Agatha had
put the creature on the pavement for a moment and turned to look in a
shop window. Some dog from the other side of the street had enticed
the trembling object. It had started tottering across, uttering tiny
snorts of sensual excitement behind its absurd muzzle. A Rolls-Royce
had done the rest. It had suffered very little damage, and laid out
on Miss Morganhurst's red lacquer table, it really looked finer than
it had ever done. Agatha, of course, was terrified. She knew better
than anyone how deeply her mistress had loved the poor trembling
image. Sobbing, she explained. She was really touched, I think--quite
truly touched for half a minute. Then, when she saw how quietly Miss
Morganhurst took it, she regained her courage. Miss Morganhurst said
nothing but "Yes." Agatha regained, with her courage, her volubility.
Words poured forth. She could needs tell madame how deeply, deeply she
regretted her carelessness. She would kill herself for her carelessness
if madame preferred that. How she could! Madame might do with her what
she wished....
But all that Miss Morganhurst said was "Yes."
Miss Morganhurst went into her bedroom to dress for dinner, and
Tiny-Tee was left, at full length in all her glory, trembling no
longer, upon the red lacquer table.
Agatha went downstairs for something, spoke to Fanny, the portress,
and returned. Outside the bedroom door, which was ajar, she heard a
strange sound, like someone cracking nuts, she described it afterwards.
She went in. Miss Morganhurst, her thin grey hair about her neck, clad
only in her chemise, was sitting on her bed swinging her bare legs.
At sight of Agatha she screeched like a parrot. As Agatha approached
she sprang off the bed and advanced at her--her back bent, her fingers
bent talon-wise. A stream of words poured from her lips. Every horror,
every indecency, every violation of truth and honour that the war had
revealed through the press, through books, through letters, seemed to
have lodged in that brain. Every murder, every rape, every slaughter of
innocent children, every violation of girls and old women--they were
all there. She stopped close to Agatha and the words streamed out. At
the end of every sentence, with a little sigh, she whispered--"I was
there! I was there!... I've seen it."
Agatha, frozen with horror, remained; then, action coming back to her,
she fled--Miss Morganhurst pursued her, her bare feet pattering on the
carpet. She called Agatha by the name of some obscure German captain.
Agatha found a doctor. When they returned Miss Morganhurst was lying on
her face on the floor in the darkness, hiding from what she saw. "I was
there, you know," she whispered to the doctor as he put her to bed.
She died next day. Perhaps, after all, many people have felt the war
more than one has supposed....
V
PETER WESTCOTT
Westcott's astonishment when Edmund Robsart offered to lend his
chambers rent free for two months was only equalled by his amazement
when he discovered himself accepting that offer. Had you told him a
week before that within seven days he would be sleeping in Robsart's
sumptuous bed closed in by the rich sanctities of Robsart's sumptuous
flat, he would have looked at you with that cool contempt that was
one of Westcott's worst features; for Westcott in those days was an
arrogant man--arrogant through disgust of himself and disgust of the
world--two very poor reasons for arrogance.
This was the way of his accepting Robsart's offer. He had been
demobilised at the beginning of March and had realised, with a sudden
surprise that seemed only to confirm his arrogance, that he had no one
to go and see, no work to do, no place that needed him, no place that
he needed. He took a bedroom in a dirty little street off the Strand.
He knew that there were two men whom he should look up, Maradick and
Galleon. He swore to himself that he would die before he saw either of
them. Then, in the Strand, he met Lester, a man whom he had known in
his old literary days before the war. Twenty years ago Lester had been
a man of much promise, and his novel _To Paradise_ had been read by
everyone who wanted a short road to culture. Now the war had definitely
dated him and he seemed to belong to the _Yellow Book_ and the _Bodley
Head_ and all those days when names were so much more important than
performance, and a cover with a Beardsley drawing on it hid a multitude
of amateurs.
Westcott did not mind whether or no Lester were dated; he was, for
the matter of that, himself dated. It was long indeed since anyone
had mentioned _Reuben Hallard_, or _The Vines_, or _The Stone House_.
It seemed many ages since he himself had thought of them. He liked
Lester, and being a man who, in spite of his loneliness and arrogance,
responded at once to kindliness, he accepted Lester's invitation to
dinner. He dug up an old dinner jacket that was tight and unduly
stretched across his broad shoulders and went to dinner in the Cromwell
Road.
Days of failure and disappointment had not suited Mrs. Lester, who had
always lived for excitement and good society, and found neither in the
Cromwell Road. There was only one other guest beside Westcott, and that
was Edmund Robsart, the most successful of all modern novelists. For
many years Robsart's name had been a synonym for success. "It must be,"
thought Westcott, looking at the man's red face and superb chest and
portly stomach, "at least thirty years since you published _The Prime
Minister's Daughter_ and hit the nail at the very first time. What a
loathsome fellow you are, what harm you've done to literature, and what
a gorgeous time you must have had!"
And the very first thing that Robsart said was: "You don't mean to tell
me that you're Westcott, the author of _Reuben Hallard_!"
"Now you're a fool to be touched by that," Westcott said to himself.
But he was astonished, nevertheless--touched, it seemed, not so much
for himself as in a kind of protective way for that poor little
firstling who had been both begotten and produced in a London
boarding-house and had held in his little hands so much promise, so
many hopes, so much pride and ambition.
Westcott was touched; he did not resent Robsart's fatherly, patronising
air as of one who held always in his chubby, gouty fist the golden
keys to Paradise. He drank Lester's wine and laughed at Robsart's
anecdotes and was sympathetic to Mrs. Lester's complaints; he, Peter
Westcott, who throughout the war had been held to be cold, conceited,
overbearing, the most unpopular officer in his regiment. At the end of
the evening Robsart asked him to come to lunch. "I live in Duke Street,
Hortons. Everyone knows Hortons." He gave him his number. "Tuesday,
1.30. Glad to see you."
Westcott cursed himself for a fool when he went back to his Strand
lodging. What did he want with men of Robsart's kidney? Had he not been
laughing and mocking at Robsart for years? Had he not taken Robsart's
success as a sign of the contemptible character of the British Public;
when men like Galleon and Lester had been barely able to live by their
pens and Robsart rolled in money--rolled in money earned by tawdry
fustian sentimentality like _The Kings of the Earth_ and _Love Laughs
at Locksmiths_.
Nevertheless, he went and brushed his old blue suit and rolled up to
Duke Street, looking, as he always did, like an able-bodied seaman
on leave. Robsart's flat was very much what he had expected it to
be--quite sumptuous and quite lifeless. There was a little dining-room
off what Robsart called the Library. This little dining-room had
nothing in it save a round, shining gate-legged table with a glass top
to it, a red Persian rug that must have been priceless, a Rodin bust of
an evil-looking old woman who stuck her tongue out, and a Gauguin that
looked to Westcott like a red apple and a banana, but was, in reality,
a native woman by the seashore. In the Library there were wonderful
books, the walls being completely covered by them.
"Most of them first or rare editions," said Robsart carelessly. Behind
glass near the window were the books that he had himself written, all
the different editions, the translations, the cheap "Shillings" and
"Two Shillings," the strange Swedish and Norwegian and Russian copies
with their paper backs, the row of "Tauchnitz," and then all the
American editions with their solemn, heavy bindings. Then there were
the manuscripts of the novels, all bound beautifully in red morocco,
and in the bottom shelf the books with all the newspaper cuttings
dating, as Westcott to his amazement saw, from 1884. Thirty-five years,
and all this sumptuousness as a result! Nevertheless the books round
the room looked dead, dead, dead. "Never touched," thought Peter,
"except to show them to poor humble failures like myself."
Half an hour's conversation was quite enough to strip Peter of any
illusions he may have had about Robsart's natural simplicity of heart.
He had invited Westcott there because he wanted a little praise from
"the Younger Generation"--"needed" rather than "wanted" was perhaps
the right word. Westcott was hardly the ideal victim, because he was
over forty, and an undoubted failure; nevertheless, at Lester's he had
appeared amiable and kindly--a little encouragement and he would say
something pleasant.
Then Robsart would have soothed that tiresome, biting, bitter
irritation that had beset him of late, born he knew not where, a
suggestion carried on the wind that "he was behind the times," that his
books "no longer sold," that no young man or woman "thought of him with
anything but contempt." These things had not been said directly to him;
he had not even read them in the papers. There were certain critical
journals that had, of course, since the beginning of his career given
him nothing but abuse if they noticed him at all. They now treated
him to silence. He did not expect them to alter. But his sales _were_
falling; even the critics who had supported him through all weathers
were complaining a little now of monotony of subject, of repetition of
idea. "Damn it all, what _can_ you do but repeat after thirty books?"
Sometimes he wondered whether he would not stop and "rest on his
laurels." But that meant a diminution of income; he had always lived
well and spent every penny as it came along. Moreover, now was the
worst moment to choose, with the income-tax at what it was and food and
clothes and everything else at double its natural price!
As a matter of truth, he had been looking forward during the last two
years to "after the war." ... That was the time when he was going
to start again. Get this war behind one and he would break out in
an entirely new place--"begin all over again"--show all those young
fellows that all their so-called modernity was nothing but a new trick
or two for covering up the same old thing. He could do it as well as
they. Write in suspensive dots and dashes, mention all the parts of the
human body in full, count every tick of the clock, and call your book
"Disintegration," or "Dead Moons," or "Green Queens."
Robsart liked himself in these moods, and during luncheon he amiably
wandered along in this direction, plucking the flowers of his wit as he
went and flinging them into Westcott's lap.
Peter grew ever more and more silent. He hated Robsart. That ghastly
preoccupation with his own little affairs, the self-patting and
self-applause over the little successes that he had won, above all,
that blending of all the horror and tragedy of that great nightmare
of a war to fit into the pattern of that mean, self-gratifying little
life--these things were horrible. But, strangely, with the ever-growing
disgust of Robsart and his slightly disturbed self-complacency came
an evil longing in Peter's breast for some of the comfort and luxury
that Robsart's life represented. Ever since that day, now so many years
ago, when his wife had run away with his best friend, he had known,
it seemed, no peace, no quiet, no tranquillity. It was not security
that he needed, but rather a pause in the battle of the spiritual
elements that seemed to be for ever beating at his ears and driving him
staggering from post to post. Had it not been for the war he had often
thought, he must have succumbed before now. Final defeat, at any rate,
meant rest. He had not succumbed. These years in Gallipoli and France
had saved him. But he, in those desolate, death-ridden places had again
and again said to himself, even as Robsart, safe in Hortons, had said:
"After the war.... After the war...." After the war Peter would build
up his life again. But first, even a month's rest--somewhere that was
not dirty and cheap and ill-smelling. Somewhere with good food and kind
looks.... Then he smiled as he thought of Maradick and Galleon, his
two friends, who could both give him those things. No, he wanted also
freedom.
Thus, to his amazement, at the end of luncheon, when he was feeling as
though he could not bear the sound of Robsart's rich, self-satisfied
voice a moment longer, the man made his proposal. He was going to
Scotland for two months. Would Westcott like to take the flat, free of
rent, of course? It was at his disposal. He need not have meals there
unless he wished.
Something in Westcott's spirit had attracted Robsart. Westcott had
not given him the praise he had needed; but now he seemed to have
forgotten that. The man who sat opposite to him with the thin face,
the black, closely cropped hair, thin above his forehead, grey above
the temples, with the broad shoulders, the hard, thick-set figure, the
grave eyes, the nervous, restless fingers, the man who, in spite of his
forty years, seemed still in some strange way a boy--that man had been
through fire and tribulation such as Robsart would never know. Robsart
was not a bad man, nor an unkindly; success had been the worst thing
that could have happened to his soul. He put his hand on Westcott's
shoulder: "You stay here and have a rest for a bit. Do just as you
like. Chuck my things about. Smash the Rodin if it amuses you." Peter
accepted.
When he moved, with his few possessions, into the grand place, he found
it less alarming than he had expected. Hortons itself was anything but
alarming. In the first place, there was the nicest girl in the world,
Fanny, who was portress downstairs. She made one happy at once. Then
the valet, Albert, or Albert Edward, as he seemed to prefer to be
called, was the kind of man understood in a moment by Peter. They were
friends in three minutes. Albert Edward had his eye on Fanny, and was
going to propose one of these days. Wouldn't they make a jolly pair?
Once or twice the great Mr. Nix himself, the manager of the flats, came
in to see how Peter was faring. He seemed to have an exalted idea of
Peter because he was "Robsart's friend." Robsart was a very great man
in Mr. Nix's eyes.
"But I'm not his friend," Peter said. "You must have been," Mr. Nix
said, "for him to let you have his flat like that. I've never known him
to do that before."
In three days Peter was happy; in another three days he began to be
strangled. There were too many things in the flat--beautiful things,
costly things. Little golden trifles, precious china, pictures worth a
fortune, first editions scattered about as though they were nothing.
"Too full, too full, too full."
Peter couldn't sleep. He pushed on all the lights, and pushed them all
off again. He got up, and in his old, shabby, patched pyjamas walked
the length of the flat up and down, up and down. The Brahmin gods in
the gold temple stared at him impassively. The Rodin old woman leered.
"Another two days and I'm done with this place," he thought. Then
Murdoch Temple came to see him. Westcott had known Temple before the
war; he had not seen him for five years. Temple had not altered: there
was the same slight, delicate body, pale, discontented face, jet-black
hair, long, nervous and conceited hands, shabby clothes too tight for
the body and most characteristic of all, a melancholy and supercilious
curl to his upper lip. Temple was supercilious by nature and
melancholy by profession. From the very beginning it had seemed that
he was destined to be a genius, and although after fifteen years of
anticipation the fulfilment of that destiny was still postponed, no one
could doubt, least of all Temple himself, that the day of recognition
was approaching. At Oxford it had seemed that there was nothing that
he could not do; in actual fact he had since then read much French and
some Russian (in translation, of course), edited two little papers,
strangled by an unsympathetic public almost at birth, produced a novel,
a poem, and a book of criticism. An unhappy chill had hung over all
these things. The war, in whose progress poor health had forbidden him
to take a very active part, had made of him a pessimist and pacifist;
but even here a certain temperamental weakness had forbidden him to be
too ardent. He was peevish rather than indignant, petulant rather than
angry, unkind rather than cruel, malicious rather than unjust, and,
undoubtedly, a little sycophantic.
He had a brain, but he had always used it for the fostering of
discontent. He did care, with more warmth than one would have supposed
possible, for literature, but everything in it must be new, and
strange, and unsuccessful. Success was, to him, the most terrible of
all things, unless he himself were to attain it.