all, and being fond of you, if you'll forgive my saying so, so that I
always hoped that I'd come back to you. Why, if you ask me, sir, it's
just the bloody war--that's all it is. I've felt something of the same
kind myself. I'm getting over it a bit. It'll pass, sir. The war leaves
you kind o' dead. People don't seem real any more. If you could get
fond of some young lady, Mr. Duddon, I'm sure...."
"Thanks, Sheraton. I dare say you're right." He went out.
It was a horrible night. The March wind was tearing down Duke Street,
hurling itself at the windows, plucking with its fingers at the doors,
screaming and laughing down the chimneys. The decorous decencies of
that staid bachelor St. James's world seemed to be nothing to its mood
of wilful bad temper. Through the clamour of banging doors and creaking
windows the bells of St. James's Church could be heard striking seven
o'clock.
The rain was intermittent, and fell in sudden little gusts, like the
subsiding agonies of a weeping child. Every once and again a thin wet
wisp of a moon showed dimly grey through heavy piles of driving cloud.
Tom found Bond Street almost deserted of foot passengers.
Buttoning his high blue collar up about his neck, he set himself to
face the storm. The drive of the rain against his cheeks gave him some
sort of dim satisfaction after the close warm comfort of his flat.
Somewhere, far, far away in him, a voice was questioning him as to why
he had given Mrs. Matcham that money. The voice reminded him of what
indeed he very well knew, that it was exactly like throwing water down
a well, that it would do Millie Matcham no good, that it was wasted
money.... Well, he didn't care. The voice was too far away, and
altogether had too little concern with him to disturb him very deeply.
Nothing disturbed him, damn it--nothing, nothing, nothing!
When he was almost upon Grosvenor Street, a sudden gust of wind
drove at him so furiously that, almost without knowing what he was
doing, instinctively he stepped back to take shelter beneath a wooden
boarding. Here a street lamp gave a pale yellow colour to the dark
shadows, and from its cover the street shot like a gleaming track of
steel into the clustered lights of Oxford Street.
Tom was aware that two people had taken shelter in the same refuge. He
peered at their dim figures. He saw at once that they were old--an old
man and an old woman.
He did not know what it was that persuaded him to stare at them as
though they could be of any importance to him. Nothing could be of any
importance to him, and he was attracted, perhaps, rather by a kind of
snivelling, sniffling noise that one of them made. The old lady--she
had a terrible cold. She sneezed violently, and the old man uttered a
scornful "chut-chut" like an angry, battered bird. Then he peered up at
Tom and said in a complaining, whining voice:
"What a night!"
"Yes, it is," said Tom. "You'd better get home."
His eyes growing accustomed to the gloom, he saw the pair distinctly.
The old man was wearing a high hat, battered and set rakishly on the
side of his head. The collar of a threadbare overcoat was turned up
high over his skinny neck. He wore shabby black gloves. The old lady,
sheltering behind the old man, was less easily discerned. She was a
humped and disconcerted shadow, with a feather in her hat and a sharp
nose.
"You'd better be getting home," Tom repeated, wondering to himself that
he stayed.
The old man peered up at him.
"You're out for no good, I reckon," he mumbled. "Waiting like this on a
night like this." There was a note in his voice of scornful patronage.
"I'm not out for anything particular," said Tom. "Simply taking a
walk." The old lady sneezed again. "You'd really better be going home.
Your wife's got a terrible cold."
"She's not my wife," said the old man. "She's my sister, if you want to
know."
"I don't want to know especially," said Tom. "Well, good-night: I see
the rain's dropped."
He stepped out into Bond Street, and then (on looking back he could
never define precisely the impulse that drove him) he hurried back to
them.
"You'd better let me get you a cab or something," he said. "You really
ought to go home."
The old man snarled at him. "You let us alone," he said. "We haven't
done you any harm."
The impulse persisted.
"I'm going to get you a cab," he said. "Whether you like it or no."
"None of your bloody philanthropy," said the old man. "I know you.
M'rier and me's all right."
It was Maria then who took the next step in the affair. Tom, although
he was afterwards to have a very considerable knowledge of that old
lady, could never definitely determine as to whether the step that she
took was honest or no. What she did was to collapse into the sodden
pavement in a black and grimy heap. The feather stood out from the
collapse with a jaunty, ironical gesture.
"'Ere, M'rier," said the old man, very much as though he were
addressing a recalcitrant horse, "you get hup."
No sound came from the heap. Tom bent down. He touched her soiled
velvet coat, lifted an arm, felt the weight sink beneath him. "Well,"
he said, almost defiantly, to the old man, "what are you going to do
now?"
"She's always doing it," he answered, "and at the most aggravating
moments." Then with something that looked suspiciously like a kick, he
repeated: "You get hup, M'rier."
"Look here, you can't do that," Tom cried. "What an old devil you are!
We've got to get her out of this."
A voice addressed them from the street: "Anything the matter?" it said.
Tom turned and found that the driver of a taxi had pulled up his
machine and was peering into the shadow.
"Yes. There's been an accident," Tom said. "This lady's fainted. We'd
better get her home."
"Where's she going to?" said the driver suspiciously.
"What business is that of yours?" cried the old man furiously. "You
just leave us alone."
"No, you couldn't do that," Tom answered. "There'll be a policeman
here in a moment, and he'll have you home whether you want it or not.
You never can lift her yourself, and you can't leave her there. You'd
better help me get her into the cab!"
The old man began to gargle strangely in his throat.
"Policeman!" he seemed to say. "If I 'ad my way----"
"Well, for once you haven't," said Tom shortly. "Here, driver, help me
lift her in."
"Where's she going?" he repeated.
"If you don't help me at once I'll see that a policeman is here. I've
got your number. You'll hear from me in the morning."
The man got off his box, cursing. He hesitated a moment, then came
across. Together he and Tom lifted the inert mass, pushed it through
the door of the cab and settled it in the seat.
"Makin' my cab dirty and all," growled the driver.
"Well," said Tom to the old man, "are you going to see your sister
home? If not, I shall take her to the nearest hospital."
For a moment the old man remained perched up against the wall, his top
hat flaunting defiance to the whole world. Suddenly, as though he had
been pushed, he came across to the driver.
"Eleven D Porker's Buildings, Victoria," he said.
"B?" asked the driver.
"D, you damned fool," the old man almost shouted.
"Thought you said B," remarked the driver very amiably.
The old man got in. He was on one side of the motionless Maria, Tom on
the other.
That was a remarkable and even romantic ride. The roads were slippery,
and the driver, it appeared, a little drunk. The cab rocked like a
drunken boat, and the watery moon, now triumphant over the clouds,
the gleaming pavement, the houses, gaunt in the uncertain moonlight,
and thin as though they had been cut from black paper, seemed to be
inebriated too. Maria shared in the general irresponsibility, lurching
from side to side, and revealing, now that her hat was on Tom's lap,
an ancient peeked face with as many lines on it as an Indian's, and
grey, untidy hair. She seemed a lifeless thing enough, and yet Tom had
a strange notion that one eye was open, and not only watching, but
winking as well.
It would have been the natural thing to have opened her dress and given
her air, to have poured whisky or brandy down her throat, to have
tickled her with feathers! Tom did none of these things: afterwards he
imagined that his inaction was due to the fact that he knew all the
time that she had not really fainted.
Not a word was exchanged during the journey. They drove down Victoria
Street, turned off on the right of Westminster Cathedral, and drew up
in a narrow, dirty street.
A high block had "Porker's Buildings" printed in large, ugly letters on
the fanlight near the door.
"You'd better help me lift her in," Tom said to the driver. "The old
man's not good for anything."
The driver grunted, but helped Maria into the street. The fresh night
air seemed to refresh her. She sighed and then sneezed.
"Maybe she can walk herself," said the driver.
The door opened of itself, and Tom was in a dark, dingy hall with a
faint gas-jet like a ghostly eye to guide him. The old man started up
the stairs.
"Can you walk a bit?" Tom asked the old lady.
She nodded. Tom paid the driver and the door closed behind him. It was
a hard fight to conquer the stairs, and Maria clung like a heavy bag
round her deliverer's neck; but on the third floor the old man unlocked
a door, walked in before them and lighted a candle. He then sat himself
down with his back to them, pulled a grimy piece of newspaper out of
his pocket, and was apparently at once absorbed in reading.
The room was a wretched enough place. One of the windows was stuffed
with brown paper; a ragged strip of carpet covered only a section of
the cracked and dirty boards. There was a grimy bed; the fireplace was
filled with rubbish.
Tom helped Maria on to the bed and looked about him. Then in a sudden
fit of irritation he went up to the old man and shook him by the
shoulder.
"Look here," he said. "This won't do. You've got to do something for
her. She may die in the night, or anything. I'll fetch a doctor, if
that's what you want, or get something from the chemist's----"
"Oh! go to hell!" said the old man without turning.
An impulse of rage seized Tom, and he caught the old man by the collar,
swung him out of the chair, shook him until he was breathless and
coughing, then said:
"Now be civil."
The old man collapsed on the bed near his sister, struggled for breath,
then screamed:
"You damned aristocrat! I'll have you up before the courts for this;
invading a man's peaceable 'ome----"
Then Maria unexpectedly interfered. She sat up, smoothing her hair
with her old trembling fingers. "I'm sure," she said, in a mincing,
apologetic voice, "that we ought to be grateful to the gentleman,
Andrew. If it 'adn't been for him, I'm sure I don't know where we'd
'ave been. It's your wicked temper you're always losing. I've told you
of it again and again--I'm much better now, thank you, sir, and I'm
sure I'm properly grateful."
Tom looked around him, then back at the two old people.
"What a filthy place," he said. "Haven't you got anybody to look after
you?"
"Me daughter run away with a musical gentleman," said Maria. "Me
'usband died of D.T.'s three years back. Andrew and meself's alone now.
We get the Old Age Pension, and manage very nicely, thank you."
"Well, I'm coming back to-morrow," said Tom fiercely, turning on the
old man. "Do you hear that?"
"If yer do," said Andrew, "I'll 'ave the perlice after you."
"Oh, no 'e won't," said Maria. "That's only 'is little way. I'm sure
we'll be pleased to see you."
Tom put some money on the bed and left.
Out in the street he paused. What was the matter with him? He stood in
the street looking up at the Westminster Cathedral Tower and the thin
sheeting of sky now clear--a pale, boundless sea in which two or three
little stars were remotely sailing. What was the matter with him?
He felt a strange stirring and trembling about him. He had some of
the pain and hurt that a man feels when he is first revived from some
drowning adventure. But it was a pain and hurt of the soul, not of
the body. His heart beat expectantly, as though around the corner of
the lonely street a wonderful stranger might suddenly be expected to
appear. He even strained his eyes against the shadows, piercing them
and finding only more shadows behind them.
He even felt tired and exhausted, as though he had but now passed
through a great emotional experience.
And all these sensations were clear and precious to him. He treasured
them, standing there, breathing deeply, as though he were in new air
of some high altitude. The boom of Big Ben came suddenly across the
silence like a summoning voice across waste, deserted country, and he
went home....
When he awoke next morning he was aware that something had happened to
him, and he did not know what it was. He lay there definitely beating
back an impulse to spring out of bed, hurry through his bath, dress,
and have breakfast, and then--what? He had not felt such an impulse
since his return from France, and it could not be that he felt it now
simply because he had, last night, met two dirty, bedraggled old
people and helped them home.
He laughed. Sheraton, hanging his shirt on the back of a chair, turned.
"Well, you're feeling better this morning, sir," he said.
"Yes, I am," said Tom, "and I'm damned if I know why." Nevertheless,
although he did not know why, before the morning was out he found
himself once more behind Victoria Street and climbing the stairs of
Porker's Buildings. He had strange experiences that morning. To many
they would have been disappointing. The old man was silent: not a word
would he say. His attitude was one of haughty, autocratic superiority.
Maria disgusted Tom. She was polite, cringing even, and as poisonous
as a snake. She stated her wants quite modestly: had it not been for
her age you would have thought her a typical image of the down-trodden,
subjected poor. Her eyes glittered.
"Well, you _are_ a nasty old creature." Tom turned from her and shook
Andrew by the shoulder.
"Well?" said Andrew.
"There's nothing now I can do?" asked Tom.
"Except get out," said Andrew.
Another old woman came in--then a young man. A fine specimen this
last--a local prize-fighter, it appeared--chest like a wall, thick,
stumpy thighs, face of a beetroot colour, nose twisted, ears like
saucers. The old woman, Maria's friend, was voluble. She explained a
great deal to Tom. She was used, it seemed, to speaking in public. They
could afford, she explained, to be indifferent to the "Quality" now,
because a time was very shortly coming when they would have everything,
and the Quality nothing. It had happened far away in Russia, and it
was about to happen here. A good thing too.... At last the poor people
could appear as they really were, hold their heads up. Only a month or
two....
"You're a Bolshevist," said Tom.
Long words did not distress the old lady. "A fine time's coming," she
said.
Maria did not refuse the food and the finery and the money. "You
think," said Tom, as a final word to her old lady friend, "that I'm
doing this because I'm charitable, because I love you, or some nonsense
of that kind. Not at all. I'm doing it because I'm interested, and I
haven't been interested in anything for months."
He arranged with the pugilist to be present at his next encounter,
somewhere in Blackfriars, next Monday night.
"It's against the Bermondsey Chick," Battling Bill explained huskily.
"I've got one on him. Your money's safe enough...."
Tom gave Maria a parting smile.
"I don't like you," he said, "and I can see that you positively hate
me, but we're getting along very nicely...."
* * * * *
It is at this point that Claribel again takes up the narrative. It was,
of course, not many days before, in Tom's own world, "What's happened
to Tom?" was on everyone's lips.
Claribel was interested as anyone, and she had, of course, her own
theories. These theories changed from day to day, but the fact, patent
to the world and beyond argument, was that Tom was "Nobody" no longer.
Life had come back to him; he was eagerly, passionately "out" upon some
secret quest.
It amused Claribel to watch her friends and relations as they set
forth, determined to lay bare Tom's mystery. Mrs. Matcham, who had her
own very definite reasons for not allowing Tom to escape, declared that
of course it was a "woman." But this did not elucidate the puzzle.
Had it been some married woman, Tom would not have been so perfectly
"open" about his disappearances. He never denied for a moment that he
disappeared; he rather liked them to know that he did. It was plainly
nothing of which he was ashamed. He had been seen at no restaurants
with anyone--no chorus-girl, no girl at all, in fact. Dollie
Pym-Dorset, who was a little sharper than the others, simply because
she was more determinedly predatory, declared that Tom was learning a
trade.
"He will turn up suddenly one day," she said, "as a chauffeur, or an
engineer, or a bootblack. He's trying to find something to fill up his
day."
"He's found it," Lucile cried with her shrill laugh. "Whatever it is,
it keeps him going. He's never in; Sheraton declares he doesn't know
where he goes. It's disgusting...."
Old Lord Ferris, who took an indulgent interest in all the Duddon
developments because of his paternal regard for Mrs. Matcham, declared
that it was one of these new religions. "They're simply all over the
place; a feller catches 'em as he would the measles. Why, I know a
chap...."
But no. Tom didn't look as though he had found a new religion. He had
made no new resolutions, dropped no profanities, lost in no way his
sense of humour. No, it didn't look like a religion.
Claribel's convictions about it were not very positive. She was simply
so glad that he had become "Somebody" again, and she had perhaps a
malicious pleasure in the disappointment of "the set." It amused her to
see the golden purse slipping out of their eager fingers, and they so
determined to stay it.
The pursuit continued for weeks. Everyone was drawn into it. Even old
Lord John Beaminster, who was beset with debts and gout, stirred up his
sister Adela to see whether she couldn't "discover" something....
It was Henry Matcham who finally achieved the revelation. He came
bursting in upon them all. The secret was out. Tom had turned "pi----"
He was working down in the East End to save souls.
The news was greeted with incredulity. "Tom soul-saving? Impossible!
Tom the cynic, the irreligious, the despiser of dogma, the arbitrator
of indifference--Incredible."
But Matcham knew. There could be no doubt. A man he knew in Brooks's
had a brother, a parson in an East-End Settlement. The parson knew Tom
well, said he was always down there, in the men's clubs and about the
streets.
They looked at one another in dismay. Claribel laughed to see them.
What was to be done? Tom must be saved, of course; but how? No plan
could be evoked. "Well, the first thing we must do," said Mrs. Matcham,
"is to get a plain statement from himself about it."
They sent Claribel as their ambassador, realising, suddenly, that "she
had some sense," and that Tom liked her.
She told him, with a twinkle in her eye, what they wanted.
"They're all very much upset by what you're doing, Tom. They don't
want to lose you, you see. They're fond of you. And they don't think
it _can_ be good for you being all the time with Bolsheviks and dirty
foreigners. You'll only be taken in by them, they think, and robbed;
and that they can't bear. Especially they think that now after the war
everyone ought to stand together, shoulder to shoulder, you know, class
by class. That's the way Henry Matcham puts it.
"Of course, they admire you very much, what you're doing--they think
it very noble. But all this slumming seems to them ... what did Dollie
call it?... Oh, yes, _vieux jeu_ ... the sort of thing young men did
in the nineties, centuries ago. Oxford House, and all that. It seems
rather stupid to them to go back to it now, especially when the war's
shown the danger of Bolshevism."
Tom laughed. "Why, Carrie," he said, "how well you know them!"
She laughed too. "Anyway," she said, "I know you better than they do."
Tom agreed that it would be a very good thing for them all to meet.
"They've got what's happened just a trifle wrong," he said. "It's only
fair to clear things up."
They all appeared on the appointed day--Mrs. Matcham, as president, in
a lovely rose-coloured tulle for which she was just a little too old,
Hattie, Dollie, Harwood Dorset, Henry Matcham, Pelham Duddon, Morgraunt
and Lucile, Dora, and of course Claribel. The event had the appearance
of one of the dear old parties.
The flat was just as beautiful, the tea as sumptuous, Sheraton as
perfect. They hung around the same chairs, the same table, in all their
finery and beauty and expense. They were as sure of conquest as they
had ever been.
Tom sat on the red leather top of the fire-guard and faced them.
Mrs. Matcham led the attack.
"Now, dear old Tom," she said, in that cooing and persuasive voice of
hers, so well known and so well liked; "you know that we all love you."
"Yes, I know you do," said Tom, grinning.
"We do. All of us. You've just been a hero, and we're all proud to
death of you. It's only our pride and our love for you that allows us
to interfere. We don't _want_ to interfere, but we do want to know
what's happening. Henry has heard that you're working down in the East
End, doing splendidly, and it's just like your dear old noble self,
but is it wise? Are you taking advice? Won't those people down there
do you in, so to speak? I know that this is a time, of course, when
we've all got to study social conditions. No thinking man or woman can
possibly look round and _not_ see that there is a great deal ... a
whole lot ... well, anyway, you know what I mean, Tom. But is it right,
without consulting any of us, to go down to all those queer people?
They can't like you really, you know. It's only for what they can get
out of you, and all that. After all, your _own_ people _are your own
people_, aren't they, Tom dear?"
"I don't know." Tom looked up at her smiling. "But I don't think that's
exactly the point. They may be or they may not.... Look here. You've
got one or two wrong ideas about this. I want you to have the truth,
and then we won't have to bother one another any more. You talk about
my working and being noble, and so on. That's the most awful Tommy-rot.
I'll tell you exactly what happened. I came back from France. At least,
no, I didn't come back; but my body came back, if you know what I
mean. I stayed over there. At least, I suppose that is what happened.
I didn't know myself what it was. I just know that I didn't exist.
You all used to come to tea here and be awfully nice and so on, but I
didn't hear a word any of you said. I hope that doesn't sound rude,
but I'm trying to tell exactly what occurred. I didn't know what was
the matter with me--I wasn't anybody at all. I was Nobody. I didn't
exist; and I asked Sheraton, and he didn't know either. And then, one
night----"
Tom paused. The dramatic moment had come. He knew the kind of thing
that they were expecting, and when he thought of the reality he laughed.
"One night--well, you won't believe me, I suppose, if I tell you I was
very unhappy--no, unhappy is too strong--I was just nothing at all.
You'd all been here to tea, and I went out for a walk down Bond Street
to clear my head. It was raining and I found two old things taking
shelter under a wooden standing. The old lady fainted while I was
talking to them, and I saw them home--And--well, that's all!"
"That's all!" cried Millie Matcham. "Do you mean, Tom, that you fell in
love with the old woman!"
Her laugh was shrill and anxious.
He laughed back. "Fell in love! That's just like you, Millie. You think
that love must be in it every time. There isn't any love in this--and
there isn't any devotion, or religion, or high-mindedness, or trying to
improve them, or any of the things you imagine. On the contrary, _they_
hate _me_, and I don't think that I'm very fond of _them_--except that
I suppose one has a sort of affection for anybody who's brought one
back to life again--when one didn't want to die!"
Henry Matcham broke in: "Tom, look here--upon my word, I don't believe
that one of us has the least idea _what_ you're talking about."