They had finished eating now and had somehow drifted into silence.
Throughout supper, all six of them (Miss Femm had never spoken a word)
had chatted easily, though there had been no general burst of talk;
but now they were quiet. They might have been waiting for a signal,
they were so curiously still. Then suddenly they were given one, for
Miss Femm, who had begun to seem a mere object, turned herself into a
real person again by rising from her chair and waddling away. She said
nothing, gave no meaning glances, did not hesitate, but simply arose
and departed. From her manner, they might have been as unreal to her as
she had been to them. They stared after her in silence. If they were
waiting for a signal, it was not this.
There came a second one, this time out of the encompassing night, which
they had almost forgotten. It might have been thunder rolling among
the hills, the bursting of a bank above, or another landslide; the
noise was distant and indeterminate, and yet it was full of menace.
Sharply, dramatically, it pointed to their situation, like a pin stuck
into a map. The roof and walls were no longer another sky and horizon
but were roof and walls and nothing more. A little box held them all,
tiny creatures crouching in a dot of light. Thus dwarfed and huddled
together in body, their spirits first shrank to a point and then
expanded in concert. They awoke to share a common mood. The change
in them was as decisive as Miss Femm’s exit, but it had to struggle
through to the surface, into speech, and so it seemed gradual, as if
curtain after curtain of gauze were being raised between them.
Philip made the first remark, and all he said was: ‘If nobody objects,
I think I’ll have a pipe.’ That was nothing, yet by addressing the
whole company as he did, he made it easier for the others to speak to
the whole table. He brought out his pipe, Sir William found a cigar,
and Penderel and the two women lit cigarettes. Mr. Femm contented
himself with gin-and-water.
‘You know,’ said Penderel, ‘we ought to play a game.’
‘Good idea,’ cried Sir William, very hearty and masterful behind
his cigar. ‘Can’t sleep yet. What about bridge?’
Margaret jumped at this. ‘I’d love a game.’ She thought how comforting
the familiar faces of the kings and queens would be. No wonder old
people, surrounded by strange faces and passing Death every night on
the stairs, became so passionately fond of cards.
‘But I’ve no cards,’ Sir William went on. He turned to Mr. Femm.
‘Expect you’ve got a pack of cards you could lend us, eh?’
‘I have none myself,’ Mr. Femm began, ‘but I have seen a pack here——’
He stopped short, something came and went in his eyes, then he shook
his head hastily. ‘No, there are none here. I am sorry.’ It was very
queer. Penderel, remembering, looked at him curiously and began to
wonder again. Sir William appealed to the Wavertons, but they had none.
‘We’ll play Truth,’ said Penderel. ‘It’s just the moment for it.’
‘So they have turned it into a game now, have they?’ cried Mr. Femm, in
his thin, bitter voice. ‘It was high time they did.’
Sir William looked puzzled. ‘Don’t seem to know it, and don’t like
the sound of it. How d’you play it? Hope it isn’t one of those games
that make you use paper and pencil, like so many kids at school. If it
is, you can count me out. I hate ’em.’
‘So do I,’ cried Gladys. ‘Is it one of them?’
‘It’s the simplest game in the world,’ Penderel explained. ‘Indeed you
can hardly call it a game. We just go on talking but we stop lying. We
simply ask one another questions, and these questions must be answered
truthfully. You have to be on your honour to answer as truthfully as
you can.’
‘My God!’ Gladys couldn’t help it, but she stopped short and then said
‘Sorry!’
‘This doesn’t seem to be your game, Gladys,’ Sir William told her.
‘You’d better keep out.’
She shook her head very decisively. ‘Not me. I’m on. It’ll be a nice
change for some of us, you particularly, Bill. But somebody wants to be
easy with the questions, or God knows what we shall hear.’ She darted a
glance across the table at Margaret to see how she was taking it. Not
too well apparently. Serve her right.
‘You two are in?’ Penderel looked at the Wavertons and they nodded.
‘We’re all in, then. Now, don’t forget, you’re bound to answer as
truthfully as you can. Get down to the stony facts.’
‘When you think of it,’ Philip growled, looking down into his pipe,
‘the very existence of this pastime, with its one rule about answering
truthfully, is an awful comment on society.’
Mr. Femm stared at him. ‘But what do you expect?’
‘Couldn’t say what we think all the time or there’d’—and Sir William
waved his cigar—‘there’d be the devil to pay! Not sure how it’ll work
even here. Still, I’m with you, and I promise to tell the truth. Won’t
hurt me for once. D’you all promise?’ They all promised.
‘How shall we begin, then?’ asked Margaret. It was queer, but she was
quite eager to begin. She had played it before and had hated it—a
thoroughly mischievous little game, she had thought. But now, perhaps
because she was in such an odd jumble of a company, perhaps because she
was simply taking shelter here, she was more than willing to ask and
answer and listen.
‘We’ll do it this way,’ Penderel suggested. He pointed to Waverton.
‘I’ll ask you a question, then you’ll ask Mrs. Waverton, and so on
round the table. That’s a pleasant neighbourly way of doing it. But
everyone must speak up so that we can all hear.’
Nobody objected to the arrangement. ‘Ask away, then,’ said Philip. ‘But
don’t be too hard on me. Remember I’m a shy man and I’m the first in
the confessional.’
‘All right. Nothing too searching to begin with.’ Penderel reflected
for a moment. ‘How’s this, then? There are, you’ll agree, innumerable
snags in life——’
‘Oh, you mustn’t talk to him about life,’ Margaret broke in. ‘He’s just
told me not to.’
‘You be quiet, Margaret,’ Philip growled, but felt himself warming
towards her. That little characteristic thrust suddenly and cosily
domesticated them. ‘Yes,’ he told Penderel, ‘I admit the snags.’
‘Good. Well, then’—and Penderel rumpled his hair and the girl at his
side laughed at him—‘tell us what seems to you the snag-in-chief, the
great, the fundamental snag. In a word, if there’s a catch in life,
where does the catch come in? You follow me? Name the fly in the
ointment?
Philip puffed at his pipe. ‘Wait a minute. That’s a question that can’t
be answered without thought? He puffed away again.
‘You see what I mean?’ said Penderel. ‘Of course, you may not think
there is any one great snag or catch. If so, you simply say so?
‘I wish I could,’ Philip replied. ‘I can’t, though, because there
_is_ a catch, an enormous fly in the ointment. And to me, it’s this.
It seems to me that life demands so much care to be lived at all
decently that it’s hardly worth living. I’m talking about life as we
see it, civilisation as it’s called, and not the life, say, of a Fiji
Islander or a Zulu. With us the whole thing has got to be so careful,
so ordered, has become so conscious, asks for so much planning and
safeguarding, that we never arrive at any real enjoyment or ease, to
say nothing of sheer rapture. We’re like people walking on a tightrope,
and the only real pleasure we get is when we say to ourselves, “Well,
that bit’s safely passed.” Do you see what I mean? If you decide
to lean back and enjoy things, then you simply come a cropper and
everything’s smashed for you; but if you’re careful to avoid the
cropper, it takes so much out of you that you can’t really enjoy life
at all. And it’s no use talking about the golden mean and compromise
and so forth, because if you try to work on that principle, you only
get bits of cropper, bits of anxiety and carefulness, bits of cropper
again, a miserable alternation. If you let things go at all, disaster
comes; if you don’t, if you look after them, then you’re simply working
hard at it all the time. The trouble is that we can’t trust life, and
in order to keep going with it at all, we have to be for ever watching
it and patching it up. Therefore the only sort of happiness we can
get out of it is like the weird pleasure that some people get from
making and altering and fiddling about with wireless sets. So long as
we continually turn the discs and change coils, we can congratulate
ourselves on the fact that the set’s working, but that’s all we can do.
We can’t sit back and listen to the music. There’s the great snag. You
all see what I mean?’
‘Can’t say that I do exactly,’ said Sir William. ‘Give me an instance.’
‘Well, take a comparatively simple matter. Health, for example. Life’s
hardly worth living without decent health, but according to the
thousand and one experts of the body, we must look after this and
that and the other in order to keep reasonably fit, and if we took
the slightest notice of one-half of them we should be worrying about
our bodies all day. Most of us don’t trouble, of course, but the fact
remains that most of us are rapidly drifting further and further away
from good health and we shall soon find ourselves crocked. I’d like
to come to a life in which I could play the fool with my body without
inevitable disaster. I must have been meant for such a life, for
there’s something inside me that protests against these conditions
we know. Or, take personal relations. They ought to be delightfully
easy and careless, but they can’t be now that we’re so self-conscious.
The best of them can’t be left to look after themselves a month, and
to keep them going properly is only another anxiety. By the time
our relations with the people close to us have been put in proper
trim, we’re in no state to enjoy them but can only find a dim sort
of pleasure in the thought that they are in proper trim. Again, take
children. Being a parent is rapidly becoming a nightmare of worry.
I’m not attacking mere crankiness now, for most of the worry is
justified, and that’s the trouble. If you don’t worry, if you are grand
and complacent, then life will make haste to see that they suffer for
it. You can’t enjoy the children—you’ve no energy left for it—you
can only enjoy repeating to yourself that you’re doing your best for
them. We’ve no easy and rapturous contact with things themselves; we
only watch their shadows, either anxiously or, at the best, with a dim
sense of triumph. There’s the snag, the catch, then. We’ve either eaten
too much or still too little from the Tree of Knowledge. As it is, we
know just enough to give life a hair-trigger.’ Then he looked round
apologetically. ‘Sorry. I seem to have made a speech.’
While the others were waving away his apology, Margaret was telling
herself that she had never heard Philip reveal himself so clearly and
fully, even though he did it unconsciously. That speech was dear old
Phil all over: he didn’t trust life an inch. It was a silly grumble,
she told herself, but only the very nicest kind of man could have made
it. And now it was her turn. She looked at Philip speculatively. What
would he ask her?
‘Your turn to ask now, Waverton,’ said Penderel. ‘And you’re
lucky, having a wife for victim.’
Philip looked at her as if she were a strange person. It gave Margaret
a little thrill, though she knew that it was because they were playing
this game, for she had noticed that look before in company.
‘Your question is this,’ said Philip, still looking at her as if he had
hardly ever seen her before. ‘What do you want? What are you getting
at? What do you want, in your heart of hearts, to do, to be? What’s the
core of the thing for you?’
‘That’s the sort of question a man _would_ ask,’ Margaret exclaimed.
‘As if I had a definite object in life tucked away in a pigeonhole in
my mind! Still, I’ll try to find an answer. Let me think.’ She glanced
round at the eyes fixed upon her, and wished there was another woman
of her own kind there, to whom she could address herself. That girl
wouldn’t understand. ‘Well,’ she began, hesitatingly, ‘I’m not sure
I can make myself clear or whether you’ll understand. The question
is, what am I getting at, what do I really want to do or to be, isn’t
it? All I can say is that I want to create a certain atmosphere,
which I won’t attempt to define for you. It’s in my mind, just as the
idea for a novel or a play is in an author’s mind, but I have to bring
it outside, into life—do you see?—just as the author has. I want to
bathe life itself in this atmosphere. I want to move in the centre
of this atmosphere, really to be always creating it, and I want the
people close to me, the ones I care for, to live in this atmosphere,
and other people, friendly outsiders, to come and dip into it and
recognise it and tell themselves that it’s my atmosphere and very good.
This atmosphere contains all the good things of life, all those things
that men put into separate compartments and somehow raise above life,
and because it includes them, is served by them, it’s naturally more
important than any of them.’ She warmed to the thought now and forgot
her audience. ‘By doing this—or trying to do this—you’re creating in
the most marvellous way because you’re using life itself as the raw
material. And the women who’ve succeeded in doing it—there are bad
atmospheres as well as good ones, of course—are really tremendous, like
queens without the fuss and the show. Men only notice it in a dim sort
of way, though they’re affected by it, of course, and you can
see how the greatest of them have been enchanted by a certain woman’s
atmosphere. They’ve not simply fallen in love, as people always think,
but they’ve discovered a new country and have stayed there. That’s what
I want then, to create my own little country.’ She stopped, breathless,
and looked round at her listeners, feeling suddenly frightened. The
next moment there would be a huge guffaw. But there wasn’t; everybody
looked either puzzled or friendly or both; and she felt relieved and
rather happy. She smiled at them: ‘I seem to have been guilty of a
speech too. I apologise.’
They cried out at this. ‘No apologies necessary, Mrs. Waverton,’ Sir
William’s voice came booming. ‘You’re too deep for me, though. Who’s
next? Can’t we have a few facts?’
It was Margaret’s turn, and her neighbour was Mr. Femm. She looked at
him in bewilderment. He ought not to have been included, she felt, as
she stared at the long, lined yellow mask he turned to her. There were
deep wrinkles all round his eyes and the thin high bridge of his nose
gleamed white as if the bone had burst through the skin, but the eyes
themselves were as vague as smoke. She couldn’t ask him anything.
He was as strange as a mandarin. Then she suddenly remembered Rebecca
Femm and the dead Rachel Femm and the women who came in silks and
scents and the men who said ‘Go away and pray,’ and it all seemed like
something from a crazy old story she had just laid aside, and yet this
man was in it, a character come to life. No, not quite to life.
‘I am ready, Mrs. Waverton.’ How queer it was to hear him speak. It
made it worse.
‘Hurry up, Margaret.’ This from Philip. She was being absurd. Anything
would do. ‘Tell us,’ she heard herself saying, ‘why you chose to live
here.’
Mr. Femm took a sip of his gin-and-water and replaced the glass very
carefully, then he peered across the table, at the place his sister had
vacated, and compressed his thin lips until his mouth seemed to vanish
completely. ‘I came here,’ he said finally, ‘or rather I returned here,
for I was born and brought up in this very house, for the same reason
that brought you here. I did not want to live again in this house just
as you did not want to spend a night in it. You came here for
shelter, and so did I. When I decided to return, I had no money and no
further prospects, if only because I was wanted by the police. That
surprises you. It was nothing really criminal, nothing, that is, in bad
taste, but the Law in this country happens to be as heavy and stupid
and idiotic as the poor creatures it is supposed to benefit, and Chance
for once was not on my side. This is the home of my family, it was my
home too, once, so I returned to it, knocked at the door as you did
to-night and demanded shelter. I have been here ever since.’ He lifted
his glass again while they stared at him in silence. It was not that
they were struck dumb by amazement but that there did not seem to be
anything to say. Sir William made a noise in his throat that sounded
like the preliminaries of speech, but he must have changed his mind for
no words came.
‘So far, so good,’ said Penderel. ‘It’s your question now, Mr. Femm.’
But he couldn’t imagine that heavy-jowled magnate, whose turn it was,
telling the truth. He was too rich, too successful, for the truth.
Mr. Femm glanced at his neighbour and then looked straight in front of
him. ‘You must tell us,’ he said, slowly, ‘the worst thing you
have done during these last twelve months.’
‘Here!’ cried Sir William, protesting.
‘That’s a stinger, isn’t it?’
‘The thing,’ Mr. Femm added calmly, ‘that you are most ashamed of
doing.’
‘You don’t want much, do you?’ He blew out a cloud of cigar smoke as
if to relieve his feelings. Then he considered. ‘Well, I don’t know.’
He frowned and looked doubtful, but then suddenly his face cleared.
‘All right. You shall have it. The worst thing I’ve done this year.
It’s nothing startling. Don’t expect any Sunday paper stuff, amazing
revelations, orgies in the West End, that sort of stuff. But I’ll be
honest with you; this really is the thing I’m most ashamed of. No
names, of course, and all in confidence. Well, a few months ago I had
a quarrel with the manager of one of my concerns and got rid of him.
That’s all. But there’s a devil of a lot behind it. I said he wasn’t
good enough, didn’t suit me, but the fact is he was one of the best
managers I’d got and a better man than the fellow that took his place.
And I knew it. He was just the sort of man I wanted in the business,
a real find, all over the work and keen as a razor. But I booted
him out. Why? I’ll tell you.’ He stopped for a moment, set his jaw,
then laughed shortly. ‘You’ll probably find it amusing. I got rid of
him because I couldn’t stand his damned superiority. That’s what it
amounts to. He was only a youngster, had only left Oxford or Cambridge
a few years when he came to me. He got to be manager of this particular
concern in no time. I believe in rapid promotion and this fellow was
worth it. But every time I saw him he made me uneasy. Nothing in his
manner, at least nothing you could put a finger on. But—well, I always
wanted to ask him where he got his shirts and ties from; I could
never find any like ’em. That’s nothing, you think, but it worried
me, made me feel uneasy. Then one day he asked me to go to dinner,
meet his wife, who’d be honoured and delighted and so on. I went, and
that settled it. There were only the three of us. His wife was very
charming, very pretty woman too, and talked well. Her father’d been
the Professor of something-or-other at Edinburgh. She was obviously in
love with her husband and he with her, really in love, and I know the
difference. Well, that was all right, something I like to see, in
fact, though you mightn’t think it, but I’m a bit of a sentimentalist.
They talked and they let me talk, encouraged me, were almost
deferential. But that superiority was there. It was the shirts and ties
all over again, only much worse. I felt more and more uncomfortable,
uneasy, dissatisfied somehow. I tried to talk the feeling down, told
’em some of the things I’d done, spread myself out, but I knew it was
just missing all the time. I could hear my own voice going on and on,
bragging to no purpose; I could see myself, hot and sweating and waving
my arms; and yet I knew this wasn’t really myself, you know. There was
something in the confounded atmosphere of these people that was making
me publish a libel of myself just to make some sort of impression on
them. And the harder I tried, the more I was convinced that what I was
saying, what I did, what I looked like, didn’t amount to anything,
that is, didn’t seem to amount to anything with these people. D’you
see what I mean? Of course I knew well enough, nobody better, that
it did amount to something; I don’t pretend to despise myself. But I
couldn’t get it over, as the actors say. And while I was fuming
and sweating and talking big, there they sat, absolutely easy and
comfortable, so damned sure of themselves. Nothing to do with social
experience, y’know, for I’d had as much of that as they had. I’d had
more, been to places they hadn’t reached, not by a long chalk. It was
that mysterious superiority. Well, when I couldn’t make any headway
against it, it got on my nerves. I’d beat it somehow. So when I left
them that night, I said to myself, going home, “All right. I’ll show
you. You’re doing very well, aren’t you? Everything’s beautiful. Well,
we’ll see. I’ve made you and I’ll unmake you.” Within a month I’d faked
a lot of grievances against him, and very soon I had him out. I paid
for it, of course, losing a good man. It was all dead against my own
interests. But I couldn’t rest until I’d done it. But I knew what I’d
done. A damned dirty trick, weak too. And that’s that. Gad, but I’m
thirsty.’
He accepted some of Mr. Femm’s gin, the only drink on hand, hastily
mixed it with water, and, without lifting his eyes, emptied the glass.
‘That’s better,’ he said, and looked round. If they didn’t like
it, he thought, they could lump it. Anyhow, they had asked him and
he had told them the truth. He had rather enjoyed it too; this was
the time and place for telling these things, explaining yourself for
once in a while. It was all right; they all looked just curious and
friendly, except perhaps the one person he knew, Gladys. She was
looking a bit scornful (as she always said herself), not so friendly
as the other girl, Mrs. Waverton, who had seemed so cool and superior
at first. But then Gladys was probably not judging the case but merely
happened to be out of patience with him.
‘Your turn to answer now, Miss Du Cane,’ Penderel told her. ‘You’re in
this, of course?’
Yes, she was in it, and looked eagerly at Sir William. ‘Come on,’ she
cried, ‘let’s know the worst.’
‘So it’s your turn, Miss Du Cane, is it?’ Sir William smiled rather
grimly at her. The name itself suggested a question to him. ‘Suppose,
then, you tell us exactly who you are.’
‘Well, if you’re not the limit!’ There was real anger in her fine eyes.
‘What d’you mean by your “exactly who you are”?’
The others felt uncomfortable, but Sir William himself was not
disturbed. ‘Nothing in that. I mean, give us a few biographical
details, the sort of thing you find in “Who’s Who.” Think of the
question I had to answer. Yours is easy.’ But there was a touch of
malice in the smile he gave her.
Gladys stared at him, pushing out her full underlip, then gave a slight
shrug and leaned back in her chair. ‘All right then. Here goes.’ But
she stopped for a moment and looked in front of her with unseeing eyes.
Then she seemed to give herself a little shake, lifted her chin, and
spoke out briskly and bravely. ‘Well, to begin with my name’s not Du
Cane. Probably none of you thought it really was, but that doesn’t
make it easier to say right out that it isn’t. My real name’s Hoskiss;
the Gladys is all right. When I first thought of trying to get into
the chorus, I wanted another name, and I happened to see a book called
“The Expensive Miss Du Cane.” That’s me, I thought. I was only a kid,
seventeen about, at the time. We lived down in Fulham, Walham Green, to
be exact, just off North End Road. There were seven of us, three girls,
two boys, and mother and father. Father’s a joiner, when he’s
working. I don’t suppose any of you know North End Road and district.
You should go and have a look at it some time. It’s not one of these
absolutely poverty-stricken places, and it strikes you as being quite
cheery, lively in fact—so long as you’re half tight or don’t have to
live there. I used to run up and down North End Road fetching fried
fish and bottles of stout for the family, and try to make enough to get
into the gallery of the Granville—that’s the little music-hall at the
bottom. We’d only got half a house for the whole seven of us, and the
house itself was no size at all, and we were always in one another’s
way, with everybody grousing and nagging like fury. We’d one little
room for the three of us, the girls I mean, and you can imagine what
that was like, each of us shoving the others’ things out of the way
or borrowing them to go out in. I was always doing that, being the
youngest. Maggie, my eldest sister, got a job as a waitress, met a
soldier on leave she liked who said he’d marry her when the war was
over. She had a baby and he never came back, and that was that. The
kid’s at home now and Maggie’s still a waitress, though not at
the same place. Ethel, the one next to me, went to work in a laundry
and then got married, married to something that looks like a rat and
acts like one. The only thing you could say in his favour was that he
was a great change after a laundry. Then I had to go out and work, and
went through job after job, three months in one of those cheap sweet
shops run by a dirty little Jew who was always putting his arm round
me, another three months running about in a big draper’s, running
round from morning till night, till I was fit to drop, then in other
shops till I landed in the pictures, odd-job girl at one of the local
picture palaces. That suited me all right, and at first I thought no
end of myself, but the money was rotten, the manager got too friendly,
and I couldn’t stick being at home. After I’d been an hour in that
house, I wanted to scream. Every time I went up West—to see a show at
Daly’s or the Gaiety or the Palace or the Palladium—I’d be awake half
the night. And then one night I went to the Granville with two girls I
knew and some boys, and they took us into the bar at the interval and
gave us some port, and some people from the show came in and we all got
friendly. One of the girls had dropped out of that show—it was a
revue called “Oh, my eye!” absolutely fifteenth rate—and I dropped in
They’d been playing at some of the little London halls and were now
going down into the country on one of the bread-and-dripping tours, you
know the sort, All This Week in the Pier Pavilion or Three Nights Only
at the Corn Exchange. I went with ’em, Miss Du Cane, third from the
right in the chorus of twelve. And that’s how Gladys left home.’
‘Ever been back since?’ asked Sir William.
‘Course I have. But not to live, not likely. I used to look in
sometimes when I was flush, and take something for mother or Maggie’s
kid. I like ’em all and they like me. If you take any one of them away,
get them into a quiet corner away from home and the others, put a drink
in front of them, they come out then, you really get to know them. It’s
when they’re all jumbled up together at home, nagging and grousing and
snarling, that they get on your nerves, at least on mine.’ She looked
across and met Margaret’s level glance. ‘But that’s enough of that. I’m
not going to tell the story of my life, sir, not even to-night when
we’re all lost and far from home and Piccadilly Circus seems to be
somewhere in New Zealand.’
‘Well, ask a question then,’ said Sir William. ‘Get your own back.’ He
was enjoying this and was wondering what Gladys would demand of the
rather pale but bright-eyed youngster on her right, Penderel, with whom
she seemed to have struck up a friendship at once.
Gladys leaned forward and then turned her head so that she could look
Penderel almost squarely in the face. He was telling himself that
her eyes were like very old brown sherry, when she brought out her
question. ‘What are you so bitter about?’
‘Me!’ It had taken his breath away.
‘Yes, you.’ She nodded at him like a wise child.
‘Why, am I bitter?’
‘I think you are,’ she told him. She appealed to the Wavertons.
‘I know what you mean,’ said Margaret. ‘It’s not perhaps the exact
word, but it will do.’ Then she addressed herself to Penderel: ‘Yes,
you are bitter, you know.’
‘Of course you are, Penderel,’ said Philip heartily. ‘You’re one of the
worst post-War cases I know, a thundering sight worse than I am.
Come on, admit it. You’re the sort of bloke they denounce in little
talks in Bright Sunday Evening Services.’ He grinned and pointed his
pipe-stem across the table. ‘Stand up to your question and explain the
wormwood.’
Penderel made a comical little grimace. ‘Well, I never knew I was so
obvious. I suppose I shall have to explain myself. I went into the
War when I was seventeen, ran away from school to do it, enlisting as
a Tommy and telling them I was nineteen. I’m not going to talk about
the War. You know all about that. It killed my father, who died from
over-work. It killed my elder brother, Jim, who was blown to pieces up
at Passchendaele. He was the best fellow in the world, and I idolised
him. It was always fellows like him, the salt of the earth, who got
done in, whether they were British or French or German or American.
People wonder what’s the matter with the world these days. They forget
that all the best fellows, the men who’d have been in their prime
now, who’d have been giving us a lead in everything, are dead. If you
could bring ’em all back, fellows like Jim, hundreds and hundreds of
thousands of ’em, you’d soon see the difference they’d make in
the place. But they’re dead, and a lot of other people, very different
sort of people, are alive and kicking. Well, I saw all this, took an
honours course in it, you might say, for it was the only education I
got after the fifth form. Then towards the end of the War I fell in
love. I was convalescent in a country house and it was spring. She was
staying there, and every time we went out walking every little gust of
wind snowed down blossom on us. I’ve never seen a place so thick with
apple blossom and cherry blossom. And she’d be waiting down there. We
became engaged. The world was all made over again and I’d only got to
see the War through to find it all waiting for me. I thought about
nothing else, went back to France, went through the dust and the gas
of the last push in the summer and autumn of ’eighteen, thinking about
nothing else. Then just after the Armistice I got a letter. It was all
a mistake; we weren’t really suited, too young to know then; she’d
found someone else; we’d always be friends. All very reasonable, no
doubt, but you see I’d been thinking about nothing else. I got out of
the Army, went home and saw her once, and gave it up. But I remember
I went down to the old place that spring, in ’nineteen, and all
the damned blossom was out again, miles of it, snowing through the air
as it did before. It made me ache to see it. I told myself that it
hadn’t been there for me and only another kind of frost would stop it.
I packed my traps and set off to look for work.’ He stopped and looked
down at his fingers drumming on the table.
‘Go on,’ said Philip, after they had waited a few moments. For that he
received one of Margaret’s fierce little nudges, always so surprising
because they never seemed part of her. They belonged, in fact, to the
other Margaret, the one inside. This was the first he had had for some
months and it was so welcome that it tingled.
‘I’ll cut it short,’ said Penderel. ‘Well, the good fellows were nearly
all gone, love was off, and the world was in a filthy muddle, but there
was still work. That was the thing. I told myself I’d work like hell.
I could have gone up to Oxford or Cambridge, but didn’t want to go. I
wasn’t in the mood for listening to the patter of dry little men in
spectacles and then going ragging with a lot of kids. I felt there was
nothing a varsity could teach me that I wanted to learn. Pure
arrogance, of course, but there you are. I didn’t even want to play
their games, their solemn good-form games. I’d go and work, find a
man’s job. There was an African scheme going, good land for ex-officers
and all that, and so I scraped together every penny I had and went into
it and out to Africa. I won’t bore you with that. It was a swindle,
and a particularly dirty swindle, the kind that sticks in your gullet.
Africa didn’t want me, at least the part I saw didn’t, and I came back
broke. I drifted about town for some time and swapped drinks with
other fellows in the same boat. The work idea was off, but I was still
looking for a job, which isn’t the same thing at all though. One or two
of the fellows I knew joined the Black and Tans, and I nearly joined
myself—nobody else seemed to want me—but I happened to like the Irish
and I didn’t like the sound of their prospective job. So I hung about,
talking over schemes with other drifters and having too many drinks. I
sold one or two things on commission but found it a poor, dirty game.
Then I found I hadn’t a bean, didn’t want to borrow, so put in a spell
of navvying, up North on some public works, got the job through pure
influence. That did me good, but I haven’t the navvy temperament
and technique and it was about as hard as a spell of penal servitude.
But I stuck it till we were paid off, came back to town and went round
the bars, seeing if there was anything doing. There was—there always
is, if you’ve got the stomach for it—but I couldn’t do it. I tried to
write—I’d got plenty of material—but could only make a rotten hack job
of it, just spoiling the stuff. Then my mother died. She’d not had much
to live for after father and Jim went. My one sister had married and
was out in India, and I wasn’t exactly a howling success as the prop
and mainstay of the family. Some money came to me. It wasn’t much and
it didn’t last long. I’ve seen to that. There’s still a little tied up,
but I’ve borrowed on the strength of that. When you’ve nothing to do,
no aim of any kind, very few real friends, money doesn’t last long.
There are twenty-four hours in every day to be paid for, bought off,
you might say. I’m one of the ugly ducklings of the War generation,
the sort that will never become swans. Already another generation’s
come up, who understand this world, who don’t let it take them in, kids
soft enough in body and speech but really as hard as nails, all
out for a damned good time. They know what they want and how to get
it, and nothing’s going to take them in. I’m out too for a damned good
time—there’s nothing else to be out for, nothing left—but I don’t get
it. And I never will.’
He looked round at the faces turned to his. Mr. Femm appeared
impassive, Sir William slightly uncomfortable, and the Wavertons and
Gladys serious and sympathetic. Then suddenly he started up and broke
into speech again, this time swiftly, vehemently.
‘You think I’ve justified myself,’ he cried to them. ‘I haven’t really.
It’s cant, though not the worst kind, but still it’s cant. It’s weak
sentimentality merely turned topsy-turvy. I’ve realised that when I’ve
heard other fellows explaining away their slackness. It’s nearly as
bad as being one of those creatures who, when they get put into the
dock, begin snivelling about their War record. It’s not the first time
that boys have left school to be shot at, have lost their brothers and
friends, have been jilted, have been swindled. If a man’s got guts, he
ought to be able to win through. That’s what you ought to tell me. I
know it. I know this disillusion or cynicism or bitterness or whatever
it is is the new cant, an attitude, weakness trying to disguise
itself. And that makes it worse for me. I say I ought to be able to
win through, and then I ask myself “win through to what?” I don’t like
being in this pit, but there’s no motive-power to lift me out, or you
might say there isn’t even any “out.” You can put it another way. I
asked Waverton what he thought was the great snag in life, the catch in
it. I asked that because I was curious. I wondered if his idea would
agree with mine. But it didn’t. Mine’s this. If you approach life in
the old noble-silly fashion, then it’ll simply cheat you and bump you
badly. If you don’t, if you crawl into it with no grand illusions, then
you’ll come to terms with it, of course, and live easily, but you’ll be
nothing but a pig, and it’s not worth having at all on those terms.’
‘That’s not unlike mine, you know,’ said Philip. ‘Only I feel I could
patch up your trouble, that a compromise is possible.’
‘And that’s what I felt about yours,’ cried Penderel. ‘I felt it
would be possible to find a safe seat somewhere between the horns of
your dilemma, but not between those of mine. Of course, if you’re a
born pig, you don’t feel it, but if you’ve merely turned piggy,
it hurts for a time. I’m hoping it’ll stop hurting soon. I’ve turned
piggy, of course.’
‘You’re a raging idealist,’ Margaret smiled at him, ‘or you wouldn’t
talk like that.’
‘That’s it,’ said Sir William, complacent now. ‘He wants the moon.’
‘No, that’s wrong,’ replied Penderel, eagerly. ‘That’s something quite
different. I know people like that, but if you think I am, you’ve
missed the point.’
‘I don’t know, Penderel,’ said Philip. ‘Surely it’s really a matter of
wanting better bread than can be made of wheat, as someone once said of
somebody.’
‘No, it isn’t.’ Penderel was very emphatic. ‘It’s worse than that. It’s
finding that bread made out of wheat isn’t worth eating.’
‘That’s the same thing,’ Philip told him.
‘I don’t mean it to be.’ He leaned forward on his elbow and frowned.
‘Wait a minute and I’ll tell you what I mean.’
‘I know what you mean.’ Gladys’s voice surprised them all, for somehow
they had not expected her to speak. ‘Well, if I don’t know what you
mean, I know what’s the matter with you. You’ve nothing to live for.
You’re just passing the time and it’s rotten. Everything so far’s
been a washout, and now it’s Monday morning all the week.’
Both Penderel and Sir William opened their mouths to speak, but they
were drowned by a new voice that was so shrill and unexpected that
it startled them all. Miss Femm had returned and was approaching the
table, shrieking at her brother.
‘Morgan’s at the bottle again,’ she was shrieking. ‘I knew he’d begin
to-night. Where did he get it from?’
Mr. Femm bit his lips. ‘He did not get it from me. Can’t you stop him?’
‘There’s no stopping him now. He’s there in the kitchen, stupid
already. I’ll take these things away, the rest can stop where they
are.’ And she bore away the remains of the joint and the cheese.
The others pushed back their chairs and rose to their feet. That
entrance had obviously put an end to their talk, during which they had
seemed to be sitting on a bank, watching life go by like a river and
pointing out to one another its eddies and ripples and gleams; but now,
with the opening of a door and the sound of another voice, life seemed
to be roaring round them again; they were in the river.
Miss Femm was back again. ‘If he goes on, he’ll have to be watched,’
she screamed. ‘It’s getting worse outside too. We’ve not done with it
yet.’ She departed with the bread and the butter.
Sir William felt he wanted to do something. He turned to Mr. Femm.
‘Who’s this fellow, Morgan? Your man? Is he as bad as all that?
Couldn’t you tackle him about it—tell him to get to bed?’
Mr. Femm, who did not look happy, shook his head. ‘I have seen him once
or twice like this before. Being little better than a brute, he is very
close to Nature, and these upheavals have a bad effect upon him, and
then he takes to drink and that makes him worse.’
‘Could I tackle him?’ Sir William looked masterful. ‘I’m used to
dealing with some pretty tough customers. He’s the big rough chap I saw
at the door here, isn’t he?’
‘He is. Very big, very rough, very strong. A tiny smile crept into Mr.
Femm’s face. ‘He is also dumb.’
‘Dumb!’ Sir William was taken aback. Somehow he couldn’t see
himself trying to reason with somebody who was dumb.
Mr. Femm nodded. ‘Very strong, very stupid, and dumb. I said he was
very close to Nature.’ He nodded again and then walked away. Sir
William stared and began to whistle soundlessly. This fellow was as odd
as his servant. He joined the Wavertons at the fire.