Why, among us a drowning man has to make for himself the very
straw he's to clutch at!
BOTH René and his mother were excited all day over their projected
visit to a music-hall.
Thrigsby had ten of these places of amusement, and they found it hard
to decide which to patronize. Only one was outside the possibility of
choice, because it had performing seals in the bill, and Mrs. Fourmy
could not bear to see animals on the stage. René was for the low
comedians, his mother for music; and at last, in the program of one of
the suburban halls, she found a musical turn which had once given her
immense pleasure. She talked of it all afternoon, adding all the time
so generously to its wonder that René began to fear she would be
disappointed with the actuality. But her anticipation was so firm as
to overbear any shortcomings in the performance, and she saw and heard
only what she expected to see and hear. For René there was a very
droll comedian who made him shout with laughter. Mrs. Fourmy was
shocked at a joke at the expense of the Deity and those who go to
heaven, but she was so delighted with her son's pleasure that she
swallowed her distaste and laughed too. All the way home they
recapitulated their moments of delight, and laughed and melted in
remembrance.
It was a lovely evening, and they walked through a residential park,
the roads of which were private and flanked and overhung with trees.
Lovers lurked in the shadows, and their sweet murmuring could be
heard. Mrs. Fourmy took her son's arm:
"You and an old woman like me."
"Won't it be lovely when we live in the country, mother?"
"Oh, but there won't be any music-halls."
"We won't need them in the country with the nights. You should have
seen them in Scotland. I used to go into the woods, and sometimes up
the hills."
"But with an old, old woman----"
"I won't let you be really old, mother. And up there I used to feel
that I didn't really want anybody. That's queer, because I was in
love--really, I was."
He began to tingle and burn at the thought of Cathleen and the absurd
end of his hopes, and almost tearfully to realize that he was not yet
out of love. That discomfort gave him a sense of gladness in his
mother's company. It was wonderful the sweetness that had come into
their life together, the peace of it and the hope.
He said:
"It won't be long before I can begin to make some money. I'm only
waiting for Professor Smallman to come back. His letter was awfully
kind. He says there will be no difficulty. I can get first-year
pupils, and he can help me to find some journalistic work. Then when
I've got my degree I'll get a post, and you won't have to take any
more money from the rich Fourmys."
"It's only what helps you now. You don't seem to be a bit ambitious,
René."
"Would you like me to be?"
"But you're so clever and everybody else is so stupid. It seems so
funny of you to be so pleased with anything you can get."
"Funny?" He could hardly grasp what she meant. She went on:
"You're so good-looking, too. I shouldn't be surprised if you got on
and married somebody who was--well, you know."
There was a strain of bitterness in his mother which could infuriate
him. To-night he was so happy with her that it made him only sad, and
he said gently:
"I don't think I'm the sort that gets on. I say things--in letters,
you know."
"But I'd like to see you well off and married to some really nice
girl."
"And I'd like to see the girl who could make me give up the idea of
living in the country with you."
"I'll come and stay with you."
So they went on gently sparring, both clinging to their separate
idylls of the future. They came out of the park into the streets of
little shops and small houses like their own, and stopped presently at
the German delicatessen store, where they argued as to what they
should have for supper, ham or liver sausage. They compromised, and
decided on both, with little Swiss cheeses and honey-cakes.
As they came out into Hog Lane West they were accosted by a man who
asked René if he could tell him where Hog Lane West was, and which way
he should turn to find 166.
"That's my house," said René.
The stranger moved closer to him and had a long look at him. René felt
a tug at his arm, and turned to find his mother trembling against him.
"René! René! it's your father!"
"Is it you, Essie?" said the stranger, and he removed his hat.
"You--you---- I'm afraid," said René chokingly, "I'm afraid you'll
find the door shut against you. I've--I've often thought what I should
do if I set eyes on you again. That's what I shall do. I can't let you
come."
"Essie," the stranger turned to Mrs. Fourmy, "I'm dead broke."
"You must come and tell us, but you mustn't stay. We've been out, René
and I. We've got supper."
Her voice thinned away. She could speak no more. Her hand pressed René
to move on, and they set out toward their house with the man
following. René held the garden gate open, and stayed for a moment
fumbling for his key. When he found it, his father and mother were
standing silhouetted against the glass panel of the door. He let them
in, and, obeying an obscure instinct that stirred in him, went
upstairs to leave them alone together. Not for long. He found that in
his confusion he had taken the viands with him. He gained a few
moments in the kitchen preparing a tray (Polly was out for the evening
and not yet returned), and then, with the dishes clattering as he
walked, he rejoined them in the dining-room.
He had not consciously expected anything, but as he entered the
dining-room he saw his father with his back turned to him at the
corner cupboard with his hand on the key, his head cocked, his
shoulders up, very like George, and it was as though he had foreseen
it. It was uncanny and his heart ached in a sort of dread.
His mother's face was shining with a glowing excitement, and she
looked away from him as she said:
"Your father wants us to let him stay for a little. There's George's
room, you know, and I want him to."
René felt helpless. The emergency was too strong for him.
"All right," he said.
His father turned and smiled pleasantly.
"That's good of you--very good of you. I'd be in the cart without.
I'm--well--I've been---- But we'll talk of that later."
"Talk!" murmured René, aghast. "Who would talk? Who could find
anything to say?" Miserably he laid out the plates round the big
hospitable table, so big, so hospitable, that it was out of place and
forbidding.
Mr. Fourmy had already helped himself to whisky. (George always kept a
bottle in the house in case he and Elsie should drop in of an
evening.) They drew up to the table and went through a mockery of
eating. The bread was bitter in René's mouth, and the dainties they
had bought were tasteless. Mrs. Fourmy talked in a toneless twittering
voice of the music-hall performance, while René stole glances at his
father and avoided meeting his eyes. If he met his eyes he felt, in
spite of himself, amused, charmed, tickled, somehow pleased, and with
that pleasure was mixed a salt savor of pity, so that it was
irresistible and led on wonderfully to a sure promise of adventure.
René kept muttering to himself: "He's a bad man. A bad Fourmy, and you
can't do worse than that." This memory he flung with a look at his
mother, only to realize as he looked that she had no thought for him,
but, like him, was stealing glances at his father and avoiding meeting
the little keen humorous eyes. And his father went on eating hungrily
and heartily. Half a loaf of bread he ate, and two-thirds of the ham
and all the liver sausage. Then he looked wistfully at the
honey-cakes, but desisted, produced a packet of cigarettes, and began
to smoke.
"That's good," he said. "My first square meal since this morning.
That's good, good."
He moved from the table into the big red velvet chair by the fire.
"Good, very good. And it's a real home-coming. After all, this isn't
so very different from the old house."
"It's bigger," said René.
His father turned and scanned him.
"I can hardly realize you yet, young man. Can't allow for your growing
up. Can only just trace the face I remember. Your nose has grown."
"You used to have a mustache."
"Yes. Shaved it off in America. Didn't like Roosevelt."
"Have you been to America?"
"Been the devil's own dance, up and down America, North and South,
Philippines, Malay Settlement--that's Rangoon--China, back to America.
Wonderful how you meet Thrigsby folk all over the world. Hundreds of
young men everywhere who seem to have been at school with you and
George. I've had enough. Want to settle down."
"Like George."
"Isn't George coming in?"
"He's married."
"The devil he is! And am I a grandfather? Lord! what a world it is for
breeding! Think of me just fifty and a grandfather. What things do
happen to a man, to be sure."
"If only you wouldn't talk," protested René in a sudden exasperation.
"To be sure," returned his father genially. "I'm the prodigal. Must
give you time to take me in while we digest the fatted calf."
"It's not that!" René was swept by his indignation on to his feet. "It
isn't that! Only I never thought of this. You come in, and you sit
there in your old chair as though you'd only gone out yesterday. And
it's over ten years, and I can hardly remember you, and I know all the
time that you're my father, and--and--I don't know you. It's simply
beastly. I don't know why it is, but it is."
"René! René!" cried his mother.
"Steady, old girl," said Mr. Fourmy, with an almost tender firmness.
He turned quietly round in his chair until he was looking sideways up
at René. "Look here, young man, it takes two to make a scene, and I
won't have it. It's no good trying to make a scene simply because you
expected to have one if ever I came back. I spanked you the day before
I left for throwing a knife at your brother in one of your baresark
fits, and for two pins I'd turn you up and spank you now."
Then René's memory played him a scurvy trick. "Boot or brush?" he
asked himself, and a sick anger rose in him and hot tears welled into
his eyes. He gasped and gurgled inarticulately, thinking he was making
an appeal to his mother, but through his tears he seemed to see his
father growing larger and larger, and in a gust of terror he lunged
out of the room, seized his cap, and rushed from the house.
"It isn't fair! it isn't fair!" he moaned.
Other young men he knew had difficulties with their fathers, but to
have a father suddenly materialize out of thin air and step back with
exasperating ease into a relationship which a part of his family at
least had forgotten, was too critical for the mind to bear. René had
been priding himself on the fact that at last he was to be as other
young men, a wage-earner, a reputable citizen, a prop to his mother, a
credit to his family and his own aspirations. And here suddenly he was
to begin all over again. His painful emotions were akin to those of a
small boy on the arrival of a new baby in his home, or to those of a
tit on finding a cuckoo's monstrous egg in its nest, and, being of a
cultivated intelligence, he could not immediately and robustly draw on
his instinct to adjust himself to the new circumstances.
He called on George. The Nest was in darkness. He went on hammering at
the door until the window above it was thrown open.
"Who's there?" snarled George. "If it's the police, the window's left
open for the cat, and I'm damned if I shut it."
"It's me--René!"
"What the hell do you want at this time of night?"
"I must see you. Something has happened."
"What?"
"Come down and let me in."
He was filled with a cold and shuddering feeling of being ridiculous
as he waited. He wanted to run away, but that would have been even
more absurd. The chain of the door rattled, the bolts rapped back, and
George said:
"Come in. You've wakened Elsie, and she's not at all well."
"But I wanted to see you. Father's come back."
"What?"
"Father's come back."
"Mother all right?"
"She seems quite pleased."
"Then there's nothing more to be said. If you don't like him, tell him
he's got to pay the rent. That'll clear him out fast enough. Good
night."
George seized René by the arm, lifted him through the door on to the
step, closed the door, shot the bolts and the chain. In his
astonishment René found himself nearly back at 166 before he could
realize the outrage that had been done to his feelings. He had wanted
to tell George that the atmosphere of the house was just horrible, and
George had never thought of that.
166 was in darkness too. How grim these little houses were in the
darkness! How they invited violence and the wickedness of the night!
How derelict they seemed! How fit for the harboring of wandering, evil
men! Now he thought of his father as evil, a shadow come to obliterate
the brightness that had grown and filled the house since George's
departure.
He let himself in, saw that all the lights were out downstairs, the
large coals taken from the dining-room fire, the windows and doors
fastened. Then he crept upstairs on tiptoe in his stockinged feet and
groped fearfully toward his mother's door, half dreading some awful
discovery. He could hear no sound. As he passed George's room there
came out of it his father's rich, familiar snore.
V