1
In the morning, Ninian and Roger rose early, for Ninian was going to
Southampton to see the _Gigantic_ start on her maiden voyage to America,
and Roger had a case at a county court outside London. In a vague way,
Ninian had intended to talk to Roger about his engagement, to reason
with him, as he put it. Gilbert had pointed out that the chief
employment of women is to disrupt the friendships of men. "Men," he had
said to Ninian and Henry after Roger had gone to bed, "take years to
make up a friendship, and then a female comes along and busts it up in a
couple of weeks!" Ninian did not intend to let Miss Rachel Wynne break
up _their_ friendship, and he planned a long, comprehensive and settling
conversation with Roger on the subject of females generally and of
Rachel Wynne particularly. In bed, he had invented an extraordinarily
convincing argument, before which Roger must collapse, but by the time
he had finished shaving, the argument had vanished from his mind, and
his convincing speech shrivelled into a halting, "I say, Roger, old
chap, it's a bit thick, you know!" and even that ceased to exist when he
saw Roger, with the _Times_ propped against the sugar bowl, eating bacon
and eggs as easily as if he had never betrothed himself to any woman.
"Hilloa, Roger!" said Ninian, sitting down at the table, and reaching
for the toast.
"Hilloa, Ninian!" Roger murmured, without looking up.
Magnolia entered with Ninian's breakfast and placed it before him.
"Anything in the _Times_?" Ninian said, pouring out coffee.
"Usual stuff. The bacon's salt!..."
The time, Ninian thought, was hardly suitable for a few home-thrusting
words on the subject of marriage, so he reminded Roger that he was going
to Southampton.
"Tom Arthurs has promised to show me over as much of the _Gigantic_ as
we can manage in a couple of hours. That won't be as much as I'd like to
see, but I'll try and go over her when she comes back from New York. Any
mustard about?"
"You'll be back again to-night, I suppose?"
"Probably. You're right ... this bacon is salt, damn it!"
Roger rose from the table and moved to the window where he stood for a
while looking out on the garden. It seemed to Ninian that in a moment or
two he would speak of his engagement, and so he sat still, waiting for
him to begin.
"Well," said Roger, turning away from the window and feeling for his
watch, "I must be off. So long, Ninian!"
He went out of the room quickly and in a little while, Ninian heard the
street door banging behind him.
"Damn," he said to himself, "I've just remembered what I was going to
say to him!"
He had finished his breakfast and left the house before Gilbert and
Henry came down from their rooms. Henry was too tired to talk much, and
Gilbert, finding him uncommunicative, made no effort to make
conversation. He picked up the _Times_ and contented himself with the
morning's news, while Henry read a letter from John Marsh which had come
by the first post.
"_I'm interested in your Improved Tories_," he wrote, "_I think the
scheme is excellent. You sharpen your wits on other people's, and you
keep in touch with all kinds of opinions. That's excellent! Your father,
and you, too, used to say we were rather one-eyed in Dublin, and I
think there's a good deal of truth in that, so I'm trying to get a
group of people in Dublin to form a society somewhat similar to your
Improved Tories. Did you ever meet a man called Arthur Griffiths when
you were here? He is a very able, but not very sociable, man, and so
people do not know him as well as they ought to ... and his tongue is
like a flail ... so that most of the people who do know him, don't like
him. The Nationalist M. P.'s detest him. Well, several years ago he
founded a society which he called the Sinn Fein Movement, and the
principle of the thing is excellent up to a point. Do you remember any
of your Gaelic? Sinn Fein means 'we ourselves,' and that is the
principle of the society. The object is to induce Irishmen to do for
themselves, things that are done for them by Englishmen. It ought to
appeal to your father. Griffiths got the idea, I think, from Hungary.
We're to withdraw our representatives from the English parliament and
start an Irish Government on the basis of a Grand Council of the County
Councils. We're to have our own consular service, our own National Bank
and Stock Exchange and Civil Service, and a mercantile marine so that we
can trade direct with other countries. And we're to nationalise the
railways and canals and bogs (which are to be reclaimed) and take over
insurance and education and so forth. All this is to be done by the
General Council of the County Councils in opposition to anything of the
sort that is done by the English Government in preparation for the day
when there is an Irish Government when, of course, the General Council
will be merged in the Government. Oh, and we're to have Protection, too!
It seems rather a lot, doesn't it? but the idea is excellent and, if
modified considerably, fairly practical. Griffiths has antiquated
notions of economics, however, and some of the things he says prevent me
from joining him. His great idea is to attract capital to Ireland by
telling capitalists how cheap Irish labour is. That seems to me to be an
abominable proposal, likely to lead to something worse than Wigan and
all those miserable English towns your father dislikes so heartily. And
probably, of all his proposals, it is the most likely to succeed. That's
why I'm opposed to him at present. I cannot bear the thought of seeing
England duplicated in Ireland. But the scheme has merit, and Galway and
I are plotting to capture the movement from Griffiths. We think that if
we could graft the Sinn Fein on to the Gaelic League, we'd be on the way
to establishing Irish independence. Our people are becoming very
materialistic, and we must quicken their spirits again somehow. Douglas
Hyde is the trouble, of course. He wants to keep the Gaelic League clear
of politics. As if you can possibly keep politics out of anything in
Ireland! We want to make every Gaelic Leaguer a conscious rebel against
English beliefs and English habits. I wish you'd come over and join us.
It'll be very hard, but exhilarating, work. You've no notion of how
sordid and money-grubbing and English the mass of our people are
becoming. It's a man's job to destroy that spirit and revive the old,
careless, generous, God-loving Irish one...._"
"Still harping on that old nationality," Henry thought to himself, when
he had finished reading the letter.
He was in no mood for thoughts on Ireland. His mind was still full of
the idea that had come into his head the previous night. _Why should he
not get married?_ The idea attracted and repelled him. It would, he
thought, be very pleasant to live with ... with Mary, say ... to love
her and be loved by her ... very pleasant ... but one would have to
accept responsibilities, and there would probably be children. He would
dislike having to leave Ninian and Roger and Gilbert, particularly
Gilbert, and his share in the meetings of the Improved Tories would
begin to dwindle. On the other hand, there would be Mary ... If he were
to lose his friends and the careless, cultured life they led in the
Bloomsbury house, he would gain Mary, and perhaps she would more than
compensate for them....
Gilbert interrupted his thoughts.
"Rum go, this about Roger, isn't it?" he said.
Henry nodded his head. "I hadn't any idea of it," he replied. "I'd never
even heard of her until he said she was coming to dinner!"
"I had," Gilbert said, "but I didn't think he was going to let the life
force catch hold of him. Close chap, Roger! He never gives himself away
... and that's the sort that's most romantic. You and I are obviously
sloppy, Quinny, but somehow we miss all the messes that reticent, close
chaps like Roger fall into. You don't much like her, do you?"
"Well, I'm not what you might call smitten by her, but that's because
she seems to think I'm wasting time in writing novels. She's too
strenuous for me. I like women who relax sometimes. She'll orate to him
every night, just as she orated to us, about people's wrongs...."
"Mind, she's clever!" said Gilbert.
"Oh, I don't deny that. That's part of my case against her. Really and
truly, Gilbert, do you like clever women?"
"Really and truly, Quinny, I don't. Perhaps that's not the way to put
it. I like talking to clever women, but I shouldn't like to marry one of
them. I'm clever myself, and perhaps that's why. There isn't room for
more than one clever person in a family, and I think a clever man should
marry an intelligently stupid woman, and vice versa. You can argue with
clever women, but you can't kiss them or flirt with them. All the clever
ones I've ever known have had something hard in them ... like a lump of
steel. Men aren't like that! They can be hard, of course, but they
aren't always exhibiting their hardness. Clever women are."
Henry tossed Marsh's letter across the table to Gilbert.
"Read that," he said, "while I look through the _Times_!"
They both rose from the table, and sat for a while in the armchairs on
either side of the fireplace.
"You know, Quinny," said Gilbert, as he took Marsh's letter out of its
envelope, "I often think we're awfully young, all of us!"
"Young?"
"Yes. Immature ... and all that. We're frightfully clever, of course,
but really we don't know much, and yet you're writing books and I'm
writing plays and Ninian's building Tunnels and Roger's playing ducks
and drakes with the law ... and not one of us is thirty yet. Lord, I
wish Roger hadn't got engaged. That sort of thing makes a man think!"
He read Marsh's letter and then passed it back to Henry.
"Seems all right," he said. "It's a pity those Irish fellows haven't got
a wider outlook. Sitting there fussing over their mouldy island when
there's the whole world to fuss over! I must be off soon. There's a
rehearsal of my play this morning...."
"I say, Gilbert," Henry interrupted, "do you think I ought to go and
join this Irish Renascence business?"
"How can I tell? It probably won't amount to much. I should take an
intelligent interest in it, if I were you. Perhaps you can induce Marsh
to come over and talk to the Improved Tories about it. What are you
doing this morning?"
"Oh, working!"
"Well, so long!"
"So long, Gilbert. You'll be back to lunch, I suppose?"
"I don't think so. The rehearsals are very long now. You see, the play's
to be done on Wednesday...."
2
When Gilbert had gone, Henry, having glanced through the _Times_, went
up to his room and began to write, but he did not continue at his
manuscript for very long. The words would not roll lightly off his pen:
they fell off and lay inertly about the paper. He was accustomed now to
periods during which his mind seemed to have lost its power to operate,
and he was not alarmed by them. He knew that it was useless to attempt
to do any work that morning, so he left his room and, telling Mrs.
Clutters that he would not return to lunch, went out of the house and
wandered about the streets for a while without any purpose. It was not
until he saw the sign on a passing motor-'bus that he decided on what he
should do. "Hyde Park Corner" was on the sign, and he called to the
conductor and presently mounted to the roof of the 'bus and was driven
towards the Park.
"I wonder," he thought to himself, "whether I shall see Lady Cecily
to-day!"
Lady Cecily had curiously disappeared from their lives. Gilbert,
absorbed in the production of his play, had not spoken of her again, nor
had he made any mention of his proposal to leave London and go to
Anglesey. He had resigned from the staff of the _Daily Echo_, and, since
he no longer attended first-nights at the theatre, he had not seen Lady
Cecily since the night on which "The Ideal Husband" was revived. Henry
had said to himself on several occasions that he would go and see Lady
Cecily, but he had not done so. He did not care to go alone, and he
cared less to ask Gilbert to go with him ... but to-day, as suddenly as
she had quitted his thoughts, Lady Cecily came into them again, and, as
he sat on top of the omnibus, he hoped that he would see her in the
Park. "If not," he said to himself, "I'll call on her this afternoon!"
He descended from the 'bus at Hyde Park Corner and hastily entered the
Park. He crossed to the Achilles monument and debated with himself as to
whether he should sit down or walk about, and decided to sit down. If
Lady Cecily were in the Park, he told himself, she would pass his chair
some time during the morning. He chose a seat near the railings and sat
down and waited. There was a continual flow of carriages and cars, but
none of them contained Lady Cecily, and when he had been sitting for
almost an hour, he told himself that he was not likely to see her that
morning. He rose, as he said this to himself, and turned to walk across
the grass towards Rotten Bow, and as he turned, he saw Jimphy. He was
not anxious to meet Jimphy again, and he pretended not to see him, but
Jimphy came up to him, smiling affably, and said "Hilloa, Quinn, old
chap!" so he had to be as amiable as he could in response to the
greeting.
Jimphy wanted to know why it was that he and Henry had not met again
since the night that "Cecily let a chap in for a damn play," and
reminded him of their engagement to visit the Empire together. "Anyhow,"
he said, "you can come and lunch with us. Cecily'll be glad to see you.
I said I'd come home to lunch if I could find some one worth bringing
with me, so that's all right!"
"How is Lady Cecily?" Henry asked, as he and Jimphy left the Park
together.
"Oh, I expect she's all right," Jimphy answered. "I forgot to ask this
morning, but if she'd been seedy or anything she'd have told me about
it, so I suppose she's all right!"
"When's this play of Farlow's coming on?" Jimphy asked on the doorstep
of his house.
"Wednesday," Henry answered.
"Cecily's made me promise to go and see it with her. What sort of a
piece is it?"
They entered the house as he spoke.
"It's excellent...."
"Is it comic?"
"Well, I suppose it is. He calls it a comedy," Henry said.
"So long as there's a laugh in it, I don't mind going to see it. I can't
stand these weepy bits. 'Hamlet' and that sort of stuff. Enough to give
a chap the pip! Oh, here's Cecily!"
Henry turned to look up the stairs down which Lady Cecily was coming,
and then he went forward to greet her.
"How nice of you," she said. "Has Gilbert come, too?"
"No," he answered, chilled by her question. "He has a rehearsal this
morning!"
"Oh, yes, of course," she said. "His play! I forgot. We're going to see
it on Wednesday. I hope it's good!"
"It's very good," Henry replied.
3
Jimphy left them after lunch. He was awfully sorry, old chap, to have to
tear himself away and all that, but the fact was he had an appointment
... an important appointment ... and of course a chap had to keep an
important appointment....
"We'll forgive you, Jimphy!" Lady Cecily said, and then he went away,
begging Henry to remember that they must go to the Empire together one
night.
"Well?" said Lady Cecily when her husband had gone, "how are you all
getting on?"
She was reclining on a couch, with her feet resting on a cushion, and as
she asked her question she pointed to another cushion lying on a chair.
He fetched it and put it behind her back.
"Splendidly," he answered. "Is that right?"
She settled herself more comfortably. "Yes, thanks," she said. "I read
your novel," she went on.
"Did you like it?"
"Oh, yes. Of course, I liked it. I suppose you're writing another book
now!" He nodded his head, and she went on. "I wish I could write books,
but of course I can't. Mr. Lensley says I live books. Isn't that nice of
him? Do you put real people in your books, or do you make them all up?
Do you know, I think I'll have another cigarette!"
He passed the box of cigarettes to her and held it while she made up her
mind whether she would smoke an Egyptian or a Turkish. Her delicate
fingers moved indecisively from the one brand to the other. "You like
Turkish, don't you?" he said, wishing that he could take her slender
hand in his and hold it forever.
"Choose one for me," she said, capriciously, lying back and clasping her
hands about her head.
He took a cigarette from the box and offered it to her, but she did not
hold out her hand to take it, and he understood that he was to place it
between her lips. His fingers trembled as he did so, and he turned
hurriedly to find the matches.
"Behind you," she said, and he turned and picked them up.
He lit a match and held it to her cigarette, and while he held it, her
fingers touched his. She had taken hold of the cigarette to remove it
from her lips.... He blew out the light and threw the match into the
ash-tray, and then went and sat down in the deep chair in which he had
been sitting when she asked him to get the cushion for her.
"Why didn't you call before?" she said, lazily blowing the smoke up into
the air.
It was difficult to say why he had not called before, so he answered
vaguely. There had been so much to do of late....
"And Gilbert? He doesn't rehearse all day long, does he?"
"No, not all day, but he's pretty tired by the time he gets home."
"Why didn't he come to the Savoy that night?" she asked.
He wished she would not talk about Gilbert. He could not tell her the
real reason why Gilbert had not kept his promise to join the
supper-party and he was a poor hand at inventing convincing lies.
"There was some trouble at his office, I think," he said, "and he
couldn't get away until too late!..."
"He didn't write or come to see me!" she protested.
It was probable that Gilbert forgot his duty in the excitement of
hearing that his play was to be produced....
"I suppose so," she said.
She talked to him about his books and about Ireland. She had been to
Dublin once and had gone to the Viceregal Lodge ... Lady Dundrum had
taken her to some function there ... and she was eager for the
tittle-tattle of the Court. Was it true that Lord Kelpie was indifferent
to his lady?... Henry knew very little of the Dublin gossip. "I haven't
been there since I left Trinity," he said, in explanation, "and the only
people who write to me don't take any interest in Court functions!"
He rose to go, but she asked him to stay to tea with her, and so he
remained.
"I don't suppose any one will call," she said, "but in case ..."
She told a servant that she was "not at home" to any one, and Henry,
wondering why she had done so, felt vaguely flattered and as vaguely
nervous. Her beauty filled him with desire and apprehension and left him
half eager, half afraid to be alone with her. He understood Gilbert's
fear that if he yielded to Cecily, she would destroy him. There was
something in this woman that overpowered the senses, that made a man as
will-less as a log, and left him in the end, spent, exhausted,
incapable. He saw the danger that had frightened Gilbert, but he could
not make up his mind to run away from it. There was something so
exquisitely sensual in her look as she lay on the couch, looking at him
and chattering in the Lensley style, that he felt inclined to yield
himself to her, even if in yielding he should lose everything.
"Of course," he said to himself, "this is all imagination. She doesn't
want me at all ... she wants Gilbert!"
She asked for another cigarette, and he took one and placed it in her
lips and lit it for her, and again his fingers touched hers, and again
he trembled with unaccountable emotion. As he bent over her, holding the
match to the cigarette, he felt the blood rushing to his head and for a
moment or two his eyes were blurred and he could not see clearly. Then
his eyes cleared and he saw that she was looking steadily at him, and he
knew that she understood what was passing in his mind. He dropped the
match on to the ash-tray and bent a little nearer to her. He would take
her in his arms, he said to himself, and hold her tightly to him....
"Won't you sit down," she said, pointing to his chair.
He straightened himself, but did not move away. His eyes were still
intent on hers, as if he could not avoid her gaze, and for a while
neither of them spoke or moved. Then she smiled at him.
"You're a funny boy," she said. "Won't you sit down!" and again she
pointed to the chair.
His answer was so low that he could hardly hear himself speak, and at
first he thought she had not heard him. "I'd better go," he said.
"Not yet," she answered. "You needn't go yet!"
"I'd better...."
She put out her hand and made him sit down.
"There's no hurry," she said.
He leant back in his chair, resting his elbows on the arms of it and
folding his fingers under his chin.
"You look frightened," she said.
"I am," he answered.
"Of me?" He nodded his head, and she laughed. "How absurd!" she said.
"I'm not a bit terrifying...."
He was not trembling now. He felt quite calm, as if he had resigned
himself to what must be.
"No, I ... I know you're not," he said, "only ..."
"Only what?"
"I don't know!"
She put her cigarette down and turned slightly towards him.
"Funny boy!" she said. "Funny Irish boy!"
He smiled foolishly at her, but did not answer. He knew that if he
spoke at all, he would say wild things that could not be withdrawn or
explained away.
"Funny scared Irish boy!" she said, and he could see the mockery in her
eyes. "Such a frightened Irish boy!..."
He could hold out no longer. She had put her hand out towards him ...
why he could not tell ... and impulsively he seized it and clasped it
tightly in his. His grasp must have hurt her, for she cried a little and
tried to withdraw her hand, but he would not let go his hold of it
until, kneeling beside her, he had put his arms about her and kissed
her.
"I love you," he said. "You know I love you...."
"Don't!"
"I loved you the minute I set eyes on you, and I wanted to meet you
again ... and then I was jealous of Gilbert because you took so much
notice of him and so little of me, and ... I love you, I love you!"
She thrust him from her. "You're hurting me," she said, and she panted
as she spoke.
"I want to hurt you," he answered.
"But you mustn't...."
He did not let her finish her sentence. He pressed his lips hard on hers
until his strength seemed to pass away from him. He felt in some strange
way that her eyes were closed and that she was moaning....
He put his arms about her again, and drew her head gently on to his
breast. "My dear," he said softly, bending over her and kissing her
hair.
She lay very still in his arms, so still that he thought she had fallen
asleep. Her long lashes trembled a little, and then she opened her eyes,
sighing contentedly as she did so. He smiled down at her, and she smiled
in response. Then she put her hand up and stroked his cheek and ruffled
his hair.
"Funny Irish boy!" she said again.
4
He climbed on to a 'bus which bore him eastwards. It was impossible, in
his state of exaltation, to go home and eat in the company of the
others. Ninian would probably be back from Southampton, unbalanced with
admiration for Tom Arthurs and the _Gigantic_, and then Gilbert would
tell him how Sir Geoffrey Mundane had behaved during the rehearsal and
how exasperating Mrs. Michael Gordon, the leading lady, had been. "She's
brilliant, of course," he had said about her once, "but if I were her
husband I'd beat her!" He could not endure the thought of spending the
evening in the customary company of his friends. They would want to
talk, they would draw him into the conversation, and he neither wished
to talk nor to listen. His desire was only to remember, to go over again
in his mind that long, passionate afternoon with Cecily.... So he had
telephoned to Mrs. Clutters telling her that he would not be in to
dinner, and then, climbing on to a 'bus, had allowed himself to be
carried eastwards, not knowing or caring whither he was being carried.
He paid no heed to the other passengers on the 'bus, nor did he interest
himself in the traffic of the streets. When the conductor came,
demanding fares, he asked for a ticket to the terminus, but did not
bother to ask where the terminus was. His mind was full of golden hair
and warm, moist lips and soft, disturbing perfume and the touch of a
shapely hand. Cecily had insisted on calling him "Paddy" because he was
Irish and because so many Englishmen are called "Henry," and when he had
left her, she had offered her lips to him and, when he had kissed her,
had told him she would see him again soon. "When Gilbert's play is
done," she said, and added, "Tell Gilbert I shall expect him to come and
talk to me after the first act!"
He had been jealous when she said that. "You don't really care for me,"
he had said. "You really love Gilbert!"
"Of course I love Gilbert," she had answered, laughing at him and
patting his cheek, "but I love you, too. I love lots of people! ..."
Then, ashamed of himself, he had left her. It was caddish of him to
speak of Gilbert to her, for Gilbert was his friend and her lover. If
one were to try and take a friend's mistress from him, one should at
least be silent about it. But how could he help these outbursts of
jealousy! He cared for Gilbert far more than he cared for any man ...
but he could not prevent himself from raging at the thought that Gilbert
had but to hold out his arms and Cecily would run to be clasped in them.
"I'm a makeshift," he said to himself. "That's all!"
But even if he were only a makeshift, that was better than being shut
away from her love altogether. "I daresay," he thought, "she's as fond
of me as she is of any one!" and he wondered whether she really loved
Gilbert. It was difficult for him to believe that she could yield so
easily to him and love Gilbert deeply, and he soothed his conscience by
telling himself that Cecily was one of those women who are in love with
love, ready to accept kisses from any ardent youth who offers them to
her. He remembered his contribution to the discussion on women and the
way in which he had insisted on infinite variety of experiences. Cecily
was, as a woman, what he had wished to be as a man. We had to recognise
the differences of nature, he had said, but somehow he did not greatly
care to see his principle put into practice by Cecily. There was
something very fine and dashing and Byronic and adventurous in a man
with a spacious spirit, but after all, women were women, and one did not
like to think of adventuring women. He wanted to have Cecily to himself
... he did not wish to share her with Gilbert or with Jimphy or with any
one, and it hardly seemed decent that Cecily should wish to spread her
affections over three men. "And there may be others, too!" All this talk
about sex-equality had an equitable sound ... his intellect agreed that
if men were to have amorous adventures, then women should have them too;
if men were to be unfaithful without reproach, then women should be
equally without reproach in their infidelity ... but his instinct cried
out against it. He wanted his woman to himself even though he might not
keep himself for her alone.
"And that's the beginning and the end of the sex-question," he said. "We
simply aren't willing to let women live on our level. In theory, the man
who goes to a prostitute is as bad as she is, but in practice, we don't
believe it, and women don't believe it either, and nothing will ever
make us believe it. And it's the same with lovers and mistresses. It
simply doesn't seem decent to a man who keeps a mistress that his wife
should have a lover. You can't help having instincts!..."
5
The 'bus drove over London Bridge and presently he found himself in the
railway station. It was too early yet to eat, and he made up his mind to
go for a walk through Southwark. None of them had ever been in the
slums. They had set their minds against suggestions that they should
live in Walworth or Whitechapel or Bethnal Green in order that they
might get to know something of the lives of the very poor. "That's
simply slush," Gilbert had said. "We shouldn't live like them. We'd have
four good meals every day and baths every morning, and we'd only feel
virtuous and 'smarmy' and do-good-to-the-poor-y. My object is to get rid
of slums, not to go and live in the damn things and encourage
slum-owners by paying rent regularly. All those Settlement people ...
really, they're doing the heroic stunt for their own ends. They'll go
into parliament and say they have intimate knowledge of the way in
which the poor live because they've lived with them ... and it's all my
eye, that stuff!"
The notion had made a faint appeal to Henry, but he had not responded to
it because of the way in which the others had sneered at it and because
he liked pleasant surroundings. Once, in Dublin, he had wandered out of
St. Stephens's Green and found himself in the Combe, and the sights he
had witnessed there had sickened him so that he had hurried away, and
always thereafter had been careful not to enter side streets with which
he was not familiar. Now, he felt that he ought to see a London slum.
One had to have a point of view about poor people, and it was difficult
to have a point of view about people of whom one was almost totally
ignorant.
He walked slowly up the Borough High Street, uncertain of himself and of
the district. He would want something to eat presently, and if he were
to venture too far into the slums that lay hidden behind St. George's
Church and the Elephant, he might have difficulty in finding a place
where he could take a meal in comfort. He stood for a few moments
outside the window of a shop in which sausages and steaks and onions
were being fried. There was a thick, hot, steamy odour coming from the
door that filled him with nausea, and he turned to move away, but as he
did so, he saw two sickly boys, half naked, standing against the window
with their mouths pressed close to the glass. They were eyeing the
cooking food so hungrily that he felt pity for them, and he touched one
of them on the shoulder and asked him if he would like something to eat.
The boy looked at him, but did not answer, and his companion came
shuffling to his side and eyed him too.
"Wouldn't you like some of that ... that stuff!" Henry said, pointing to
a great slab of thick pudding, padded with currants.
One of the boys nodded his head, and Henry moved towards the door of the
shop, bidding them both to follow him.
"Give these youngsters some of that pudding!" he said to the man behind
the counter: a fat, flaccid man with a wet, steamy brow which he
periodically wiped with a grimy towel.
"'Ere!" said the man, cutting off large pieces of the pudding and
passing it across the counter to the boys who took it, without speaking,
and began to gnaw at it immediately.
"Wod you say for it, eih?" the man demanded.
They mumbled unintelligibly, their mouths choked with the food.
"Pore little kids, they don't know no better! Nah, then, 'op it, you
two! That'll be fourpence, sir!"
Henry paid for the pudding and left the malodorous shop. The children
were standing in the shadow outside, one of them eating wolfishly, while
the other held the pudding in front of him, gaping at it....
"Don't you like it?" Henry said, bending down to him.
"'E can't eat it, guv'nor!" the other boy said.
"Can't eat it?"
"No, guv'nor, 'e can't. I'll 'ave to eat it for 'im...."
"But why can't you eat?" Henry asked, turning to the boy who still gaped
helplessly at the pudding.
The child did not answer. He stared at the pudding, and then he stared
at Henry, and as he did so, the pudding fell from his hands, and he
became sick....
"'Ere, wod you chuckin' it awy for?" the other boy said, dropping
quickly to the ground and picking up the pudding.
"He's ill," Henry said helplessly.
"'E's always ill," the boy answered, stuffing pieces of the recovered
pudding into his mouth.
A policeman was standing at the corner, and Henry went to him and told
him of the child's plight.
"Sick is 'e?" the constable exclaimed.
"Yes," Henry answered. "He looked hungry, poor little chap, and so I
bought him some of the pudding they sell in that shop!"
The policeman looked at him for a few moments. "Well, of course, you
meant it kindly, sir!" he said, "but if I was you I wouldn't do that
again. If you'll excuse me sayin' it, sir, it was a damn silly thing to
do!"
"Why?"
"Why! 'Alf the kids about 'ere is too 'ungry to eat. That kid ought to
be in the 'ospital by rights. Don't never give 'em no puddin' or stuff
like that, sir. Their stomachs can't stand it. Nah, then," he said to
the sick child, "you 'op 'ome, young 'un. You didn't ought to be 'angin'
about 'ere, you know, upsettin' the traffic an' mykin' a mess on the
pyvement. Gow on! Git aht of it!"
The boys ran off, leaving Henry staring blankly after them. "'E'll be
all right, sir!" said the policeman. "It's no good tryin' to do nothink
for 'em. They're down, guv'nor, an' that's all about it. I seen a lot of
yooman nature down about 'ere, an' you can tyke it from me, them kids is
down an' they'll stay down, an' that's all you can say about it.
Good-night, sir!"
"Good-night!" said Henry.
He moved away, feeling sick and miserable and angry.
"It's beastly," he said to himself. "That's what it is. Beastly!"
6
His mind was occupied by violent thoughts about the two children whom he
had fed with currant pudding, and he did not observe what he was doing
or where he was going. He was in a wide, dark street where there were
tram-lines, but he could not remember seeing a tramcar pass by. He was
tired and although he was not hungry, he was conscious of a missed meal,
and he was thirsty. "I'd better turn back," he said to himself, turning
as he did so. He wondered where he was, and he resolved that he would
ask the first policeman he met to tell him in what part of London he now
was and what was the quickest way to get out of it.
"It was silly of me to come here at all," he murmured, and then he
turned quickly and stared across the street.
A woman had screamed somewhere near by ... on the other side of the
street, he thought ... and as he looked, he saw figures struggling, and
then they parted and one of them, a woman, ran away towards a lamppost,
holding her hands before her in an appealing fashion, and crying, "Oh,
don't! Don't hit me!..." The other figure was that of a man, and as the
woman shrank from him, the man advanced towards her with his fist
uplifted....
Henry could feel himself shrinking back into the shadow.
"He's going to hit her," he was saying to himself, and he closed his
eyes, afraid lest he should see the man's fist smashing into the woman's
face. He could hear a foul oath uttered by the man and the woman's
scream as she retreated still further from him ... and then, trembling
with fright, he ran across the street and thrust himself between them.
"Oh, my God, what am I doing?" he moaned to himself as he stood in the
glare of the yellow light that fell from the street lamp. He felt rather
than saw that the woman had risen from the ground and run away the
moment the man's attention was distracted from her, and a shudder of
fear ran through him as he realised that he was alone. He could see the
man's brutal face and his blazing, drink-inflamed eyes, and in the
middle of his fear, he thought how ugly the man's eyebrows were ... one
long, black line from eye to eye across the top of his nose. The man,
his fist clenched and raised, advanced towards him. "He's going to hit
me now," Henry thought. "He'll knock me down and ... and kick me!...
These people always kick you!..."
He stood still waiting for the blow, mesmerised by the man's blazing
eyes; but the man, though his fist was still clenched, did not strike
him. He reeled up to him so closely that Henry was sickened by the
smell of his drink-sodden breath. "Fight for a woman, would you?" he
shouted at him. "Eih? P'tect a woman, would you?..."
Henry wanted to laugh. The man was repeating phrases from melodramas!...
"Tyke a woman's part, eih? I know you, you bloody toff! You ... you
think you're a bloody 'ero, eih, p'tectin' a woman from 'er 'usband!" He
pushed Henry aside, almost falling on the pavement as he did so. "I've a
goo' mind to break your bloody neck for you, see, bloody toff,
interferin' ... 'usband an' wife. See? Thash what I'll do!..."
He came again at Henry, but still he did not strike. He mumbled his
melodramatic phrases, swaying in front of Henry, and threatening to
break his neck and punch his jaw and give him a thick ear, but he did no
more than that, and while he threatened, a crowd gathered out of the
shadows, and a woman, with bare arms, touched Henry's arm and drew him
away from the drunken man. "You 'op it, mister," she said, "or you'll
get 'urt!" She pushed him out of the crowd, slapping a lad in the face
who had jostled him and said, "Gawblimey, look at Percy!" and when she
had got him away from them, she told him again to 'op it.
"Thank you!..." he began.
"Don't you wyste no time, mister, but 'op it quick," she interrupted,
giving him a push forward.
"But I don't know where I am," he replied.
"Dunno w'ere you are!... Well, of course, you look like that! You're in
Bermondsey, mister, an' if you tyke my advice you'll go 'ome an' sty
'ome. People like you didden ought to be let out alone! You go 'ome to
your mother, sir! The first turnin' on the right'll bring you to the
trams...."
He did as she told him, hurrying away from the dark street as quickly as
he could. He was trembling. Every nerve in his body seemed to be
strained, and his eyes had the tired feel they always had when he was
deeply agitated.
"My God," he said, "what an ass I was to do that!"
7
Gilbert and Roger were sitting together when he got home.
"Hilloa, Quinny!" Gilbert exclaimed as he looked at Henry's white face.
"What have you been up to?"
He told them of his adventure in Bermondsey.
"You do do some damn funny things, Quinny!" said Gilbert, going to the
sideboard and getting out the whisky. "Here, have a drop of this stuff.
You look completely pipped!"
"I don't think I should make a habit of knight-errantry, if I were you,"
said Roger. "Not in slums at all events!"
"Has Ninian come back yet?" Henry asked, sipping the whisky.
"He's gone to bed. The _Gigantic_ got off all right, but there was
trouble at the start. She fouled a cruiser or something. Ninian's full
of it. He'll tell you the whole rigmarole in the morning. You'd better
trot off to bed when you've drunk that, and for God's sake, Quinny,
don't try to be heroic again. You're not cut out for that sort of
job!..."