I’m still trying to earn a living. I’m sorry you don’t like my
articles, because they’re the way to that possibility. You say
you’re ready to forget and forgive. That seems to me hardly good
enough. When you tell me you love me again and want my love,
I’ll come to you. I thought that was understood between
us. . . .
He referred to her sympathy with his family afflictions:
. . . Yes, it’s sad about Digby, and mother’s death leaves me
very much alone. . . .
That correspondence with Joyce didn’t seem to alter much in their
relations to each other. It left him in exactly the same situation
spiritually, and physically—a husband “on probation,” with a verdict of
disloyalty against him, but an offer of pardon on recantation of faith.
No, not good enough! Hopelessly impossible on any basis of self-respect
or decent comradeship, to say nothing of love. Yet tempting to a man who
hated loneliness, and was alone; who, at the very sight of Joyce’s
handwriting, felt the same thrill of passion for her which had come to
him always at the touch of her finger-tips, or the quick toss of her
head, or the whiteness of her neck. It was a temptation to his weakness,
but he was stubborn as well as weak, and wouldn’t yield to such a
miserable compact as this surrender would mean to his manhood.
He was in a wretched state of mind, which Joyce’s last letter
intensified in wretchedness. Susan’s agony, Digby’s murder, his mother’s
death, his father’s grief and rage—for he was raging now with more
personal passion against the Irish rebels—had smitten him at a time
when Joyce’s desertion would have been enough to cast him into the
blackest depths. It seemed as though God, or fate, had a special grudge
against him, and kicked him when he was down.
The last blow—a feeble tap, perhaps, yet overpowering for a while to
his moral strength—befell him in a letter from a man named Heatherdew,
into whose hands, as literary agent, Christy had placed the war-book.
MY DEAR MAJOR POLLARD [he wrote]:
For our friend Christy’s sake, as well as in the usual way of
business, I have spared no trouble in trying to find a publisher
for your book, “The Machine Gun Company,” which I may say I have
read with the greatest interest and admiration. It has now been
to eight publishers and all of them, without exception, express
the opinion that, at the present time, there is no market for
war books. The public, they say (I think incorrectly) wish to
forget the war. My own opinion is that they are tired of war
books which do not go to the heart of the business which you and
I know. However, I consider it useless to make further effort,
and I therefore return the manuscript, advising you to hold it
for a year or two, when it may have a better chance.
It was a vital disappointment. Bertram had always clung to the hope of
this book as a compensation for his failure to get “a job,” as a
justification, even, of his life. He had put everything that was in him
into this book, his secret agonies and fears, his quality of courage,
his love of England, his understanding of the men, the ardour that was
his in the beginning of war, the joy in comradeship, the later
disillusion, the final disgust.
This was the war as it had passed through his own soul, and through the
souls of all the men he knew. It was the Absolute Truth, as he had seen
it and known it. It was, above all, his defence against Joyce’s
accusations, and the general suspicion of her family and friends that he
was a “slacker,” unpatriotic, and careless of his country’s honour.
Janet Welford had spoken well of it. “It’s good!” she had said, and had
praised it as “almost great.” Well, here it was back again, soiled by
publishers’ readers, scrumpled through the post, condemned.
Bertram flung it into a drawer of the little old desk where, as a boy in
his father’s house, he had written secret verses, youthful essays about
London life, and, later, love-letters to Joyce Bellairs.
An immense gloom closed down upon his spirit. What was the use of
anything? He had tried hard, and failed utterly, in every way. He had
made a frightful mucker of life. His luck was out. Why kick against it?
Why not face up to the futility of life—for him, anyhow? He hadn’t even
had the decent luck of going out with the men who had met a bullet or a
bit of shell. Those things had passed him by, though he hadn’t dodged
them. That was a decent way of death, and honourable, the easiest way
out of all difficulties. Even now, a bullet would solve a lot of
problems, and answer that alternative which Joyce had put: “It must be
one thing or the other.” He wondered if she would weep as much for him
as for the Lely portrait of Rupert Bellairs. She might like the
sentiment of being a widow for a little while. She would look beautiful
in her weeds, with a little bit of white lace under the black round her
gold-spun hair, almost as beautiful as Lady Martock. Kenneth Murless
would say all kinds of consoling things in his gentlemanly way. All her
friends would write, wire, send messages, flowers. The two Russian girls
would utter extravagances in broken English, and the Countess Lydia
would enquire whether Joyce’s husband had died a Bolshevik, or suggest
that he had killed himself at the bidding of Lenin and Trotsky, “who
have agents everywhere, _ma chérie_!” Well, he would provide a lot of
pleasure to all kinds of people, and end his own misery at the same
time.
He had left his old service revolver in the study at Holland Street.
Quite easy to get, if Edith were still there, as parlour-maid.
Chatty Edith! She would be glad to see him again. He would have to
invent all kinds of lies to explain his absence and his visit, unless he
told her straight out that Joyce had deserted him and he’d come to find
his revolver to blow his brains out. He could hardly do that! She would
scream, or send for the police, or swoon away. Then he would have to
fetch the doctor, or throw water at her, or some nuisance of that kind.
Anyhow, he could get his revolver. He had killed a German with it once.
That was in a raid near Bullecourt. He remembered the jump into the
German trench, after the long crawl across No-Man’s Land and the long
wait every time a Verrey light went up and he had to lie doggo trying to
look like a sand-bag. The German sentry tried to stick him with his
bayonet, and he shoved the revolver into the fellow’s face and fired it.
It was the only thing to do, but he was sorry afterwards. He had
searched the man’s pockets for letters and post cards—the Intelligence
wanted them for identifying a German division. They were all letters
from a girl named Lisa. She was dying to see Karl again. She pined for
his dear kisses. She was a lonely little Lisa in Magdeburg. If only the
cruel war would end! So, in a dozen letters, and a score of closely
scribbled postcards. He was sorry he’d killed the fellow stone dead,
with that revolver in Holland Street. Now Karl would be revenged by the
same weapon that had killed him. Ironical that! A sort of Greek fate
business.
Bertram took the ’bus from the top of Sloane Street to High Street,
Kensington, and walked up the narrow passage to Holland Street by the
west side of St. Mary Abbot’s. That was where he had married Joyce.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” said the women outside, and he agreed and thought
her the most beautiful thing on earth, and marvelled at his luck. A
little more than a year ago!
Newspaper placards were filled with Strike news.
“Drastic Train Cuts.” “Sensational Scene in House of Commons.” “Nat
Verney States the Miners’ Case.” “No General Strike.”
How trivial was all that nonsense. What would it matter in a thousand
years, or eternity, or to-morrow as far as he was concerned?
The little house in Holland Street had its blinds pulled down. No answer
came when he rang the bell. No answer when he had pressed the knob six
times. The chatty Edith had gone away, and the house was abandoned.
Within a yard and a half of where he stood, at the corner of the little
front room which had been his study, in the desk by the window where he
had written the book which no one would publish, was that revolver he
wanted. Damn silly to think it was so close and he couldn’t get it! He
could hardly commit a burglary in Joyce’s house, in broad daylight! His
luck was out again. God, or Fate, refused him even this little bit of
luck!
A young policeman sauntered up Holland Street, stood on the opposite
side of the road, and then crossed over.
“Do you want anything?” he asked, suspiciously.
“No,” said Bertram. “I suppose the people have gone away.”
“Looks like it, with the blinds down,” said the policeman.
“Yes.”
Bertram sauntered slowly away from his wife’s house. . . . Not even that
bit of luck!