The Balance
A YARN OF THE GOOD OLD DAYS OF BROAD TROUSERS AND HIGH NECKED JUMPERS 
Introduction “Do you know, I don’t think I can read mine. It’s rather unkind.” “Oh, Basil, you must.” “Please, Basil.” This always happened when Basil played paper games. “No, I can’t, look it’s all scrumbled up.” “Oh, Basil, dearest, do.” “Oh, Basil, please.” “Darling Basil, you must.” “No, I won’t. Imogen will be in a rage with me.” “No, she won’t, will you, Imogen?” “Imogen, tell him you won’t be in a rage with him.” “Basil, do read it please.” “Well, then, if you promise you won’t hate me”—and he smoothed out the piece of paper. “Flower—Cactus. “Drink—Rum. “Stuff—Baize. “Furniture—Rocking-Horse. “Food—Venison. “Address—Dublin. “And Animal—Boa constrictor.” “Oh, Basil, how marvellous.” “Poor Adam, I never thought of him as Dublin, of course it’s perfect.” “Why Cactus?” “So phallic, my dear, and prickly.” “And such vulgar flowers.” “Boa constrictor is brilliant.” “Yes, his digestion you know.” “And can’t sting, only crush.” “And fascinates rabbits.” “I must draw a picture of Adam fascinating a rabbit,” and then, “Imogen, you’re not going?” “I must. I’m terribly sleepy. Don’t get drunk and wake me up, will you?” “Imogen, you are in a rage with me.” “My dear, I’m far too tired to be in a rage with anybody. Good night.” The door shut. “My dear, she’s furious.” “I knew she would be, you shouldn’t have made me read it.” “She’s been very odd all the evening, I consider.” “She told me she lunched with Adam before she came down.” “I expect she ate too much. One does with Adam, don’t you find?” “Just libido.” “But you know, I’m rather proud of that character all the same. I wonder why none of us ever thought of Dublin before.” “Basil, do you think Imogen can have been having an affaire with Adam, really?” 
Circumstances NOTE.—No attempt, beyond the omission of some of the aspirates, has been made at a phonetic rendering of the speech of Gladys and Ada; they are the cook and house-parlourmaid from a small house in Earls Court, and it is to be supposed that they speak as such. The conversations in the film are deduced by the experienced picture-goer from the gestures of the actors; only those parts which appear in capitals are actual “captions.” THE COCKATRICE CLUB 2.30 A.M. A CENTRE OF LONDON NIGHT LIFE. The “Art title” shows a still life of a champagne bottle, glasses, and a comic mask—or is it yawning? “Oh, Gladys, it’s begun; I knew we’d be late.” “Never mind, dear, I can see the way. Oh, I say—I am sorry. Thought the seat was empty—really I did.” Erotic giggling and a slight struggle. “Give over, can’t you, and let me get by—saucy kid.” “’Ere you are, Gladys, there’s two seats ’ere.” “Well I never—tried to make me sit on ’is knee.” “Go on. I say, Gladys, what sort of picture is this—is it comic?” The screen is almost completely dark as though the film has been greatly over-exposed. Fitful but brilliant illumination reveals a large crowd dancing, talking and eating. “No, Ada—that’s lightning. I dare say it’s a desert storm. I see a picture like that the other day with Fred.” 
EVERYBODY LOVES MY BABY. Close up: the head of a girl. “That’s ’is baby. See if she ain’t.” It is rather a lovely head, shingled and superbly poised on its neck. One is just beginning to appreciate its exquisite modelling—the film is too poor to give any clear impression of texture—when it is flashed away and its place taken by a stout and elderly man playing a saxophone. The film becomes obscure—after the manner of the more modern Continental studios: the saxophonist has become the vortex of movement; faces flash out and disappear again; fragmentary captions will not wait until they are read. “Well, I do call this soft.” A voice with a Cambridge accent from the more expensive seats says, “Expressionismus.” Gladys nudges Ada and says, “Foreigner.” After several shiftings of perspective, the focus becomes suddenly and stereoscopically clear. The girl is seated at a table leaning towards a young man who is lighting her cigarette for her. Three or four others join them at the table and sit down. They are all in evening dress. “No, it isn’t comic, Ada—it’s Society.” “Society’s sometimes comic. You see.” The girl is protesting that she must go. “Adam, I must. Mother thinks I went out to a theatre with you and your mother. I don’t know what will happen if she finds I’m not in.” There is a general leave-taking and paying of bills. “I say, Gladys, ’e’s ’ad a drop too much, ain’t ’e?” The hero and heroine drive away in a taxi. Halfway down Pont Street, the heroine stops the taxi. “Don’t let him come any farther, Adam. Lady R. will hear.” “Good night, Imogen dear.” “Good night, Adam.” She hesitates for a moment and then kisses him. Adam and the taxi drive away. Close up of Adam. He is a young man of about twenty-two, clean-shaven, with thick, very dark hair. He looks so infinitely sad that even Ada is shaken. Can it be funny? “Buster Keaton looks sad like that sometimes—don’t ’e?” Ada is reassured. Buster Keaton looks sad; Buster Keaton is funny. Adam looks sad; Adam is funny. What could be clearer? The cab stops and Adam gives it all his money. It wishes him “Good-night” and disappears into the darkness. Adam unlocks the front door. On his way upstairs he takes his letters from the hall table; they are two bills and an invitation to a dance. He reaches his room, undresses and sits for some time wretchedly staring at himself in the glass. Then he gets into bed. He dare not turn out the light because he knows that if he does the room will start spinning round him; he must be there thinking of Imogen until he becomes sober. The film becomes darker. The room begins to swim and then steadies itself. It is getting quite dark. The orchestra plays very softly the first bars of “Everybody loves my baby.” It is quite dark. Close up: the heroine. Close up: the hero asleep. Fade out. 
NEXT MORNING 8.30 A.M. The hero still asleep. The electric light is still burning. A disagreeable-looking maid enters, turns out the light and raises the blind. Adam wakes up. “Good morning, Parsons.” “Good morning, sir.” “Is the bathroom empty?” “I think Miss Jane’s just this minute gone along there.” She picks up Adam’s evening clothes from the floor. Adam lies back and ponders the question of whether he shall miss his bath or miss getting a place at the studio. Miss Jane in her bath. Adam deciding to get up. Tired out but with no inclination to sleep, Adam dresses. He goes down to breakfast. “It can’t be Society, Gladys, they aren’t eating grape fruit.” “It’s such a small ’ouse too.” “And no butler.” “Look, there’s ’is little old mother. She’ll lead ’im straight in the end. See if she don’t.” “Well, that dress isn’t at all what I call fashionable, if you ask me.” “Well, if it isn’t funny and it isn’t murder and it isn’t Society, what is it?” “P’r’aps there’ll be a murder yet.” “Well, I calls it soft, that’s what I calls it.” “Look now, ’e’s got a invitation to a dance from a Countess.” “I don’t understand this picture.” The Countess’s invitation. “Why, there isn’t even a coronet on it, Ada.” The little old mother pours out tea for him and tells him about the death of a friend in the Times that morning; when he has drunk some tea and eaten some fish, she bustles him out of the house. Adam walks to the corner of the road, where he gets on to a bus. The neighbourhood is revealed as being Regent’s Park. 
THE CENTRE OF LONDON’S QUARTIER LATIN THE MALTBY SCHOOL OF ART. No trouble has been spared by the producers to obtain the right atmosphere. The top studio at Maltby’s is already half full of young students when Adam enters. Work has not yet started, but the room is alive with busy preparation. A young woman in an overall—looking rather more like a chorus girl than a painter—is making herself very dirty cleaning her palette; another near by is setting up an easel; a third is sharpening a pencil; a fourth is smoking a cigarette in a long holder. A young man, also in an overall, is holding a drawing and appraising it at arm’s length, his head slightly on one side; a young man with untidy hair is disagreeing with him. Old Mr. Maltby, an inspiring figure in a shabby silk dressing gown, is telling a tearful student that if she misses another composition class, she will be asked to leave the school. Miss Philbrick, the secretary, interrupts the argument between the two young men to remind them that neither of them has paid his fee for the month. The girl who was setting up the easel is trying to borrow some “fixative”; the girl with the cigarette holder lends her some. Mr. Maltby is complaining of the grittiness of the charcoal they make nowadays. Surely this is the Quartier Latin itself? The “set,” too, has been conscientiously planned. The walls are hung with pots, pans and paintings—these last mainly a series of rather fleshly nudes which young Mr. Maltby has been unable to sell. A very brown skeleton hangs over the dais at the far end “I say, Gladys, do you think we shall see ’is models?” “Coo, Ada, you are a one.” Adam comes in and goes towards the board on which hangs a plan of the easel places; the girl who was lending the “fixative” comes over to him, still smoking. “THERE’S A PLACE EMPTY NEXT TO ME, DOURE, DO COME THERE.” Close up of the girl. “She’s in love with ’im.” Close up of Adam. “’E’s not in love with ’er, though, is ’e, Ada?” The place the girl points out is an excellent one in the second row; the only other one besides the very front and the very back is round at the side, next to the stove. Adam signs his initials opposite this place. “I’M SORRY—I’M AFRAID THAT I FIND THE LIGHT WORRIES ME FROM WHERE YOU ARE—ONE GETS SO FEW SHADOWS—DON’T YOU FIND?” The girl is not to be discouraged; she lights another cigarette. “I SAW YOU LAST NIGHT AT THE COCKATRICE—YOU DIDN’T SEE ME THOUGH.” “THE COCKATRICE—LAST NIGHT—OH YES—WHAT A PITY!” “WHO WERE ALL THOSE PEOPLE YOU WERE WITH?” “OH, I DON’T KNOW, JUST SOME PEOPLE, YOU KNOW.” He makes a movement as if to go away. “WHO WAS THAT GIRL YOU WERE DANCING WITH SO MUCH—THE PRETTY ONE WITH FAIR HAIR—IN BLACK?” “OH, DON’T YOU KNOW HER? YOU MUST MEET HER ONE DAY—I SAY, I’M AWFULLY SORRY, BUT I MUST GO DOWN AND GET SOME PAPER FROM MISS PHILBRICK.” “I CAN LEND YOU SOME.” But he is gone. Ada says, “Too much talk in this picture, eh, Gladys?” and the voice with the Cambridge accent is heard saying something about the “elimination of the caption.” 
ONE OF LIFE’S UNFORTUNATES. Enter a young woman huddled in a dressing-gown, preceded by young Mr. Maltby. “The model—coo—I say.” She has a slight cold and sniffles into a tiny ball of handkerchief; she mounts the dais and sits down ungracefully. Young Mr. Maltby nods good morning to those of the pupils who catch his eye; the girl who was talking to Adam catches his eye; he smiles. “’E’s in love with ’er.” She returns his smile with warmth. Young Mr. Maltby rattles the stove, opens the skylight a little and then turns to the model, who slips off her dressing gown and puts it over the back of the chair. “Coo—I say. Ada—my!” “Well I never.” The young man from Cambridge goes on talking about Matisse unfalteringly as though he were well accustomed to this sort of thing. Actually he is much intrigued. She has disclosed a dull pink body with rather short legs and red elbows; like most professional models her toes are covered with bunions and malformed. Young Mr. Maltby sets her on the chair in an established Art School pose. The class settles to work. Adam returns with some sheets of paper and proceeds to arrange them on his board. Then he stands for some time glaring at the model without drawing a line. “’E’s in love with ’er.” But for once Ada’s explanation is wrong—and then begins sketching in the main lines of the pose. He works on for five or six minutes, during which time the heat of the stove becomes increasingly uncomfortable. Old Mr. Maltby, breathing smoke, comes up behind him. “Now have you placed it? What is your centre? Where is the foot going to come? Where is the top of the head coming?” Adam has not placed it; he rubs it out angrily and starts again. Meanwhile a vivid flirtation is in progress between young Mr. Maltby and the girl who was in love with Adam. He is leaning over and pointing out mistakes to her; his hand rests on her shoulder; she is wearing a low-necked jumper; his thumb strays over the skin of her neck; she wriggles appreciatively. He takes the charcoal from her and begins drawing in the corner of her paper; her hair touches his cheek; neither of them heed the least what he is drawing. “These Bo’emians don’t ’alf carry on, eh, Gladys?” In half an hour Adam has rubbed out his drawing three times. Whenever he is beginning to interest himself in some particular combination of shapes, the model raises her ball of handkerchief to her nose, and after each sniff relapses into a slightly different position. The anthracite stove glows with heat; he works on for another half hour. 
THE ELEVEN O’CLOCK REST. 
Most of the girls light cigarettes; the men, who have increased in number with many late arrivals, begin to congregate away from them in the corner. One of them is reading The Studio. Adam lights a pipe, and standing back, surveys his drawing with detestation. Close up; Adam’s drawing. It is not really at all bad. In fact it is by far the best in the room; there is one which will be better at the end of the week, but at present there is nothing of it except some measurements and geometrical figures. Its author is unaware that the model is resting; he is engaged in calculating the medial section of her height in the corner of the paper. Adam goes out on to the stairs, which are lined with women from the lower studio eating buns out of bags. He returns to the studio. The girl who has been instructed by young Mr. Maltby comes up to him and looks at his drawing. “Rather Monday morningish.” That was exactly what young Mr. Maltby had said about hers. The model resumes her pose with slight differences; the paper bags are put away, pipes are knocked out; the promising pupil is calculating the area of a rectangle. The scene changes to 158 PONT STREET. 
THE LONDON HOUSE OF MR. CHARLES AND LADY ROSEMARY QUEST. An interior is revealed in which the producers have at last made some attempt to satisfy the social expectations of Gladys and Ada. It is true that there is very little marble and no footmen in powder and breeches, but there is nevertheless an undoubted air of grandeur about the high rooms and Louis Seize furniture, and there is a footman. The young man from Cambridge estimates the household at six thousand a year, and though somewhat overgenerous, it is a reasonable guess. Lady Rosemary’s collection of Limoges can be seen in the background. Upstairs in her bedroom Imogen Quest is telephoning. “What a lovely Kimony, Ada.” Miss Philbrick comes into the upper studio at Maltby’s, where Adam is at last beginning to take some interest in his drawing. “MISS QUEST WANTS TO SPEAK TO YOU ON THE TELEPHONE, MR. DOURE. I told her that it was against the rules for students to use the telephone except in the luncheon hour” (there is always a pathetic game of make-believe at Maltby’s played endlessly by Miss Philbrick and old Mr. Maltby, in which they pretend that somewhere there is a code of rules which all must observe), “but she says that it is most important. I do wish you would ask your friends not to ring you up in the mornings.” Adam puts down his charcoal and follows her to the office. There over the telephone is poor Miss Philbrick’s notice written in the script writing she learned at night classes in Southampton Row. “Students are forbidden to use the telephone during working hours.” “Good morning, Imogen.” “Yes, quite safely—very tired though.” “I can’t, Imogen—for one thing I haven’t the money.” “No, you can’t afford it either. Anyway, I’m dining with Lady R. tonight. You can tell me then, surely?” “Why not?” “Who lives there?” “Not that awful Basil Hay?” “Well, perhaps he is.” “I used to meet him at Oxford sometimes.” “WELL, IF YOU’RE SURE YOU CAN PAY I’LL COME TO LUNCHEON WITH YOU.” “WHY THERE? IT’S FRIGHTFULLY EXPENSIVE.” “STEAK TARTARE—WHAT’S THAT?” The Cambridge voice explains, “Quite raw, you know, with olives and capers and vinegar and things.” “My dear, you’ll turn into a werewolf.” “I should love it if you did.” “Yes, I’m afraid I am getting a little morbid.” “One-ish. Please don’t be too late—I’ve only three-quarters of an hour.” “Good-bye, Imogen.” So much of the forbidden conversation is audible to Miss Philbrick. Adam returns to the studio and draws a few heavy and insensitive lines. He rubs at them but they still show up grubbily in the pores of the paper. He tears up his drawing; old Mr. Maltby remonstrates; young Mr. Maltby is explaining the construction of the foot and does not look up. Adam attempts another drawing. Close up of Adam’s drawing. “’E’s thinking of ’er.” Unerring Ada! “These films would be so much more convincing if they would only employ decent draughtsmen to do the hero’s drawings for him—don’t you think?” Bravo, the cultured bourgeoisie! 
TWELVE O’CLOCK. There is a repetition of all the excursions of eleven o’clock. The promising pupil is working out the ratio of two cubes. The girl who has been learning the construction of the foot comes over to him and looks over his shoulder; he starts violently and loses count. Adam takes his hat and stick and goes out. Adam on a bus. Adam studying Poussin at the National Gallery. Close up of Adam studying Poussin. “’E’s thinking of ’er.” The clock of St. Martin-in-the-Fields strikes one. Adam leaves the National Gallery. 
TEN MINUTES PAST ONE. THE DINING ROOM OF THE RESTAURANT DE LA TOUR DE FORCE. Enter Adam; he looks round but as he had expected, Imogen has not yet arrived. He sits down at a table laid for two and waits. Though not actually in Soho, the Tour de Force gives unmistakably an impression half cosmopolitan, half theatrical, which Ada would sum up in the word “Bo’emian.” The tables are well spaced and the wines are excellent though extremely costly. Adam orders some sherry and waits, dividing his attention between the door through which Imogen will enter and the contemplation of a middle-aged political lawyer of repute who at the next table is trying to keep amused a bored and exquisitely beautiful youth of eighteen. 
QUARTER TO TWO. Enter Imogen. The people at the other tables say, “Look, there’s Imogen Quest. I can’t see what people find in her, can you?” or else, “I wonder who that is. Isn’t she attractive?” “My dear, I’m terribly late. I am sorry. I’ve had the most awful morning shopping with Lady R.” She sits down at the table. “You haven’t got to rush back to your school, have you? Because I’m never going to see you again. The most awful thing has happened—you order lunch, Adam. I’m very hungry. I want to eat a steak tartare and I don’t want to drink anything.” Adam orders lunch. “LADY R. SAYS I’M SEEING TOO MUCH OF YOU. ISN’T IT TOO AWFUL?” Gladys at last is quite at home. The film has been classified. Young love is being thwarted by purse-proud parents. Imogen waves aside a wagon of hors d’oeuvre. “We had quite a scene. She came into my room before I was up and wanted to know all about last night. Apparently she heard me come in. And, oh Adam, I can’t tell you what dreadful things she’s been saying about you. My dear, what an odd luncheon—you’ve ordered everything I most detest.” Adam drinks soup. “THAT’S WHY I’M BEING SENT OFF TO THATCH THIS AFTERNOON. And Lady R. is going to talk to you seriously tonight. She’s put Mary and Andrew off so that she can get you alone. Adam, how can you expect me to eat all this? and you haven’t ordered yourself anything to drink.” Adam eats an omelette alone. Imogen crumbles bread and talks to him. “But, my dear, you mustn’t say anything against Basil because I simply adore him, and he’s got the loveliest, vulgarest mother—you’d simply love her.” The steak tartare is wheeled up and made before them. Close up; a dish of pulverized and bleeding meat: hands pouring in immoderate condiments. “Do you know, Adam, I don’t think I do want this after all. It reminds me so of Henry.” 
HALF PAST TWO. Adam has finished luncheon. “SO YOU SEE, DEAR, WE SHALL NEVER, NEVER MEET AGAIN—PROPERLY I MEAN. Isn’t it just too like Lady R. for words.” Imogen stretches out her hand across the table and touches Adam’s. Close up; Adam’s hand, a signet ring on the little finger and a smudge of paint on the inside of the thumb. Imogen’s hand—very white and manicured—moves across the screen and touches it. Gladys gives a slight sob. “YOU DON’T MIND TOO DREADFULLY—DO YOU, ADAM?” Adam does mind—very much indeed. He has eaten enough to be thoroughly sentimental. The Restaurant de la Tour de Force is nearly empty. The political barrister has gone his unregenerate way; the waiters stand about restlessly. Imogen pays the bill and they rise to go. “Adam, you must come to Euston and see me off. We can’t part just like this—for always, can we? Hodges is meeting me there with the luggage.” They get into a taxi. Imogen puts her hand in his and they sit like this for a few minutes without speaking. Then Adam leans towards her and they kiss. Close up: Adam and Imogen kissing. There is a tear (which finds a ready response in Ada and Gladys, who sob uncontrollably) in Adam’s eye; Imogen’s lips luxuriously disposed by the pressure. “Like the Bronzino Venus.” “IMOGEN, YOU NEVER REALLY CARED, DID YOU? IF YOU HAD YOU WOULDN’T GO AWAY LIKE THIS. IMOGEN, DID YOU EVER CARE—REALLY?” “HAVEN’T I GIVEN PROOF THAT I DID. Adam dear, why will you always ask such tiresome questions. Don’t you see how impossible it all is? We’ve only about five minutes before we reach Euston.” They kiss again. Adam says, “Damn Lady R.” They reach Euston. Hodges is waiting for them. She has seen about the luggage; she has seen about tickets; she has even bought magazines; there is nothing to be done. Adam stands beside Imogen waiting for the train to start; she looks at a weekly paper. “Do look at this picture of Sybil. Isn’t it odd? I wonder when she had it taken.” The train is about to start. She gets into the carriage and holds out her hand. “Good-bye, darling. You will come to mother’s dance in June, won’t you? I shall be miserable if you don’t. Perhaps we shall meet before then. Good-bye.” The train moves out of the station. Close up. Imogen in the carriage studying the odd photograph of Sybil. Adam on the platform watching the train disappear. Fade out. “Well, Ada, what d’you think of it?” “Fine.” “It is curious the way that they can never make their heroes and heroines talk like ladies and gentlemen—particularly in moments of emotion.” 
A QUARTER OF AN HOUR LATER. Adam is still at Euston, gazing aimlessly at a bookstall. The various prospects before him appear on the screen. Maltby’s. The anthracite stove, the model, the amorous student—(“the Vamp”), the mathematical student, his own drawing. Dinner at home. His father, his mother, Parsons, his sister with her stupid, pimply face and her dull jealousy of all Imogen said and did and wore. Dinner at Pont Street, head to head with Lady Rosemary. Dinner by himself at some very cheap restaurant in Soho. And always at the end of it, Solitude and the thought of Imogen. Close up: Adam registering despair gradually turning to resolution. Adam on a bus going to Hanover Gate. He walks to his home. Parsons. Parsons opens the door. Mrs. Doure is out; Miss Jane is out; no, Adam does not want any tea. Adam’s room. It is a rather charming one, high at the top of the house, looking over the trees. At full moon the animals in the Zoological Gardens can be heard from there. Adam comes in and locks the door. Gladys is there already. “Suicide, Ada.” “Yes, but she’ll come in time to stop ’im. See if she don’t.” “Don’t you be too sure. This is a queer picture, this is.” He goes to his desk and takes a small blue bottle from one of the pigeon holes. “What did I tell yer? Poison.” “The ease with which persons in films contrive to provide themselves with the instruments of death ...” He puts it down, and taking out a sheet of paper writes. “Last message to ’er. Gives ’er time to come and save ’im. You see.” “AVE IMPERATRIX IMMORTALIS, MORITURUS TE SALUTANT.” Exquisitely written. He folds it, puts it in an envelope and addresses it. Then he pauses, uncertain. A vision appears: The door of Adam’s room. Mrs. Doure, changed for dinner, comes up to it and knocks; she knocks repeatedly, and in dismay calls for her husband. Professor Doure tries the door and shakes it. Parsons arrives and Jane. After some time the door is forced open; all the time Professor Doure is struggling with it, Mrs. Doure’s agitation increases. Jane makes futile attempts to calm her. At last they all burst into the room. Adam is revealed lying dead on the floor. Scene of unspeakable vulgarity involving tears, hysteria, the telephone, the police. Fade out. Close up. Adam registering disgust. Another vision: A native village in Africa on the edge of the jungle; from one of the low thatch huts creeps a man naked and sick to death, his wives lamenting behind him. He drags himself into the jungle to die alone. “Lor, Gladys. Instruction.” Another vision: Rome in the time of Petronius. A young patrician reclines in the centre of his guests. The producers have spared no effort in creating an atmosphere of superb luxury. The hall, as if in some fevered imagining of Alma Tadema, is built of marble, richly illumined by burning Christians. From right and left barbarian slave boys bring in a course of roasted peacocks. In the centre of the room a slave girl dances to a puma. Exit several of the guests to the vomitorium. Unborn pigs stewed in honey and stuffed with truffles and nightingales’ tongues succeed the peacocks. The puma, inflamed to sudden passion, springs at the girl and bears her to the ground; he stands over her, one paw planted upon her breast from which ooze tiny drops of blood. She lies there on the Alma Tadema marble, her eyes fixed upon the host in terrified appeal. But he is toying with one of the serving boys and does not notice her. More guests depart to the vomitorium. The puma devours the girl. At length, when the feast is at its height, a basin of green marble is borne in. Water, steaming and scented, is poured into it. The host immerses his hand, and a Negro woman who, throughout the banquet has crouched like some angel of death beside his couch, draws a knife from her loin cloth and buries it deep in his wrist. The water becomes red in the green marble. The guests rise to go, and with grave courtesy, though without lifting himself from the couch, he bids them each farewell. Soon he is left alone. The slave boys huddle together in the corners, their bare shoulders pressed against each other. Moved by savage desire, the Negress begins suddenly to kiss and gnaw the deadening arm. He motions her listlessly aside. The martyrs burn lower until there is only a faint glimmer of light in the great hall. The smell of cooking drifts out into the terrace and is lost on the night air. The puma can just be discerned licking its paws in the gloom. Adam lights a pipe and taps restlessly with the corner of the envelope on the writing table. Then he puts the bottle in his pocket and unlocks the door. He turns and walks over to his bookshelves and looks through them. Adam’s bookshelves; it is rather a remarkable library for a man of his age and means. Most of the books have a certain rarity and many are elaborately bound; there are also old books of considerable value given him from time to time by his father. He makes a heap on the floor of the best of them. MR. MACASSOR’S BOOKSHOP. There is about Mr. Macassor’s bookshop the appearance of the private library of an ancient and unmethodical scholar. Books are everywhere, on walls, floor and furniture, as though laid down at some interruption and straightway forgotten. First editions and early illustrated books lie hidden among Sermons and Blue Books for the earnest adventurer to find. Mr. Macassor hides his treasures with care. An elderly man is at the moment engaged in investigating a heap of dusty volumes while Mr. Macassor bends longingly over the table engrossed in a treatise on Alchemy. Suddenly the adventurer’s back straightens; his search has been rewarded and he emerges into the light, bearing a tattered but unquestionably genuine copy of the first edition of “Hydrotaphia.” He asks Mr. Macassor the price. Mr. Macassor adjusts his spectacles and brushes some snuff from his waistcoat and, bearing the book to the door, examines it as if for the first time. “Ah, yes, a delightful work. Yes, yes, marvellous style,” and he turns the pages fondly, “‘The large stations of the dead,’ what a noble phrase.” He looks at the cover and wipes it with his sleeve. “Why, I had forgotten I had this copy. It used to belong to Horace Walpole, only someone has stolen the bookplate—the rascal. Still, it was only the Oxford one—the armorial one, you know. Well, well, sir, since you have found it I suppose you have the right to claim it. Five guineas, shall I say. But I hate to part with it.” The purchaser is a discerning man. Had he seen this same book baldly described in a catalogue he would not have paid half this price for it in its present condition, but the excitement of pursuit and the pride of discovery more even than the legends of Strawberry Hill have distorted his sense of values. One cannot haggle with Mr. Macassor as with some mere tradesman in Charing Cross Road. The purchaser pays and goes away triumphant. It is thus that Mr. Macassor’s son at Magdalen is able to keep his rooms full of flowers and, during the season, to hunt two days a week. Enter Adam from a taxi laden with books. Mr. Macassor offers him snuff from an old tortoiseshell box. “IT’S A SAD THING TO HAVE TO SELL BOOKS, MR. DOURE. Very sad. I remember as if it was yesterday, Mr. Stevenson coming in to me to sell his books, and will you believe it, Mr. Doure, when it came to the point, after we had arranged everything, his heart failed him and he took them all away again. A great book-lover, Mr. Stevenson.” Mr. Macassor adjusts his spectacles and examines, caressingly, but like some morbid lover fastening ghoulishly upon every imperfection. “Well, and how much were you expecting for these?” Adam hazards, “Seventeen pounds,” but Mr. Macassor shakes his head sadly. Five minutes later he leaves the shop with ten pounds and gets into his taxi. 
PADDINGTON STATION. Adam in the train to Oxford; smoking, his hands deep in his overcoat pockets. “’E’s thinking of ’er.”   OXFORD. KNOW YOU HER SECRET NONE CAN UTTER; HERS OF THE BOOK, THE TRIPLE CROWN? Art title showing Book and Triple Crown; also Ox in ford. General prospect of Oxford from the train showing reservoir, gas works and part of the prison. It is raining. The station; two Indian students have lost their luggage. Resisting the romantic appeal of several hansom cabdrivers—even of one in a grey billycock hat, Adam gets into a Ford taxi. Queen Street, Carfax, the High Street, Radcliffe Camera in the distance. “Look, Ada, St. Paul’s Cathedral.” King Edward Street. The cab stops and Adam gets out. 
LORD BASINGSTOKE’S ROOMS. KING EDWARD STREET. Interior of Lord Basingstoke’s rooms. On the chimneypiece are photographs of Lord Basingstoke’s mother and two of Lord Basingstoke’s friends, wearing that peculiarly inane and serene smile only found during the last year at Eton and then only in photographs. Some massive glass paper weights and cards of invitation. On the walls are large coloured caricatures of Basil Hay drawn by himself at Eton, an early nineteenth-century engraving of Lord Basingstoke’s home; two unfinished drawings by Ernest Vaughan of the Rape of the Sabines and a wool picture of two dogs and a cat. Lord Basingstoke, contrary to all expectation, is neither drinking, gaming, nor struggling with his riding boots; he is engaged on writing a Collections Paper for his tutor. Lord Basingstoke’s paper in a pleasant, childish handwriting. “BRADLAUGH v. GOSSETT. THIS FAMOUS TEST CASE FINALLY ESTABLISHED THE DECISION THAT MARSHAL LAW IS UNKNOWN IN ENGLAND.” He crosses out “marshal” and puts “martial”; then sits biting his pen sadly. “Adam, how lovely; I had no idea you were in Oxford.” They talk for a little while. “RICHARD, CAN YOU DINE WITH ME TONIGHT. YOU MUST. I’M HAVING A FAREWELL BLIND.” Richard looks sadly at his Collections Paper and shakes his head. “My dear, I simply can’t. I’ve got to get this finished by tonight. I’m probably going to be sent down as it is.” Adam returns to his taxi. 
MR. SAYLE’S ROOMS IN MERTON. Flowers, Medici prints and Nonesuch Press editions. Mr. Sayle is playing “L’Après midi d’un Faun” on the gramophone to an American aunt. He cannot dine with Adam.  MR. HENRY QUEST’S ROOMS IN THE UGLIER PART OF MAGDALEN. The furniture provided by the College has been little changed except for the addition of some rather repulsive cushions. There are photographs of Imogen, Lady Rosemary and Mr. Macassor’s son winning the Magdalen Grind. Mr. Henry Quest has just given tea to two freshmen; he is secretary of the J.C.R. His face, through the disability of the camera, looks nearly black, actually it forms a patriotic combination with his Bullingdon tie; he has a fair moustache. Adam enters and invites him to dinner. Henry Quest does not approve of his sister’s friends; Adam cannot stand Imogen’s brother; they are always scrupulously polite to each other. “I’M SORRY, ADAM, THERE’S A MEETING OF THE CHATHAM HERE TONIGHT. I SHOULD HAVE LOVED TO, OTHERWISE. Stay and have a cigarette, won’t you? Do you know Mr. Trehearne and Mr. Bickerton-Gibbs?” Adam cannot stop, he has a taxi waiting. Henry Quest excuses his intrusion to Messrs. Trehearne and Bickerton-Gibbs. 
MR. EGERTON-VERSCHOYLE’S ROOMS IN PECKWATER. Mr. Egerton-Verschoyle has been entertaining to luncheon. Adam stirs him with his foot; he turns over and says: “There’s another in the cupboard—corkscrew’s behind the thing, you know ...” and trails off into incoherence.  MR. FURNESS’S ROOMS IN THE NEXT STAIRCASE. They are empty and dark. Mr. Furness has been sent down. 
MR. SWITHIN LANG’S ROOMS IN BEAUMONT STREET. Furnished in white and green. Water colours by Mr. Lang of Wembley, Mentone and Thatch. Some valuable china and a large number of magazines. A coloured and ornamented decanter of Cointreau on the chimneypiece and some gold-beaded glasses. The remains of a tea party are scattered about the room, and the air is heavy with cigarette smoke. Swithin, all in grey, is reading the Tatler. Enter Adam; effusive greetings. “Adam, do look at this photograph of Sybil Anderson. Isn’t it too funny?” Adam has seen it. They sit and talk for some time. “Swithin, you must come and dine with me tonight—please.” “Adam, I can’t. Gabriel’s giving a party in Balliol. Won’t you be there? Oh no, of course, you don’t know him, do you? He came up last term—such a dear, and so rich. I’m giving some people dinner first at the Crown. I’d ask you to join us, only I don’t honestly think you’d like them. It is a pity. What about tomorrow? Come over to dinner at Thame tomorrow.” Adam shakes his head. “I’m afraid I shan’t be here,” and goes out. 
AN HOUR LATER. Still alone, Adam is walking down the High Street. It has stopped raining and the lights shine on the wet road. His hand in his pocket fingers the bottle of poison. There appears again the vision of the African village and the lamenting wives. St. Mary’s clock strikes seven. Suddenly Adam’s step quickens as he is struck by an idea. 
MR. ERNEST VAUGHAN’S ROOMS. They stand in the front quadrangle of one of the uglier and less renowned colleges midway between the lavatories and the chapel. The window blind has become stuck halfway up the window so that by day they are shrouded in a twilight as though of the Nether world, and by night Ernest’s light blazes across the quad, revealing interiors of unsurpassed debauchery. Swithin once said that, like Ernest, Ernest’s rooms were a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. The walls are devoid of pictures except for a half-finished drawing of Sir Beelzebub calling for his rum, which, pinned there a term ago, has begun to droop at the corners, and, spattered with drink and leant against by innumerable shoulders, has begun to take on much the same patina as the walls. Inscriptions and drawings, ranging from almost inspired caricature to meaningless or obscene scrawlings, attest Ernest’s various stages of drunkenness. “Who is this Bach? I have not so much as heard of the man. E. V.” runs across the bedroom door in an unsteady band of red chalk, “UT EXULTAT IN COITU ELEPHAS, SIC RICARDUS,” surmounting an able drawing of the benign Basingstoke. A large composition of the Birth of Queen Victoria can be traced over the fireplace. There are broken bottles and dirty glasses and uncorrected galley proofs on the table; on the corner of the chimneypiece a beautiful decanter, the broken stopper of which has been replaced by a cork. Ernest is sitting in the broken wicker chair mending the feathers of some darts with unexpected dexterity. He is a short, sturdy young man, with fierce little eyes and a well-formed forehead. His tweeds, stained with drink and paint, have once been well-made, and still preserve a certain distinction. Women undergraduates, on the rare occasions of his appearance at lectures, not infrequently fall in love with him. “Bolshevist.” It is a reasonable mistake, but a mistake. Until his expulsion for overdue subscriptions, Ernest was a prominent member of the Canning. Adam goes through the gateway into Ernest’s College where two or three youths are standing about staring vacantly at the notice-boards. As Adam goes by, they turn round and scowl at him. “Another of Vaughan’s friends.” Their eyes follow him across the quad, to Ernest’s rooms. Ernest is somewhat surprised at Adam’s visit, who, indeed, has never shown any very warm affection for him. However, he pours out whisky. 
HALF AN HOUR LATER. It has begun to rain again. Dinner is about to be served in Ernest’s College and the porch is crowded by a shabby array of gowned young men vacantly staring at the notice-boards. Here and there a glaring suit of “plus fours” proclaims the generosity of the Rhodes Trust. Adam and Ernest make their way through the cluster of men who mutter their disapproval like peasants at the passage of some black magician. “IT’S NO GOOD TAKING ME TO ANY CLUB, DOURE, I’VE BEEN BLACK-BALLED FOR THE LOT.” “I should imagine that would have happened—even in Oxford.” 
AN HOUR LATER. AT THE CROWN. Adam and Ernest are just finishing dinner; both show marked signs of intoxication. The dining room at the Crown bears little resemblance to Adam’s epicurean dream. The walls, pathetically frescoed with views of Oxford, resound with the clattering of dirty plates. Swithin’s dinner party has just left, leaving the room immeasurably more quiet. The three women who up till now have been playing selections from Gilbert and Sullivan in the corner have finished work and begun eating their dinner. An undergraduate who has very grandly signed the bill is engaged in an argument with the manager. At a table near Adam’s three young men with gowns wound round their throats have settled themselves and ordered coffee and cream cakes; while they are waiting they discuss the Union elections. Adam orders more double whiskies. Ernest insists on sending a bottle of gin over to the party at the next table. It is rejected with some resentment, and soon they rise and go away. Adam orders more double whiskies. Ernest begins drawing a portrait of Adam on the tablecloth. He entitles it “Le vin triste,” and, indeed, throughout dinner, Adam has been growing sadder and sadder as his guest has grown more happy. He drinks and orders more with a mechanical weariness. At length, very unsteadily, they rise to go. From now onwards the film becomes a series of fragmentary scenes interspersed among hundreds of feet of confusion. “It’s going queer again, Ada. D’you think it’s meant to be like this?” A public-house in the slums. Adam leans against the settee and pays for innumerable pints of beer for armies of ragged men. Ernest is engrossed in a heated altercation about birth control with a beggar whom he has just defeated at “darts.” Another public house: Ernest, beset by two panders, is loudly maintaining the abnormality of his tastes. Adam finds a bottle of gin in his pocket and attempts to give it to a man; his wife interposes; eventually the bottle falls to the floor and is broken. Adam and Ernest in a taxi; they drive from college to college, being refused admission. Fade out. GABRIEL’S PARTY in Balliol is being an enormous success. It is a decorous assembly mostly sober. There are bottles of champagne and decanters of whisky and brandy, but most of Gabriel’s guests prefer dancing. Others sit about and talk. They are large, well-furnished rooms, and the effect is picturesque and agreeable. There are a few people in fancy dress—a Queen Victoria, a Sapphist and two Generals Gordon. A musical comedy actor, who is staying the weekend with Gabriel, stands by the gramophone looking through the records; as becomes a guest of honour he is terribly bored. Henry Quest has escaped from the Chatham and is talking about diplomatic appointments, drinking whisky and regarding everyone with disapproval. Lord Basingstoke stands talking to him, with his mind still worrying about the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia. Swithin is making himself quite delightful to the guest of honour. Mr. Egerton-Verschoyle sits very white, complaining of the cold. Enter Mr. Sayle of Merton. “GABRIEL, DO LOOK WHO I’VE FOUND IN THE QUAD. MAY I BRING HIM IN?” He pulls in Adam, who stands with a broken gin bottle in one hand staring stupidly about the room. Someone pours him out a glass of champagne. The party goes on. A voice is heard roaring “ADAM” outside the window, and suddenly there bursts in Ernest, looking incredibly drunk. His hair is disordered, his eyes glazed, his neck and face crimson and greasy. He sits down in a chair immobile; someone gives him a drink; he takes it mechanically and then pours it into the carpet and continues to stare before him. “ADAM, IS THIS IMPOSSIBLE PERSON A FRIEND OF YOURS? DO FOR GOODNESS’ SAKE TAKE HIM AWAY. GABRIEL WILL BE FURIOUS.” “HE’S THE MOST MARVELLOUS MAN, HENRY. YOU JUST DON’T KNOW HIM. COME AND TALK TO HIM.” And to his intense disgust Henry is led across the room and introduced to Ernest. Ernest at first does not seem to hear, and then slowly raises his eyes until they are gazing at Henry; by a further effort he continues to focus them. “QUEST? ANY RELATION TO ADAM’S WOMAN?” There is about to be a scene. The musical comedy actor feels that only this was needed to complete the melancholy of the evening. Henry is all indignation and contempt. “IMOGEN QUEST IS MY SISTER IF THAT’S WHAT YOU MEAN. WHO THE DEVIL ARE YOU AND WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY SPEAKING ABOUT HER LIKE THAT?” Gabriel flutters ineffectually in the background. Richard Basingstoke interposes with a genial, “Come on, Henry, can’t you see the frightful man’s blind drunk?” Swithin begs Adam to take Ernest away. Everybody is thrown into the utmost agitation. But Ernest, in his own way, saves everyone from further anxiety. “DO YOU KNOW, I THINK I’M GOING TO BE SICK?” And makes his way unmolested and with perfect dignity to the quad. The gramophone starts playing “Everybody loves my baby.” Fade out. 
THE OXFORD CITY LIBERAL ASSOCIATION DANCE AT THE TOWN HALL. Tickets are being sold at the door for 1s. 6d. Upstairs there is a table with jugs of lemonade and plates of plum cake. In the main hall a band is playing and the younger liberals are dancing. One of the waitresses from the Crown sits by the door fanning her face with a handkerchief. Ernest, with a radiant smile, is slowly walking round the room offering plum cake to the couples sitting about. Some giggle and take it; some giggle and refuse; some refuse and look exceedingly haughty. Adam leans against the side of the door watching him. Close up; Adam bears on his face the same expression of blind misery that he wore in the taxi the night before. 
LE VIN TRISTE. Ernest has asked the waitress from the Crown to dance with him. It is an ungainly performance; still sublimely contented he collides with several couples, misses his footing and, but for his partner, would have fallen. An M.C. in evening dress asks Adam to take him away. Broad stone steps. Several motors are drawn up outside the Town Hall. Ernest climbs into the first of them—a decrepit Ford—and starts the engine. Adam attempts to stop him. A policeman hurries up. There is a wrenching of gears and the car starts. The policeman blows his whistle. Halfway down St. Aldates the car runs into the kerb, mounts the pavement and runs into a shop window. The inhabitants of St. Aldates converge from all sides; heads appear at every window; policemen assemble. There is a movement in the crowd to make way for something being carried out. Adam turns and wanders aimlessly towards Carfax. St. Mary’s clock strikes twelve. It is raining again. Adam is alone. 
HALF AN HOUR LATER. AN HOTEL BEDROOM. Adam is lying on his face across the bed, fully clothed. He turns over and sits up. Again the vision of the native village; the savage has dragged himself very near to the edge of the jungle. His back glistens in the evening sun with his last exertion. He raises himself to his feet, and with quick unsteady steps reaches the first bushes; soon he is lost to view. Adam steadies himself at the foot of the bed and walks to the dressing table; he leans for a long time looking at himself in the glass. He walks to the window and looks out into the rain. Finally he takes the blue bottle from his pocket, uncorks it, smells it, and then without more ado drinks its contents. He makes a wry face at its bitterness and stands for a minute uncertain. Then moved by some odd instinct he turns out the light and curls himself up under the coverlet. At the foot of a low banyan tree the savage lies very still. A large fly settles on his shoulder; two birds of prey perch on the branch above him, waiting. The tropical sun begins to set, and in the brief twilight animals begin to prowl upon their obscene questings. Soon it is quite dark. A photograph of H.M. the King in naval uniform flashes out into the night. 
GOD SAVE THE KING. The cinema quickly empties. The young man from Cambridge goes his way to drink a glass of Pilsen at Odenino’s. Ada and Gladys pass out through ranks of liveried attendants. For perhaps the fiftieth time in the course of the evening Gladys says, “Well, I do call it a soft film.” “Fancy ’er not coming in again.” There is quite a crowd outside, all waiting to go to Earls Court. Ada and Gladys fight manfully and secure places on the top of the bus. “Ere, ’oo are yer pushing? Mind out, can’t yer?” When they arrive home they will no doubt have some cocoa before going to bed, and perhaps some bread and bloater paste. It has been rather a disappointing evening on the whole. Still, as Ada says, with the pictures you has to take the bad with the good. Next week there may be something really funny. Larry Semon or Buster Keaton—who knows? 
Conclusion I The tea grew cold upon the chamber cupboard and Adam Doure stared out into the void. The rain of yesterday had cleared away and the sun streamed into the small bedroom, lighting it up with amiable and unwelcome radiance. The distressing sound of a self-starter grappling in vain with a cold engine rang up from the yard below the window. Otherwise everything was quiet. He cogitated: therefore he was. From the dismal array of ills that confronted him and the confused memories that lay behind, this one proposition obtruded itself with devastating insistence. Each of his clearing perceptions advanced fresh evidence of his existence; he stretched out his limbs fully clothed under the counterpane and gazed at the ceiling with uncomprehending despair, while memories of the preceding evening, of Ernest Vaughan with swollen neck and staring eye, of the slum bar and the eager faces of the two pimps, of Henry, crimson and self-righteous, of shop girls in silk blouses eating plum cake, of the Ford wrecked in the broken window, fought for precedence in his awakening consciousness until they were established in some fairly coherent chronological order; but always at the end there remained the blue bottle and the sense of finality rudely frustrated. It stood upon the dressing table now, emptied of all its power of reprieve, while the tea grew cold upon the chamber cupboard. After all the chaotic impressions which he had thus painfully and imperfectly set in order, the last minutes before he had turned out the light stood out perfectly clearly. He could see the white, inconsolable face that had stared out at him from the looking glass; he could feel at the back of his tongue the salt and bitter taste of the poison. And then as the image of the taste began to bulk larger in his field of consciousness, as though with the sudden breaking down of some intervening barrier another memory swept in on him blotting out all else with its intensity. He remembered as in a nightmare, remote, yet infinitely clear, his awakening in the darkness with the coldness of death about his heart; he had raised himself from the bed and stumbled to the window and leant there, he did not know how long, with the cold air in his face and the steady monotone of the rain fighting with the drumming of blood in his head. Gradually, as he stood there motionless, nausea had come upon him; he had fought it back, his whole will struggling in the effort; it had come again; his drunken senses relaxed their resistance, and with complete abandonment of purpose and restraint, he vomited into the yard below. Slowly and imperceptibly the tea grew cold on the chamber cupboard. II Centuries ago, in his dateless childhood, Ozymandias had sprung to the top of the toy cupboard tired of Adam’s game. It was a game peculiar to himself and Ozymandias which Adam had evolved, and which was only played on the rare occasions of his being left alone. First, Ozymandias had to be sought from room to room, and when at last he was found, borne up to the nursery and shut in. He would watch him for some minutes as he paced the floor and surveyed the room with just the extreme tip of his tail expressing his unfathomable contempt for European civilization. Then armed with a sword, gun, battledore, or an armful of bricks to throw, and uttering sadistic cries, Adam would pursue him round and round the room, driving him from refuge to refuge, until almost beside himself with rage and terror, he crouched junglelike with ears flattened back and porpentine hair. Here Adam would rest, and after some slight pause the real business of the game began. Ozymandias had to be won back to complacency and affection. Adam would sit down on the floor some little way from him and begin calling to him softly and endearingly. He would lie on his stomach with his face as near Ozymandias as he would allow and whisper extravagant eulogies of his beauty and grace; mother-like he would comfort him, evoking some fictitious tormentor to be reproached, assuring him that he was powerless to hurt him any more; Adam would protect him; Adam would see that the horrible little boy did not come near him again. Slowly Ozymandias’ ears would begin to come forward and his eyes begin to close, and the delectable exercise invariably ended with caresses of passionate reconciliation. On this particular afternoon, however, Ozymandias had refused to play, and the moment Adam brought him into the nursery, had established himself in unassailable sanctuary at the top of the toy cupboard. He sat there among the dust and broken toys, and Adam, foiled in his purpose, sat gloomily beneath calling to him. But Adam—at the age of seven—was not easily discouraged, and soon he began pushing up the nursery table towards the cupboard. This done he lifted the soldier box into it, and above this planted a chair. There was not room, turn it how he might, for all four legs to rest on the box, but content with an unstable equilibrium, Adam poised it upon three and mounted. When his hands were within a few inches of Ozymandias’ soft fur an unwary step on to the unsupported part of the chair precipitated him and it, first on to the table and then with a clatter and cry on to the floor. Adam had been too well brought up to remember very much of his life in the days before he went to his private school, but this incident survived in his memory with a clearness, which increased as he became farther removed from it, as the first occasion on which he became conscious of ill as a subjective entity. His life up till this time had been so much bounded with warnings of danger that it seemed for a moment inconceivable that he could so easily have broken through into the realm of positive bodily harm. Indeed, so incompatible did it seem with all previous experience that it was some appreciable time before he could convince himself of the continuity of his existence; but for the wealth of Hebraic and mediaeval imagery with which the idea of life outside the body had become symbolized, he could in that moment easily have believed in his own bodily extinction and the unreality of all the sensible objects about him. Later he learned to regard these periods between his fall and the dismayed advent of help from below, as the first promptings towards that struggle for detachment in which he had, not without almost frantic endeavour, finally acknowledged defeat in the bedroom of the Oxford hotel. The first phase of detachment had passed and had been succeeded by one of methodical investigation. Almost simultaneously with his acceptance of his continued existence had come the conception of pain—vaguely at first as of a melody played by another to which his senses were only fitfully attentive, but gradually taking shape as the tangible objects about him gained in reality, until at length it appeared as a concrete thing, external but intimately attached to himself. Like the pursuit of quicksilver with a spoon, Adam was able to chase it about the walls of his consciousness until at length he drove it into a corner in which he could examine it at his leisure. Still lying perfectly still, just as he had fallen, with his limbs half embracing the wooden legs of the chair, Adam was able, by conscentrating his attention upon each part of his body in turn, to exclude the disordered sensations to which his fall had given rise and trace the several constituents of the bulk of pain down their vibrating channels to their sources in his various physical injuries. The process was nearly complete when the arrival of his nurse dissolved him into tears and scattered his bewildered ratiocinations. It was in some such mood as this that, an hour or so after his awakening, Adam strode along the towing path away from Oxford. He still wore the clothes in which he had slept, but in his intellectual dishevelment he had little concern for his appearance. All about him the shadows were beginning to dissipate and give place to clearer images. He had breakfasted in a world of phantoms, in a great room full of uncomprehending eyes, protruding grotesquely from monstrous heads that lolled over steaming porridge; marionette waiters had pirouetted about him with uncouth gestures. All round him a macabre dance of shadows had reeled and flickered, and in and out of it Adam had picked his way, conscious only of one insistent need, percolating through to him from the world outside, of immediate escape from the scene upon which the bodiless harlequinade was played, into a third dimension beyond it. And at length, as he walked by the river, the shapes of the design began to advance and recede, and the pattern about him and the shadows of the night before became planes and masses and arranged themselves into a perspective, and like the child in the nursery Adam began feeling his bruises. Somewhere among the red roofs across the water bells were ringing discordantly. Two men were fishing on the bank. They looked curiously at him and returned their attention to their barren sport. A small child passed him sucking her thumb in Freudian ecstasy. And after a time Adam left the footpath and lay down under a bank and by the Grace of God fell asleep. III It was not a long or an unbroken sleep, but Adam rose from it refreshed and after a little while resumed his journey. On a white footbridge he paused, and lighting his pipe, gazed down into his ruffled image. A great swan swept beneath him with Spenserian grace, and as the scattered particles of his reflection began to reassemble, looking more than ever grotesque in contrast with the impeccable excellence of the bird, he began half-consciously to speak aloud: “So, you see, you are after all come to the beginning of another day.” And as he spoke, he took from his pocket the envelope addressed to Imogen and tore it into small pieces. Like wounded birds they tumbled and fluttered, until reaching the water they became caught up in its movement and were swept out of sight round the bend of the river towards the city, which Adam had just left. The reflection answered: “Yes, I think that that was well done. After all, ‘imperatrix’ is not a particularly happy epithet to apply to Imogen, is it?—and, by the way, are you certain that she can understand Latin? Suppose that she had had to ask Henry to translate it to her! “But, tell me, does this rather picturesque gesture mean that you have decided to go on living? You seemed so immovably resolved on instant death yesterday, that I find it hard to believe you can have changed your mind.” Adam: I find it hard to believe that it was I who yesterday was so immovably resolved. I cannot explain but it seems to me as though the being who survives, I must admit, with very great clearness in my memory, was born of a dream, drank and died in a dream. The Reflection: And loved in a dream, too? Adam: There you confound me, for it seems to me that that love of his alone does partake of reality. But perhaps I am merely yielding to the intensity of the memory. Indeed I think that I am. For the rest that being had no more substance than you yourself, whom the passage of a bird can dissolve. Reflection: That is a sorry conclusion, for I am afraid that you are trying to dismiss as a shadow a being in every way as real as yourself. But in your present mood it would be useless to persuade you. Tell me instead, what was the secret which you learned, asleep there in the grass? Adam: I found no secret—only a little bodily strength. Reflection: Is the balance of life and death so easily swayed? Adam: It is the balance of appetite and reason. The reason remains constant—the appetite varies. Reflection: And is there no appetite for death? Adam: None which cannot be appeased by sleep or change or the mere passing of time. Reflection: And in the other scale no reason? Adam: None. None. Reflection: No honour to be observed to friends? No interpenetration, so that you cannot depart without bearing away with you something that is part of another? Adam: None. Reflection: Your art? Adam: Again the appetite to live—to preserve in the shapes of things the personality whose dissolution you foresee inevitably. Reflection: That is the balance then—and in the end circumstance decides. Adam: Yes, in the end circumstance. 
Continuation They have all come over to Thatch for the day; nine of them, three in Henry Quest’s Morris and the others in a huge and shabby car belonging to Richard Basingstoke. Mrs. Hay had only expected Henry Quest and Swithin, but she waves a plump hand benignly and the servants busy themselves in finding more food. It is so nice living near Oxford, and Basil’s friends always look so charming about the place even if they are rather odd in their manners sometimes. They all talk so quickly that she can neverhear what they are saying and they never finish their sentences either—but it doesn’t matter, because they always talk about people she doesn’t know. Dear boys, of  course they don’t mean to be rude really—they are so well bred, and it is nice to see them making themselves really at home. Who are they talking about now? “No, Imogen, really, he’s getting rather impossible.” “I can’t tell you what he was like the other night.” “The night you came down here.” “Gabriel was giving a party.” “And he didn’t know Gabriel and he hadn’t been asked.” “And Gabriel didn’t want him—did you, Gabriel?” “Because you never know what he is going to do next.” “And he brought in the most dreadful person.” “Quite, quite drunk.” “Called Ernest Vaughan, you wouldn’t have met him. Just the most awful person in the world. Gabriel was perfectly sweet to him.” Dear boys, so young, so intolerant. Still, if they must smoke between courses, they might be a little more careful with the ash. The dark boy at the end—Basil always forgot to introduce his friends to her—was quite ruining the table. “Edwards, give the gentleman next to Lord Basingstoke another ash-tray.” What were they saying? “D’you know, Henry, I think that that was rather silly of you? Why should I mind what some poor drunk says about me?” What a sweet girl Imogen Quest was. So much easie
A House Of Gentlefolks
I I arrived at Vanburgh at five to one. It was raining hard by now and the dreary little station yard was empty except for a deserted and draughty-looking taxi. They might have sent a car for me. How far was it to Stayle? About three miles, the ticket collector told me. Which part of Stayle might I be wanting? The Duke’s? That was a good mile the other side of  the village. They really might have sent a car. With a little difficulty I found the driver of the taxi, a sulky and scorbutic young man who may well have been the bully of some long-forgotten school story. It was some consolation to feel that he must be getting wetter than I. It was a beastly drive. After the crossroads at Stayle we reached what were obviously the walls of the park, interminable and dilapidated walls that stretched on past corners and curves with leafless trees dripping on to their dingy masonry. At last they were broken by lodges and gates, four gates and three lodges, and through the ironwork I could see a great sweep of ill-kept drive. But the gates were shut and padlocked and most of the windows in the lodges were broken. “There are some more gates further on,” said the school bully, “and beyond them, and beyond them again. I suppose they must get in and out somehow, sometimes.” At last we found a white wooden gate and a track which led through some farm buildings into the main drive. The park land on either side was railed off and no doubt let out to pasture. One very dirty sheep had strayed on to the drive and stumbled off in alarm at our approach, continually looking over its shoulder and then starting away again until we overtook it. Last of all the house came in sight, spreading out prodigiously in all directions. The man demanded eight shillings for the fare. I gave it to him and rang the bell. After some delay an old man opened the door to me. “Mr. Vaughan,” I said. “I think his Grace is expecting me to luncheon.” “Yes; will you come in, please?” and I was just handing him my hat when he added: “I am the Duke of Vanburgh. I hope you will forgive my opening the door myself. The butler is in bed today—he suffers terribly in his back during the winter, and both my footmen have been killed in the war.” Have been killed—the words haunted me incessantly throughout the next few hours and for days to come. That desolating perfect tense, after ten years at least, probably more ... Miss Stein and the continuous present; the Duke of Vanburgh and the continuous perfect passive..... I was unprepared for the room to which he led me. Only once before, at the age of twelve, had I been to a ducal house, and besides the fruit garden, my chief memory of  that visit was one of intense cold and of running upstairs through endless passages to get my mother a fur to wear round her shoulders after dinner. It is true that that was in Scotland, but still I was quite unprepared for the overpowering heat that met us as the Duke opened the door. The double windows were tight shut and a large coal fire burned brightly in the round Victorian grate. The air was heavy with the smell of chrysanthemums, there was a gilt clock under a glass case on the chimneypiece and everywhere in the room stiff little assemblages of china and bric-a-brac. One might expect to find such a room in Lancaster Gate or Elm Park Gardens where the widow of some provincial knight knits away her days among trusted servants. In front of the fire sat an old lady, eating an apple. “My dear, this is Mr. Vaughan, who is going to take Stayle abroad—my sister, Lady Emily. Mr. Vaughan has just driven down from London in his motor.” “No,” I said, “I came by train—the twelve fifty-five.” “Wasn’t that very expensive?” said Lady Emily. Perhaps I ought here to explain the reason for my visit. As I have said, I am not at all in the habit of moving in these exalted circles, but I have a rather grand godmother who shows a sporadic interest in my affairs. I had just come down from Oxford, and was very much at a loose end when she learned unexpectedly that the Duke of  Vanburgh was in need of a tutor to take his grandson and heir abroad—a youth called the Marquess of Stayle, eighteen years old. It had seemed a tolerable way in which to spend the next six months, and accordingly the thing had been arranged. I was here to fetch away my charge and start for the Continent with him next day. “Did you say you came by train?” said the Duke. “By the twelve fifty-five.” “But you said you were coming by motor.” “No, really, I can’t have said that. For one thing I haven’t got a motor.” “But if you hadn’t said that, I should have sent Byng to meet you. Byng didn’t meet you, did he?” “No,” I said, “he did not.” “Well, there you see.” Lady Emily put down the core of her apple and said very suddenly: “Your father used to live over at Oakshott. I knew him quite well. Shocking bad on a horse.” “No, that was my uncle Hugh. My father was in India almost all his life. He died there.” “Oh, I don’t think he can have done that,” said Lady Emily; “I don’t believe he even went there—did he, Charles?” “Who? what?” “Hugh Vaughan never went to India, did he?” “No, no, of course not. He sold Oakshott and went to live in Hampshire somewhere. He never went to India in his life.” At this moment another old lady, almost indistinguishable from Lady Emily, came into the room. “This is Mr. Vaughan, my dear. You remember his father at Oakshott, don’t you? He’s going to take Stayle abroad—my sister, Lady Gertrude.” Lady Gertrude smiled brightly and took my hand. “Now I knew there was someone coming to luncheon, and then I saw Byng carrying in the vegetables a quarter of an hour ago. I thought, now he ought to be at Vanburgh meeting the train.” “No, no, dear,” said Lady Emily. “Mr. Vaughan came down by motor.” “Oh, that’s a good thing. I thought he said he was coming by train.” II The Marquess of Stayle did not come in to luncheon. “I am afraid you may find him rather shy at first,” explained the Duke. “We did not tell him about your coming until this morning. We were afraid it might unsettle him. As it is he is a little upset about it. Have you seen him since breakfast, my dear?” “Don’t you think,” said Lady Gertrude, “that Mr. Vaughan had better know the truth about Stayle? He is bound to discover it soon.” The Duke sighed: “The truth is, Mr. Vaughan, that my grandson is not quite right in his head. Not mad, you understand, but noticeably underdeveloped.” I nodded. “I gathered from my godmother that he was a little backward.” “That is largely why he never went to school. He went to a private school once for two terms, but he was very unhappy and the fees were very high; so I took him away. Since then he has had no regular education.” “No education of any sort, dear,” said Lady Gertrude gently. “Well, it practically amounts to that. And it is a sad state of affairs, as you will readily understand. You see, the boy will succeed me and—well, it is very unfortunate. Now there is quite a large sum of money which his mother left for the boy’s education. Nothing has been done with it—to tell you the truth, I had forgotten all about it until my lawyer reminded me of it the other day. It is about thirteen hundred pounds by now, I think. I have talked the matter over with Lady Emily and Lady Gertrude, and we came to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to send him abroad for a year with a tutor. It might make a difference. Anyway, we shall feel that we have done our duty by the boy.” (It seemed to me odd that they should feel that about it, but I said nothing.) “You will probably have to get him some clothes too. You see he has never been about much, and we have let him run wild a little, I am afraid.” When luncheon was over they brought out a large box of peppermint creams. Lady Emily ate five. III Well, I had been sent down from Oxford with every circumstance of discredit, and it did not become me to be over nice; still, to spend a year conducting a lunatic nobleman about Europe was rather more than I had bargained for. I had practically made up my mind to risk my godmother’s displeasure and throw up the post while there was still time, when the young man made his appearance. He stood at the door of the dining room surveying the four of us, acutely ill at ease but with a certain insolence. “Hullo, have you finished lunch? May I have some peppermints, Aunt Emily?” He was not a bad-looking youth at all, slightly over middle height, and he spoke with that rather agreeable intonation that gentlepeople acquire who live among servants and farm hands. His clothes, with which he had obviously been at some pains, were unbelievable—a shiny blue suit with four buttons, much too small for him, showing several inches of wrinkled woollen sock and white flannel shirt. Above this he had put on a stiff evening collar and a very narrow tie, tied in a sailor-knot. His hair was far too long, and he had been putting water on it. But for all this he did not look mad. “Come and say ‘How do you do?’ to your new tutor,” said Lady Gertrude, as though to a child of six. “Give him your right hand—that’s it.” He came awkwardly towards me, holding out his hand, then put it behind him and then shot it out again suddenly, leaning his body forward as he did so. I felt a sudden shame for this poor ungraceful creature. “How-d’you-do?” he said. “I expect they forgot to send the car for you, didn’t they? The last tutor walked out and didn’t get here until half past two. Then they said I was mad, so he went away again. Have they told you I’m mad yet?” “No,” I said decidedly, “of course not.” “Well, they will then. But perhaps they have already, and you didn’t like to tell me. You’re a gentleman, aren’t you? That’s what grandfather said: ‘He’s a bad hat, but at least he’s a gentleman.’ But you needn’t worry about me. They all say I’m mad.” Anywhere else this might have caused some uneasiness, but the placid voice of Lady Gertrude broke in: “Now, you mustn’t talk like that to Mr. Vaughan. Come and have a peppermint, dear.” And she looked at me as though to say, “What did I tell you?” Quite suddenly I decided to take on the job after all. An hour later we were in the train. I had the Duke’s cheque for £150 preliminary expenses in my pocket; the boy’s preposterous little wicker box was in the rack over his head. “I say,” he said, “what am I to call you?” “Well, most of my friends call me Ernest.” “May I really do that?” “Yes, of course. What shall I call you?” He looked doubtful. “Grandfather and the aunts call me Stayle; everyone else calls me ‘my Lord’ when they are about and ‘Bats’ when we are alone. It’s short for ‘Bats in the Belfry’, you know.” “But haven’t you got a Christian name?” He had to think before he answered. “Yes—George Theodore Verney.” “Well, I’m going to call you George.” “Will you really? I say, have you been to London a lot?” “Yes, I live there usually.” “I say. D’you know I’ve never been to London? I’ve never been away from home at all—except to that school.” “Was that beastly?” “It was —” He used a ploughboy’s oath. “I say, oughtn’t I to say that? Aunt Emily says I shouldn’t.” “She’s quite right.” “Well, she’s got some mighty queer ideas, I can tell you,” and for the rest of the journey he chatted freely. That evening he evinced a desire to go to a theatre, but remembering his clothes, I sent him to bed early and went out in search of friends. I felt that with £150 in my pocket I could afford champagne. Besides, I had a good story to tell. We spent the next day ordering clothes. It was clear the moment I saw his luggage that we should have to stay on in London for four or five days; he had nothing that he could possibly wear. As soon as he was up I put him into one of my overcoats and took him to all the shops where I owed money. He ordered lavishly and with evident relish. By the evening the first parcels had begun to arrive and his room was a heap of cardboard and tissue paper. Mr. Phillrick, who always gives me the impression that I am the first commoner who has dared to order a suit from him, so far relaxed from his customary austerity as to call upon us at the hotel, followed by an assistant with a large suitcase full of patterns. George showed a well-bred leaning towards checks. Mr. Phillrick could get two suits finished by Thursday, the other would follow us to the Crillon. Did he know anywhere where we could get a tolerable suit of evening clothes ready made? He gave us the name of the shop where his firm  sold their misfits. He remembered his Lordship’s father well. He would call upon his Lordship for a fitting tomorrow evening. Was I sure that I had all the clothes I needed at the moment? He had some patterns just in. As for that little matter of my bill—of course, any time that was convenient to me. (His last letter had made it unmistakably clear that he must have a cheque on account before undertaking any further orders.) I ordered two suits. All of this George enjoyed enormously. After the first morning I gave up all attempt at a tutorial attitude. We had four days to spend in London before we could start and, as George had told me, it was his first visit. He had an unbounded zeal to see everything, and, above all, to meet people; but he had also a fresh and acute critical faculty and a natural fastidiousness which shone through the country bumpkin. The first time he went to a revue he was all agog with excitement; the theatre, the orchestra, the audience all enthralled him. He insisted on being there ten minutes before the time; he insisted on leaving ten minutes before the end of the first act. He thought it vulgar and dull and ugly, and there was so much else that he was eager to see. The dreary “might-as-well-stay-here-now-we’ve-paid” attitude was unintelligible to him. In the same way with his food, he wished to try all the dishes. If he found he did not like anything, he ordered something else. On the first evening we dined out he decided that champagne was tasteless and disagreeable and refused to drink it again. He had no patience for acquiring tastes, but most good things pleased him immediately. At the National Gallery he would look at nothing after Bellini’s “Death of Peter Martyr.” He was an immediate success with everyone I introduced him to. He had no “manner” of any kind. He said all he thought with very little reticence and listened with the utmost interest to all he heard said. At first he would sometimes break in with rather disturbing sincerity upon the ready-made conversations with which we are mostly content, but almost at once he learned to discern what was purely mechanical and to disregard it. He would pick up tags and phrases and use them with the oddest twists, revitalizing them by his interest in their picturesqueness. And all this happened in four days; if it had been in four months the change would have been remarkable. I could see him developing from one hour to the next. On our last evening in London I brought out an atlas and tried to explain where we were going. The world for him was divided roughly into three hemispheres—Europe, where there had been a war; it was full of towns like Paris and Buda-Pest, all equally remote and peopled with prostitutes; the East, a place full of camels and elephants, deserts and dervishes and nodding mandarins; and America, which besides its own two continents included Australia, New Zealand, and most of the British Empire not obviously “Eastern”; somewhere, too, there were some “savages.” “We shall have to stop the night at Brindisi,” I was saying. “Then we can get the Lloyd Trestino in the morning. What a lot you’re smoking!” We had just returned from a tea and cocktail party. George was standing at the looking glass gazing at himself in his new clothes. “You know, he has made this suit rather well, Ernest. It’s about the only thing I learned at home—smoking, I mean. I used to go up to the saddle room with Byng.” “You haven’t told me what you thought of the party.” “Ernest, why are all your friends being so sweet to me? Is it just because I’m going to be a duke?” “I expect that makes a difference with some of them—Julia for instance. She said you looked so fugitive.” “I’m afraid I didn’t like Julia much. No, I mean Peter and that funny Mr. Oliphant.” “I think they like you.” “How odd!” He looked at himself in the glass again. “D’you know, I’ll tell you something I’ve been thinking all these last few days. I don’t believe I really am mad at all. It’s only at home I feel so different from everyone else. Of course I don’t know much ... I’ve been thinking, d’you think it can be grandfather and the aunts who are mad, all the time?” “They’re certainly getting old.” “No, mad. I can remember some awfully dotty things they’ve done at one time or another. Last summer Aunt Gertrude swore there was a swarm of bees under her bed and had all the gardeners up with smoke and things. She refused to get out of bed until the bees were gone—and there weren’t any there. And then there was the time grandfather made a wreath of strawberry leaves and danced round the garden singing ‘Cook’s son, Dook’s son, son of a belted earl.’ It didn’t strike me at the time, but that was an odd thing to do, wasn’t it? Anyway, I shan’t see them again for months and months. Oh, Ernest, it’s too wonderful. You don’t think the sleeves are too tight, do you? Are people black in Athens?” “Not coal black—mostly Jews and undergraduates.” “What’s that?” “Well, Peter’s an undergraduate. I was one until a few weeks ago.” “I say, do you think people will take me for an undergraduate?” IV It seems to me sometimes that Nature, like a lazy author, will round off abruptly into a short story what she obviously intended to be the opening of a novel. Two letters arrived for me by the post next morning. One was from my bank returning the Duke’s cheque for £150 marked “Payment Stopped”; the other from a firm of solicitors enjoining me that they, or rather one of them, would call upon me that morning in connection with the Duke of Vanburgh’s business. I took them in to George. All he said was: “I had a sort of feeling that this was all too good to last.” The lawyer duly arrived. He seemed displeased that neither of us was dressed. He intimated that he wished to speak to me alone. His Grace, he said, had altered his plans for his grandson. He no longer wished him to go abroad. Of course, between ourselves we had to admit that the boy was not quite sane ... very sad ... these old families ... putting me in such a difficult position in case anything happened..... His Grace had talked it over with Lady Emily and Lady Gertrude..... It really was too dangerous an experiment ... besides, they had especially kept the boy shut away because they did not want the world to know ... discredit on a great name ... and, of course, if he went about, people were bound to talk. It was not strictly his business to discuss the wisdom of his client’s decision, but, again between ourselves, he had been very much surprised that his Grace had ever considered letting the boy leave home..... Later perhaps, but not yet ... he would always need watching. And of course there was a good deal of money coming to him. Strictly between ourselves, his Grace was a great deal better off than people supposed ... town property ... death duties ... keeping up Stayle ... and so on. He was instructed to pay the expenses incurred up to date and to give me three months’ salary ... most generous of his Grace, no legal obligation..... As to the clothes ... we really seemed rather to have exceeded his Grace’s instructions. Still, no doubt all the things that had not been specially made could be returned to the shops. He would give instructions about that ... he was himself to take Lord Stayle back to his grandfather. And an hour later they left. “It’s been a marvellous four days,” said George; and then: “Anyway, I shall be twenty-one in three years and I shall have my mother’s money then. I think it’s rather a shame sending back those ties though. Don’t you think I could keep one or two?” Five minutes later Julia rang up to ask us to luncheon. 
The Manager Of "The Kremlin"
This story was told me in Paris very early in the morning by the manager of a famous night club, and I am fairly certain that it is true. I shall not tell you the real name of the manager or of his club, because it is not the sort of advertisement he would like, but I will call them, instead, Boris and “The Kremlin.” “The Kremlin” occupies a position of its own. Your hat and coat are taken at the door by a perfectly genuine Cossack of ferocious appearance; he wears riding boots and spurs, and the parts of his face that are not hidden by beard are cut and scarred like that of a pre-war German student. The interior is hung with rugs and red, woven stuff to represent a tent. There is a very good tsigain band playing gipsy music, and a very good jazz-band which plays when people want to dance. The waiters are chosen for their height. They wear magnificent Russian liveries, and carry round flaming skewers on which are spitted onions between rounds of meat. Most of them are ex-officers of the Imperial Guard. Boris, the manager, is quite a young man; he is 6 ft. 5 1/2 in. in height. He wears a Russian silk blouse, loose trousers and top boots, and goes from table to table seeing that everything is all right. From two in the morning until dawn “The Kremlin” is invariably full, and the American visitors, looking wistfully at their bills, often remark that Boris must be “making a good thing out of it.” So he is. Fashions change very quickly in Montmartre, but if his present popularity lasts for another season, he talks of retiring to a villa on the Riviera. One Saturday night, or rather a Sunday morning, Boris did me the honour of coming to sit at my table and take a glass of wine with me. It was then that Boris told his story. His father was a general, and when the war broke out Boris was a cadet at the military academy. He was too young to fight, and was forced to watch, from behind the lines, the collapse of the Imperial Government. Then came the confused period when the Great War was over, and various scattered remnants of the royalist army, with half-hearted support from their former allies, were engaged in a losing fight against the Bolshevists. Boris was eighteen years old. His father had been killed and his mother had already escaped to America. The military academy was being closed down, and with several of his fellow cadets Boris decided to join the last royalist army which, under Kolchak, was holding the Bolshevists at bay in Siberia. It was a very odd kind of army. There were dismounted cavalry and sailors who had left their ships, officers whose regiments had mutinied, frontier garrisons and aides-de-camp, veterans of the Russo-Japanese war, and boys like Boris who were seeing action for the first time. Besides these, there were units from the Allied Powers, who seemed to have been sent there by their capricious Governments and forgotten; there was a corps of British engineers and some French artillery; there were also liaison officers and military attachés to the General Headquarters Staff. Among the latter was a French cavalry officer a few years older than Boris. To most educated Russians before the war French was as familiar as their own language. Boris and the French attaché became close friends. They used to smoke together and talk of Moscow and Paris before the war. As the weeks passed it became clear that Kolchak’s campaign could end in nothing but disaster. Eventually a council of officers decided that the only course open was to break through to the east coast and attempt to escape to Europe. A force had to be left behind to cover the retreat, and Boris and his French friend found themselves detailed to remain with this rearguard. In the action which followed, the small covering force was completely routed. Alone among the officers Boris and his friend escaped with their lives, but their condition was almost desperate. Their baggage was lost and they found themselves isolated in a waste land, patrolled by enemy troops and inhabited by savage Asiatic tribesmen. Left to himself, the Frenchman’s chances of escape were negligible, but a certain prestige still attached to the uniform of a Russian officer in the outlying villages. Boris lent him his military overcoat to cover his uniform, and together they struggled through the snow, begging their way to the frontier. Eventually they arrived in Japanese territory. Here all Russians were suspect, and it devolved on the Frenchman to get them safe conduct to the nearest French Consulate. Boris’s chief aim now was to join his mother in America. His friend had to return to report himself in Paris, so here they parted. They took an affectionate farewell, promising to see each other again when their various affairs were settled. But each in his heart doubted whether chance would ever bring them together again. Two years elapsed, and then one day in spring a poorly-dressed young Russian found himself in Paris, with three hundred francs in his pocket and all his worldly possessions in a kitbag. He was very different from the debonair Boris who had left the military academy for Kolchak’s army. America had proved to be something very different from the Land of Opportunity he had imagined. His mother sold the jewels and a few personal possessions she had been able to bring away with her, and had started a small dressmaking business. There seemed no chance of permanent employment for Boris, so after two or three months of casual jobs he worked his passage to England. During the months that followed, Boris obtained temporary employment as a waiter, a chauffeur, a professional dancing-partner, a dock-labourer, and he came very near to starvation. Finally, he came across an old friend of his father’s, a former first secretary in the diplomatic corps, who was now working as a hairdresser. This friend advised him to try Paris, where a large Russian colony had already formed, and gave him his fare. It was thus that one morning, as the buds were just beginning to break in the Champs Elysées and the couturiers were exhibiting their Spring fashions, Boris found himself, ill-dressed and friendless, in another strange city. His total capital was the equivalent of about thirty shillings; and so, being uncertain of what was to become of him, he decided to have luncheon. An Englishman finding himself in this predicament would no doubt have made careful calculations. He would have decided what was the longest time that his money would last him, and would have methodically kept within his budget while he started again “looking for a job.” But as Boris stood working out this depressing sum, something seemed suddenly to snap in his head. With the utmost privation he could hardly hope to subsist for more than two or three weeks. At the end of that time he would be in exactly the same position, a fortnight older, with all his money spent and no nearer a job. Why not now as well as in a fortnight’s time? He was in Paris, about which he had read and heard so much. He made up his mind to have one good meal and leave the rest to chance. He had often heard his father speak of a restaurant called Larne. He had no idea where it was, so he took a taxi. He entered the restaurant and sat down in one of the red-plush seats, while the waiters eyed his clothes with suspicion. He looked about him in an unembarrassed way. It was quieter and less showy in appearance than the big restaurants he had passed in New York and London, but a glance at the menu told him that it was not a place where poor people often went. Then he began ordering his luncheon, and the waiter’s manner quickly changed as he realized that this eccentrically dressed customer did not need any advice about choosing his food and wine. He ate fresh caviare and ortolansan porto and crepes suzettes; he drank a bottle of vintage claret and a glass of very old fine champagne, and he examined several boxes of cigars before he found one in perfect condition. When he had finished, he asked for his bill. It was 260 francs. He gave the waiter a tip of 26 francs and 4 francs to the man at the door who had taken his hat and kitbag. His taxi had cost 7 francs. Half a minute later he stood on the kerb with exactly 3 francs in the world. But it had been a magnificent lunch, and he did not regret it. As he stood there, meditating what he could do, his arm was suddenly taken from behind, and turning he saw a smartly dressed Frenchman, who had evidently just left the restaurant. It was his friend the military attaché. “I was sitting at the table behind you,” he said. “You never noticed me, you were so intent on your food.” “It is probably my last meal for some time,” Boris explained, and his friend laughed at what he took to be a joke. They walked up the street together, talking rapidly. The Frenchman described how he had left the army when his time of service was up, and was now a director of a prosperous motor business. “And you, too,” he said. “I am delighted to see that you also have been doing well.” “Doing well? At the moment I have exactly three francs in the world.” “My dear fellow, people with three francs in the world do not eat caviare at Larne.” Then for the first time he noticed Boris’s frayed clothes. He had only known him in a war-worn uniform and it had seemed natural at first to find him dressed as he was. Now he realized that these were not the clothes which prosperous young men usually wear. “My dear friend,” he said, “forgive me for laughing. I didn’t realize..... Come and dine with me this evening at my flat, and we will talk about what is to be done.” “And so,” concluded Boris, “I became the manager of ‘The Kremlin.’ If I had not gone to Larne that day it is about certain we should never have met! “My friend said that I might have a part in his motor business, but that he thought anyone who could spend his last 300 francs on one meal was ordained by God to keep a restaurant. “So it has been. He financed me. I collected some of my old friends to work with us. Now, you see, I am comparatively a rich man.” The last visitors had paid their bill and risen, rather unsteadily, to go. Boris rose, too, to bow them out. The daylight shone into the room as they lifted the curtain to go out. Suddenly, in the new light, all the decorations looked bogus and tawdry; the waiters hurried away to change their sham liveries. Boris understood what I was feeling. “I know,” he said. “It is not Russian. It is not anything even to own a popular night club when one has lost one’s country.” 
Love In The Slump
I The marriage of Tom Watch and Angela Trench-Troubridge was, perhaps, as unimportant an event as has occurred within living memory. No feature was lacking in the previous histories of the two young people, in their engagement, or their wedding, that could make them completely typical of all that was most unremarkable in modern social conditions. The evening paper recorded: “This has been a busy week at St. Margaret’s. The third fashionable wedding of the week took place there this afternoon, between Mr. Tom Watch and Miss Angela Trench-Troubridge. Mr. Watch, who, like so many young men nowadays, works in the city, is the second son of the late Hon. Wilfrid Watch of Holyborne House, Shaftesbury; the bride’s father, Colonel Trench-Troubridge, is well known as a sportsman, and has stood several times for Parliament in the Conservative interest. Mr. Watch’s brother, Captain Peter Watch of the Coldstream Guards, acted as best man. The bride wore a veil of old Brussels lace lent by her grandmother. In accordance with the new fashion for taking holidays in Britain, the bride and bridegroom are spending a patriotic honeymoon in the West of England.” And when that has been said there is really very little that need be added. Angela was twenty-five, pretty, good-natured, lively, intelligent and popular—just the sort of girl, in fact, who, for some mysterious cause deep-rooted in Anglo-Saxon psychology, finds it most difficult to get satisfactorily married. During the last seven years she had done everything which it is customary for girls of her sort to do. In London she had danced on an average four evenings a week, for the first three years at private houses, for the last four at restaurants and night clubs; in the country she had been slightly patronizing to the neighbours and had taken parties to the hunt ball which she hoped would shock them; she had worked in a slum and a hat shop, had published a novel, been bridesmaid eleven times and godmother once; been in love, unsuitably, twice; had sold her photograph for fifty guineas to the advertising department of a firm of beauty specialists; had got into trouble when her name was mentioned in gossip columns; had acted in five or six charity matinées and two pageants, had canvassed for the Conservative candidate at two General Elections, and, like every girl in the British Isles, was unhappy at home. In the Crisis years things became unendurable. For some time her father had shown an increasing reluctance to open the London house; now he began to talk in a sinister way about “economies,” by which he meant retiring permanently to the country, reducing the number of indoor servants, stopping bedroom fires, cutting down Angela’s allowance and purchasing a mile and a half of fishing in the neighbourhood, on which he had had his eye for several years. Faced with the grim prospect of an indefinitely prolonged residence in the home of her ancestors, Angela, like many a sensible English girl before her, decided that after her two unhappy affairs she was unlikely to fall in love again. There was for her no romantic parting of the ways between love and fortune. Elder sons were scarcer than ever that year and there was hot competition from America and the Dominions. The choice was between discomfort with her parents in a Stately Home or discomfort with a husband in a London mews. Poor Tom Watch had been mildly attentive to Angela since her first season. He was her male counterpart in about every particular. Normally educated, he had, after aking a Third in History at the University, gone into the office of a reliable firm of chartered accountants, with whom he had worked ever since. And throughout those sunless city afternoons he looked back wistfully to his undergraduate days, when he had happily followed the normal routine of University success by riding second on a borrowed hunter in the Christ Church “grind,” breaking furniture with the Bullingdon, returning at dawn through the window after dances in London, and sharing dingy but expensive lodgings in the High with young men richer than himself. Angela, as one of the popular girls of her year, used to be a frequent visitor to Oxford and to the houses where Tom stayed during the vacation, and as the bleak succession of years in his accountant’s office sobered and depressed him, Tom began to look upon her as one of the few bright fragments remaining from his glamorous past. He still went out a little, for an unattached young man is never quite valueless in London, but the late dinner parties to which he went sulkily, tired by his day’s work and out of touch with the topics in which the débutantes attempted to interest him, served only to show him the gulf that was widening between himself and his former friends. Angela, because (as cannot be made too clear) she was a thoroughly nice girl, was always charming to him, and he returned her interest gratefully. She was, however, a part of his past, not of his future. His regard was sentimental but quite unaspiring. She was a piece of his irrecapturable youth; nothing could have been more remote from his attitude than to think of her as a possible companion for old age. Accordingly her proposal of marriage came to him as a surprise that was by no means welcome. They had left a particularly crowded and dull dance, and were eating kippers at a night club. They were in the intimate and slightly tender mood which always developed between them when Angela had said in a gentle voice: “You’re always so much nicer to me than anyone else, Tom; I wonder why?” and before he could deflect her—he had had an unusually exacting day’s business and the dance had been stupefying—she had popped the question. “Well, of course,” he had stammered, “I mean to say there’s nothing I’d like more, old girl. I mean, you know, of course I’ve always been crazy about you ... But the difficulty is I simply can’t afford to marry. Absolutely out of the question for years, you know.” “But I don’t think I should mind being poor with you, Tom; we know each other so well. Everything would be easy.” And before Tom knew whether he was pleased or not, the engagement had been announced. He was making eight hundred a year; Angela had two hundred. There was “more coming” to both of them eventually. Things were not too bad if they were sensible about not having children. He would have to give up his occasional days of hunting; she was to give up her maid. On this basis of mutual sacrifice they arranged for their future. It rained heavily on the day of the wedding, and only the last-ditchers among the St. Margaret’s crowd turned out to watch the melancholy succession of guests popping out of their dripping cars and plunging up the covered way into the church. There was a party afterwards at Angela’s home in Egerton Gardens. At half past four, the young couple caught a train at Paddington for the West of England. The blue carpet and the striped awning were rolled away and locked among candle-ends and hassocks in the church store-room. The lights in the aisles were turned out and the doors locked and bolted. The flowers and shrubs were stacked up to await distribution in the wards of a hospital for incurables in which Mrs. Watch had an interest. Mrs. Trench-Troubridge’s secretary set to work dispatching silver-and-white cardboard packets of wedding cake to servants and tenants in the country. One of the ushers hurried to Covent Garden to return his morning coat to the firm of gentlemen’s outfitters from whom it was hired. A doctor was summoned to attend the bridegroom’s small nephew, who, after attracting considerable attention as page at the ceremony by his outspoken comments, developed a high temperature and numerous disquieting symptoms of food poisoning. Sarah Trumpery’s maid discreetly returned the travelling clock which the old lady had inadvertently pouched from among the wedding presents. (This foible of hers was well known and the detectives had standing orders to avoid a scene at the reception. It was not often that she was asked to weddings nowadays. When she was, the stolen presents were invariably returned that evening or on the following day.) The bridesmaids got together over dinner and fell into eager conjecture about the intimacies of the honeymoon, the odds in this case being three to two that the ceremony had not been anticipated. The Great Western express rattled through the sodden English counties. Tom and Angela sat glumly in a first-class smoking carriage, discussing the day. “It was so wonderful neither of us being late.” “Mother fussed so ...” “I didn’t see John, did you?” “He was there. He said good-bye to us in the hall.” “Oh, yes ... I hope they’ve packed everything.” “What books did you bring?” A thoroughly normal, uneventful wedding. Presently Tom said: “I suppose in a way it’s rather unenterprising of us, just going off to Aunt Martha’s house in Devon. Remember how the Lockwoods went to Morocco and got captured by brigands?” “And the Randalls got snowed up for ten days in Norway.” “We shan’t get much adventure in Devon, I’m afraid.” “Well, Tom, we haven’t really married for adventure, have we?” And, as things happened, it was from that moment onwards that the honeymoon took an odd turn. 
II 
“D’you know if we change?” “I rather think we do. I forgot to ask. Peter got the tickets. I’ll get out at Exeter and find out.” The train drew into the station. “Shan’t be a minute,” said Tom, shutting the door behind him to keep out the cold. He walked up the platform, purchased a West country evening paper, learned that they need not change and was returning to his carriage when his arm was seized and a voice said: “Hello, Watch, old man! Remember me?” And with a little difficulty he recognized the smiling face of an old school acquaintance. “See you’ve just got married. Congratulations. Meant to write. Great luck running into you like this. Come and have a drink.” “Wish I could. Got to get back to the train.” “Heaps of time, old man. Waits twelve minutes here. Must have a drink.” Still searching his memory for the name of his old friend, Tom went with him to the station buffet. “I live fifteen miles out, you know. Just come in to meet the train. Expecting some cow-cake down from London. No sign of it ... Well, all the best.” They drank two glasses of whisky—very comforting after the cold train journey. Then Tom said: “Well, it’s been jolly seeing you. I must get back to the train now. Come with me and meet my wife.” But when they reached the platform, the train was gone. “I say, old man, that’s darned funny, you know. What are you going to do? There’s not another train tonight. Tell you what, you’d better come and spend the night with me and go on in the morning. We can wire and tell your wife where you are.” “I suppose Angela will be all right?” “Heavens, yes! Nothing can happen in England. Besides, there’s nothing you can do. Give me her address and I’ll send a wire now, telling her where you are. Jump into the car and wait.” Next morning Tom woke up with a feeling of slight apprehension. He turned over in bed, examining with sleepy eyes the unaccustomed furniture of the room. Then he remembered. Of course he was married. And Angela had gone off in the train, and he had driven for miles in the dark to the house of an old friend whose name he could not remember. It had been dinnertime when they arrived. They had drunk Burgundy and port and brandy. Frankly, they had drunk rather a lot. They had recalled numerous house scandals, all kinds of jolly insults to chemistry masters, escapades after dark when they had gone up to London to the “43.” What was the fellow’s name? It was clearly too late to ask him now. And anyway he would have to get on to Angela. He supposed that she had reached Aunt Martha’s house safely and had got his telegram. Awkward beginning to the honeymoon—but then he and Angela knew each other so well ... It was not as though this were some sudden romance. Presently he was called. “Hounds are meeting near here this morning, sir. The Captain wondered if you’d care to go hunting.” “No, no! I have to leave immediately after breakfast.” “The Captain said he could mount you, sir, and lend you clothes.” “No, no! Quite impossible.” But when he came down to breakfast and found his host filling a saddle flask with cherry-brandy, secret threads began to pull at Tom’s heart. “Of course we’re a comic sort of pack. Everyone turns out, parson, farmers, all kinds of animals. But we generally get a decent run along the edge of the moor. Pity you can’t come out. I’d like you to try my new mare, she’s a lovely ride ... a bit fine for this type of country, perhaps ...” Well, why not? ... after all, he and Angela knew each other so well ... it was not as though ... And two hours later Tom found himself in a high wind galloping madly across the worst hunting country in the British Isles—alternations of heather and bog, broken by pot-holes, boulders, mountain streams and disused gravel pits—hounds streaming up the valley opposite, the mare going perfectly, farmers’ boys on shaggy little ponies, solicitors’ wives on cobs, retired old sea-captains bouncing about eighteen hands high, vets and vicars plunging on all sides of him, and not a care in his heart. Two hours later still he was in less happy circumstances, seated alone in the heather, surrounded on all sides by an unbroken horizon of empty moor. He had dismounted to tighten a girth, and galloping across a hillside to catch up with the field, his mount had put her foot in a rabbit hole, tumbled over, rolled perilously near him, and then regaining her feet, had made off at a brisk canter towards her stable, leaving him on his back, panting for breath. Now he was quite alone in a totally strange country. He did not know the name of his host or of his host’s house. He pictured himself tramping from village to village saying: “Can you tell me the address of a young man who was hunting this morning? He was in Butcher’s house at Eton!” Moreover, Tom suddenly remembered he was married. Of course he and Angela knew each other so well ... but there were limits. At eight o’clock that evening a weary figure trudged into the gas-lit parlour of the Royal George Hotel, Chagford. He wore sodden riding boots and torn and muddy clothes. He had wandered for five hours over the moor, and was hungry. They provided him with Canadian cheese, margarine, tinned salmon, and bottled stout, and sent him to sleep in a large brass bedstead which creaked as he moved. But he slept until half past ten next morning. The third day of the honeymoon started more propitiously. A bleak sun was shining a little. Stiff and sore in every muscle, Tom dressed in the still damp riding clothes of his unknown host and made inquiries about reaching the remote village where his Aunt Martha’s house stood, and where Angela must be anxiously awaiting him. He wired to her: “Arriving this evening. Will explain. All love,” and then inquired about trains. There was one train in the day which left early in the afternoon and, after three changes, brought him to a neighbouring station late that evening. Here he suffered another check. There was no car to be hired in the village. His aunt’s house was eight miles away. The telephone did not function after seven o’clock. The day’s journey in damp clothes had set him shivering and sneezing. He was clearly in for a bad cold. The prospect of eight miles’ walk in the dark was unthinkable. He spent the night at the inn. The fourth day dawned to find Tom speechless and nearly deaf. In this condition the car came to conduct him to the house so kindly lent for his week’s honeymoon. Here he was greeted with the news that Angela had left early that morning. “Mrs. Watch received a telegram, sir, saying that you had met with an accident hunting. She was very put out as she had asked several friends to luncheon.” “But where has she gone?” “The address was on the telegram, sir. It was the same address as your first telegram ... No, sir, the telegram has not been preserved.” So Angela had gone to his host near Exeter; well, she could jolly well look after herself. Tom felt far too ill to worry. He went straight to bed. The fifth day passed in a stupor of misery. Tom lay in bed listlessly turning the pages of such books as his aunt had collected in her fifty years of vigorous out-of-door life. On the sixth day conscience began to disturb him. Perhaps he ought to do something about Angela. It was then the butler suggested that the name in the inside pocket of the hunting coat would probably be that of Tom’s late, Angela’s present host. Some work with a local directory settled the matter. He sent a telegram. “Are you all right? Awaiting you here. Tom,” and received the answer: “Quite all right. Your friend divine. Why not join us here. Angela.” “In bed severe cold. Tom.” “So sorry darling. Will see you in London or shall I join you. Hardly worth it is it. Angela.” “Will see you London. Tom.” Of course Angela and he knew each other very well ... Two days later they met in the little flat which Mrs. Watch had been decorating for them. “I hope you’ve brought all the luggage.” “Yes, darling. What fun to be home!” “Office tomorrow.” “Yes, and I’ve got hundreds of people to ring up. I haven’t thanked them for the last batch of presents yet.” “Have a good time?” “Not bad. How’s your cold?” “Better. What are we doing tonight?” “I promised to go and see mama. Then I said I would dine with your Devon friend. He came up with me to see about some cow-cake. It seemed only decent to take him out after staying with him.” “Quite right. But I think I won’t come.” “No, I shouldn’t. I shall have heaps to tell her that would bore you.” That evening Mrs. Trench-Troubridge said: “I thought Angela was looking sweet tonight. The honeymoon’s done her good. So sensible of Tom not to take her on some exhausting trip on the Continent. You can see she’s come back quite rested. And the honeymoon is so often such a difficult time particularly after all the rush of the wedding.” “What’s this about their taking a cottage in Devon?” asked her husband. “Not taking dear, it’s being given them. Near the house of a bachelor friend of Tom’s apparently. Angela said it would be such a good place for her to go sometimes when she wanted a change. They can never get a proper holiday because of Tom’s work.” “Very sensible, very sensible indeed,” said Mr. Trench-Troubridge, lapsing into a light doze, as was usual with him at nine in the evening. 
Too Much Tolerance
A round, amiable face, reddened rather than browned by the tropical sun; round, rather puzzled grey eyes; close-cut sandy hair; a large, smiling mouth; a small sandy moustache; clean white duck suit and sun helmet—a typical English commercial agent stopping between ships at a stifling little port on the Red Sea. We were the only Europeans in the hotel. The boat for which we were both waiting was two days late. We spent all our time together. We went round the native bazaar and played interminable games of poker dice at the café tables. In these circumstances a casual acquaintance easily assumes a confidential tone. At first naturally enough we talked of general subjects—local conditions and race problems. “Can’t understand what all the trouble’s about. They’re all jolly chaps when you get to know them.” British officials, traders, Arabs, natives, Indian settlers—they were all to my new friend jolly good chaps. Such an odd thing they couldn’t get on better. Of course, different races had different ideas—some didn’t wash, some had queer ideas about honesty, some got out of  hand at times when they’d had too much to drink. “Still,” he said, “that’s nobody’s business but their own. If only they’d all let each other alone to go their own ways there wouldn’t be any problems. As for religions, well, there was a lot of good in them all—Hindu, Mahommedan, Pagan: the missionaries did a lot of good, too—Wesleyan, Catholic, Church of England, all jolly good fellows.” People in remote parts of the world tend to have unshakable views on every topic. After a few months spent among them it was a relief to come across so tolerant and broad a mind. On the first evening I left my companion with a feeling of warm respect. Here at last, in a continent peopled almost exclusively by fanatics of one kind or another, I thought I had found a nice man. Next day we got on to more intimate subjects and I began to learn something of his life. He was now nearer fifty than forty years of age, though I should have thought him younger. He had been an only son, brought up in an English provincial town in a household where rigid principles of Victorian decorum dominated its members. He had been born late in his parents’ life, and all his memories dated from after his father’s retirement from a responsible Government post in India. It was alien to his nature to admit the existence of discomfort or disagreement, but it was clear from his every reference to it that his home had not been a congenial one. Exact rules of morals and etiquette, ruthless criticism of neighbours, an insurmountable class barrier raised against all who were considered socially inferior, hostile disapproval of superiors—these were clearly the code of my friend’s parents, and he had grown up with a deep-rooted resolution to model his own life on opposite principles. I had been surprised on the evening of our first meeting to discover the nature of his work. He was engaged in selling sewing machines on commission to Indian storekeepers up and down the East African coast. It was clearly not the job for which his age and education should have fitted him. Later I learned the explanation. He had gone into business on leaving his public school, had done quite well, and eventually, just before the war, had set up on his own with the capital left him at his father’s death. “I had bad luck there,” he said. “I never feel quite to blame over what happened. You see, I’d taken a chap into partnership with me. He’d been a clerk with me in the office, and I’d always liked him, though he didn’t get on very well with the other fellows. “He got sacked just about the time I came in for some money. I never quite made out what the trouble was about, and anyway it was none of my business. The arrangement seemed rather lucky at first, because my partner wasn’t fit for military service, so all the time I was in the army he was able to look after things at home. “The business seemed to be going very well, too. We moved to new offices and took on a larger staff, and all through the war we were drawing very decent dividends. But apparently it was only temporary prosperity. “When I got back after the Armistice I didn’t pay a great deal of attention to my affairs, I’m afraid. I was glad to be home and wanted to make the most of peace. I left my partner to manage everything, and I suppose I more or less let things slide for two years. “Anyway, I didn’t know how bad things were until he suddenly told me that we should have to go into liquidation. “Since then I’ve been lucky in getting jobs, but it isn’t quite the same as being one’s own master.” He gazed out across the quay, turning his glass idly in his hand. Then, as an afterthought, he made an illuminating addition to his story. “One thing I’m very glad of,” he said, “my partner didn’t come down with me. Almost immediately after we closed down he opened on his own in the same way of business on quite a large scale. He’s a rich man now.” Later in the day he surprised me by casually mentioning his son. “Son?” “Yes. I’ve a boy of twenty-seven at home. Awfully nice fellow. I wish I could get back more often to see him. But he’s got his own friends now and I dare say he’s happy by himself. He’s interested in the theatre. “It’s not a thing I know much about myself. All his friends are theatrical, you know, jolly interesting. “I’m glad the boy has struck out for himself. I always made a point of never trying to force his interest in anything that didn’t attract him. “The only pity is that there’s very little money in it. He’s always hoping to get a job either on the stage or the cinema, but it’s difficult if you don’t know the right people, he says, and that’s expensive. “I send him as much as I can, but he has to be well dressed, you know, and go about a good deal and entertain, and all that takes money. Still, I expect it’ll lead to something in the end. He’s a jolly good fellow.” But it was not until some days later, on board ship, when we were already berthed at the port where he was due to disembark next day, that he mentioned his wife. We had had many drinks to wish each other good luck on our respective journeys. The prospect of immediate separation made mutual confidence easier than it would be between constant companions. “My wife left me,” he said simply. “It was a great surprise. I can’t to this day think why. I always encouraged her to do just what she wanted. “You see, I’d seen a lot of the Victorian idea of marriage, where a wife was supposed to have no interests outside her housekeeping, and the father of the family dined at home every evening. I don’t approve of that. “I always liked my wife to have her own friends and have them in the house when she wanted and to go out when she wanted and I did the same. I thought we were ideally happy. “She liked dancing and I didn’t, so when a chap turned up who she seemed to like going about with, I was delighted. I’d met him once or twice and heard that he ran after women a good bit, but that wasn’t my business. “My father used to keep a strict division among his friends, between those he saw at home and those he met in the club. He wouldn’t bring anyone to his house whose moral character he didn’t wholly approve of. I think that’s all old-fashioned rot. “Anyway, to cut a long story short, after she’d been going out with this fellow for some time she suddenly fell in love and went off with him. I’d always liked him, too. Jolly good sort of fellow. I suppose she had a perfect right to do what she preferred. All the same, I was surprised. And I’ve been lonely since.” At this moment two fellow passengers whose acquaintance I had been scrupulously avoiding came past our table. He called them to our table, so I wished him “Good-night” and went below. I did not see him to speak to next day, but I caught a brief glimpse of him on the pier, supervising the loading of his crate of sample sewing machines. As I watched, he finished his business and strode off towards the town—a jaunty, tragic little figure, cheated out of his patrimony by his partner, battened on by an obviously worthless son, deserted by his wife, an irrepressible, bewildered figure striding off under his bobbing topee, cheerfully butting his way into a whole continent of rapacious and ruthless jolly good fellows. 
Excursion In Reality
I The commissionaire at Espinoza’s restaurant seems to maintain under his particular authority all the most decrepit taxicabs in London. He is a commanding man; across his great chest the student of military medals may construe a tale of heroism and experience; Boer farms sink to ashes, fanatical Fuzzi-wuzzies hurl themselves to paradise, supercilious mandarins survey the smashing of their porcelain and rending of fine silk, in that triple row of decorations. He has only to run from the steps of Espinoza’s to call to your service a vehicle as crazy as all the enemies of the King-Emperor. Half-a-crown into the white cotton glove, because Simon Lent was too tired to ask for change. He and Sylvia huddled into the darkness on broken springs, between draughty windows. It had been an unsatisfactory evening. They had sat over their table until two because it was an extension night. Sylvia would not drink anything because Simon had said he was broke. So they sat for five or six hours, sometimes silent, sometimes bickering, sometimes exchanging listless greetings with the passing couples. Simon dropped Sylvia at her door; a kiss, clumsily offered, coldly accepted; then back to the attic flat, over a sleepless garage, for which Simon paid six guineas a week. Outside his door they were sluicing a limousine. He squeezed round it and climbed the narrow stairs, that had once echoed to the whistling of ostlers, stamping down to stables before dawn. (Woe to young men in Mewses! Oh woe, to bachelors half in love, living on £800 a year!) There was a small heap of letters on his dressing table, which had arrived that evening while he was dressing. He lit his gas fire and began to open them. Tailor’s bill £56, hosier £43; a reminder that his club subscription for that year had not yet been paid; his account from Espinoza’s with a note informing him that the terms were strict, net cash monthly, and that no further credit would be extended to him; it “appeared from the books” of his bank that his last cheque overdrew his account £10 16s. beyond the limit of his guaranteed overdraft; a demand from the income-tax collector for particulars of his employees and their wages (Mrs. Shaw, who came in to make his bed and orange juice for 4s. 6d. a day); small bills for books, spectacles, cigars, hair lotion and Sylvia’s last four birthday presents. (Woe to shops that serve young men in Mewses!) The other part of his mail was in marked contrast to this. There was a box of preserved figs from an admirer in Fresno, California; two letters from young ladies who said they were composing papers about his work for their college literary societies, and would he send a photograph; press cuttings describing him as a “popular,” “brilliant,” “meteorically successful,” and “enviable” young novelist; a request for the loan of two hundred pounds from a paralysed journalist; an invitation to luncheon from Lady Metroland; six pages of closely reasoned abuse from a lunatic asylum in the North of England. For the truth, which no one who saw into Simon Lent’s heart could possibly have suspected, was that he was in his way and within his limits quite a famous young man. There was a last letter with a typewritten address which Simon opened with little expectation of pleasure. The paper was headed with the name of a Film Studio in one of the suburbs of London. The letter was brief and business-like. Dear Simon Lent (a form of address, he had noted before, largely favoured by the theatrical profession), I wonder whether you have ever considered writing for the Films. We should value your angle on a picture we are now making. Perhaps you would meet me for luncheon tomorrow at the Garrick Club and let me know your reactions to this. Will you leave a message with my night-secretary some time before 8 a.m. tomorrow morning or with my day-secretary after that hour. Cordially yours, Below this were two words written in pen and ink which seemed to be Jewee Mecceee with below them the explanatory typescript (Sir James Macrae). Simon read this through twice. Then he rang up Sir James Macrae and informed his night-secretary that he would keep the luncheon appointment next day. He had barely put down the telephone before the bell rang. “This is Sir James Macrae’s night-secretary speaking. Sir James would be very pleased if Mr. Lent would come round and see him this evening at his house in Hampstead.” Simon looked at his watch. It was nearly three. “Well ... it’s rather late to go so far tonight ...” “Sir James is sending a car for you.” Simon was no longer tired. As he waited for the car the telephone rang again. “Simon,” said Sylvia’s voice; “are you asleep?” “No, in fact I’m just going out.” “Simon ... I say, was I beastly tonight?” “Lousy.” “Well, I thought you were lousy too.” “Never mind. See you sometime.” “Aren’t you going to go on talking?” “Can’t, I’m afraid. I’ve got to do some work.” “Simon, what can you mean?” “Can’t explain now. There’s a car waiting.” “When am I seeing you—tomorrow?” “Well, I don’t really know. Ring me up in the morning. Good night.” A quarter of a mile away, Sylvia put down the telephone, rose from the hearthrug, where she had settled herself in the expectation of twenty minutes’ intimate explanation and crept disconsolately into bed. Simon bowled off to Hampstead through deserted streets. He sat back in the car in a state of pleasant excitement. Presently they began to climb the steep little hill and emerged into an open space with a pond and the tops of trees, black and deep as a jungle in the darkness. The night-butler admitted him to the low Georgian house and led him to the library, where Sir James Macrae was standing before the fire, dressed in ginger-coloured plus fours. A table was laid with supper. “Evening, Lent. Nice of you to come. Have to fit in business when I can. Cocoa or whisky? Have some rabbit pie, it’s rather good. First chance of a meal I’ve had since breakfast. Ring for some more cocoa, there’s a good chap. Now what was it you wanted to see me about?” “Well, I thought you wanted to see me.” “Did I? Very likely. Miss Bentham’ll know. She arranged the appointment. You might ring the bell on the desk, will you?” Simon rang and there instantly appeared the neat night-secretary. “Miss Bentham, what did I want to see Mr. Lent about?” “I’m afraid I couldn’t say, Sir James. Miss Harper is responsible for Mr. Lent. When I came on duty this evening I merely found a note from her asking me to fix an appointment as soon as possible.” “Pity,” said Sir James. “We’ll have to wait until Miss Harper comes on tomorrow.” “I think it was something about writing for films.” “Very likely,” said Sir James. “Sure to be something of the kind. I’ll let you know without delay. Thanks for dropping in.” He put down his cup of cocoa and held out his hand with unaffected cordiality. “Good night, my dear boy.” He rang the bell for the night-butler. “Sanders, I want Benson to run Mr. Lent back.” “I’m sorry, sir. Benson has just gone down to the studio to fetch Miss Grits.” “Pity,” said Sir James. “Still, I expect you’ll be able to pick up a taxi or something.” 
II 
Simon got to bed at half past four. At ten minutes past eight the telephone by his bed was ringing. “Mr. Lent? This is Sir James Macrae’s secretary speaking. Sir James’s car will call for you at half past eight to take you to the studio.” “I shan’t be ready as soon as that, I’m afraid.” There was a shocked pause; then, the day-secretary said: “Very well, Mr. Lent. I will see if some alternative arrangement is possible and ring you in a few minutes.” In the intervening time Simon fell asleep again. Then the bell woke him once more and the same impersonal voice addressed him. “Mr. Lent? I have spoken to Sir James. His car will call for you at eight forty-five.” Simon dressed hastily. Mrs. Shaw had not yet arrived, so there was no breakfast for him. He found some stale cake in the kitchen cupboard and was eating it when Sir James’s car arrived. He took a slice down with him, still munching. “You needn’t have brought that,” said a severe voice from inside the car. “Sir James has sent you some breakfast. Get in quickly; we’re late.” In the corner, huddled in rugs, sat a young woman in a jaunty red hat; she had bright eyes and a very firm mouth. “I expect that you are Miss Harper.” “No. I’m Elfreda Grits. We’re working together on this film, I believe. I’ve been up all night with Sir James. If you don’t mind I’ll go to sleep for twenty minutes. You’ll find a thermos of cocoa and some rabbit pie in the basket on the floor.” “Does Sir James live on cocoa and rabbit pie?” “No; those are the remains of his supper. Please don’t talk. I want to sleep.” Simon disregarded the pie, but poured some steaming cocoa into the metal cap of the thermos flask. In the corner, Miss Grits composed herself for sleep. She took off the jaunty red hat and laid it between them on the seat, veiled her eyes with two blue-pigmented lids and allowed the firm lips to relax and gape a little. Her platinum-blonde wind-swept head bobbed and swayed with the motion of the car as they swept out of London through converging and diverging tram lines. Stucco gave place to brick and the façades of the tube stations changed from tile to concrete; unoccupied building plots appeared and newly planted trees along unnamed avenues. Five minutes exactly before their arrival at the studio, Miss Grits opened her eyes, powdered her nose, touched her lips with red, and pulling her hat on to the side of her scalp, sat bolt upright, ready for another day. Sir James was at work on the lot when they arrived. In a white-hot incandescent hell two young people were carrying on an infinitely tedious conversation at what was presumably the table of a restaurant. A dozen emaciated couples in evening dress danced listlessly behind them. At the other end of the huge shed some carpenters were at work building the façade of a Tudor manor house. Men in eye-shades scuttled in and out. Notices stood everywhere. Do not Smoke. Do not Speak. Keep away from the high-power cable. Miss Grits, in defiance of these regulations, lit a cigarette, kicked some electric apparatus out of her path, said, “He’s busy. I expect he’ll see us when he’s through with this scene,” and disappeared through a door marked No admittance. Shortly after eleven o’clock Sir James caught sight of Simon. “Nice of you to come. Shan’t be long now,” he called out to him. “Mr. Briggs, get a chair for Mr. Lent.” At two o’clock he noticed him again. “Had any lunch?” “No,” said Simon. “No more have I. Just coming.” At half past three Miss Grits joined him and said: “Well, it’s been an easy day so far. You mustn’t think we’re always as slack as this. There’s a canteen across the yard. Come and have something to eat.” An enormous buffet was full of people in a variety of costume and make-up. Disappointed actresses in languorous attitudes served cups of tea and hard-boiled eggs. Simon and Miss Grits ordered sandwiches and were about to eat them when a loud-speaker above their heads suddenly announced with alarming distinctness, “Sir James Macrae calling Mr. Lent and Miss Grits in the Conference Room.” “Come on, quick,” said Miss Grits. She bustled him through the swing doors, across the yard, into the office buildings and up a flight of stairs to a solid oak door marked Conference. Keep out. Too late. “Sir James has been called away,” said the secretary. “Will you meet him at the West End office at five-thirty.” Back to London, this time by tube. At five-thirty they were at the Piccadilly office ready for the next clue in their treasure hunt. This took them to Hampstead. Finally at eight they were back at the studio. Miss Grits showed no sign of exhaustion. “Decent of the old boy to give us a day off,” she remarked. “He’s easy to work with in that way—after Hollywood. Let’s get some supper.” But as they opened the canteen doors and felt the warm breath of light refreshments, the loud-speaker again announced: “Sir James Macrae calling Mr. Lent and Miss Grits in the Conference Room.” This time they were not too late. Sir James was there at the head of an oval table; round him were grouped the chiefs of his staff. He sat in a greatcoat with his head hung forward, elbows on the table and his hands clasped behind his neck. The staff sat in respectful sympathy. Presently he looked up, shook himself and smiled pleasantly. “Nice of you to come,” he said. “Sorry I couldn’t see you before. Lots of small things to see to on a job like this. Had dinner?” “Not yet.” “Pity. Have to eat, you know. Can’t work at full pressure unless you eat plenty.” Then Simon and Miss Grits sat down and Sir James explained his plan. “I want, ladies and gentlemen, to introduce Mr. Lent to you. I’m sure you all know his name already and I daresay some of you know his work. Well, I’ve called him in to help us and I hope that when he’s heard the plan he’ll consent to join us. I want to produce a film of Hamlet. I daresay you don’t think that’s a very original idea—but it’s Angle that counts in the film world. I’m going to do it from an entirely new angle. That’s why I’ve called in Mr. Lent. I want him to write dialogue for us.” “But, surely,” said Simon, “there’s quite a lot of dialogue there already?” “Ah, you don’t see my angle. There have been plenty of productions of Shakespeare in modern dress. We are going to produce him in modern speech. How can you expect the public to enjoy Shakespeare when they can’t make head or tail of the dialogue. D’you know I began reading a copy the other day and blessed if I could understand it. At once I said, ‘What the public wants is Shakespeare with all his beauty of thought and character translated into the language of everyday life.’ Now Mr. Lent here was the man whose name naturally suggested itself. Many of the most high-class critics have commended Mr. Lent’s dialogue. Now my idea is that Miss Grits here shall act in an advisory capacity, helping with the continuity and the technical side, and that Mr. Lent shall be given a free hand with the scenario ...” The discourse lasted for a quarter of an hour; then the chiefs of staff nodded sagely; Simon was taken into another room and given a contract to sign by which he received £50 a week retaining fee and £250 advance. “You had better fix up with Miss Grits the times of work most suitable to you. I shall expect your first treatment by the end of the week. I should go and get some dinner if I were you. Must eat.” Slightly dizzy, Simon hurried to the canteen where two languorous blondes were packing up for the night. “We’ve been on since four o’clock this morning,” they said, “and the supers have eaten everything except the nougat. Sorry.” Sucking a bar of nougat Simon emerged into the now deserted studio. On three sides of him, to the height of twelve feet, rose in appalling completeness the marble walls of the scene-restaurant; at his elbow a bottle of imitation champagne still stood in its pail of melted ice; above and beyond extended the vast gloom of rafters and ceiling. “Fact,” said Simon to himself, “the world of action ... the pulse of life ... Money, hunger ... Reality.” Next morning he was called with the words, “Two young ladies waiting to see you.” “Two?” Simon put on his dressing gown and, orange juice in hand, entered his sitting room. Miss Grits nodded pleasantly. “We arranged to start at ten,” she said. “But it doesn’t really matter. I shall not require you very much in the early stages. This is Miss Dawkins. She is one of  the staff stenographers. Sir James thought you would need one. Miss Dawkins will be attached to you until further notice. He also sent two copies of Hamlet. When you’ve had your bath, I’ll read you my notes for our first treatment.” But this was not to be; before Simon was dressed Miss Grits had been recalled to the studio on urgent business. “I’ll ring up and tell you when I am free,” she said. Simon spent the morning dictating letters to everyone he could think of; they began—“Please forgive me for dictating this, but I am so busy just now that I have little time for personal correspondence ...” Miss Dawkins sat deferentially over her pad. He gave her Sylvia’s number. “Will you get on to this number and present my compliments to Miss Lennox and ask her to luncheon at Espinoza’s ... And book a table for two there at one forty-five.” “Darling,” said Sylvia, when they met, “why were you out all yesterday and who was that voice this morning?” “Oh, that was Miss Dawkins, my stenographer.” “Simon, what can you mean?” “You see, I’ve joined the film industry.” “Darling. Do give me a job.” “Well, I’m not paying much attention to casting at the moment—but I’ll bear you in mind.” “Goodness. How you’ve changed in two days!” “Yes!” said Simon, with great complacency. “Yes, I think I have. You see, for the first time in my life I have come into contact with Real Life. I’m going to give up writing novels. It was a mug’s game anyway. The written word is dead—first the papyrus, then the printed book, now the film. The artist must no longer work alone. He is part of the age in which he lives; he must share (only of course, my dear Sylvia, in very different proportions) the weekly wage envelope of the proletarian. Vital art implies a corresponding set of social relationships. Co-operation ... co-ordination ... the hive endeavour of the community directed to a single end ...” Simon continued in this strain at some length, eating meantime a luncheon of Dickensian dimensions, until, in a small, miserable voice, Sylvia said: “It seems to me that you’ve fallen for some ghastly film star.” “O God,” said Simon, “only a virgin could be as vulgar as that.” They were about to start one of their old, interminable quarrels when the telephone boy brought a message that Miss Grits wished to resume work instantly. “So that’s her name,” said Sylvia. “If you only knew how funny that was,” said Simon, scribbling his initials on the bill and leaving the table while Sylvia was still groping with gloves and bag. As things turned out, however, he became Miss Grits’s lover before the week was out. The idea was hers. She suggested it to him one evening at his flat as they corrected the typescript of the final version of their first treatment. “No, really,” Simon said aghast. “No, really. It would be quite impossible. I’m sorry, but ...” “Why? Don’t you like women?” “Yes, but ...” “Oh, come along,” Miss Grits said briskly. “We don’t get much time for amusement ...” And later, as she packed their manuscripts into her attaché case she said, “We must do it again if we have time. Besides I find it’s so much easier to work with a man if you’re having an affaire with him.” 
III 
For three weeks Simon and Miss Grits (he always thought of her by this name in spite of all subsequent intimacies) worked together in complete harmony. His life was re-directed and transfigured. No longer did he lie in bed, glumly preparing himself for the coming day; no longer did he say every morning ‘I must get down to the country and finish that book’ and every evening find himself slinking back to the same urban flat; no longer did he sit over supper tables with Sylvia, idly bickering; no more listless explanations over the telephone. Instead he pursued a routine of incalculable variety, summoned by telephone at all hours to conferences which rarely assembled; sometimes to Hampstead, sometimes to the studios, once to Brighton. He spent long periods of work pacing up and down his sitting room, with Miss Grits pacing backwards and forwards along the other wall and Miss Dawkins obediently perched between them, as the two dictated, corrected and redrafted their scenario. There were meals at improbable times and vivid, unsentimental passages of love with Miss Grits. He ate irregular and improbable meals, bowling through the suburbs in Sir James’s car, pacing the carpet dictating to Miss Dawkins, perched in deserted lots upon scenery which seemed made to survive the collapse of civilization. He lapsed, like Miss Grits, into brief spells of death-like unconsciousness, often awakening, startled, to find that a street or desert or factory had come into being about him while he slept. The film meanwhile grew rapidly, daily putting out new shoots and changing under their eyes in a hundred unexpected ways. Each conference produced some radical change in the story. Miss Grits in her precise, unvariable voice would read out the fruits of their work. Sir James would sit with his head in his hand, rocking slightly from side to side and giving vent to occasional low moans and whimpers; round him sat the experts—production, direction, casting, continuity, cutting and costing managers, bright eyes, eager to attract the great man’s attention with some apt intrusion. “Well,” Sir James would say, “I think we can O.K. that. Any suggestions, gentlemen?” There would be a pause, until one by one the experts began to deliver their contributions ... “I’ve been thinking, sir, that it won’t do to have the scene laid in Denmark. The public won’t stand for travel stuff. How about setting it in Scotland—then we could have some kilts and clan gathering scenes?” “Yes, that’s a very sensible suggestion. Make a note of that, Lent ...” “I was thinking we’d better drop this character of the Queen. She’d much better be dead before the action starts. She hangs up the action. The public won’t stand for him abusing his mother.” “Yes, make a note of that, Lent.” “How would it be, sir, to make the ghost the Queen instead of the King ...” “Yes, make a note of that, Lent ...” “Don’t you think, sir, it would be better if Ophelia were Horatio’s sister. More poignant, if you see what I mean.” “Yes, make a note of that ...” “I think we are losing sight of the essence of the story in the last sequence. After all, it is first and foremost a Ghost Story, isn’t it? ...” And so from simple beginnings the story spread majestically. It was in the second week that Sir James, after, it must be admitted, considerable debate, adopted the idea of incorporating with it the story of Macbeth. Simon was opposed to the proposition at first, but the appeal of the three witches proved too strong. The title was then changed to The White Lady of Dunsinane, and he and Miss Grits settled down to a prodigious week’s work in rewriting their entire scenarios. 
IV 
The end came as suddenly as everything else in this remarkable episode. The third conference was being held at an hotel in the New Forest where Sir James happened to be staying; the experts had assembled by train, car and motor-bicycle at a moment’s notice and were tired and unresponsive. Miss Grits read the latest scenario; it took some time, for it had now reached the stage when it could be taken as “white script” ready for shooting. Sir James sat sunk in reflection longer than usual. When he raised his head, it was to utter the single word: “No.” “No?” “No, it won’t do. We must scrap the whole thing. We’ve got much too far from the original story. I can’t think why you need introduce Julius Caesar and King Arthur at all.” “But, sir, they were your own suggestions at the last conference.” “Were they? Well, I can’t help it. I must have been tired and not paying full attention ... Besides, I don’t like the dialogue. It misses all the poetry of the original. What the public wants is Shakespeare, the whole of Shakespeare and nothing but Shakespeare. Now this scenario you’ve written is all very well in its way—but it’s not Shakespeare. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll use the play exactly as he wrote it and record from that. Make a note of it, Miss Grits.” “Then you’ll hardly require my services any more?” said Simon. “No, I don’t think I shall. Still, nice of you to have come.” Next morning Simon woke bright and cheerful as usual and was about to leap from his bed when he suddenly remembered the events of last night. There was nothing for him to do. An empty day lay before him. No Miss Grits, no Miss Dawkins, no scampering off to conferences or dictating of dialogue. He rang up Miss Grits and asked her to lunch with him. “No, quite impossible, I’m afraid. I have to do the continuity for a scenario of St. John’s Gospel before the end of the week. Pretty tough job. We’re setting it in Algeria so as to get the atmosphere. Off to Hollywood next month. Don’t suppose I shall see you again. Good-bye.” Simon lay in bed with all his energy slowly slipping away. Nothing to do. Well, he supposed, now was the time to go away to the country and get on with his novel. Or should he go abroad? Some quiet café-restaurant in the sun where he could work out those intractable last chapters. That was what he would do ... sometime ... the end of the week perhaps. Meanwhile he leaned over on his elbow, lifted the telephone and, asking for Sylvia’s number, prepared himself for twenty-five minutes’ acrimonious reconciliation. 
Incident In Azanie
I 
The union club at Matodi was in marked contrast to the hillside, bungalow dwellings of the majority of its members. It stood in the centre of the town, on the waterfront; a seventeenth-century Arab mansion built of massive whitewashed walls round a small court; latticed windows overhung the street from which, in former times, the womenfolk of a great merchant had watched the passing traffic; a heavy door, studded with brass bosses gave entrance to the dark shade of the court, where a little fountain sprayed from the roots of an enormous mango; and an open staircase of inlaid cedar-wood led to the cool interior. An Arab porter, clothed in a white gown scoured and starched like a Bishop’s surplice, crimson sash and tarboosh, sat drowsily at the gate. He rose in reverence as Mr. Reppington, the magistrate, and Mr. Bretherton, the sanitary-inspector, proceeded splendidly to the bar. In token of the cordiality of the Condominium, French officials were honorary members of the Club, and a photograph of a former French President (“We can’t keep changing it,” said Major Lepperidge, “every time the frogs care to have a shim-ozzle”) hung in the smoking room opposite the portrait of the Prince of Wales; except on Gala nights, however, they rarely availed themselves of their privilege. The single French journal to which the Club subscribed was La Vie Parisienne, which, on this particular evening, was in the hands of a small man of plebeian appearance, sitting alone in a basket chair. Reppington and Bretherton nodded their way forward. “Evening, Granger.” “Evening, Barker.” “Evening, Jagger,” and then in an audible undertone Bretherton inquired, “Who’s the chap in the corner with La Vie?” “Name of Brooks. Petrol or something.” “Ah.” “Pink gin?” “Ah.” “What sort of day?” “Bad show, rather. Trouble about draining the cricket field. No subsoil.” “Ah. Bad show.” The Goan barman put their drinks before them. Bretherton signed the chit. “Well, cheerio.” “Cheerio.” Mr. Brooks remained riveted upon La Vie Parisienne. Presently Major Lepperidge came in, and the atmosphere stiffened a little. (He was O.C. of the native levy, seconded from India.) “Evening, Major,” from civilians. “Good evening, sir,” from the military. “Evening. Evening. Evening. Phew. Just had a very fast set of lawner with young Kentish. Hot service. Gin and lime. By the way, Bretherton, the cricket field is looking pretty seedy.” “I know. No subsoil.” “I say, that’s a bad show. No subsoil. Well, do what you can, there’s a good fellow. It looks terrible. Quite bare and a great lake in the middle.” The Major took his gin and lime and moved towards a chair; suddenly he saw Mr. Brooks, and his authoritative air softened to unaccustomed amiability. “Why, hallo, Brooks,” he said. “How are you? Fine to see you back. Just had the pleasure of seeing your daughter at the tennis club. My missus wondered if you and she would care to come up and dine one evening. How about Thursday? Grand. She’ll be delighted. Good-night you fellows. Got to get a shower.” The occurrence was sensational. Bretherton and Reppington looked at one another in shocked surprise. Major Lepperidge, both in rank and personality, was the leading man in Matodi—in the whole of Azania indeed, with the single exception of the Chief Commissioner at Debra Dowa. It was inconceivable that Brooks should dine with Lepperidge. Bretherton himself had only dined there once and he was Government. “Hullo, Brooks,” said Reppington “Didn’t see you there behind your paper. Come and have one.” “Yes, Brooks,” said Bretherton. “Didn’t know you were back. Have a jolly leave? See any shows?” “It’s very kind of you, but I must be going. We arrived on Tuesday in the Ngoma. No, I didn’t see any shows. You see, I was down at Bournemouth most of the time.” “One before you go.” “No really, thanks, I must get back. My daughter will be waiting. Thanks all the same. See you both later.” Daughter.....? 
II 
There were eight Englishwomen in Matodi, counting Mrs. Bretherton’s two-year-old daughter; nine if you included Mrs. Macdonald (but no one did include Mrs. Macdonald who came from Bombay and betrayed symptoms of Asiatic blood. Besides, no one knew who Mr. Macdonald had been. Mrs. Macdonald kept an ill-frequented pension on the outskirts of the town named “The Bougainvillea”). All who were of marriageable age were married; they led lives under a mutual scrutiny too close and unremitting for romance. There were, however, seven unmarried Englishmen, three in Government service, three in commerce and one unemployed, who had fled to Matodi from his creditors in Kenya. (He sometimes spoke vaguely of “planting” or “prospecting,” but in the meantime drew a small remittance each month and hung amiably about the Club and the tennis courts.) Most of these bachelors were understood to have some girl at home; they kept photographs in their rooms, wrote long letters regularly, and took their leave with hints that when they returned they might not be alone. But they invariably were. Perhaps in precipitous eagerness for sympathy they painted too dark a picture of Azanian life; perhaps the Tropics made them a little addle-pated..... Anyway, the arrival of Prunella Brooks sent a wave of excitement through English society. Normally, as the daughter of Mr. Brooks, oil company agent, her choice would have been properly confined to the three commercial men—Mr. James, of the Eastern Exchange Telegraph Company, and Messrs. Watson and Jagger, of the Bank—but Prunella was a girl of such evident personal superiority, that in her first afternoon at the tennis courts, as has been shown above, she transgressed the shadow line offortlessly and indeed unconsciously, and stepped straight into the inmost sanctuary, the Lepperidge bungalow. She was small and unaffected, an iridescent blonde, with a fresh skin, doubly intoxicating in contrast with the tanned and desiccated tropical complexions around her; with rubbery, puppyish limbs and a face which lit up with amusement at the most barren pleasantries; an air of earnest interest in the opinions and experiences of all she met; a natural confidante, with no disposition to make herself the centre of a group, but rather to tackle her friends one by one, in their own time, when they needed her; deferential and charming to the married women; tender, friendly, and mildly flirtatious with the men; keen on games but not so good as to shake masculine superiority; a devoted daughter denying herself any pleasure that might impair the smooth working of Mr. Brooks’s home—“No, I must go now. I couldn’t let father come home from the Club and not find me there to greet him”—in fact, just such a girl as would be a light and blessing in any outpost of the Empire. It was very few days before all at Matodi were eloquent of their good fortune. Of course, she had first of all to be examined and instructed by the matrons of the colony, but she submitted to her initiation with so pretty a grace that she might not have been aware of the dangers of the ordeal. Mrs. Lepperidge and Mrs. Reppington put her through it. Far away in the interior, in the sunless secret places, where a twisted stem across the jungle track, a rag fluttering to the bough of a tree, a fowl headless and full spread by an old stump marked the taboo where no man might cross, the Sakuya women chanted their primeval litany of initiation; here on the hillside the no less terrible ceremony was held over Mrs. Lepperidge’s tea table. First the questions; disguised and delicate over the tea cake but quickening their pace as the tribal rhythm waxed high and the table was cleared of tray and kettle, falling faster and faster like ecstatic hands on the taut cowhide, mounting and swelling with the first cigarette; a series of urgent, peremptory interrogations. To all this Prunella responded with docile simplicity. The whole of her life, upbringing and education were exposed, examined and found to be exemplary; her mother’s death, the care of an aunt, a convent school in the suburbs which had left her with charming manners, a readiness to find the right man and to settle down with him whenever the Service should require it; her belief in a limited family and European education, the value of sport, kindness to animals, affectionate patronage of men. Then, when she had proved herself worthy of it, came the instruction. Intimate details of health and hygiene, things every young girl should know, the general dangers of sex and its particular dangers in the Tropics; the proper treatment of the other inhabitants of Matodi, etiquette towards ladies of higher rank, the leaving of  cards..... “Never shake hands with natives, however well educated they think themselves. Arabs are quite different, many of them very like gentlemen ... no worse than a great many Italians, really ... Indians, luckily, you won’t have to meet ... never allow native servants to see you in your dressing gown ... and be very careful about curtains in the bathroom—natives peep ... never walk in the side streets alone—in fact you have no business in them at all ... never ride outside the compound alone. There have been several cases of bandits ... an American missionary only last year, but he was some kind of non-Conformist ... We owe it to our menfolk to take no unnecessary risks ... a band of brigands commanded by a Sakuya called Joab ... the Major will soon clean him up when he gets the levy into better shape ... they find their boots very uncomfortable at present ... meanwhile it is a very safe rule to take a man with you everywhere.....” III 
And Prunella was never short of male escort. As the weeks passed it became clear to the watching colony that her choice had narrowed down to two—Mr. Kentish, assistant native commissioner, and Mr. Benson, second lieutenant in the native levy; not that she was not consistently charming to everyone else—even to the shady remittance man and the repulsive Mr. Jagger—but by various little acts of preference she made it known that Kentish and Benson were her favourites. And the study of their innocent romances gave a sudden new interest to the social life of the town. Until now there had been plenty of entertaining certainly—gymkhanas and tennis tournaments, dances and dinner parties, calling and gossiping, amateur opera and church bazaars—but it had been a joyless and dutiful affair. They knew what was expected of Englishmen abroad; they had to keep up appearances before the natives and their co-protectionists; they had to have something to write home about; so they sturdily went through the recurring recreations due to their station. But with Prunella’s coming a new lightness was in the air; there were more parties and more dances and a point to everything. Mr. Brooks, who had never dined out before, found himself suddenly popular, and as his former exclusion had not worried him, he took his present vogue as a natural result of his daughter’s charm, was pleased by it and mildly embarrassed. He realized that she would soon want to get married and faced with equanimity the prospect of his inevitable return to solitude. Meanwhile Benson and Kentish ran neck and neck through the crowded Azanian spring and no one could say with confidence which was leading—betting was slightly in favour of Benson, who had supper dances with her at the Caledonian and the Polo Club Balls—when there occurred the incident which shocked Azanian feeling to its core. Prunella Brooks was kidnapped. The circumstances were obscure and a little shady. Prunella, who had never been known to infringe one jot or tittle of the local code, had been out riding alone in the hills. That was apparent from the first, and later, under cross-examination, her syce revealed that this had for some time been her practice, two or three times a week. The shock of her infidelity to rule was almost as great as the shock of her disappearance. But worse was to follow. One evening at the Club, since Mr. Brooks was absent (his popularity had waned in the last few days and his presence made a painful restraint) the question of Prunella’s secret rides was being freely debated, when a slightly fuddled voice broke into the conversation. “It’s bound to come out,” said the remittance man from Kenya, “so I may as well tell you right away. Prunella used to ride with me. She didn’t want us to get talked about, so we met on the Debra Dowa road by the Moslem Tombs. I shall miss those afternoons very much indeed,” said the remittance man, a slight, alcoholic quaver in his voice, “and I blame myself to a great extent for all that has happened. You see, I must have had a little more to drink than was good for me that morning and it was very hot, so with one thing and another, when I went to change into riding breeches I fell asleep and did not wake up until after dinnertime. And perhaps that is the last we shall ever see of her ...” and two vast tears rolled down his cheeks. This unmanly spectacle preserved the peace, for Benson and Kentish had already begun to advance upon the remittance man with a menacing air. But there is little satisfaction in castigating one who is already in the profound depths of self-pity and the stern tones of Major Lepperidge called them sharply to order. “Benson, Kentish, I don’t say I don’t sympathize with you boys and I know exactly what I’d do myself under the circumstances. The story we have just heard may or may not be the truth. In either case I think I know what we all feel about the teller. But that can wait. You’ll have plenty of time to settle up when we’ve got Miss Brooks safe. That is our first duty.” Thus exhorted, public opinion again rallied to Prunella, and the urgency of her case was dramatically emphasized two days later by the arrival at the American Consulate of the Baptist missionary’s right ear loosely done up in newspaper and string. The men of the colony—excluding, of course, the remittance man—got together in the Lepperidge bungalow and formed a committee of defence, first to protect the women who were still left to them and then to rescue Miss Brooks at whatever personal inconvenience or risk. 
IV 
The first demand for ransom came through the agency of Mr. Youkoumian. The little Armenian was already well known and, on the whole, well liked by the English community; it did them good to find a foreigner who so completely fulfilled their ideal of all that a foreigner should be. Two days after the foundation of the British Womanhood Protection Committee, he appeared at the Major’s orderly room asking for a private audience, a cheerful, rotund, self-abasing figure, in a shiny alpaca suit, skull cap and yellow, elastic-sided boots. “Major Lepperidge,” he said, “you know me; all the gentlemen in Matodi know me. The English are my favourite gentlemen and the natural protectors of the under races all same as the League of Nations. Listen, Major Lepperidge, I ear things. Everyone trusts me. It is a no good thing for these black men to abduct English ladies. I fix it O.K.” To the Major’s questions, with infinite evasions and circumlocutions, Youkoumian explained that by the agency of various cousins of his wife he had formed contact with an Arab, one of whose wives was the sister of a Sakuya in Joab’s band; that Miss Brooks was at present safe and that Joab was disposed to talk business. “Joab make very stiff price,” he said. “He want one undred thousand dollars, an armoured car, two machine guns, a undred rifles, five thousand rounds of ammunition, fifty orses, fifty gold wrist watches, a wireless set, fifty cases of whisky, free pardon and the rank of honorary colonel in the Azanian levy.” “That, of course, is out of the question.” The little Armenian shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, well, then he cut off Miss Brooks’s ears all same as the American clergyman. Listen, Major, this is one damn awful no good country. I live ere forty years, I know. I been little man and I been big man in this country, all same rule for big and little. If native want anything you give it im quick, then work ell out of im and get it back later. Natives all damn fool men but very savage all same as animals. Listen, Major, I make best whisky in Matodi—Scotch, Irish, all brands I make im; I got very fine watches in my shop all same as gold, I got wireless set—armoured car, orses, machine guns is for you to do. Then we clean up tidy bit fifty-fifty, no?” 
V 
Two days later Mr. Youkoumian appeared at Mr. Brooks’s bungalow. “A letter from Miss Brooks,” he said. “A Sakuya fellow brought it in. I give im a rupee.” It was an untidy scrawl on the back of an envelope. Dearest Dad, I am safe at present and fairly well. On no account attempt to follow the messenger. Joab and the bandits would torture me to death. Please send gramophone and records. Do come to terms or I don’t know what will happen. Prunella. It was the first of a series of notes which, from now on, arrived every two or three days through the agency of Mr. Youkoumian. They mostly contained requests for small personal possessions ... Dearest Dad, Not those records. The dance ones..... Please send face cream in pot in bathroom, also illustrated papers ... the green silk pajamas ... Lucky Strike cigarettes ... two light drill skirts and the sleeveless silk shirts ... The letters were all brought to the Club and read aloud, and as the days passed the sense of tension became less acute, giving way to a general feeling that the drama had become prosaic. “They are bound to reduce their price. Meanwhile the girl is safe enough,” pronounced Major Lepperidge, voicing authoritatively what had long been unspoken in the minds of the community. The life of the town began to resume its normal aspect—administration, athletics, gossip; the American missionary’s second ear arrived and attracted little notice, except from Mr. Youkoumian, who produced an ear trumpet which he attempted to sell to the mission headquarters. The ladies of the colony abandoned the cloistered life which they had adopted during the first scare; the men became less protective and stayed out late at the Club as heretofore. Then something happened to revive interest in the captive. Sam Stebbing discovered the cypher. He was a delicate young man of high academic distinction, lately arrived from Cambridge to work with Grainger in the immigration office. From the first he had shown a keener interest than most of his colleagues in the situation. For a fortnight of oppressive heat he had sat up late studying the texts of Prunella’s messages; then he emerged with the startling assertion that there was a cypher. The system by which he had solved it was far from simple. He was ready enough to explain it, but his hearers invariably lost hold of the argument and contented themselves with the solution. “... you see you translate it into Latin, you make an anagram of the first and last words of the first message, the second and last but one of the third when you start counting from the centre onwards. I bet that puzzled the bandits ...” “Yes, old boy. Besides, none of them can read anyway ...” “Then in the fourth message you go back to the original system, taking the fourth word and the last but three ...” “Yes, yes, I see. Don’t bother to explain any more. Just tell us what the message really says.” “It says, ‘DAILY THREATENED WORSE THAN BREATH.’ “Her system’s at fault there, must mean ‘death’; then there’s a word I can’t understand—PLZGF, no doubt the poor child was in great agitation when she wrote it, and after that TRUST IN MY KING.” This was generally voted a triumph. The husbands brought back the news to their wives. “... Jolly ingenious the way old Stebbing worked it out. I won’t bother to explain it to you. You wouldn’t understand. Anyway, the result is clear enough. Miss Brooks is in terrible danger. We must all do something.” “But who would have thought of little Prunella being so clever ...” “Ah, I always said that girl had brains.” 
VI 
News of the discovery was circulated by the Press agencies throughout the civilized world. At first the affair had received wide attention. It had been front page, with portrait, for two days, then middle page with portrait, then middle page halfway down without portrait, and finally page three of the Excess as the story became daily less alarming. The cypher gave the story a new lease on life. Stebbing, with portrait, appeared on the front page. Ten thousand pounds was offered by the paper towards the ransom, and a star journalist appeared from the skies in an aeroplane to conduct and report the negotiations. He was a tough young man of Australian origin and from the moment of his arrival everything went with a swing. The colony sunk its habitual hostility to the Press, elected him to the Club, and filled his leisure with cocktail parties and tennis tournaments. He even usurped Lepperidge’s position as authority on world topics. But his stay was brief. On the first day he interviewed Mr. Brooks and everyone of importance in the town, and cabled back a moving “human” story of Prunella’s position in the heart of the colony. From now onwards to three millions or so of readers Miss Brooks became Prunella. (There was only one local celebrity whom he was unable to meet. Poor Mr. Stebbing had “gone under” with the heat and had been shipped back to England on sick leave in a highly deranged condition of nerves and mind.) On the second day he interviewed Mr. Youkoumian. They sat down together with a bottle of mastika at a little round table behind Mr. Youkoumian’s counter at ten in the morning. It was three in the afternoon before the reporter stepped out into the white-dust heat, but he had won his way. Mr. Youkoumian had promised to conduct him to the bandits’ camp. Both of them were pledged to secrecy. By sundown the whole of Matodi was discussing the coming expedition, but the journalist was not embarrassed by any inquiries; he was alone that evening, typing out an account of what he expected would happen next day. He described the start at dawn ... “grey light breaking over the bereaved township of Matodi ... the camels snorting and straining at their reins ... the many sorrowing Englishmen to whom the sun meant only the termination of one more night of hopeless watching ... silver dawn breaking in the little room where Prunella’s bed stood, the coverlet turned down as she had left it on the fatal afternoon ...” He described the ascent into the hills—“... luxuriant tropical vegetation giving place to barren scrub and bare rock ...” He described how the bandits’ messenger blindfolded him and how he rode, swaying on his camel through darkness, into the unknown. Then, after what seemed an eternity, the halt; the bandage removed from his eyes ... the bandits’ camp. “... twenty pairs of remorseless eastern eyes glinting behind ugly-looking rifles ...” here he took the paper from his machine and made a correction; the bandits’ lair was to be in a cave “... littered with bone and skins.” ... Joab, the bandit chief, squatting in barbaric splendour, a jewelled sword across his knees. Then the climax of the story; Prunella bound. For some time he toyed with the idea of stripping her, and began to hammer out a vivid word-picture of her girlish frame shrinking in the shadows, Andromeda-like. But caution restrained him and he contented himself with “... her lovely, slim body marked by the hempen ropes that cut into her young limbs ...” The concluding paragraphs related how despair suddenly melted to hope in her eyes as he stepped forward, handing over the ransom to the bandit chief and “in the name of the Daily Excess and the People of Great Britain restored her to her heritage of freedom.” It was late before he had finished, but he retired to bed with a sense of high accomplishment, and next morning deposited his manuscript with the Eastern Exchange Telegraph Company before setting out with Mr. Youkoumian for the hills. The journey was in all respects totally unlike his narrative. They started, after a comfortable breakfast, surrounded by the well wishes of most of the British and many of the French colony, and instead of riding on camels they drove in Mr. Kentish’s baby Austin. Nor did they even reach Joab’s lair. They had not gone more than ten miles before a girl appeared walking alone on the track towards them. She was not very tidy, particularly about the hair, but, apart from this, showed every sign of robust well-being. “Miss Brooks, I presume,” said the journalist, unconsciously following a famous precedent. “But where are the bandits?” Prunella looked inquiringly towards Mr. Youkoumian who, a few steps in the rear, was shaking his head with vigour. “This British newspaper writing gentleman,” he explained, “e know all same Matodi gentlemen. E got the thousand pounds for Joab.” “Well, he’d better take care,” said Miss Brooks, “the bandits are all round you. Oh you wouldn’t see them, of course, but I don’t mind betting that there are fifty rifles covering us at this moment from behind the boulders and bush and so on.” She waved a bare, suntanned arm expansively towards the innocent-looking landscape. “I hope you’ve brought the money in gold.” “It’s all here, in the back of the car, Miss Brooks.” “Splendid. Well, I’m afraid Joab won’t allow you into his lair, so you and I will wait here, and Youkoumian shall drive into the hills and deliver it.” “But listen, Miss Brooks, my paper has put a lot of money into this story. I got to see that lair.” “I’ll tell you all about it,” said Prunella, and she did. “There were three huts,” she began, her eyes downcast, her hands folded, her voice precise and gentle as though she were repeating a lesson, “the smallest and the darkest was used as my dungeon.” The journalist shifted uncomfortably. “Huts,” he said. “I had formed the impression that they were caves.” “So they were,” said Prunella. “Hut is a local word for cave. Two lions were chained beside me night and day. Their eyes glared and I felt their foetid breath. The chains were of a length so that if I lay perfectly still I was out of their reach. If I had moved hand or foot ...” She broke off with a little shudder ... By the time that Youkoumian returned, the journalist had material for another magnificent front-page splash. “Joab has given orders to withdraw the snipers,” Prunella announced, after a whispered consultation with the Armenian. “It is safe for us to go.” So they climbed into the little car and drove unadventurously back to Matodi. 
VII 
Little remains of the story to be told. There was keen enthusiasm in the town when Prunella returned, and an official welcome was organized for her on the subsequent Tuesday. The journalist took many photographs, wrote up a scene of homecoming that stirred the British public to the depths of its heart, and soon flew away in his aeroplane to receive congratulation and promotion at the Excess office. It was expected that Prunella would now make her final choice between Kentish and Benson, but this excitement was denied to the colony. Instead, came the distressing intelligence that she was returning to England. A light seemed to have been extinguished in Azanian life, and in spite of avowed good wishes there was a certain restraint on the eve of her departure—almost of resentment, as though Prunella were guilty of disloyalty in leaving. The Excess inserted a paragraph announcing her arrival, headed ECHO OF KIDNAPPING CASE, but otherwise she seemed to have slipped unobtrusively from public attention. Stebbing, poor fellow, was obliged to retire from the service. His mind seemed permanently disordered and from now on he passed his time, harmlessly but unprofitably, in a private nursing home, working out hidden messages in Bradshaw’s Railway Guide. Even in Matodi the kidnapping was seldom discussed. One day six months later Lepperidge and Bretherton were sitting in the Club drinking their evening glass of pink gin. Banditry was in the air at the moment for that morning the now memberless trunk of the American missionary had been found at the gates of the Baptist compound. “It’s one of the problems we shall have to tackle,” said Lepperidge. “A case for action. I am going to make a report of the entire matter.” Mr. Brooks passed them on his way out to his lonely dinner table; he was a rare visitor to the Club now; the petrol agency was uniformly prosperous and kept him late at his desk. He neither remembered nor regretted his brief popularity, but Lepperidge maintained a guilty cordiality towards him whenever they met. “Evening, Brooks. Any news of Miss Prunella?” “Yes, as a matter of fact I heard from her today. She’s just been married.” “Well I’m blessed ... I hope you’re glad. Anyone we know?” “Yes, I am glad in a way, though of course I shall miss her. It’s that fellow from Kenya who stayed here once; remember him?” “Ah, yes, him? Well, well ... Give her my salaams when you write.” Mr. Brooks went downstairs into the still and odorous evening. Lepperidge and Bretherton were completely alone. The Major leant forward and spoke in husky, confidential tones. “I say, Bretherton,” he said. “Look here, there’s something I’ve often wondered, strictly between ourselves, I mean. Did you ever think there was anything fishy about that kidnapping?” “Fishy, sir?” “Fishy.” “I think I know what you mean, sir. Well some of us have been thinking, lately ...” “Exactly.” “Not of course anything definite. Just what you said yourself, sir, fishy.” “Exactly ... Look here, Bretherton, I think you might pass the word round that it’s not a thing to be spoken about, see what I mean? The missus is putting it round to the women too ...” “Quite, sir. It’s not a thing one wants talked about ... Arabs, I mean, and frogs.” “Exactly.” There was another long pause. At last Lepperidge rose to go. “I blame myself,” he said. “We made a great mistake over that girl. I ought to have known better. After all, first and last when all’s said and done, Brooks is a commercial wallah.”
Bella Fleace Gave A Party
Ballingar is four and a half hours from Dublin if you catch the early train from Broadstone Station and five and a quarter if you wait until the afternoon. It is the market town of a large and comparatively well-populated district. There is a pretty Protestant Church in 1820 Gothic on one side of the square and a vast, unfinished Catholic cathedral opposite it, conceived in that irresponsible medley of architectural orders that is so dear to the hearts of transmontane pietists. Celtic lettering of a sort is beginning to take the place of the Latin alphabet on the shop fronts that complete the square. These all deal in identical goods in varying degrees of dilapidation; Mulligan’s Store, Flannigan’s Store, Riley’s Store, each sells thick black boots, hanging in bundles, soapy colonial cheese, hardware and haberdashery, oil and saddlery, and each is licensed to sell ale and porter for consumption on or off the premises. The shell of the barracks stands with empty window frames and blackened interior as a monument to emancipation. Someone has written The Pope is a Traitor in tar on the green pillar box. A typical Irish town. Fleacetown is fifteen miles from Ballingar, on a direct uneven road through typical Irish country; vague purple hills in the far distance and towards them, on one side of the road, fitfully visible among drifting patches of white mist, unbroken miles of bog, dotted with occasional stacks of cut peat. On the other side the ground slopes up to the north, divided irregularly into spare fields by banks and stone walls over which the Ballingar hounds have some of their most eventful hunting. Moss lies on everything; in a rough green rug on the walls and banks, soft green velvet on the timber—blurring the transitions so that there is no knowing where the ground ends and trunk and masonry begin. All the way from Ballingar there is a succession of whitewashed cabins and a dozen or so fair-size farmhouses; but there is no gentleman’s house, for all this was Fleace property in the days before the Land Commission. The demesne land is all that belongs to Fleacetown now, and this is let for pasture to neighbouring farmers. Only a few beds are cultivated in the walled kitchen garden; the rest has run to rot, thorned bushes barren of edible fruit spreading everywhere among weedy flowers reverting rankly to type. The hothouses have been draughty skeletons for ten years. The great gates set in their Georgian arch are permanently padlocked, the lodges are derelict, and the line of the main drive is only just discernible through the meadows. Access to the house is half a mile further up through a farm gate, along a track befouled by cattle. But the house itself, at the date with which we are dealing, was in a condition of comparatively good repair; compared, that is to say, with Ballingar House or Castle Boycott or Knode Hall. It did not, of course, set up to rival Gordontown, where the American Lady Gordon had installed electric light, central heating and a lift, or Mock House or Newhill, which were leased to sporting Englishmen, or Castle Mockstock, since Lord Mockstock married beneath him. These four houses with their neatly raked gravel, bathrooms and dynamos, were the wonder and ridicule of the country. But Fleacetown, in fair competition with the essentially Irish houses of the Free State, was unusually habitable. Its roof was intact; and it is the roof which makes the difference between the second and third grade of Irish country houses. Once that goes you have moss in the bedrooms, ferns on the stairs and cows in the library, and in a very few years you have to move into the dairy or one of the lodges. But so long as he has, literally, a roof over his head, an Irishman’s house is still his castle. There were weak bits in Fleacetown, but general opinion held that the leads were good for another twenty years and would certainly survive the present owner. Miss Annabel Rochfort-Doyle-Fleace, to give her the full name under which she appeared in books of reference, though she was known to the entire countryside as Bella Fleace, was the last of her family. There had been Fleces and Fleysers living about Ballingar since the days of Strongbow, and farm buildings marked the spot where they had inhabited a stockaded fort two centuries before the immigration of the Boycotts or Gordons or Mockstocks. A family tree emblazed by a nineteenth-century genealogist, showing how the original stock had merged with the equally ancient Rochforts and the respectable though more recent Doyles, hung in the billiard room. The present home had been built on extravagant lines in the middle of the eighteenth century, when the family, though enervated, was still wealthy and influential. It would be tedious to trace its gradual decline from fortune; enough to say that it was due to no heroic debauchery. The Fleaces just got unobtrusively poorer in the way that families do who make no effort to help themselves. In the last generations, too, there had been marked traces of eccentricity. Bella Fleace’s mother—an O’Hara of Newhill—had from the day of her marriage until her death suffered from the delusion that she was a Negress. Her brother, from whom she had inherited, devoted himself to oil painting; his mind ran on the simple subject of assassination and before his death he had executed pictures of practically every such incident in history from Julius Caesar to General Wilson. He was at work on a painting, his own murder, at the time of the troubles, when he was, in fact, ambushed and done to death with a shotgun on his own drive. It was under one of her brother’s paintings—Abraham Lincoln in his box at the theatre—that Miss Fleace was sitting one colourless morning in November when the idea came to her to give a Christmas party. It would be unnecessary to describe her appearance closely, and somewhat confusing, because it seemed in contradiction to much of her character. She was over eighty, very untidy and very red; streaky grey hair was twisted behind her head into a horsy bun, wisps hung round her cheeks; her nose was prominent and blue veined; her eyes pale blue, blank and mad; she had a lively smile and spoke with a marked Irish intonation. She walked with the aid of a stick, having been lamed many years back when her horse rolled her among loose stones late in a long day with the Ballingar Hounds; a tipsy sporting doctor had completed the mischief, and she had not been able to ride again. She would appear on foot when hounds drew the Fleacetown coverts and loudly criticize the conduct of the huntsman, but every year fewer of her old friends turned out; strange faces appeared. They knew Bella, though she did not know them. She had become a by-word in the neighbourhood, a much-valued joke. “A rotten day,” they would report. “We found our fox, but lost again almost at once. But we saw Bella. Wonder how long the old girl will last. She must be nearly ninety. My father remembers when she used to hunt—went like smoke, too.” Indeed, Bella herself was becoming increasingly occupied with the prospect of death. In the winter before the one we are talking of, she had been extremely ill. She emerged in April, rosy cheeked as ever, but slower in her movements and mind. She gave instructions that better attention must be paid to her father’s and brother’s graves, and in June took the unprecedented step of inviting her heir to visit her. She had always refused to see this young man up till now. He was an Englishman, a very distant cousin, named Banks. He lived in South Kensington and occupied himself in the Museum. He arrived in August and wrote long and very amusing letters to all his friends describing his visit, and later translated his experiences into a short story for the Spectator. Bella disliked him from the moment he arrived. He had horn-rimmed spectacles and a BBC voice. He spent most of his time photographing the Fleacetown chimneypieces and the moulding of the doors. One day he came to Bella bearing a pile of calf-bound volumes from the library. “I say, did you know you had these?” he asked. “I did,” Bella lied. “All first editions. They must be extremely valuable.” “You put them back where you found them.” Later, when he wrote to thank her for his visit—enclosing prints of some of his photographs—he mentioned the books again. This set Bella thinking. Why should that young puppy go poking round the house putting a price on everything? She wasn’t dead yet, Bella thought. And the more she thought of it, the more repugnant it became to think of Archie Banks carrying off her books to South Kensington and removing the chimneypieces and, as he threatened, writing an essay about the house for the Architectural Review. She had often heard that the books were valuable. Well, there were plenty of books in the library and she did not see why Archie Banks should profit by them. So she wrote a letter to a Dublin bookseller. He came to look through the library, and after a while he offered her twelve hundred pounds for the lot, or a thousand for the six books which had attracted Archie Banks’s attention. Bella was not sure that she had the right to sell things out of the house; a wholesale clearance would be noticed. So she kept the sermons and military history which made up most of the collection, the Dublin bookseller went off with the first editions, which eventually fetched rather less than he had given, and Bella was left with winter coming on and a thousand pounds in hand. It was then that it occurred to her to give a party. There were always several parties given round Ballingar at Christmastime, but of late years Bella had not been invited to any, partly because many of her neighbours had never spoken to her, partly because they did not think she would want to come, and partly because they would not have known what to do with her if she had. As a matter of fact she loved parties. She liked sitting down to supper in a noisy room, she liked dance music and gossip about which of the girls was pretty and who was in love with them, and she liked drink and having things brought to her by men in pink evening coats. And though she tried to console herself with contemptuous reflections about the ancestry of the hostesses, it annoyed her very much whenever she heard of a party being given in the neighbourhood to which she was not asked. And so it came about that, sitting with the Irish Times under the picture of Abraham Lincoln and gazing across the bare trees of the park to the hills beyond, Bella took it into her head to give a party. She rose immediately and hobbled across the room to the bellrope. Presently her butler came into the morning room; he wore the green baize apron in which he cleaned the silver and in his hand he carried the plate brush to emphasize the irregularity of the summons. “Was it yourself ringing?” he asked. “It was, who else?” “And I at the silver!” “Riley,” said Bella with some solemnity, “I propose to give a ball at Christmas.” “Indeed!” said her butler. “And for what would you want to be dancing at your age?” But as Bella adumbrated her idea, a sympathetic light began to glitter in Riley’s eye. “There’s not been such a ball in the country for twenty-five years. It will cost a fortune.” “It will cost a thousand pounds,” said Bella proudly. The preparations were necessarily stupendous. Seven new servants were recruited in the village and set to work dusting and cleaning and polishing, clearing out furniture and pulling up carpets. Their industry served only to reveal fresh requirements; plaster mouldings, long rotten, crumbled under the feather brooms, worm-eaten mahogany floorboards came up with the tin tacks; bare brick was disclosed behind the cabinets in the great drawing room. A second wave of the invasion brought painters, paperhangers and plumbers, and in a moment of enthusiasm Bella had the cornice and the capitals of the pillars in the hall regilded; windows were reglazed, banisters fitted into gaping sockets, and the stair carpet shifted so that the worn strips were less noticeable. In all these works Bella was indefatigable. She trotted from drawing room to hall, down the long gallery, up the staircase, admonishing the hireling servants, lending a hand with the lighter objects of furniture, sliding, when the time came, up and down the mahogany floor of the drawing room to work in the French chalk. She unloaded chests of silver in the attics, found long-forgotten services of china, went down with Riley into the cellars to count the few remaining and now flat and acid bottles of champagne. And in the evenings when the manual labourers had retired exhausted to their gross recreations, Bella sat up far into the night turning the pages of cookery books, comparing the estimates of rival caterers, inditing long and detailed letters to the agents for dance bands and, most important of all, drawing up her list of guests and addressing the high double piles of engraved cards that stood in her escritoire. Distance counts for little in Ireland. People will readily drive three hours to pay an afternoon call, and for a dance of such importance no journey was too great. Bella had her list painfully compiled from works of reference, Riley’s more up-to-date social knowledge and her own suddenly animated memory. Cheerfully, in a steady childish handwriting, she transferred the names to the cards and addressed the envelopes. It was the work of several late sittings. Many of those whose names were transcribed were dead or bedridden; some whom she just remembered seeing as small children were reaching retiring age in remote corners of the globe; many of the houses she wrote down were blackened shells, burned during the troubles and never rebuilt; some had “no one living in them, only farmers.” But at last, none too early, the last envelope was addressed. A final lap with the stamps and then later than usual she rose from the desk. Her limbs were stiff, her eyes dazzled, her tongue cloyed with the gum of the Free State post office; she felt a little dizzy, but she locked her desk that evening with the knowledge that the most serious part of the work of the party was over. There had been several notable and deliberate omissions from that list. “What’s all this I hear about Bella giving a party?” said Lady Gordon to Lady Mockstock. “I haven’t had a card.” “Neither have I yet. I hope the old thing hasn’t forgotten me. I certainly intend to go. I’ve never been inside the house. I believe she’s got some lovely things.” With true English reserve the lady whose husband had leased Mock Hall never betrayed the knowledge that any party was in the air at all at Fleacetown. As the last days approached Bella concentrated more upon her own appearance. She had bought few clothes of recent years, and the Dublin dressmaker with whom she used to deal had shut up shop. For a delirious instant she played with the idea of a journey to London and even Paris, and considerations of time alone obliged her to abandon it. In the end she discovered a shop to suit her, and purchased a very magnificent gown of crimson satin; to this she added long white gloves and satin shoes. There was no tiara, alas! among her jewels, but she unearthed large numbers of bright, nondescript Victorian rings, some chains and lockets, pearl brooches, turquoise earrings, and a collar of garnets. She ordered a coiffeur down from Dublin to dress her hair. On the day of the ball she woke early, slightly feverish with nervous excitement, and wriggled in bed till she was called, restlessly rehearsing in her mind every detail of the arrangements. Before noon she had been to supervise the setting of hundreds of candles in the sconces round the ballroom and supper room, and in the three great chandeliers of cut Waterford glass; she had seen the supper tables laid out with silver and glass and stood the massive wine coolers by the buffet; she had helped bank the staircase and hall with chrysanthemums. She had no luncheon that day, though Riley urged her with samples of the delicacies already arrived from the caterer’s. She felt a little faint; lay down for a short time, but soon rallied to sew with her own hands the crested buttons on to the liveries of the hired servants. The invitations were timed for eight o’clock. She wondered whether that were too early—she had heard tales of parties that began very late—but as the afternoon dragged on unendurably, and rich twilight enveloped the house, Bella became glad that she had set a short term on this exhausting wait. At six she went up to dress. The hairdresser was there with a bag full of tongs and combs. He brushed and coiled her hair and whiffed it up and generally manipulated it until it became orderly and formal and apparently far more copious. She put on all her jewellery and, standing before the cheval glass in her room, could not forbear a gasp of surprise. Then she limped downstairs. The house looked magnificent in the candlelight. The band was there, the twelve hired footmen, Riley in knee breeches and black silk stockings. It struck eight. Bella waited. Nobody came. She sat down on a gilt chair at the head of the stairs, looked steadily before her with her blank, blue eyes. In the hall, in the cloakroom, in the supper room, the hired footmen looked at one another with knowing winks. “What does the old girl expect? No one’ll have finished dinner before ten.” The linkmen on the steps stamped and chafed their hands. At half past twelve Bella rose from her chair. Her face gave no indication of what she was thinking. “Riley, I think I will have some supper. I am not feeling altogether well.” She hobbled slowly to the dining room. “Give me a stuffed quail and a glass of wine. Tell the band to start playing.” The Blue Danube waltz flooded the house. Bella smiled approval and swayed her head a little to the rhythm. “Riley, I am really quite hungry. I’ve had nothing all day. Give me another quail and some more champagne.” Alone among the candles and the hired footmen, Riley served his mistress with an immense supper. She enjoyed every mouthful. Presently she rose. “I am afraid there must be some mistake. No one seems to be coming to the ball. It is very disappointing after all our trouble. You may tell the band to go home.” But just as she was leaving the dining room there was a stir in the hall. Guests were arriving. With wild resolution Bella swung herself up the stairs. She must get to the top before the guests were announced. One hand on the banister, one on her stick, pounding heart, two steps at a time. At last she reached the landing and turned to face the company. There was a mist before her eyes and a singing in her ears. She breathed with effort, but dimly she saw four figures advancing and saw Riley meet them and heard him announce: “Lord and Lady Mockstock, Sir Samuel and Lady Gordon.” Suddenly the daze in which she had been moving cleared. Here on the stairs were the two women she had not invited—Lady Mockstock the draper’s daughter, Lady Gordon the American. She drew herself up and fixed them with her blank, blue eyes. “I had not expected this honour,” she said. “Please forgive me if I am unable to entertain you.” The Mockstocks and the Gordons stood aghast; saw the mad blue eyes of their hostess, her crimson dress; the ballroom beyond, looking immense in its emptiness; heard the dance music echoing through the empty house. The air was charged with the scent of chrysanthemums. And then the drama and unreality of the scene were dispelled. Miss Fleace suddenly sat down, and holding out her hands to her butler, said, “I don’t quite know what’s happening.” He and two of the hired footmen carried the old lady to a sofa. She spoke only once more. Her mind was still on the same subject. “They came uninvited, those two ... and nobody else.” A day later she died. Mr. Banks arrived for the funeral and spent a week sorting out her effects. Among them he found in her escritoire, stamped, addressed, but unposted, the invitations to the ball. 
Cruise Letters From A Young Lady Of Leisure
S.S. Glory of Greece Darling, Well I said I would write and so I would have only goodness it was rough so didnt. Now everything is a bit more alright so I will tell you. Well as you know the cruise started at Monte Carlo and when papa and all of us went to Victoria we found that the tickets didnt include the journey there so Goodness how furious he was and said he wouldnt go but Mum said of course we must go and we said that too only papa had changed all his money into Liri or Franks on account of foreigners being so dishonest but he kept a shilling for the porter at Dover being methodical so then he had to change it back again and that set him wrong all the way to Monte Carlo and he wouldnt get me and Bertie a sleeper and wouldnt sleep himself in his through being so angry Goodness how Sad. Then everything was much more alright the purser called him Colonel and he likes his cabin so he took Bertie to the casino and he lost and Bertie won and I think Bertie got a bit plastered at least he made a noise going to bed he’s in the next cabin as if he were being sick and that was before we sailed. Bertie has got some books on Baroque art on account of his being at Oxford. Well the first day it was rough and I got up and felt odd in the bath and the soap wouldnt work on account of salt water you see and came into breakfast and there was a list of so many things including steak and onions and there was a corking young man who said we are the only ones down may I sit here and it was going beautifully and he had steak and onions but it was no good I had to go back to bed just when he was saying there was nothing he admired so much about a girl as her being a good sailor goodness how sad. The thing is not to have a bath and to be very slow in all movements. So next day it was Naples and we saw some Bertie churches and then that bit that got blown up in an earthquake and a poor dog killed they have a plaster cast of him goodness how sad. Papa and Bertie saw some pictures we weren’t allowed to see and Bill drew them for me afterwards and Miss P. tried to look too. I havent told you about Bill and Miss P. have I? Well Bill is rather old but clean looking and I dont suppose hes very old not really I mean and he’s had a very disillusionary life on account of his wife who he says I wont say a word against but she gave him the raspberry with a foreigner and that makes him hate foreigners. Miss P. is called Miss Phillips and is lousy she wears a yachting cap and is a bitch. And the way she makes up to the second officer is no ones business and its clear to the meanest intelligence he hates her but its part of the rules that all the sailors have to pretend to fancy the passengers. Who else is there? Well a lot of old ones. Papa is having a walk out with one called Lady Muriel something or other who knew uncle Ned. And there is a honeymoon couple very embarrassing. And a clergyman and a lovely pansy with a camera and white suit and lots of families from the industrial north. So Bertie sends his love too. XXXXXX etc. Mum bought a shawl and an animal made of lava. POSTCARD This is a picture of Taormina. Mum bought a shawl here. V. funny because Miss P. got left as shed made chums only with second officer and he wasnt allowed ashore so when it came to getting into cars Miss P. had to pack in with a family from the industrial north. S.S. Glory of Greece Darling, Hope you got P.C. from Sicily. The moral of that was not to make chums with sailors though who I’ve made a chum of is the purser who’s different on account he leads a very cynical life with a gramophone in his cabin and as many cocktails as he likes and welsh rabbits sometimes and I said but do you pay for all these drinks but he said no so that’s all right. So we have three days at sea which the clergyman said is a good thing as it makes us all friendly but it hasn’t made me friendly with Miss P. who won’t leave poor Bill alone not taking any more chances of being left alone when she goes ashore. The purser says theres always someone like her on board in fact he says that about everyone except me who he says quite rightly is different goodness how decent. So there are deck games they are hell. And the day before we reach Haifa there is to be a fancy dress dance. Papa is very good at the deck games expecially one called shuffle board and eats more than he does in London but I daresay its alright. You have to hire dresses for the ball from the barber I mean we do not you. Miss P. has brought her own. So I’ve thought of a v. clever thing at least the purser suggested it and that is to wear the clothes of one of the sailors I tried his on and looked a treat. Poor Miss P. Bertie is madly unpop, he wont play any of the games and being plastered the other night too and tried to climb down a ventilator and the second officer pulled him out and the old ones at the captains table look askance at him. New word that. Literary yes? No? So I think the pansy is writing a book he has a green fountain pen and green ink but I couldnt see what it was. XXXX Pretty good about writing you will say and so I am. POSTCARD This is a photograph of the Holyland and the famous sea of Gallillee. It is all v. Eastern with camels. I have a lot to tell you about the ball. Such goings on and will write very soon. Papa went off for the day with Lady M. and came back saying enchanting woman Knows the world. S.S. Glory of Greece Darling, Well the Ball we had to come in to dinner in our clothes and everyone clapped as we came downstairs. So I was pretty late on account of not being able to make up my mind whether to wear the hat and in the end did and looked a corker. Well it was rather a faint clap for me considering so when I looked about there were about twenty girls and some women all dressed like me so how cynical the purser turns out to be. Bertie looked horribly dull as an apache. Mum and Papa were sweet. Miss P. had a ballet dress from the Russian ballet which couldnt have been more unsuitable so we had champagne for dinner and were jolly and they threw paper streamers and I threw mine before it was unrolled and hit Miss P. on the nose. Ha ha. So feeling matey I said to the steward isnt this fun and he said yes for them who hasnt got to clear it up goodness how Sad. Well of course Bertie was plastered and went a bit far particularly in what he said to Lady M. then he sat in the cynical pursers cabin in the dark and cried so Bill and I found him and Bill gave him some drinks and what do you think he went off with Miss P. and we didnt see either of them again it only shows into what degradation the Demon Drink can drag you him I mean. Then who should I meet but the young man who had steak and onions on the first morning and is called Robert and said I have been trying to meet you again all the voyage. Then I bitched him a bit goodness how Decent. Poor Mum got taken up by Bill and he told her all about his wife and how she had disillusioned him with the foreigner so tomorrow we reach Port Said d.v. which is latin in case you didn’t know meaning God Willing and all go up the nile and to Cairo for a week. Will send P.C. of Sphinx. XXXXXX POSTCARD This is the Sphinx. Goodness how Sad. POSTCARD This is temple of someone. Darling I cant wait to tell you I’m engaged to Arthur. Arthur is the one I thought was a pansy. Bertie thinks egyptian art is v. inartistic. POSTCARD This is Tutankhamens v. famous Tomb. Bertie says it is vulgar and is engaged to Miss P. so hes not one to speak and I call her Mabel now. G how S. Bill wont speak to Bertie Robert wont speak to me Papa and Lady M. seem to have had a row there was a man with a snake in a bag also a little boy who told my fortune which was v. prosperous Mum bought a shawl. POSTCARD Saw this Mosque today. Robert is engaged to a new girl called something or other who is lousy. S.S. Glory of Greece Darling, Well so we all came back from Egypt pretty excited and the cynical purser said what news and I said news well Im engaged to Arthur and Bertie is engaged to Miss P. and she is called Mabel now which is hardest of all to bear I said and Robert to a lousy girl and Papa has had a row with Lady M. and Bill has had a row with Bertie and Roberts lousy girl was awful to me and Arthur was sweet but the cynical purser wasnt a bit surprised on account he said people always get engaged and have quarrels on the Egyptian trip every cruise so I said I wasnt in the habit of getting engaged lightly thank you and he said I wasnt apparently in the habit of going to Egypt so I wont speak to him again nor will Arthur. All love. S.S. Glory of Greece Sweet, This is Algiers not very eastern in fact full of frogs. So it is all off with Arthur I was right about him at the first but who I am engaged to is Robert which is much better for all concerned really particularly Arthur on account of what I said originally first impressions always right. Yes? No? Robert and I drove about all day in the Botanic gardens and Goodness he was Decent. Bertie got plastered and had a row with Mabel—Miss P. again—so thats all right too and Robert’s lousy girl spent all day on board with second officer. Mum bought shawl. Bill told Lady M. about his disillusionment and she told Robert who said yes we all know so Lady M. said it was very unreticent of Bill and she had very little respect for him and didnt blame his wife or the foreigner. Love. POSTCARD I forget what I said in my last letter but if I mentioned a lousy man called Robert you can take it as unsaid. This is still Algiers and Papa ate dubious oysters but is all right. Bertie went to a house full of tarts when he was plastered and is pretty unreticent about it as Lady M. would say. POSTCARD So now we are back and sang old lang syne is that how you spell it and I kissed Arthur but wont speak to Robert and he cried not Robert I mean Arthur so then Bertie apologized to most of the people hed insulted but Miss P. walked away pretending not to hear. Goodness what a bitch. 
The Man Who Liked Dickens
Although Mr. McMaster had lived in Amazonas for nearly sixty years, no one except a few families of Shiriana Indians was aware of his existence. His house stood in a small savannah, one of those little patches of sand and grass that crop up occasionally in that neighbourhood, three miles or so across, bounded on all sides by forest. The stream which watered it was not marked on any map; it ran through rapids, always dangerous and at most seasons of the year impassable, to join the upper waters of the River Uraricoera, whose course, though boldly delineated in every school atlas, is still largely conjectural. None of the inhabitants of the district, except Mr. McMaster, had ever heard of the republic of Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil or Bolivia, each of whom had at one time or another claimed its possession. Mr. McMaster’s house was larger than those of his neighbours, but similar in character—a palm thatch roof, breast high walls of mud and wattle, and a mud floor. He owned the dozen or so head of puny cattle which grazed in the savannah, a plantation of cassava, some banana and mango trees, a dog, and, unique in the neighbourhood, a single-barrelled, breech-loading shotgun. The few commodities which he employed from the outside world came to him through a long succession of traders, passed from hand to hand, bartered for in a dozen languages at the extreme end of one of the longest threads in the web of commerce that spreads from Manáos into the remote fastness of the forest. One day while Mr. McMaster was engaged in filling some cartridges, a Shiriana came to him with the news that a white man was approaching through the forest, alone and very sick. He closed the cartridge and loaded his gun with it, put those that were finished into his pocket and set out in the direction indicated. The man was already clear of the bush when Mr. McMaster reached him, sitting on the ground, clearly in a very bad way. He was without hat or boots, and his clothes were so torn that it was only by the dampness of his body that they adhered to it; his feet were cut and grossly swollen, every exposed surface of skin was scarred by insect and bat bites; his eyes were wild with fever. He was talking to himself in delirium, but stopped when Mr. McMaster approached and addressed him in English. “I’m tired,” the man said; then: “Can’t go any farther. My name is Henty and I’m tired. Anderson died. That was a long time ago. I expect you think I’m very odd.” “I think you are ill, my friend.” “Just tired. It must be several months since I had anything to eat.” Mr. McMaster hoisted him to his feet and, supporting him by the arm, led him across the hummocks of grass towards the farm. “It is a very short way. When we get there I will give you something to make you better.” “Jolly kind of you.” Presently he said: “I say, you speak English. I’m English, too. My name is Henty.” “Well, Mr. Henty, you aren’t to bother about anything more. You’re ill and you’ve had a rough journey. I’ll take care of you.” They went very slowly, but at length reached the house. “Lie there in the hammock. I will fetch something for you.” Mr. McMaster went into the back room of the house and dragged a tin canister from under a heap of skins. It was full of a mixture of dried leaf and bark. He took a handful and went outside to the fire. When he returned he put one hand behind Henty’s head and held up the concoction of herbs in a calabash for him to drink. He sipped, shuddering slightly at the bitterness. At last he finished it. Mr. McMaster threw out the dregs on the floor. Henty lay back in the hammock sobbing quietly. Soon he fell into a deep sleep. “Ill-fated” was the epithet applied by the press to the Anderson expedition to the Parima and upper Uraricoera region of Brazil. Every stage of the enterprise from the preliminary arrangements in London to its tragic dissolution in Amazonas was attacked by misfortune. It was due to one of the early setbacks that Paul Henty became connected with it. He was not by nature an explorer; an even-tempered, good-looking young man of fastidious tastes and enviable possessions, unintellectual, but appreciative of fine architecture and the ballet, well travelled in the more accessible parts of the world, a collector though not a connoisseur, popular among hostesses, revered by his aunts. He was married to a lady of exceptional charm and beauty, and it was she who upset the good order of his life by confessing her affection for another man for the second time in the eight years of their marriage. The first occasion had been a short-lived infatuation with a tennis professional, the second was a captain in the Coldstream Guards, and more serious. Henty’s first thought under the shock of this revelation was to go out and dine alone. He was a member of four clubs, but at three of them he was liable to meet his wife’s lover. Accordingly he chose one which he rarely frequented, a semi-intellectual company composed of publishers, barristers, and men of scholarship awaiting election to the Athenaeum. Here, after dinner, he fell into conversation with Professor Anderson and first heard of the proposed expedition to Brazil. The particular misfortune that was retarding arrangements at that moment was the defalcation of the secretary with two-thirds of the expedition’s capital. The principals were ready—Professor Anderson, Dr. Simmons the anthropologist, Mr. Necher the biologist, Mr. Brough the surveyor, wireless operator and mechanic—the scientific and sporting apparatus was packed up in crates ready to be embarked, the necessary facilities had been stamped and signed by the proper authorities, but unless twelve hundred pounds was forthcoming the whole thing would have to be abandoned. Henty, as has been suggested, was a man of comfortable means; the expedition would last from nine months to a year; he could shut his country house—his wife, he reflected, would want to remain in London near her young man—and cover more than the sum required. There was a glamour about the whole journey which might, he felt, move even his wife’s sympathies. There and then, over the club fire, he decided to accompany Professor Anderson. When he went home that evening he announced to his wife: “I have decided what I shall do.” “Yes, darling?” “You are certain that you no longer love me?” “Darling, you know, I adore you.” “But you are certain you love this guardsman, Tony whatever-his-name-is, more?” “Oh, yes, ever so much more. Quite a different thing altogether.” “Very well, then. I do not propose to do anything about a divorce for a year. You shall have time to think it over. I am leaving next week for the Uraricoera.” “Golly, where’s that?” “I am not perfectly sure. Somewhere in Brazil, I think. It is unexplored. I shall be away a year.” “But darling, how ordinary! Like people in books—big game, I mean, and all that.” “You have obviously already discovered that I am a very ordinary person.” “Now, Paul, don’t be disagreeable—oh, there’s the telephone. It’s probably Tony. If it is, d’you mind terribly if I talk to him alone for a bit?” But in the ten days of preparation that followed she showed greater tenderness, putting off her soldier twice in order to accompany Henty to the shops where he was choosing his equipment and insisting on his purchasing a worsted cummerbund. On his last evening she gave a supper party for him at the Embassy to which she allowed him to ask any of his friends he liked; he could think of no one except Professor Anderson, who looked oddly dressed, danced tirelessly and was something of a failure with everyone. Next day Mrs. Henty came with her husband to the boat train and presented him with a pale blue, extravagantly soft blanket, in a suède case of the same colour furnished with a zip fastener and monogram. She kissed him good-bye and said, “Take care of yourself in wherever it is.” Had she gone as far as Southampton she might have witnessed two dramatic passages. Mr. Brough got no farther than the gangway before he was arrested for debt—a matter of £32; the publicity given to the dangers of the expedition was responsible for the action. Henty settled the account. The second difficulty was not to be overcome so easily. Mr. Necher’s mother was on the ship before them; she carried a missionary journal in which she had just read an account of the Brazilian forests. Nothing would induce her to permit her son’s departure; she would remain on board until he came ashore with her. If necessary, she would sail with him, but go into those forests alone he should not. All argument was unavailing with the resolute old lady, who eventually, five minutes before the time of embarkation, bore her son off in triumph, leaving the company without a biologist. Nor was Mr. Brough’s adherence long maintained. The ship in which they were travelling was a cruising liner taking passengers on a round voyage. Mr. Brough had not been on board a week and had scarcely accustomed himself to the motion of the ship before he was engaged to be married; he was still engaged, although to a different lady, when they reached Manáos and refused all inducements to proceed farther, borrowing his return fare from Henty and arriving back in Southampton engaged to the lady of his first choice, whom he immediately married. In Brazil the officials to whom their credentials were addressed were all out of power. While Henty and Professor Anderson negotiated with the new administrators, Dr. Simmons proceeded up river to Boa Vista where he established a base camp with the greater part of the stores. These were instantly commandeered by the revolutionary garrison, and he himself imprisoned for some days and subjected to various humiliations which so enraged him that, when released, he made promptly for the coast, stopping at Manáos only long enough to inform his colleagues that he insisted on leaving his case personally before the central authorities at Rio. Thus, while they were still a month’s journey from the start of their labours, Henty and Professor Anderson found themselves alone and deprived of the greater part of their supplies. The ignominy of immediate return was not to be borne. For a short time they considered the advisability of going into hiding for six months in Madeira or Tenerife, but even there detection seemed probable; there had been too many photographs in the illustrated papers before they left London. Accordingly, in low spirits, the two explorers at last set out alone for the Uraricoera with little hope of accomplishing anything of any value to anyone. For seven weeks they paddled through green, humid tunnels of forest. They took a few snapshots of naked, misanthropic Indians; bottled some snakes and later lost them when their canoe capsized in the rapids; they overtaxed their digestions, imbibing nauseous intoxicants at native galas; they were robbed of the last of their sugar by a Guianese prospector. Finally, Professor Anderson fell ill with malignant malaria, chattered feebly for some days in his hammock, lapsed into coma and died, leaving Henty alone with a dozen Maku oarsmen, none of whom spoke a word of any language known to him. They reversed their course and drifted down stream with a minimum of provisions and no mutual confidence. One day, a week or so after Professor Anderson’s death, Henty awoke to find that his boys and his canoe had disappeared during the night, leaving him with only his hammock and pajamas some two or three hundred miles from the nearest Brazilian habitation. Nature forbade him to remain where he was although there seemed little purpose in moving. He set himself to follow the course of the stream, at first in the hope of meeting a canoe. But presently the whole forest became peopled for him with frantic apparitions, for no conscious reason at all. He plodded on, now wading in the water, now scrambling through the bush. Vaguely at the back of his mind he had always believed that the jungle was a place full of food; that there was danger of snakes and savages and wild beasts, but not of starvation. But now he observed that this was far from being the case. The jungle consisted solely of immense tree trunks, embedded in a tangle of thorn and vine rope, all far from nutritious. On the first day he suffered hideously. Later he seemed anaesthetized and was chiefly embarrassed by the behaviour of the inhabitants who came out to meet him in footman’s livery, carrying his dinner, and then irresponsibly disappeared or raised the covers of their dishes and revealed live tortoises. Many people who knew him in London appeared and ran round him with derisive cries, asking him questions to which he could not possibly know the answer. His wife came, too, and he was pleased to see her, assuming that she had got tired of her guardsman and was there to fetch him back; but she soon disappeared, like all the others. It was then that he remembered that it was imperative for him to reach Manáos; he redoubled his energy, stumbling against boulders in the stream and getting caught up among the vines. “But I mustn’t waste my strength,” he reflected. Then he forgot that, too, and was conscious of nothing more until he found himself lying in a hammock in Mr. McMaster’s house. His recovery was slow. At first, days of lucidity alternated with delirium; then his temperature dropped and he was conscious even when most ill. The days of fever grew less frequent, finally occurring in the normal system of the tropics, between long periods of comparative health. Mr. McMaster dosed him regularly with herbal remedies. “It’s very nasty,” said Henty, “but it does do good.” “There is medicine for everything in the forest,” said Mr. McMaster; “to make you well and to make you ill. My mother was an Indian and she taught me many of them. I have learned others from time to time from my wives. There are plants to cure you and give you fever, to kill you and send you mad, to keep away snakes, to intoxicate fish so that you can pick them out of the water with your hands like fruit from a tree. There are medicines even I do not know. They say that it is possible to bring dead people to life after they have begun to stink, but I have not seen it done.” “But surely you are English?” “My father was—at least a Barbadian. He came to British Guiana as a missionary. He was married to a white woman but he left her in Guiana to look for gold. Then he took my mother. The Shiriana women are ugly but very devoted. I have had many. Most of the men and women living in this savannah are my children. That is why they obey—for that reason and because I have the gun. My father lived to a great age. It is not twenty years since he died. He was a man of education. Can you read?” “Yes, of course.” “It is not everyone who is so fortunate. I cannot.” Henty laughed apologetically. “But I suppose you haven’t much opportunity here.” “Oh yes, that is just it. I have a great many books. I will show you when you are better. Until five years ago there was an Englishman—at least a black man, but he was well educated in Georgetown. He died. He used to read to me every day until he died. You shall read to me when you are better.” “I shall be delighted to.” “Yes, you shall read to me,” Mr. McMaster repeated, nodding over the calabash. During the early days of his convalescence Henty had little conversation with his host; he lay in the hammock staring up at the thatched roof and thinking about his life, rehearsing over and over again different incidents in their life together, including her affairs with the tennis professional and the soldier. The days, exactly twelve hours each, passed without distinction. Mr. McMaster retired to sleep at sundown, leaving a little lamp burning—a hand-woven wick drooping from a pot of beef fat—to keep away vampire bats. The first time that Henty left the house Mr. McMaster took him for a little stroll around the farm. “I will show you the black man’s grave,” he said, leading him to a mound between the mango trees. “He was very kind to me. Every afternoon until he died, for two hours, he used to read to me. I think I will put up a cross—to commemorate his death and your arrival—a pretty idea. Do you believe in God?” “I’ve never really thought about it much.” “You are perfectly right. I have thought about it a great deal and I still do not know ... Dickens did.” “I suppose so.” “Oh yes, it is apparent in all his books. You will see.” That afternoon Mr. McMaster began the construction of a headpiece for the Negro’s grave. He worked with a large spokeshave in a wood so hard that it grated and rang like metal. At last when Henty had passed six or seven consecutive days without fever, Mr. McMaster said, “Now I think you are well enough to see the books.” At one end of the hut there was a kind of loft formed by a rough platform erected up in the eaves of the roof. Mr. McMaster propped a ladder against it and mounted. Henty followed, still unsteady after his illness. Mr. McMaster sat on the platform and Henty stood at the top of the ladder looking over. There was a heap of small bundles there, tied up with rag, palm leaf and rawhide. “It has been hard to keep out the worms and ants. Two are practically destroyed. But there is an oil the Indians know how to make that is useful.” He unwrapped the nearest parcel and handed down a calf-bound book. It was an early American edition of Bleak House. “It does not matter which we take first.” “You are fond of Dickens?” “Why, yes, of course. More than fond, far more. You see, they are the only books I have ever heard. My father used to read them and then later the black man ... and now you. I have heard them all several times by now but I never get tired; there is always more to be learned and noticed, so many characters, so many changes of scene, so many words ... I have all Dickens’s books except those that the ants devoured. It takes a long time to read them all—more than two years.” “Well,” said Henty lightly, “they will well last out my visit.” “Oh, I hope not. It is delightful to start again. Each time I think I find more to enjoy and admire.” They took down the first volume of Bleak House and that afternoon Henty had his first reading. He had always rather enjoyed reading aloud and in the first year of marriage had shared several books in this way with his wife, until one day, in one of her rare moments of confidence, she remarked that it was torture to her. Sometimes after that he had thought it might be agreeable to have children to read to. But Mr. McMaster was a unique audience. The old man sat astride his hammock opposite Henty, fixing him throughout with his eyes, and following the words, soundlessly, with his lips. Often when a new character was introduced he would say, “Repeat the name, I have forgotten him,” or, “Yes, yes, I remember her well. She dies, poor woman.” He would frequently interrupt with questions; not as Henty would have imagined about the circumstances of the story—such things as the procedure of the Lord Chancellor’s Court or the social conventions of the time, though they must have been unintelligible, did not concern him—but always about the characters. “Now, why does she say that? Does she really mean it? Did she feel faint because of the heat of the fire or of something in that paper?” He laughed loudly at all the jokes and at some passages which did not seem humorous to Henty, asking him to repeat them two or three times; and later at the description of the sufferings of the outcasts in “Tom-all-Alone’s” tears ran down his cheeks into his beard. His comments on the story were usually simple. “I think that Dedlock is a very proud man,” or, “Mrs. Jellyby does not take enough care of her children.” Henty enjoyed the readings almost as much as he did. At the end of the first day the old man said, “You read beautifully, with a far better accent than the black man. And you explain better. It is almost as though my father were here again.” And always at the end of a session he thanked his guest courteously. “I enjoyed that very much. It was an extremely distressing chapter. But, if I remember rightly, it will all turn out well.” By the time that they were well into the second volume, however, the novelty of the old man’s delight had begun to wane, and Henty was feeling strong enough to be restless. He touched more than once on the subject of his departure, asking about canoes and rains and the possibility of finding guides. But Mr. McMaster seemed obtuse and paid no attention to these hints. One day, running his thumb through the pages of Bleak House that remained to be read, Henty said, “We still have a lot to get through. I hope I shall be able to finish it before I go.” “Oh yes,” said Mr. McMaster. “Do not disturb yourself about that. You will have time to finish it, my friend.” For the first time Henty noticed something slightly menacing in his host’s manner. That evening at supper, a brief meal of farine and dried beef eaten just before sundown, Henty renewed the subject. “You know, Mr. McMaster, the time has come when I must be thinking about getting back to civilization. I have already imposed myself on your hospitality for too long.” Mr. McMaster bent over his plate, crunching mouthfuls of farine, but made no reply. “How soon do you think I shall be able to get a boat? ... I said how soon do you think I shall be able to get a boat? I appreciate all your kindness to me more than I can say, but ...” “My friend, any kindness I may have shown is amply repaid by your reading of Dickens. Do not let us mention the subject again.” “Well, I’m very glad you have enjoyed it. I have, too. But I really must be thinking of getting back ...” “Yes,” said Mr. McMaster. “The black man was like that. He thought of it all the time. But he died here ...” Twice during the next day Henty opened the subject but his host was evasive. Finally he said, “Forgive me, Mr. McMaster, but I really must press the point. When can I get a boat?” “There is no boat.” “Well, the Indians can build one.” “You must wait for the rains. There is not enough water in the river now.” “How long will that be?” “A month ... two months ...” They had finished Bleak House and were nearing the end of Dombey and Son when the rain came. “Now it is time to make preparations to go.” “Oh, that is impossible. The Indians will not make a boat during the rainy season—it is one of their superstitions.” “You might have told me.” “Did I not mention it? I forgot.” Next morning Henty went out alone while his host was busy, and, looking as aimless as he could, strolled across the savannah to the group of Indian houses. There were four or five Shirianas sitting in one of the doorways. They did not look up as he approached them. He addressed them in the few words of Maku he had acquired during the journey but they made no sign whether they understood him or not. Then he drew a sketch of a canoe in the sand, he went through some vague motions of carpentry, pointed from them to him, then made motions of giving something to them and scratched out the outlines of a gun and a hat and a few other recognizable articles of trade. One of the women giggled, but no one gave any sign of comprehension, and he went away unsatisfied. At their midday meal Mr. McMaster said, “Mr. Henty, the Indians tell me that you have been trying to speak with them. It is easier that you say anything you wish through me. You realize, do you not, that they would do nothing without my authority. They regard themselves, quite rightly in most cases, as my children.” “Well, as a matter of fact, I was asking them about a canoe.” “So they gave me to understand ... and now if you have finished your meal perhaps we might have another chapter. I am quite absorbed in the book.” They finished Dombey and Son; nearly a year had passed since Henty had left England, and his gloomy foreboding of permanent exile became suddenly acute when, between the pages of Martin Chuzzlewit, he found a document written in pencil in irregular characters. Year 1919 I James McMaster of Brazil do swear to Barnabas Washington of Georgetown that if he finish this book in fact Martin Chuzzlewit I will let him go away back as soon as finished. There followed a heavy pencil X, and after it: Mr. McMaster made this mark signed Barnabas Washington. “Mr. McMaster,” said Henty. “I must speak frankly. You saved my life, and when I get back to civilization I will reward you to the best of my ability. I will give you anything within reason. But at present you are keeping me here against my will. I demand to be released.” “But, my friend, what is keeping you? You are under no restraint. Go when you like.” “You know very well that I can’t get away without your help.” “In that case you must humour an old man. Read me another chapter.” “Mr. McMaster, I swear by anything you like that when I get to Manáos I will find someone to take my place. I will pay a man to read to you all day.” “But I have no need of another man. You read so well.” “I have read for the last time.” “I hope not,” said Mr. McMaster politely. That evening at supper only one plate of dried meat and farine was brought in and Mr. McMaster ate alone. Henty lay without speaking, staring at the thatch. Next day at noon a single plate was put before Mr. McMaster, but with it lay his gun, cocked, on his knee, as he ate. Henty resumed the reading of Martin Chuzzlewit where it had been interrupted. Weeks passed hopelessly. They read Nicholas Nickleby and Little Dorrit and Oliver Twist. Then a stranger arrived in the savannah, a half-caste prospector, one of that lonely order of men who wander for a lifetime through the forests, tracing the little streams, sifting the gravel and, ounce by ounce, filling the little leather sack of gold dust, more often than not dying of exposure and starvation with five hundred dollars’ worth of gold hung around their necks. Mr. McMaster was vexed at his arrival, gave him farine and passo and sent him on his journey within an hour of his arrival, but in that hour Henty had time to scribble his name on a slip of paper and put it into the man’s hand. From now on there was hope. The days followed their unvarying routine; coffee at sunrise, a morning of inaction while Mr. McMaster pottered about on the business of the farm, farine and passo at noon, Dickens in the afternoon, farine and passo and sometimes some fruit for supper, silence from sunset to dawn with the small wick glowing in the beef fat and the palm thatch overhead dimly discernible; but Henty lived in quiet confidence and expectation. Some time, this year or the next, the prospector would arrive at a Brazilian village with news of his discovery. The disasters to the Anderson expedition would not have passed unnoticed. Henty could imagine the headlines that must have appeared in the popular press; even now probably there were search parties working over the country he had crossed; any day English voices might sound over the savannah and a dozen friendly adventurers come crashing through the bush. Even as he was reading, while his lips mechanically followed the printed pages, his mind wandered away from his eager, crazy host opposite, and he began to narrate to himself incidents of his homecoming—the gradual re-encounters with civilization; he shaved and bought new clothes at Manáos, telegraphed for money, received wires of congratulation; he enjoyed the leisurely river journey to Belem, the big liner to Europe; savoured good claret and fresh meat and spring vegetables; he was shy at meeting his wife and uncertain how to address ... “Darling, you’ve been much longer than you said. I quite thought you were lost ...” And then Mr. McMaster interrupted. “May I trouble you to read that passage again? It is one I particularly enjoy.” The weeks passed; there was no sign of rescue, but Henty endured the day for hope of what might happen on the morrow; he even felt a slight stirring of cordiality towards his gaoler and was therefore quite willing to join him when, one evening after a long conference with an Indian neighbour, he proposed a celebration. “It is one of the local feast days,” he explained, “and they have been making piwari. You may not like it, but you should try some. We will go across to this man’s home tonight.” Accordingly after supper they joined a party of Indians that were assembled round the fire in one of the huts at the other side of the savannah. They were singing in an apathetic, monotonous manner and passing a large calabash of liquid from mouth to mouth. Separate bowls were brought for Henty and Mr. McMaster, and they were given hammocks to sit in. “You must drink it all without lowering the cup. That is the etiquette.” Henty gulped the dark liquid, trying not to taste it. But it was not unpleasant, hard and muddy on the palate like most of the beverages he had been offered in Brazil, but with a flavour of honey and brown bread. He leant back in the hammock feeling unusually contented. Perhaps at that very moment the search party was in camp a few hours’ journey from them. Meanwhile he was warm and drowsy. The cadence of song rose and fell interminably, liturgically. Another calabash of piwari was offered him and he handed it back empty. He lay full length watching the play of shadows on the thatch as the Shirianas began to dance. Then he shut his eyes and thought of England and his wife and fell asleep. He awoke, still in the Indian hut, with the impression that he had outslept his usual hour. By the position of the sun he knew it was late afternoon. No one else was about. He looked for his watch and found to his surprise that it was not on his wrist. He had left it in the house, he supposed, before coming to the party. “I must have been tight last night,” he reflected. “Treacherous drink, that.” He had a headache and feared a recurrence of fever. He found when he set his feet to the ground that he stood with difficulty; his walk was unsteady and his mind confused as it had been during the first weeks of his convalescence. On the way across the savannah he was obliged to stop more than once, shutting his eyes and breathing deeply. When he reached the house he found Mr. McMaster sitting there. “Ah, my friend, you are late for the reading this afternoon. There is scarcely another half hour of light. How do you feel?” “Rotten. That drink doesn’t seem to agree with me.” “I will give you something to make you better. The forest has remedies for everything; to make you awake and to make you sleep.” “You haven’t seen my watch anywhere?” “You have missed it?” “Yes. I thought I was wearing it. I say, I’ve never slept so long.” “Not since you were a baby. Do you know how long? Two days.” “Nonsense. I can’t have.” “Yes, indeed. It is a long time. It is a pity because you missed our guests.” “Guests?” “Why, yes. I have been quite gay while you were asleep. Three men from outside. Englishmen. It is a pity you missed them. A pity for them, too, as they particularly wished to see you. But what could I do? You were so sound asleep. They had come all the way to find you, so—I thought you would not mind—as you could not greet them yourself I gave them a little souvenir, your watch. They wanted something to take home to your wife who is offering a great reward for news of you. They were very pleased with it. And they took some photographs of the little cross I put up to commemorate your coming. They were pleased with that, too. They were very easily pleased. But I do not suppose they will visit us again, our life here is so retired ... no pleasures except reading ... I do not suppose we shall ever have visitors again ... well, well, I will get you some medicine to make you feel better. Your head aches, does it not ... We will not have any Dickens today ... but tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. Let us read Little Dorrit again. There are passages in that book I can never hear without the temptation to weep.” 
Out Of Depth
I 
Rip had got to the decent age when he disliked meeting new people. He lived a contented life between New York and the more American parts of Europe and everywhere, by choosing his season, he found enough of his old acquaintances to keep him effortlessly amused. For fifteen years at least he had dined with Margot Metroland during the first week of his visit to London, and he had always been sure of finding six or eight familiar and welcoming faces. It is true that there were also strangers, but these had passed before him and disappeared from his memory, leaving no more impression than a change of servants at his hotel. Tonight, however, as he entered the drawing room, before he had greeted his hostess or nodded to Alastair Trumptington, he was aware of something foreign and disturbing. A glance round the assembled party confirmed his alarm. All the men were standing save one; these were mostly old friends interspersed with a handful of new, gawky, wholly inconsiderable young men, but the seated figure instantly arrested his attention and froze his bland smile. This was an elderly, large man, quite bald, with a vast white face that spread down and out far beyond the normal limits. It was like Mother Hippo in Tiger Tim; it was like an evening shirt-front in a du Maurier drawing; down in the depths of the face was a little crimson smirking mouth; and, above it, eyes that had a shifty, deprecating look, like those of a temporary butler caught out stealing shirts. Lady Metroland seldom affronted her guests’ reticence by introducing them. “Dear Rip,” she said, “it’s lovely to see you again. I’ve got all the gang together for you, you see,” and then noticing that his eyes were fixed upon the stranger, added, “Doctor Kakophilos, this is Mr. Van Winkle. Doctor Kakophilos,” she added, “is a great magician. Norah brought him, I can’t think why.” “Musician?” “Magician. Norah says there’s nothing he can’t do.” “How do you do?” said Rip. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,” said Dr. Kakophilos, in a thin Cockney voice. “Eh?” “There is no need to reply. If you wish to, it is correct to say ‘Love is the law, Love under will.’” “I see.” “You are unusually blessed. Most men are blind.” “I tell you what,” said Lady Metroland. “Let’s all have some dinner.” It took an hour’s substantial eating and drinking before Rip began to feel at ease again. He was well placed between two married women of his own generation, with both of whom, at one time and another, he had had affairs; but even their genial gossip could not entirely hold his attention and he found himself continually gazing down the table to where, ten places away, Dr. Kakophilos was frightening a pop-eyed débutante out of all semblance of intelligence. Later, however, wine and reminiscence began to glow within him. He remembered that he had been brought up a Catholic and had therefore no need to fear black magic. He reflected that he was wealthy and in good health; that none of his women had ever borne him ill-will (and what better sign of good character was there than that?); that it was his first week in London and that everyone he most liked seemed to be there too; that the wine was so copious he had ceased to notice its excellence. He got going well and soon had six neighbours listening as he told some successful stories in his soft, lazy voice; he became aware with familiar, electric tremors that he had captured the attention of a lady opposite on whom he had had his eye last summer in Venice and two years before in Paris; he drank a good deal more and didn’t care a damn for Dr. Kakophilos. Presently, almost imperceptibly to Rip, the ladies left the dining room. He found himself with a ballon of brandy and a cigar, leaning back in his chair and talking for about the first time in his life to Lord Metroland. He was telling him about big game when he was aware of a presence at his other side, like a cold draught. He turned and saw that Dr. Kakophilos had come sidling up to him. “You will see me home tonight,” said the magician. “You and Sir Alastair?” “Like hell I will,” said Rip. “Like hell,” repeated Dr. Kakophilos, deep meaning resounding through his horrible Cockney tones. “I have need of you.” “Perhaps we ought to be going up,” said Lord Metroland, “or Margot will get restless.” For Rip the rest of the evening passed in a pleasant daze. He remembered Margot confiding in him that Norah and that silly little something girl had had a scene about Dr. Kakophilos and had both gone home in rages. Presently the party began to thin until he found himself alone with Alastair Trumptington drinking whiskeys in the small drawing room. They said good-bye and descended the stairs arm in arm. “I’ll drop you, old boy.” “No, old boy, I’ll drop you.” “I like driving at night.” “So do I, old boy.” They were on the steps when a cold Cockney voice broke in on their friendly discussion. “Will you please drop me?” A horrible figure in a black cloak had popped out on them. “Where do you want to go?” asked Alastair in some distaste. Dr. Kakophilos gave an obscure address in Bloomsbury. “Sorry, old boy, bang out of my way.” “And mine.” “But you said you liked driving at night.” “Oh God! All right, jump in.” And the three went off together. Rip never quite knew how it came about that he and Alastair went up to Dr. Kakophilos’s sitting room. It was certainly not for a drink, because there was none there; nor did he know how it was that Dr. Kakophilos came to be wearing a crimson robe embroidered with gold symbols and a conical crimson hat. It only came to him quite suddenly that Dr. Kakophilos was wearing these clothes; and when it came it set him giggling, so uncontrollably that he had to sit on the bed. And Alastair began to laugh too, and they both sat on the bed for a long time laughing. But quite suddenly Rip found that they had stopped laughing and that Dr. Kakophilos, still looking supremely ridiculous in his sacerdotal regalia, was talking to them ponderously about time and matter and spirit and a number of things which Rip had got through forty-three eventful years without considering. “And so,” Dr. Kakophilos was saying, “you must breathe the fire and call upon Omraz the spirit of release and journey back through the centuries and recover the garnered wisdom which the ages of reason have wasted. I chose you because you are the two most ignorant men I ever met. I have too much knowledge to risk my safety. If you never come back nothing will be lost.” “Oh, I say,” said Alastair. “And what’s more, you’re tipsy,” said Dr. Kakophilos relapsing suddenly into everyday speech. Then he became poetic again and Rip yawned and Alastair yawned. At last Rip said: “Jolly decent of you to tell us all this, old boy; I’ll come in another time to hear the rest. Must be going now, you know.” “Yes,” said Alastair. “A most interesting evening.” Dr. Kakophilos removed his crimson hat and mopped his moist, hairless head. He surveyed his parting guests with undisguised disdain. “Sots,” he said. “You are partakers in a mystery beyond your comprehension. In a few minutes your drunken steps will have straddled the centuries. Tell me, Sir Alastair,” he asked, his face alight with ghastly, facetious courtesy, “have you any preference with regard to your translation? You may choose any age you like.” “Oh, I say, jolly decent of you ... Never was much of a dab at History you know.” “Say.” “Well, any time really. How about Ethelred the Unready?—always had a soft spot for him.” “And you, Mr. Van Winkle?” “Well, if I’ve got to be moved about, being an American, I’d sooner go forwards—say five hundred years.” Dr. Kakophilos drew himself up. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” “I can answer that one. ‘Love is the law, Love under will.’” “God, we’ve been a long time in that house,” said Alastair as at length they regained the Bentley. “Awful old humbug. Comes of getting tight.” “Hell, I could do with another,” said Rip. “Know anywhere?” “I do,” said Alastair and, turning a corner sharply, ran, broadside on, into a mail van that was thundering down Shaftesbury Avenue at forty-five miles an hour. When Rip stood up, dazed but, as far as he could judge, without specific injury, he was scarcely at all surprised to observe that both cars had disappeared.There was so much else to surprise him; a light breeze, a clear, star-filled sky, a wide horizon unobscured by buildings. The moon, in her last quarter, hung low above a grove of trees, illumined a slope of hummocky turf and a herd of sheep, peacefully cropping the sedge near Piccadilly Circus and, beyond, was reflected in a still pool, pierced here and there with reed. Instinctively, for his head and eyes were still aflame from the wine he had drunk and there was a dry, stale taste in his mouth, Rip approached the water. His evening shoes sank deeper with each step and he paused, uncertain. The entrance of the Underground Station was there, transformed into a Piranesi ruin; a black aperture tufted about with fern and some crumbling steps leading down to black water. Eros had gone, but the pedestal rose above the reeds, moss grown and dilapidated. “Golly,” said Mr. Van Winkle slowly, “the twenty-fifth century.” Then he crossed the threshold of the underground station and, kneeling on the slippery fifth step, immersed his head in the water. Absolute stillness lay all around him except for rhythmic, barely audible nibbling of the pastured sheep. Clouds drifted across the moon and Rip stood awed by the darkness; they passed and Rip stepped out into the light, left the grotto and climbed to a grass mound at the corner of the Haymarket. To the south, between the trees, he could pick out the silver line of the river. Warily, for the ground was full of pits and crevices, he crossed what had once been Leicester and Trafalgar Squares. Great flats of mud, submerged at high water, stretched to his feet over the Strand, and at the margin of mud and sedge was a cluster of huts, built on poles; inaccessible because their careful householders had drawn up the ladders at sunset. Two campfires, almost extinct, glowed red upon platforms of beaten earth. A ragged guard slept with his head on his knees. Two or three dogs prowled below the huts, nosing for refuse, but the breeze was blowing from the riverbank and, though Rip had made some noise in his approach, they gave no alarm. Limitless calm lay on all sides among the monstrous shapes of grassgrown masonry and concrete. Rip crouched in a damp hollow and waited for day. It was still night, darker from the setting of the moon, when the cocks began to crow—twenty or thirty of them, Rip judged—from the roosts under the village. The sentry came to life and raked over the embers sending up a spatter of wood sparks. Presently a thin line of light appeared downstream, broadening into delicate summer dawn. Birds sang all round him. Tousled households appeared on the little platforms before the huts; women scratching their heads, shaking out blankets, naked children. They let down ladders of hide and stick; two or three women padded down to the river with earthenware pots to draw water; they hitched up their clothes to the waist and waded thigh deep. From where Rip lay he could see the full extent of the village. The huts extended for half a mile or so, in a single line along the bank. There were about fifty of  them; all of the same size and character, built of wattle and mud with skin-lined roofs; they seemed sturdy and in good repair. A dozen or more canoes were beached along the mud flats; some of them dug-out trees, others of a kind of basketwork covered in skins. The people were fair-skinned and fair-haired, but shaggy, and they moved with the loping gait of savages. They spoke slowly in the sing-song tones of an unlettered race who depend on oral tradition for the preservation of their lore. Their words seemed familiar yet unintelligible. For more than an hour Rip watched the village come to life and begin the routine of its day, saw the cooking-pots slung over the fires, the men going down and muttering sagely over their boats as longshoremen do; saw the children scrambling down the supports of the houses to the refuse below—and for perhaps the first time in his life felt uncertain of what he should do. Then with as much resolution as he could muster, he walked towards the village. The effect was instantaneous. There was a general scramble of women for their children, a general stampede for the ladders. The men at the boats stopped fiddling with tackle and came lumbering up the banks. Rip smiled and walked on. The men got together and showed no inclination to budge. Rip raised his clasped hands and shook them amicably in the air as he had seen boxers do when entering the ring. The shaggy white men made no sign of recognition. “Good morning,” said Rip. “Is this London?” The men looked at each other in surprise, and one very old white beard giggled slightly. After a painful delay the leader nodded and said, “Lunnon.” Then they cautiously encircled him until, growing bolder, they came right up to him and began to finger his outlandish garments, tapping his crumpled shirt with their horny nails and plucking at his studs and buttons. The women meanwhile were shrieking with excitement in the house-tops. When Rip looked up to them and smiled, they dodged into the doorways, peeping out at him from the smoky interiors. He felt remarkably foolish and very dizzy. The men were discussing him; they squatted on their hams and began to debate, without animation or conviction. Occasional phrases came to him, “white,” “black boss,” “trade,” but for the most part the jargon was without meaning. Rip sat down too. The voices rose and fell liturgically. Rip closed his eyes and made a desperate effort to wake himself from this preposterous nightmare. “I am in London, in nineteen-thirty-three, staying at the Ritz Hotel. I drank too much last night at Margot’s. Have to go carefully in future. Nothing really wrong. I am in the Ritz in nineteen-thirty-three.” He said it over and over again, shutting his senses to all outward impression, forcing his will towards sanity. At last, fully convinced, he raised his head and opened his eyes ... early morning on the river, a cluster of wattle huts, a circle of impassive barbarous faces ... 
II 
It is not to be supposed that one who has lightly skipped five hundred years would take great notice of the passage of days and nights. Often in Rip’s desultory reading, he had struck such phrases as, “From then time ceased to have any reality for her”; at last he knew what they meant. There was a time when he lived under guard among the Londoners; they fed him on fish and coarse bread and heady, viscous beer; often, in the late afternoon when the work for the day was over, the village women would collect round him in a little circle, watching all his movements with an intent scrutiny; sometimes impatiently (once a squat young matron came up to him and suddenly tweaked his hair) but more often shyly—ready to giggle or take flight at any unusual movement. This captivity may have lasted many days. He was conscious of restraint and strangeness; nothing else. Then there was another impression; the coming of the boss. A day of excitement in the village; the arrival of a large mechanically propelled boat, with an awning and a flag; a crew of smart Negroes, all wearing uniforms of leather and fur although it was high summer; a commander among the Negroes issuing orders in a quiet supercilious voice. The Londoners brought out sacks from their huts and spread on the beach the things they had recovered from the ruins by digging—pieces of machinery and ornament, china and glass and carved stonework, jewellery and purposeless bits of things they hoped might have value. The blacks landed bales of thick cloth, cooking utensils, fish-hooks, knife-blades and axe-heads; discussion and barter followed, after which the finds from the diggings were bundled up into the launch. Rip was led forward and presented, turned round and inspected; then he too was put in the launch. A phantasmagoric journey downstream; Rip seated on the cargo; the commander puffing imperturbably at a cigar. Now and then they stopped at other villages, smaller than London, but built on the same plan. Here curious Englishmen crowded the banks and paddled in to stare at him until peremptorily told to keep their distance. The nightmare journey continued. Arrival at the coast; a large military station; uniforms of leather and fur; black faces; flags; saluting. A pier with a large steamer alongside; barracks and a government house. A Negro anthropologist with vast spectacles. Impressions became more vivid and more brief; momentary illumination like flickering lightning. Someone earnestly trying to talk to Rip. Saying English words very slowly; reading to him from a book, familiar words with an extraordinary accent; a black man trying to read Shakespeare to Rip. Someone measured his skull with calipers. Growing blackness and despair; restraint and strangeness; moments of illumination rarer and more fantastic. At night when Rip woke up and lay alone with his thoughts quite clear and desperate, he said: “This is not a dream. It is simply that I have gone mad.” Then more blackness and wildness. The officers and officials came and went. There was a talk of sending him “home.” “Home,” thought Rip and beyond the next official town, vague and more distant, he saw the orderly succession of characterless, steam-heated apartments, the cabin trunks and promenade decks, the casinos and bars and supper restaurants, that were his home. And then later—how much later he could not tell—something that was new and yet ageless. The word “Mission” painted on a board; a black man dressed as a Dominican friar ... and a growing clearness. Rip knew that out of strangeness, there had come into being something familiar; a shape in chaos. Something was being done. Something was being done that Rip knew; something that twenty-five centuries had not altered; of his own childhood which survived the age of the world. In a log-built church at the coast town he was squatting among a native congregation; some of them in cast-off uniforms; the women had shapeless, convent-sewn frocks; all round him dishevelled white men were staring ahead with vague, uncomprehending eyes, to the end of the room where two candles burned. The priest turned towards them his bland, black face. “Ite, missa est.” 
III 
It was some days after the accident before Rip was well enough to talk. Then he asked for the priest who had been by his head when he recovered consciousness. “What I can’t understand, Father, is how you came to be there.” “I was called in to see Sir Alastair. He wasn’t badly hurt, but he had been knocked unconscious. You both had a lucky escape. It was odd Sir Alastair asking for me. He isn’t a Catholic, but he seems to have had some sort of dream while he was unconscious that made him want to see a priest. Then they told me you were here too, so I came along.” Rip thought for a little. He felt very dizzy when he tried to think. “Alastair had a dream too, did he?” “Apparently something about the Middle Ages. It made him ask for me.” “Father,” said Rip, “I want to make a confession ... I have experimented in black art ...” 
An Alternative Ending to A Handful of Dust
I 
The liner came into harbour at Southampton, late in the afternoon. They had left the sun three days behind them; after the Azores there had been a high sea running; in the Channel a white mist. Tony had been awake all night, disturbed by the fog signals and the uncertainty of homecoming. They berthed alongside the quay. Tony leant on the rail looking for his chauffeur. He had cabled to Hetton that he was to be met and would drive straight home. He wanted to see the new bathrooms. Half the summer workmen had been at Hetton. There would be several changes to greet him. It had been an uneventful excursion. Not for Tony were the ardours of serious travel, desert or jungle, mountain or pampas; he had no inclination to kill big game or survey unmapped tributaries. He had left England because, in the circumstances, it seemed the correct procedure, a convention hallowed in fiction and history by generations of disillusioned husbands. He had put himself in the hands of a travel agency and for lazy months had pottered from island to island in the West Indies, lunching at Government Houses, drinking swizzles on club verandahs, achieving an easy popularity at Captains’ tables; he had played deck quoits and Ping-Pong, had danced on deck and driven with new acquaintances, on well-laid roads amid tropical vegetation. Now he was home again. He had thought less and less of Brenda during the passing weeks. Presently he identified his chauffeur among the sparse population of the quay. The man came on board and took charge of the luggage. The car was waiting on the other side of the customs sheds. The chauffeur said, “Shall I have the big trunk sent on by train?” “There’s plenty of room for it behind the car, isn’t there?” “Well, hardly, sir. Her ladyship has a lot of luggage with her.” “Her ladyship?” “Yes, sir. Her ladyship is waiting in the car. She telegraphed that I was to pick her up at the hotel.” “I see. And she has a lot of luggage?” “Yes, sir, an uncommon lot.” “Well ... perhaps you had better send the trunks by train.” “Very good, sir.” So Tony went out to the car alone, while his chauffeur was seeing to the trunks. Brenda was in the back, shrunk into the corner. She had taken off her hat—a very small knitted hat, clipped with a brooch he had given her some years ago—and was holding it in her lap. There was deep twilight inside the car. She looked up without moving her head. “Darling,” she said, “your boat was very late.” “Yes, we had fog in the channel.” “I got here last night. The people in the office said you’d be in early this morning.” “Yes, we are late.” “You can never tell with ships, can you?” said Brenda. There was a pause. Then she said, “Aren’t you going to come in?” “There’s a fuss about the luggage.” “Blake will see to that.” “He’s sending it by train.” “Yes, I thought he would have to. I’m sorry I brought so much ... You see, I brought everything. I’ve turned against that flat ... It never quite lost the smell. I thought it was just newness, but it got worse. You know—radiator smell. So what with one thing and another I thought, how about giving it up.” Then the chauffeur came back. He had settled everything about the luggage. “Well, we’d better start right away.” “Very good, sir.” Tony got in beside Brenda, and the chauffeur shut the door on them. They ran through the streets of Southampton and out into the country. The lamps were already alight behind the windows they passed. “How did you know I was coming this afternoon?” “I thought you were coming this morning. Jock told me.” “I didn’t expect to see you.” “Jock said you’d be surprised.” “How is Jock?” “Something awful happened to him, but I can’t remember what. I think it was to do with politics—or it may have been a girl. I can’t remember.” They sat far apart, each in a corner. Tony was very tired after his sleepless night. His eyes were heavy and the lights hurt them when the car passed through a bright little town. “Have you been having a lovely time?” “Yes. Have you?” “No, rather lousy really. But I don’t expect you want to hear about that.” “What are your plans?” “Vague. What are yours?” “Vague.” And then in the close atmosphere and gentle motion of the car, Tony fell asleep. He slept for two and a half hours, with his face half hidden in the collar of his overcoat. Once, as they stopped at a level crossing, he half woke up and asked, deep down in the tweed, “Are we there?” “No, darling. Miles more.” And then he fell asleep again and woke to find them hooting at the lodge gates. He woke, too, to find that the question which neither he nor Brenda had asked, was answered. This should have been a crisis; his destinies had been at his control; there had been things to say, a decision to make, affecting every hour of his future life. And he had fallen asleep. Ambrose was on the drawbridge to greet them. “Good evening, my lady. Good evening, sir. I hope you have had an agreeable voyage, sir.” “Most agreeable, thank you, Ambrose. Everything quite all right here?” “Everything quite all right, sir. There are one or two small things, but perhaps I had better mention them in the morning.” “Yes, in the morning.” “Your correspondence is all in the library, sir.” “Thank you. I’ll see to all that tomorrow.” They went into the great hall and upstairs. A large log fire was burning in Guinevere. “The men only left last week, sir. I think you will find their work quite satisfactory.” While his suitcase was being unpacked, Tony and Brenda examined the new bathrooms. Tony turned on the taps. “I haven’t had the furnace lighted, sir. But it was lit the other day and the result was quite satisfactory.” “Let’s not change,” said Brenda. “No. We’ll have dinner right away, Ambrose.” During dinner, Tony talked about his trip; of the people he had met, and the charm of the scenery, the improvidence of the Negro population, the fine flavour of the tropical fruits, the varying hospitality of the different Governors. “I wonder if we could grow Avocado pears, here, under glass,” he said. Brenda did not say very much. Once he asked her, “Have you been away at all?” and she replied “Me? No. London all the time.” “How is everybody?” “I didn’t see many people. Polly’s in America.” And that set Tony talking about the excellent administration in Haiti. “They’ve made a new place of it,” he said. After dinner they sat in the library. Tony surveyed the substantial pile of letters that had accumulated for him in his absence. “I can’t do anything about that tonight,” he said. “I’m so tired.” “Yes, let’s go to bed soon.” There was a pause, and it was then that Brenda said, “You aren’t still in a rage with me, are you? ... over that nonsense with Mr. Beaver, I mean?” “I don’t know that I was ever in a rage.” “Oh yes you were. Just at the end you were, before you went away.” Tony did not answer. “You aren’t in a rage, are you? I hoped you weren’t, when you went to sleep in the car.” Instead of answering, Tony asked, “What’s become of Beaver?” “It’s rather a sad story, do you really want to hear it?” “Yes.” “Well, I come out of it in a very small way. You see, I just couldn’t hold him down. He got away almost the same time as you. “You see, you didn’t leave me with very much money, did you? And that made everything difficult because poor Mr. Beaver hadn’t any either. So everything was most uncomfortable..... And then there was a club he wanted to join—Brown’s—and they wouldn’t have him in, and for some reason he held that against me, because he thought I ought to have made Reggie help more instead of what actually happened, which was that Reggie was the chief one to keep him out. Gentlemen are so funny about their clubs, I should have thought it was heaven to have Mr. Beaver there, but they didn’t. “And then Mrs. Beaver turned against me—she was always an old trout anyway—and I tried to get a job with her shop, but no, she wouldn’t have me on account she thought I was doing harm to Beaver. And then I had a job with Daisy trying to get people to go to her restaurant, but that wasn’t any good, and those I got didn’t pay their bills. “So there was I living on bits from the delicatessen shop round the corner, and no friends much except Jenny, and I got to hate her. “Tony, it was a lousy summer. “And then, finally, there was an American vamp called Mrs. Rattery—you know, the Shameless Blonde. Well, my Mr. Beaver met her and from that moment I was nowhere. Of course she was just his ticket and he was bats about her, only she never seemed to notice him, and every time he met her she forgot she’d seen him before, and that was hard cheese on Beaver, but it didn’t make him any more decent to me. And he wore himself to a shadow chasing after her and getting no fun, till finally Mrs. Beaver sent him away and he’s got some job to do with her shop buying things in Berlin or Vienna. “So that’s that ... Tony, I believe you’re falling asleep again.” “Well, I didn’t get any sleep at all last night.” “Come on, let’s go up.”  II 
That winter, shortly before Christmas, Daisy opened another restaurant. Tony and Brenda were in London for the day, so they went there to lunch. It was very full (Daisy’s restaurants were often full, but it never seemed to make any effect on the resulting deficit). They went to their table nodding gaily to right and left. “All the old faces,” said Brenda. A few places away sat Polly Cockpurse and Sybil with two young men. “Who was that?” “Brenda and Tony Last. I wonder what’s become of them. They never appear anywhere now.” “They never did much.” “I had an idea they’d split.” “It doesn’t look like it.” “Come to think of it, I do remember some talk last spring,” said Sybil. “Yes, I remember. Brenda had a fancy for someone quite extraordinary. I can’t remember who it was, but I know it was someone quite extraordinary.” “Wasn’t that her sister Marjorie?” “Oh no, hers was Robin Beasley.” “Yes, of course ... Brenda’s looking pretty.” “Such a waste. But I don’t think she’d ever have the energy now to get away.” At Brenda and Tony’s table they were saying, “I wish you’d see her.” “No, you must see her.” “All right, I’ll see her.” Tony had to go and see Mrs. Beaver about the flat. Ever since his return they had been trying to sublet it. Now Mrs. Beaver had informed them that there was a tenant in sight. So while Brenda was at the doctor’s (she was expecting a baby) Tony went round to the shop. Mrs. Beaver was surrounded with a new sort of lampshade made of cellophane and cork. “How are you, Mr. Last?” she said, rather formally. “We haven’t met since that delightful weekend at Hetton.” “I hear you’ve found a tenant for the flat.” “Yes, I think so. A young cousin of Viola Chasm’s. Of course I’m afraid you’ll have to make some slight sacrifice. You see the flats have proved too popular, if you see what I mean. The demand was so brisk that a great many other firms came into the market and, as a result, rents have fallen. Everyone is taking flats of the kind now, but the speculative builders are letting them at competitive rents. The new tenant will only pay two pounds fifteen a week and he insists on its being entirely repainted. We will undertake that, of course. I think we can make a very nice job of it for fifty pounds or so.” “You know,” said Tony, “I’ve been thinking. It’s rather a useful thing to have—a flat of that kind.” “It is necessary,” said Mrs. Beaver. “Exactly. Well I think I shall keep it on. The only trouble is that my wife is inclined to fret a little about the rent. My idea is to use it when I come to London instead of my club. It will be cheaper and a great deal more convenient. But my wife may not see it in that light ... in fact ...” “I quite understand.” “I think it would be better if my name didn’t appear on that board downstairs.” “Naturally. A number of my tenants are taking the same precaution.” “So that’s all right.” “That’s quite satisfactory. I daresay you will want some little piece of extra furniture—a writing table, for instance.” “Yes, I suppose I had better.” “I’ll send one round. I think I know just what will suit you.” The table was delivered a week later. It cost eighteen pounds; on the same day there was a new name painted on the board below. And for the price of the table Mrs. Beaver observed absolute discretion. Tony met Brenda at Marjorie’s house and they caught the evening train together. “Did you get rid of the flat?” she asked. “Yes, that’s all settled.” “Mrs. Beaver decent?” “Very decent.” “So that’s the end of that,” said Brenda. And the train sped through the darkness towards Hetton. 
Period Piece
Lady Amelia had been educated in the belief that it was the height of impropriety to read a novel in the morning. Now, in the twilight of her days, when she had singularly little to occupy the two hours between her appearance downstairs at quarter past eleven, hatted and fragrant with lavender water, and the announcement of luncheon, she adhered rigidly to this principle. As soon as luncheon was over, however, and coffee had been served in the drawing room; before the hot milk in his saucer had sufficiently cooled for Manchu to drink it; while the sunlight, in summer, streamed through the Venetian blinds of the round-fronted Regency windows; while, in winter, the carefully stacked coal-fire glowed in its round-fronted grate; while Manchu sniffed and sipped at his saucer, and Lady Amelia spread out on her knees the various shades of coarse wool with which her failing eyesight now compelled her to work; while the elegant Regency clock ticked off the two and a half hours to tea time—it was Miss Myers’s duty to read a novel aloud to her employer. With the passing years Lady Amelia had grown increasingly fond of novels, and of novels of a particular type. They were what the assistant in the circulating library termed “strong meat” and kept in a hidden place under her desk. It was Miss Myers’s duty to fetch and return them. “Have you anything of the kind Lady Amelia likes?” she would ask sombrely. “Well, there’s this just come in,” the assistant would answer, fishing up a volume from somewhere near her feet. At one time Lady Amelia had enjoyed love stories about the irresponsible rich; then she had had a psychological phase; at the moment her interests were American, in the school of brutal realism and gross slang. “Something else like Sanctuary or Bessie Cotter,” Miss Myers was reluctantly obliged to demand. And as the still afternoon was disturbed by her delicately modulated tones enunciating page by page, in scarcely comprehensible idiom, the narratives of rape and betrayal, Lady Amelia would occasionally chuckle a little over her woolwork. “Women of my age always devote themselves either to religion or novels,” she said. “I have remarked among my few surviving friends that those who read novels enjoy far better health.” The story they were reading came to an end at half past four. “Thank you,” said Lady Amelia. “That was most entertaining. Make a note of the author’s name, please, Miss Myers. You will be able to go to the library after tea and see whether they have another. I hope you enjoyed it.” “Well, it was very sad, wasn’t it?” “Sad?” “I mean the poor young man who wrote it must come from a terrible home.” “Why do you say that, Miss Myers?” “Well, it was so far fetched.” “It is odd you should think so. I invariably find modern novels painfully reticent. Of course until lately I never read novels at all. I cannot say what they were like formerly. I was far too busy in the old days living my own life and sharing the lives of my friends—all people who came from anything but terrible homes,” she added with a glance at her companion; a glance sharp and smart as a rap on the knuckles with an ivory ruler. There was half an hour before tea; Manchu was asleep on the hearth rug, before the fireless grate; the sun streamed in through the blinds, casting long strips of light on the Aubusson carpet. Lady Amelia fixed her eyes on the embroidered, heraldic firescreen; and proceeded dreamily. “I suppose it would not do. You couldn’t write about the things which actually happen. People are so used to novels that they would not believe them. The poor writers are constantly at pains to make the truth seem probable. Dear me, I often think, as you sit, so kindly, reading to me, ‘If one was just to write down quite simply the events of a few years in any household one knows ... No one would believe it.’ I can hear you yourself, dear Miss Myers, saying, ‘Perhaps these things do happen, very occasionally, once in a century, in terrible homes’; instead of which they are constantly happening, every day, all round us—or at least, they were in my young days. “Take for example the extremely ironic circumstances of the succession of the present Lord Cornphillip: “I used to know the Cornphillips very well in the old days,” said Lady Amelia—“Etty was a cousin of my mother’s—and when we were first married my husband and I used to stay there every autumn for the pheasant shooting. Billy Cornphillip was a very dull man—very dull indeed. He was in my husband’s regiment. I used to know a great many dull people at the time when I was first married, but Billy Cornphillip was notorious for dullness even among my husband’s friends. Their place is in Wiltshire. I see the boy is trying to sell it now. I am not surprised. It was very ugly and very unhealthy. I used to dread our visits there. “Etty was entirely different, a lively little thing with very nice eyes. People thought her fast. Of course it was a very good match for her; she was one of seven sisters and her father was a younger son, poor dear. Billy was twelve years older. She had been after him for years. I remember crying with pleasure when I received her letter telling me of the engagement ... It was at the breakfast table ... she used a very artistic kind of writing paper with pale blue edges and bows of blue ribbon at the corner ... “Poor Etty was always being artistic; she tried to do something with the house—put up peacocks’ feathers and painted tambourines and some very modern stencil work—but the result was always depressing. She made a little garden for herself at some distance from the house, with a high wall and a padlocked door, where she used to retire to think—or so she said—for hours at a time. She called it the Garden of Her Thoughts. I went in with her once, as a great privilege, after one of her quarrels with Billy. Nothing grew very well there—because of the high walls, I suppose, and her doing it all herself. There was a mossy seat in the middle. I suppose she used to sit on it while she thought. The whole place had a nasty dank smell ... “Well we were all delighted at Etty’s luck and I think she quite liked Billy at first and was prepared to behave well to him, in spite of his dullness. You see it came just when we had all despaired. Billy had been the friend of Lady Instow for a long time and we were all afraid she would never let him marry but they had a quarrel at Cowes that year and Billy went up to Scotland in a bad temper and little Etty was staying in the house; so everything was arranged and I was one of her bridesmaids. “The only person who was not pleased was Ralph Bland. You see he was Billy’s nearest relative and would inherit if Billy died without children and he had got very hopeful as time went on. “He came to a very sad end—in fact I don’t know what became of him—but at the time of which I am speaking he was extremely popular, especially with women ... Poor Viola Chasm was terribly in love with him. Wanted to run away. She and Lady Anchorage were very jealous of each other about him. It became quite disagreeable, particularly when Viola found that Lady Anchorage was paying her maid five pounds a week to send on all Ralph’s letters to her—before Viola had read them, that was what she minded. He really had a most agreeable manner and said such ridiculous things ... The marriage was a great disappointment to Ralph; he was married himself and had two children. She had a little money at one time, but Ralph ran through it. Billy did not get on with Ralph—they had very little in common, of course—but he treated him quite well and was always getting him out of difficulties. In fact he made him a regular allowance at one time, and what with that and what he got from Viola and Lady Anchorage he was really quite comfortable. But, as he said, he had his children’s future to consider, so that Billy’s marriage was a great disappointment to him. He even talked of emigrating and Billy advanced him a large sum of money to purchase a sheep farm in New Zealand, but nothing came of that because Ralph had a Jewish friend in the city who made away with the entire amount. It all happened in a very unfortunate manner because Billy had given him this lump sum on the understanding that he should not expect an allowance. And then Viola and Lady Anchorage were greatly upset at his talk of leaving and made other arrangements so that in one way and another Ralph found himself in very low water, poor thing. “However he began to recover his spirits when, after two years, there was no sign of an heir. People had babies very much more regularly when I was young. Everybody expected that Etty would have a baby—she was a nice healthy little thing—and when she did not, there was a great deal of ill-natured gossip. Ralph himself behaved very wrongly in the matter. He used to make jokes about it, my husband told me, quite openly at his club in the worst possible taste. “I well remember the last time that Ralph stayed with the Cornphillips; it was a Christmas party and he came with his wife and his two children. The eldest boy was about six at the time and there was a very painful scene. I was not there myself, but we were staying nearby with the Lockejaws and of course we heard all about it. Billy seems to have been in his most pompous mood and was showing off the house when Ralph’s little boy said solemnly and very loudly, ‘Daddy says that when I step into your shoes I can pull the whole place down. The only thing worth worrying about is the money.’ “It was towards the end of a large and rather old-fashioned Christmas party, so no one was feeling in a forgiving mood. There was a final breach between the two cousins. Until then, in spite of the New Zealand venture, Billy had been reluctantly supporting Ralph. Now the allowance ceased once for all and Ralph took it in very bad part. “You know what it is—or perhaps, dear Miss Myers, you are so fortunate as not to know what it is—when near relatives begin to quarrel. There is no limit to the savagery to which they will resort. I should be ashamed to indicate the behaviour of these two men towards each other during the next two or three years. No one had any sympathy with either. “For example, Billy, of course, was a Conservative. Ralph came down and stood as a Radical in the General Election in his own county and got in. “This, you must understand, was in the days before the lower classes began going into politics. It was customary for the candidates on both sides to be men of means and, in the circumstances, there was considerable expenditure involved. Much more in fact than Ralph could well afford, but in those days Members of Parliament had many opportunities for improving their position, so we all thought it a very wise course of Ralph’s—the first really sensible thing we had known him to do. What followed was very shocking. “Billy of course had refused to lend his interest—that was only to be expected—but when the election was over, and everybody perfectly satisfied with the result, he did what I always consider a Very Wrong Thing. He made an accusation against Ralph of corrupt practices. It was a matter of three pounds which Ralph had given to a gardener whom Billy had discharged for drunkenness. I daresay that all that kind of thing has ceased nowadays, but at the time to which I refer, it was universally customary. No one had any sympathy with Billy but he pressed the charge and poor Ralph was unseated. “Well, after this time, I really think that poor Ralph became a little unsettled in his mind. It is a very sad thing, Miss Myers, when a middle-aged man becomes 
obsessed by a grievance. You remember how difficult it was when the Vicar thought that Major Etheridge was persecuting him. He actually informed me that Major Etheridge 
put water in the petrol tank of his motor-cycle and gave sixpences to the choir boys to sing out of tune—well it was like that with poor Ralph. He made up his mind 
that Billy had deliberately ruined him. He took a cottage in the village and used to embarrass Billy terribly by coming to all the village fêtes and staring at Billy 
fixedly. Poor Billy was always embarrassed when he had to make a speech. Ralph used to laugh ironically at the wrong places but never so loudly that Billy could have 
him turned out. And he used to go to public houses and drink far too much. They found him asleep on the terrace twice. And of course no one on the place liked to offend 
him, because at any moment he might become Lord Cornphillip. “It must have been a very trying time for Billy. He and Etty were not getting on at all well together, poor things, and she spent more and more time in the Garden of 
Her Thoughts and brought out a very silly little book of sonnets, mostly about Venice and Florence, though she could never induce Billy to take her abroad. He used to 
think that foreign cooking upset him. “Billy forbade her to speak to Ralph, which was very awkward as they were always meeting one another in the village and had been great friends in the old days. In fact 
Ralph used often to speak very contemptuously of his cousin’s manliness and say it was time someone took Etty off his hands. But that was only one of Ralph’s jokes, 
because Etty had been getting terribly thin and dressing in the most artistic way, and Ralph always liked people who were chic and plump—like poor Viola Chasm. 
Whatever her faults —” said Lady Amelia, “Viola was always chic and plump. “It was at the time of the Diamond Jubilee that the crisis took place. There was a bonfire and a great deal of merry making of a rather foolish kind and Ralph got 
terribly drunk. He began threatening Billy in a very silly way and Billy had him up before the magistrates and they made an order against him to keep the peace and not 
to reside within ten miles of Cornphillip. ‘All right,’ Ralph said, in front of the whole Court, ‘I’ll go away, but I won’t go alone.’ And will you believe it, 
Miss Myers, he and Etty went off to Venice together that very afternoon. “Poor Etty, she had always wanted to go to Venice and had written so many poems about it, but it was a great surprise to us all. Apparently she had been meeting Ralph 
for some time in the Garden of Her Thoughts. “I don’t think Ralph ever cared about her, because, as I say, she was not at all his type, but it seemed to him a very good revenge on Billy. “Well, the elopement was far from successful. They took rooms in a very insanitary palace, and had a gondola and ran up a great many bills. Then Etty got a septic 
throat as a result of the sanitation and while she was laid up Ralph met an American woman who was much more his type. So in less than six weeks poor Etty was back in 
England. Of course she did not go back to Billy at once. She wanted to stay with us, but, naturally, that wasn’t possible. It was very awkward for everyone. There was 
never, I think, any talk of a divorce. It was long before that became fashionable. But we all felt it would be very inconsiderate to Billy if we had her to stay. And 
then, this is what will surprise you, Miss Myers, the next thing we heard was that Etty was back at Cornphillip and about to have a baby. It was a son. Billy was very 
pleased about it and I don’t believe that the boy ever knew, until quite lately, at luncheon with Lady Metroland, when my nephew Simon told him, in a rather ill-
natured way. “As for poor Ralph’s boy, I am afraid he has come to very little good. He must be middle-aged by now. No one ever seems to hear anything of him. Perhaps he was killed 
in war. I cannot remember. “And here comes Ross with the tray; and I see that Mrs. Samson has made more of those little scones which you always seem to enjoy so much. I am sure, dear Miss Myers, 
you would suffer much less from your migraine if you avoided them. But you take so little care of yourself, dear Miss Myers ... Give one to Manchu.” 
On Guard
I 
Millicent Blade had a notable head of naturally fair hair; she had a docile and affectionate disposition, and an expression of face which changed with lightning rapidity from amiability to laughter and from laughter to respectful interest. But the feature which, more than any other, endeared her to sentimental Anglo-Saxon manhood was her nose. It was not everybody’s nose; many prefer one with greater body; it was not a nose to appeal to painters, for it was far too small and quite without shape, a mere dab of putty without apparent bone structure; a nose which made it impossible for its wearer to be haughty or imposing or astute. It would not have done for a governess or a cellist or even for a post office clerk, but it suited Miss Blade’s book perfectly, for it was a nose that pierced the thin surface crust of the English heart to its warm and pulpy core; a nose to take the thoughts of English manhood back to its schooldays, to the doughy-faced urchins on whom it had squandered its first affection, to memories of changing room and chapel and battered straw boaters. Three Englishmen in five, it is true, grow snobbish about these things in later life and prefer a nose that makes more show in public—but two in five is an average with which any girl of modest fortune may be reasonably content. Hector kissed her reverently on the tip of this nose. As he did so, his senses reeled and in momentary delirium he saw the fading light of the November afternoon, the raw mist spreading over the playing fields; overheated youth in the scrum; frigid youth at the touchline, shuffling on the duckboards, chafing their fingers and, when their mouths were emptied of biscuit crumbs, cheering their house team to further exertion. “You will wait for me, won’t you?” he said. “Yes, darling.” “And you will write?” “Yes, darling,” she replied more doubtfully, “sometimes ... at least I’ll try. Writing is not my best thing, you know.” “I shall think of you all the time Out There,” said Hector. “It’s going to be terrible—miles of impassable waggon track between me and the nearest white man, blinding sun, lions, mosquitoes, hostile natives, work from dawn until sunset singlehanded against the forces of nature, fever, cholera ... But soon I shall be able to send for you to join me.” “Yes, darling.” “It’s bound to be a success. I’ve discussed it all with Beckthorpe—that’s the chap who’s selling me the farm. You see the crop has failed every year so far—first coffee, then seisal, then tobacco, that’s all you can grow there, and the year Beckthorpe grew seisal, everyone else was making a packet in tobacco, but seisal was no good; then he grew tobacco, but by then it was coffee he ought to have grown, and so on. He stuck it nine years. Well if you work it out mathematically, Beckthorpe says, in three years one’s bound to strike the right crop. I can’t quite explain why but it is like roulette and all that sort of thing, you see.” “Yes, darling.” Hector gazed at her little, shapeless, mobile button of a nose and was lost again ... “Play up, play up,” and after the match the smell of crumpets being toasted over a gas-ring in his study ... 
II 
Later that evening he dined with Beckthorpe, and, as he dined, he grew more despondent. “Tomorrow this time I shall be at sea,” he said, twiddling his empty port glass. “Cheer up, old boy,” said Beckthorpe. Hector filled his glass and gazed with growing distaste round the reeking dining room of Beckthorpe’s club. The last awful member had left the room and they were alone with the cold buffet. “I say, you know, I’ve been trying to work it out. It was in three years you said the crop was bound to be right, wasn’t it?” “That’s right, old boy.” “Well, I’ve been through the sum and it seems to me that it may be eighty-one years before it comes right.” “No, no, old boy, three or nine or at the most twenty-seven.” “Are you sure?” “Quite.” “Good ... you know it’s awful leaving Milly behind. Suppose it is eighty-one years before the crop succeeds. It’s the devil of a time to expect a girl to wait. Some other blighter might turn up, if you see what I mean.” “In the Middle Ages they used to use girdles of chastity.” “Yes, I know. I’ve been thinking of them. But they sound damned uncomfortable. I doubt if Milly would wear one even if I knew where to find it.” “Tell you what, old boy. You ought to give her something.” “Hell, I’m always giving her things. She either breaks them or loses them or forgets where she got them.” “You must give her something she will always have by her, something that will last.” “Eighty-one years?” “Well, say, twenty-seven. Something to remind her of you.” “I could give her a photograph—but I might change a bit in twenty-seven years.” “No, no, that would be most unsuitable. A photograph wouldn’t do at all. I know what I’d give her. I’d give her a dog.” “Dog?” “A healthy puppy that was over distemper and looked like living a long time. She might even call it Hector.” “Would that be a good thing, Beckthorpe?” “Best possible, old boy.” So next morning, before catching the boat train, Hector hurried to one of the mammoth stores of London and was shown to the livestock department. “I want a puppy.” “Yes, sir, any particular sort?” “One that will live a long time. Eighty-one years, or twenty-seven at the least.” The man looked doubtful. “We have some fine healthy puppies of course,” he admitted, “but none of them carry a guarantee. Now if it was longevity you wanted, might I recommend a tortoise? They live to an extraordinary age and are very safe in traffic.” “No, it must be a pup.” “Or a parrot?” “No, no, a pup. I would prefer one named Hector.” They walked together past monkeys and kittens and cockatoos to the dog department which, even at this early hour, had attracted a small congregation of rapt worshippers. There were puppies of all varieties in wire-fronted kennels, ears cocked, tails wagging, noisily soliciting attention. Rather wildly, Hector selected a poodle and, as the salesman disappeared to fetch him his change, he leant down for a moment’s intense communion with the beast of his choice. He gazed deep into the sharp little face, avoided a sudden snap and said with profound solemnity: “You are to look after Milly, Hector. See that she doesn’t marry anyone until I get back.” And the pup Hector waved his plume of tail. 
III 
Millicent came to see him off, but, negligently, went to the wrong station; it could not have mattered, however, for she was twenty minutes late. Hector and the poodle hung about the barrier looking for her, and not until the train was already moving did he bundle the animal into Beckthorpe’s arms with instructions to deliver him at Millicent’s address. Luggage labelled for Mombasa, “Wanted on the voyage,” lay in the rack above him. He felt very much neglected. That evening as the ship pitched and rolled past the Channel lighthouses, he received a radiogram: Miserable to miss you went Paddington like idiot thank you thank you for sweet dog I love him father minds dreadfully longing to hear about farm dont fall for ship siren all love Milly. In the Red Sea he received another. Beware sirens puppy bit man called Mike. After that Hector heard nothing of Millicent except for a Christmas card which arrived in the last days of February. 
IV 
Generally speaking, Millicent’s fancy for any particular young man was likely to last four months. It depended on how far he had got in that time whether the process of extinction was sudden or protracted. In the case of Hector, her affection had been due to diminish at about the time that she became engaged to him; it had been artificially prolonged during the succeeding three weeks, during which he made strenuous, infectiously earnest efforts to find employment in England; it came to an abrupt end with his departure for Kenya. Accordingly the duties of the puppy Hector began with his first days at home. He was young for the job and wholly inexperienced; it is impossible to blame him for his mistake in the matter of Mike Boswell. This was a young man who had enjoyed a wholly unromantic friendship with Millicent since she first came out. He had seen her fair hair in all kinds of light, in and out of doors, crowned in hats in succeeding fashions, bound with ribbon, decorated with combs, jauntily stuck with flowers; he had seen her nose uplifted in all kinds of weather, had even, on occasions, playfully tweeked it with his finger and thumb, and had never for one moment felt remotely attracted to her. But the puppy Hector could hardly be expected to know this. All he knew was that two days after receiving his commission, he observed a tall and personable man of marriageable age who treated his hostess with the sort of familiarity which, among the kennel maids with whom he had been brought up, meant only one thing. The two young people were having tea together. Hector watched for some time from his place on the sofa, barely stifling his growls. A climax was reached when, in the course of some barely intelligible back-chat, Mike leant forward and patted Millicent on the knee. It was not a serious bite, a mere snap, in fact; but Hector had small teeth as sharp as pins. It was the sudden, nervous speed with which Mike withdrew his hand which caused the damage; he swore, wrapped his hand in a handkerchief, and at Millicent’s entreaty revealed three or four minute wounds. Millicent spoke harshly to Hector and tenderly to Mike, and hurried to her mother’s medicine cupboard for a bottle of iodine. Now no Englishman, however phlegmatic, can have his hand dabbed with iodine without, momentarily at any rate, falling in love. Mike had seen the nose countless times before, but that afternoon, as it was bowed over his scratched thumb, and as Millicent said, “Am I hurting terribly?”, as it was raised towards him, and as Millicent said, “There. Now it will be all right,” Mike suddenly saw it transfigured as its devotees saw it and from that moment, until long after the three months of attention which she accorded him, he was Millicent’s besotted suitor. The pup Hector saw all this and realized his mistake. Never again, he decided, would he give Millicent the excuse to run for the iodine bottle. 
V 
He had on the whole an easy task, for Millicent’s naturally capricious nature could, as a rule, be relied upon, unaided, to drive her lovers into extremes of irritation. Moreover she had come to love the dog. She received very regular letters from Hector, written weekly and arriving in batches of three or four according to the mails. She always opened them; often she read them to the end, but their contents made little impression upon her mind and gradually their writer drifted into oblivion so that when people said to her “How is darling Hector?” it came naturally to her to reply, “He doesn’t like the hot weather much I’m afraid, and his coat is in a very poor state. I’m thinking of having him plucked,” instead of, “He had a go of malaria and there is black worm in his tobacco crop.” Playing upon this affection which had grown up for him, Hector achieved a technique for dealing with Millicent’s young men. He no longer growled at them or soiled their trousers; that merely resulted in his being turned from the room; instead, he found it increasingly easy to usurp the conversation. Tea was the most dangerous time of day, for then Millicent was permitted to entertain friends in her sitting room; accordingly, though he had a constitutional preference for pungent, meaty dishes, Hector heroically simulated a love of lump sugar. Having made this apparent, at whatever cost to his digestion, it was easy to lead Millicent on to an interest in tricks; he would beg and “trust,” lie down as though dead, stand in the corner and raise a forepaw to his ear. “What does S U G A R spell?” Millicent would ask and Hector would walk round the tea table to the sugar bowl and lay his nose against it, gazing earnestly and clouding the silver with his moist breath. “He understands everything,” Millicent would say in triumph. When tricks failed Hector would demand to be let out of the door. The young man would be obliged to interrupt himself to open it. Once on the other side Hector would scratch and whine for re-admission. In moments of extreme anxiety Hector would affect to be sick—no difficult feat after the unwelcome diet of lump sugar; he would stretch out his neck, retching noisily, till Millicent snatched him up and carried him to the hall, where the floor, paved in marble, was less vulnerable—but by that time a tender atmosphere had been shattered and one wholly prejudicial to romance created to take its place. This series of devices spaced out through the afternoon and tactfully obtruded whenever the guest showed signs of leading the conversation to a more intimate phase, distracted young man after young man and sent them finally away, baffled and despairing. Every morning Hector lay on Millicent’s bed while she took her breakfast and read the daily paper. This hour from ten to eleven was sacred to the telephone and it was then that the young men with whom she had danced overnight attempted to renew their friendship and make plans for the day. At first Hector sought, not unsuccessfully, to prevent these assignations by entangling himself in the wire, but soon a subtler and more insulting technique suggested itself. He pretended to telephone too. Thus, as soon as the bell rang, he would wag his tail and cock his head on one side in a way that he had learned was engaging. Millicent would begin her conversation and Hector would wriggle up under her arm and nuzzle against the receiver. “Listen,” she would say, “someone wants to talk to you. Isn’t he an angel?” Then she would hold the receiver down to him and the young man at the other end would be dazed by a shattering series of yelps. This accomplishment appealed so much to Millicent that often she would not even bother to find out the name of the caller but, instead, would take off the receiver and hold it directly to the black snout, so that some wretched young man half a mile away, feeling, perhaps, none too well in the early morning, found himself barked to silence before he had spoken a word. At other times young men, badly taken with the nose, would attempt to waylay Millicent in Hyde Park when she was taking Hector for exercise. Here, at first, Hector would get lost, fight other dogs and bite small children to keep himself constantly in her attention, but soon he adopted a gentler course. He insisted upon carrying Millicent’s bag for her. He would trot in front of the couple and whenever he thought an interruption desirable he would drop the bag; the young man was obliged to pick it up and restore it first to Millicent and then, at her request, to the dog. Few young men were sufficiently servile to submit to more than one walk in these degrading conditions. In this way two years passed. Letters arrived constantly from Kenya, full of devotion, full of minor disasters—blight in the seisal, locusts in the coffee, labour troubles, drought, flood, the local government, the world market. Occasionally Millicent read the letters aloud to the dog, usually she left them unread on her breakfast tray. She and Hector moved together through the leisurely routine of English social life. Wherever she carried her nose, two in five marriageable men fell temporarily in love; wherever Hector followed their ardour changed to irritation, shame and disgust. Mothers began to remark complacently that it was curious how that fascinating Blade girl never got married. 
VI 
 At last in the third year of this régime a new problem presented itself in the person of Major Sir Alexander Dreadnought, Bart., M.P., and Hector immediately realized that he was up against something altogether more formidable than he had hitherto tackled. Sir Alexander was not a young man; he was forty-five and a widower. He was wealthy, popular and preternaturally patient; he was also mildly distinguished, being joint-master of a Midland pack of hounds and a junior Minister; he bore a war record of conspicuous gallantry. Millie’s father and mother were delighted when they saw that her nose was having its effect on him. Hector took against him from the first, exerted every art which his two and a half years’ practice had perfected, and achieved nothing. Devices that had driven a dozen young men to frenzies of chagrin seemed only to accentuate Sir Alexander’s tender solicitude. When he came to the house to fetch Millicent for the evening he was found to have filled the pockets of his evening clothes with lump sugar for Hector; when Hector was sick Sir Alexander was there first, on his knees with a page of The Times; Hector resorted to his early, violent manner and bit him frequently and hard, but Sir Alexander merely remarked, “I believe I am making the little fellow jealous. A delightful trait.” For the truth was that Sir Alexander had been persecuted long and bitterly from his earliest days—his parents, his sisters, his schoolfellows, his company-sergeant and his colonel, his colleagues in politics, his wife, his joint-master, huntsman and hunt secretary, his election agent, his constituents and even his parliamentary private secretary had one and all pitched into Sir Alexander, and he accepted this treatment as a matter of course. For him it was the most natural thing in the world to have his eardrums outraged by barks when he rang up the young woman of his affections; it was a high privilege to retrieve her handbag when Hector dropped it in the Park; the small wounds that Hector was able to inflict on his ankles and wrists were to him knightly scars. In his more ambitious moments he referred to Hector in Millicent’s hearing as “my little rival.” There could be no doubt whatever of his intentions and when he asked Millicent and her mama to visit him in the country, he added at the foot of the letter, “Of course the invitation includes little Hector.” The Saturday to Monday visit to Sir Alexander’s was a nightmare to the poodle. He worked as he had never worked before; every artifice by which he could render his presence odious was attempted and attempted in vain. As far as his host was concerned, that is to say. The rest of the household responded well enough, and he received a vicious kick when, through his own bad management, he found himself alone with the second footman, whom he had succeeded in upsetting with a tray of cups at tea time. Conduct that had driven Millicent in shame from half the stately homes of England was meekly accepted here. There were other dogs in the house—elderly, sober, well-behaved animals at whom Hector flew; they turned their heads sadly away from his yaps of defiance, he snapped at their ears. They lolloped sombrely out of reach and Sir Alexander had them shut away for the rest of the visit. There was an exciting Aubusson carpet in the dining room to which Hector was able to do irreparable damage; Sir Alexander seemed not to notice. Hector found a carrion in the park and conscientiously rolled in it—although such a thing was obnoxious to his nature—and, returning, fouled every chair in the drawing room; Sir Alexander himself helped Millicent wash him and brought some bath salts from his own bathroom for the operation. Hector howled all night; he hid and had half the household searching for him with lanterns; he killed some young pheasants and made a sporting attempt on a peacock. All to no purpose. He staved off an actual proposal, it is true—once in the Dutch garden, once on the way to the stables and once while he was being bathed—but when Monday morning arrived and he heard Sir Alexander say, “I hope Hector enjoyed his visit a little. I hope I shall see him here very, very often,” he knew that he was defeated. It was now only a matter of waiting. The evenings in London were a time when it was impossible for him to keep Millicent under observation. One of these days he would wake up to hear Millicent telephoning to her girlfriends, breaking the good news of her engagement. Thus it was that after a long conflict of loyalties he came to a desperate resolve. He had grown fond of his young mistress; often and often when her face had been pressed down to his he had felt sympathy with that long line of young men whom it was his duty to persecute. But Hector was no kitchen-haunting mongrel. By the code of all well-born dogs it is money that counts. It is the purchaser, not the mere feeder and fondler, to whom ultimate loyalty is due. The hand which had once fumbled with the fivers in the livestock department of the mammoth store, now tilled the unfertile soil of equatorial Africa, but the sacred words of commission still rang in Hector’s memory. All through the Sunday night and the journey of Monday morning, Hector wrestled with his problem; then he came to the decision. The nose must go. 
VII 
It was an easy business; one firm snap as she bent over his basket and the work was accomplished. She went to a plastic surgeon and emerged some weeks later without scar or stitch. But it was a different nose; the surgeon in his way was an artist and, as I have said above, Millicent’s nose had no sculptural qualities. Now she has a fine aristocratic beak, worthy of the spinster she is about to become. Like all spinsters she watches eagerly for the foreign mails and keeps carefully under lock and key a casket full of depressing agricultural intelligence; like all spinsters she is accompanied everywhere by an ageing lapdog. 
Winner Takes All
I 
When Mrs. Kent-Cumberland’s eldest son was born (in an expensive London nursing home) there was a bonfire on Tomb Beacon; it consumed three barrels of tar, an immense catafalque of timber, and, as things turned out—for the flames spread briskly in the dry gorse and loyal tenantry were too tipsy to extinguish them—the entire vegetation of Tomb Hill. As soon as mother and child could be moved, they travelled in state to the country, where flags were hung out in the village street and a trellis arch of evergreen boughs obscured the handsome Palladian entrance gates of their home. There were farmers’ dinners both at Tomb and on the Kent-Cumberlands’ Norfolk estate, and funds for a silver-plated tray were ungrudgingly subscribed. The christening was celebrated by a garden party. A princess stood Godmother by proxy, and the boy was called Gervase Peregrine Mountjoy St. Eustace—all of them names illustrious in the family’s history. Throughout the service and the subsequent presentations he maintained an attitude of phlegmatic dignity which confirmed everyone in the high estimate they had already formed of his capabilities. After the garden party there were fireworks and after the fireworks a very hard week for the gardeners, cleaning up the mess. The life of the Kent-Cumberlands then resumed its normal tranquillity until nearly two years later, when, much to her annoyance, Mrs. Kent-Cumberland discovered that she was to have another baby. The second child was born in August in a shoddy modern house on the East Coast which had been taken for the summer so that Gervase might have the benefit of sea air. Mrs. Kent-Cumberland was attended by the local doctor, who antagonized her by his middle-class accent, and proved, when it came to the point, a great deal more deft than the London specialist. Throughout the peevish months of waiting Mrs. Kent-Cumberland had fortified herself with the hope that she would have a daughter. It would be a softening influence for Gervase, who was growing up somewhat unresponsive, to have a pretty, gentle, sympathetic sister two years younger than himself. She would come out just when he was going up to Oxford and would save him from either of the dreadful extremes of evil company which threatened that stage of development—the bookworm and the hooligan. She would bring down delightful girls for Eights Week and Commem. Mrs. Kent-Cumberland had it all planned out. When she was delivered of another son she named him Thomas, and fretted through her convalescence with her mind on the coming hunting season. 
II 
The two brothers developed into sturdy, unremarkable little boys; there was little to choose between them except their two years’ difference in age. They were both sandy-haired, courageous, and well-mannered on occasions. Neither was sensitive, artistic, highly strung, or conscious of being misunderstood. Both accepted the fact of Gervase’s importance just as they accepted his superiority of knowledge and physique. Mrs. Kent-Cumberland was a fair-minded woman, and in the event of the two being involved in mischief, it was Gervase, as the elder, who was the more severely punished. Tom found that his obscurity was on the whole advantageous, for it excused him from the countless minor performances of ceremony which fell on Gervase. 
III 
At the age of seven Tom was consumed with desire for a model motor-car, an expensive toy of a size to sit in and pedal about the garden. He prayed for it steadfastly every evening and most mornings for several weeks. Christmas was approaching. Gervase had a smart pony and was often taken hunting. Tom was alone most of the day and the motor-car occupied a great part of his thoughts. Finally he confided his ambition to an uncle. This uncle was not addicted to expensive present giving, least of all to children (for he was a man of limited means and self-indulgent habits) but something in his nephew’s intensity of feeling impressed him. “Poor little beggar,” he reflected, “his brother seems to get all the fun,” and when he returned to London he ordered the motor-car for Tom. It arrived some days before Christmas and was put away upstairs with other presents. On Christmas Eve Mrs. Kent-Cumberland came to inspect them. “How very kind,” she said, looking at each label in turn, “how very kind.” The motor-car was by far the largest exhibit. It was pillar-box red, complete with electric lights, a hooter and a spare wheel. “Really,” she said. “How very kind of Ted.” Then she looked at the label more closely. “But how foolish of him. He’s put Tom’s name on it.” “There was this book for Master Gervase,” said the nurse, producing a volume labelled “Gervase with best wishes from Uncle Ted.” “Of course the parcels have been confused at the shop,” said Mrs. Kent-Cumberland. “This can’t have been meant for Tom. Why, it must have cost six or seven pounds.” She changed the labels and went downstairs to supervise the decoration of the Christmas tree, glad to have rectified an obvious error of justice. Next morning the presents were revealed. “Oh, Ger. You are lucky,” said Tom, inspecting the motor-car. “May I ride in it?” “Yes, only be careful. Nanny says it was awfully expensive.” Tom rode it twice round the room. “May I take it in the garden sometimes?” “Yes. You can have it when I’m hunting.” Later in the week they wrote to thank their uncle for his presents. Gervase wrote: “Dear Uncle Ted, Thank you for the lovely present. It’s lovely. The pony is very well. I am going to hunt again before I go back to school. Love from Gervase.” “Dear Uncle Ted,” wrote Tom, “Thank you ever so much for the lovely present. It is just what I wanted. Again thanking you very much. With love from Tom.” “So that’s all the thanks I get. Ungrateful little beggar,” said Uncle Ted, resolving to be more economical in future. But when Gervase went back to school, he said, “You can have the motor-car, Tom, to keep.” “What, for my own?” “Yes. It’s a kid’s toy, anyway.” And by this act of generosity he increased Tom’s respect and love for him a hundredfold. 
IV 
The War came and profoundly changed the lives of the two boys. It engendered none of the neuroses threatened by pacifists. Air raids remained among Tom’s happiest memories, when the school used to be awakened in the middle of the night and hustled downstairs to the basements where, wrapped in eiderdowns, they were regaled with cocoa and cake by the matron, who looked supremely ridiculous in a flannel nightgown. Once a Zeppelin was hit in sight of the school; they all crowded to the dormitory windows to see it sinking slowly in a globe of pink flame. A very young master whose health rendered him unfit for military service danced on the headmaster’s tennis court crying, “There go the baby killers.” Tom made a collection of “War Relics,” including a captured German helmet, shell-splinters, The Times for August 4th, 1914, buttons, cartridge cases, and cap badges, that was voted the best in the school. The event which radically changed the relationship of the brothers was the death, early in 1915, of their father. Neither knew him well nor particularly liked him. He had represented the division in the House of Commons and spent much of his time in London while the children were at Tomb. They only saw him on three occasions after he joined the army. Gervase and Tom were called out of the classroom and told of his death by the headmaster’s wife. They cried, since it was expected of them, and for some days were treated with marked deference by the masters and the rest of the school. It was in the subsequent holidays that the importance of the change became apparent. Mrs. Kent-Cumberland had suddenly become more emotional and more parsimonious. She was liable to unprecedented outbursts of tears, when she would crush Gervase to her and say, “My poor fatherless boy.” At other times she spoke gloomily of death duties. 
V 
For some years in fact “Death Duties” became the refrain of the household. When Mrs. Kent-Cumberland let the house in London and closed down a wing at Tomb, when she reduced the servants to four and the gardeners to two, when she “let the flower gardens go,” when she stopped asking her brother Ted to stay, when she emptied the stables, and became almost fanatical in her reluctance to use the car, when the bathwater was cold and there were no new tennis balls, when the chimneys were dirty and the lawns covered with sheep, when Gervase’s cast-off clothes ceased to fit Tom, when she refused him the “extra” expense at school of carpentry lessons and mid-morning milk—“Death Duties” were responsible. “It is all for Gervase,” Mrs. Kent-Cumberland used to explain. “When he inherits, he must take over free of debt, as his father did.” 
VI 
Gervase went to Eton in the year of his father’s death. Tom would normally have followed him two years later, but in her new mood of economy, Mrs. Kent-Cumberland cancelled his entry and began canvassing her friends’ opinions about the less famous, cheaper public schools. “The education is just as good,” she said, “and far more suitable for a boy who has his own way to make in the world.” Tom was happy enough at the school to which he was sent. It was very bleak and very new, salubrious, progressive, prosperous in the boom that secondary education enjoyed in the years immediately following the war, and, when all was said and done, “thoroughly suitable for a boy with his own way to make in the world.” He had several friends whom he was not allowed to invite to his home during the holidays. He got his House colours for swimming and fives, played once or twice in the second eleven for cricket, and was a platoon-commander in the O.T.C.; he was in the sixth form and passed the Higher Certificate in his last year, became a prefect and enjoyed the confidence of his house master, who spoke of him as “a very decent stamp of boy.” He left school at the age of eighteen without the smallest desire to revisit it or see any of its members again. Gervase was then at Christ Church. Tom went up to visit him, but the magnificent Etonians who romped in and out of his brother’s rooms scared and depressed him. Gervase was in the Bullingdon, spending money freely and enjoying himself. He gave a dinner party in his rooms, but Tom sat in silence, drinking heavily to hide his embarrassment, and was later sombrely sick in a corner of Peckwater quad. He returned to Tomb next day in the lowest spirits. “It is not as though Tom were a scholarly boy,” said Mrs. Kent-Cumberland to her friends. “I am glad he is not, of course. But if he had been, it might have been right to make the sacrifice and send him to the University. As it is, the sooner he Gets Started the better.” 
VII 
Getting Tom started, however, proved a matter of some difficulty. During the Death Duty Period, Mrs. Kent-Cumberland had cut herself off from many of her friends. Now she cast round vainly to find someone who would “put Tom into something.” Chartered Accountancy, Chinese Customs, estate agencies, “the City,” were suggested and abandoned. “The trouble is, that he has no particular abilities,” she explained. “He is the sort of boy who would be useful in anything—an all-round man—but, of course, he has no capital.” August, September, October passed; Gervase was back at Oxford, in fashionable lodgings in the High Street, but Tom remained at home without employment. Day by day he and his mother sat down together to luncheon and dinner, and his constant presence was a severe strain on Mrs. Kent-Cumberland’s equability. She herself was always busy and, as she bustled about her duties, it shocked and distracted her to encounter the large figure of her younger son sprawling on the morning room sofa or leaning against the stone parapet of the terrace and gazing out apathetically across the familiar landscape. “Why can’t you find something to do?” she would complain. “There are always things to do about a house. Heaven knows I never have a moment.” And when, one afternoon, he was asked out by some neighbours and returned too late to dress for dinner, she said, “Really, Tom, I should have thought that you had time for that.” “It is a very serious thing,” she remarked on another occasion, “for a young man of your age to get out of the habit of work. It saps his whole morale.” Accordingly she fell back upon the ancient country house expedient of Cataloguing the Library. This consisted of an extensive and dusty collection of books amassed by succeeding generations of a family at no time notable for their patronage of literature; it had been catalogued before, in the middle of the nineteenth century, in the spidery, spinsterish hand of a relative in reduced circumstances; since then the additions and disturbances had been negligible, but Mrs. Kent-Cumberland purchased a fumed oak cabinet and several boxes of cards and instructed Tom how she wanted the shelves renumbered and the books twice entered under Subject and Author. It was a system that should keep a boy employed for some time, and it was with vexation, therefore, that, a few days after the task was commenced, she paid a surprise visit to the scene of his labour and found Tom sitting, almost lying, in an armchair, with his feet on a rung of the library steps, reading. “I am glad you have found something interesting,” she said in a voice that conveyed very little gladness. “Well, to tell you the truth, I think I have,” said Tom, and showed her the book. It was the manuscript journal kept by a Colonel Jasper Cumberland during the Peninsular War. It had no startling literary merit, nor did its criticisms of the general staff throw any new light upon the strategy of the campaign, but it was a lively, direct, day-to-day narrative, redolent of its period; there was a sprinkling of droll anecdotes, some vigorous descriptions of fox-hunting behind the lines of Torres Vedras, of the Duke of Wellington dining in Mess, of a threatened mutiny that had not yet found its way into history, of the assault on Badajos; there were some bawdy references to Portuguese women and some pious reflections about patriotism. “I was wondering if it might be worth publishing,” said Tom. “I should hardly think so,” replied his mother. “But I will certainly show it to Gervase when he comes home.” For the moment the discovery gave a new interest to Tom’s life. He read up the history of the period and of his own family. Jasper Cumberland he established as a younger son of the period, who had later emigrated to Canada. There were letters from him among the archives, including the announcement of his marriage to a Papist which had clearly severed the link with his elder brother. In a case of uncatalogued miniatures in the long drawing room, he found the portrait of a handsome whiskered soldier, which by a study of contemporary uniforms he was able to identify as the diarist. Presently, in his round, immature handwriting, Tom began working up his notes into an essay. His mother watched his efforts with unqualified approval. She was glad to see him busy, and glad to see him taking an interest in his family’s history. She had begun to fear that by sending him to a school without “tradition” she might have made a socialist of the boy. When, shortly before the Christmas vacation, work was found for Tom she took charge of his notes. “I am sure Gervase will be extremely interested,” she said. “He may even think it worth showing to a publisher.” 
VIII 
The work that had been found for Tom was not immediately lucrative, but, as his mother said, it was a Beginning. It was to go to Wolverhampton and learn the motor business from the bottom. The first two years were to be spent at the works, from where, if he showed talent, he might graduate to the London showrooms. His wages, at first, were thirty-five shillings a week. This was augmented by the allowance of another pound. Lodgings were found for him over a fruit shop in the outskirts of the town, and Gervase gave him his old two-seater car, in which he could travel to and from his work, and for occasional weekends home. It was during one of these visits that Gervase told him the good news that a London publisher had read the diary and seen possibilities in it. Six months later it appeared under the title The Journal of an English Cavalry Officer during the Peninsular War. Edited with notes and a biographical introduction by Gervase Kent-Cumberland. The miniature portrait was prettily reproduced as a frontispiece, there was a collotype copy of a page of the original manuscript, a contemporary print of Tomb Park, and a map of the campaign. It sold nearly two thousand copies at twelve-and-sixpence and received two or three respectful reviews in the Saturday and Sunday papers. The appearance of the Journal coincided within a few days with Gervase’s twenty-first birthday. The celebrations were extravagant and prolonged, culminating in a ball at which Tom’s attendance was required. He drove over, after the works had shut down, and arrived, just in time for dinner, to find a house-party of thirty and a house entirely transformed. His own room had been taken for a guest (“as you will only be here for one night,” his mother explained). He was sent down to the Cumberland Arms, where he dressed by candlelight in a breathless little bedroom over the bar, and arrived late and slightly dishevelled at dinner, where he sat between two lovely girls who neither knew who he was nor troubled to inquire. The dancing, afterwards, was in a marquee built on the terrace, which a London catering firm had converted into a fair replica of a Pont Street drawing room. Tom danced once or twice with the daughters of neighbouring families whom he had known since childhood. They asked him about Wolverhampton and the works. He had to get up early next morning; at midnight he slipped away to his bed at the inn. The evening had bored him; because he was in love. 
IX 
It had occurred to him to ask his mother whether he might bring his fiancée to the ball, but on reflection, enchanted as he was, he had realized that it would not do. The girl was named Gladys Cruttwell. She was two years older than himself; she had fluffy, yellow hair which she washed at home once a week and dried before the gas-fire; on the day after the shampoo it was very light and silky; towards the end of the week, darker and slightly greasy. She was a virtuous, affectionate, self-reliant, even-tempered, unintelligent, high-spirited girl, but Tom could not disguise from himself the fact that she would not go down well at Tomb. She worked for the firm on the clerical side. Tom had noticed her on his second day, as she tripped across the yard, exactly on time, bare-headed (the day after a shampoo) in a woollen coat and skirt which she had knitted herself. He had got into conversation with her in the canteen, by making way for her at the counter with a chivalry that was not much practised at the works. His possession of a car gave him a clear advantage over the other young men about the place. They discovered that they lived within a few streets of one another, and it presently became Tom’s practice to call for her in the mornings and take her home in the evenings. He would sit in the two-seater outside her gate, sound the horn, and she would come running down the path to greet him. As summer approached they went for drives in the evening among leafy Warwickshire lanes. In June they were engaged. Tom was exhilarated, sometimes almost dizzy at the experience, but he hesitated to tell his mother. “After all,” he reflected, “it is not as though I were Gervase,” but in his own heart he knew that there would be trouble. Gladys came of a class accustomed to long engagements; marriage seemed a remote prospect; an engagement to her signified the formal recognition that she and Tom spent their spare time in one another’s company. Her mother, with whom she lived, accepted him on these terms. In years to come, when Tom had got his place in the London showrooms, it would be time enough to think about marrying. But Tom was born to a less patient tradition. He began to speak about a wedding in the autumn. “It would be lovely,” said Gladys in the tones she would have employed about winning the Irish sweepstake. He had spoken very little about his family. She understood, vaguely, that they lived in a big house, but it was a part of life that never had been real to her. She knew that there were Duchesses and Marchionesses in something called “Society”; they were encountered in the papers and the films. She knew there were directors with large salaries; but the fact that there were people like Gervase or Mrs. Kent-Cumberland, and that they could think of themselves as radically different from herself, had not entered her experience. When, eventually, they were brought together Mrs. Kent-Cumberland was extremely gracious and Gladys thought her a very nice old lady. But Tom knew that the meeting was proving disastrous. “Of course,” said Mrs. Kent-Cumberland, “the whole thing is quite impossible. Miss What-ever-her-name-was seemed a thoroughly nice girl, but you are not in a position to think of marriage. Besides,” she added with absolute finality, “you must not forget that if anything were to happen to Gervase, you would be his heir.” So Tom was removed from the motor business and an opening found for him on a sheep farm in South Australia. 
X 
It would not be fair to say that in the ensuing two years Mrs. Kent-Cumberland forgot her younger son. She wrote to him every month and sent him bandana handkerchiefs for Christmas. In the first, lonely days he wrote to her frequently, but when, as he grew accustomed to the new life, his letters became less frequent she did not seriously miss them. When they did arrive they were lengthy; she put them aside from her correspondence to read at leisure and, more than once, mislaid them, unopened. But whenever her acquaintances asked after Tom, she loyally answered, “Doing splendidly. And enjoying himself very much.” She had many other things to occupy and, in some cases, distress her. Gervase was now in authority at Tomb, and the careful régime of his minority wholly reversed. There were six expensive hunters in the stable. The lawns were mown, bedrooms thrown open, additional bathrooms installed; there was even talk of constructing a swimming pool. There was constant Saturday to Monday entertaining. There was the sale, at a poor price, of two Romneys and a Hoppner. Mrs. Kent-Cumberland watched all this with mingled pride and anxiety. In particular she scrutinized the succession of girls who came to stay, in the irreconcilable, ever present fears that Gervase would or would not marry. Either conclusion seemed perilous; a wife for Gervase must be well-born, well-conducted, rich, of stainless reputation, and affectionately disposed to Mrs. Kent-Cumberland; such a mate seemed difficult to find. The estate was clear of the mortgages necessitated by death duties, but dividends were uncertain, and though, as she frequently pointed out, she “never interfered,” simple arithmetic and her own close experience of domestic management convinced her that Gervase would not long be able to support the scale of living which he had introduced. With so much on her mind, it was inevitable that Mrs. Kent-Cumberland should think a great deal about Tomb and very little about South Australia, and should be rudely shocked to read in one of Tom’s letters that he was proposing to return to England on a visit, with a fiancée and a future father-in-law; that in fact he had already started, was now on the sea and due to arrive in London in a fortnight. Had she read his earlier letters with attention she might have found hints of such an attachment, but she had not done so, and the announcement came to her as a wholly unpleasant surprise. “Your brother is coming back.” “Oh, good! When?” “He is bringing a farmer’s daughter to whom he is engaged—and the farmer. They want to come here.” “I say, that’s rather a bore. Let’s tell them we’re having the boilers cleaned.” “You don’t seem to realize that this is a serious matter, Gervase.” “Oh, well, you fix things up. I dare say it would be all right if they came next month. We’ve got to have the Anchorages some time. We might get both over together.” In the end it was decided that Gervase should meet the immigrants in London, vet them and report to his mother whether or no they were suitable fellow guests for the Anchorages. A week later, on his return to Tomb, his mother greeted him anxiously. “Well? You never wrote?” “Wrote, why should I? I never do. I say, I haven’t forgotten a birthday or anything, have I?” “Don’t be absurd, Gervase. I mean, about your brother Tom’s unfortunate entanglement. Did you see the girl?” “Oh, that. Yes, I went and had dinner with them. Tom’s done himself quite well. Fair, rather fat, saucer-eyed, good-tempered I should say by her looks.” “Does she—does she speak with an Australian accent?” “Didn’t notice it.” “And the father?” “Pompous old boy.” “Would he be all right with the Anchorages?” “I should think he’d go down like a dinner. But they can’t come. They are staying with the Chasms.” “Indeed! What an extraordinary thing. But, of course, Archie Chasm was Governor-General once. Still, it shows they must be fairly respectable. Where are they staying?” “Claridges.” “Then they must be quite rich, too. How very interesting. I will write this evening.” 
XI 
Three weeks later they arrived. Mr. MacDougal, the father, was a tall, lean man, with pince-nez and an interest in statistics. He was a territorial magnate to whom the Tomb estates appeared a cosy small-holding. He did not emphasize this in any boastful fashion, but in his statistical zeal gave Mrs. Kent-Cumberland some staggering figures. “Is Bessie your only child?” asked Mrs. Kent-Cumberland. “My only child and heir,” he replied, coming down to brass tacks at once. “I dare say you have been wondering what sort of settlement I shall be able to make on her. Now that, I regret to say, is a question I cannot answer accurately. We have good years, Mrs. Kent-Cumberland, and we have bad years. It all depends.” “But I dare say that even in bad years the income is quite considerable?” “In a bad year,” said Mr. MacDougal, “in a very bad year such as the present, the net profits, after all deductions have been made for running expenses, insurance, taxation, and deterioration, amount to something between”—Mrs. Kent-Cumberland listened breathlessly—“fifty and fifty-two thousand pounds. I know that is a very vague statement, but it is impossible to be more accurate until the last returns are in.” Bessie was bland and creamy. She admired everything. “It’s so antique,” she would remark with relish, whether the object of her attention was the Norman Church of Tomb, the Victorian panelling in the billiard room, or the central-heating system which Gervase had recently installed. Mrs. Kent-Cumberland took a great liking to the girl. “Thoroughly Teachable,” she pronounced. “But I wonder whether she is really suited to Tom ... I wonder ...” The MacDougals stayed for four days and, when they left, Mrs. Kent-Cumberland pressed them to return for a longer visit. Bessie had been enchanted with everything she saw. “I wish we could live here,” she had said to Tom on her first evening, “in this dear, quaint old house.” “Yes, darling, so do I. Of course it all belongs to Gervase, but I always look on it as my home.” “Just as we Australians look on England.” “Exactly.” She had insisted on seeing everything; the old gabled manor, once the home of the family, relegated now to the function of dower house since the present mansion was built in the eighteenth century—the house of mean proportions and inconvenient offices where Mrs. Kent-Cumberland, in her moments of depression, pictured her own, declining years; the mill and the quarries; the farm, which to the MacDougals seemed minute and formal as a Noah’s Ark. On these expeditions it was Gervase who acted as guide. “He, of course, knows so much more about it than Tom,” Mrs. Kent-Cumberland explained. Tom, in fact, found himself very rarely alone with his fiancée. Once, when they were all together after dinner, the question of his marriage was mentioned. He asked Bessie whether, now that she had seen Tomb, she would sooner be married there, at the village church, than in London. “Oh there is no need to decide anything hastily,” Mrs. Kent-Cumberland had said. “Let Bessie look about a little first.” When the MacDougals left, it was to go to Scotland to see the castle of their ancestors. Mr. MacDougal had traced relationship with various branches of his family, had corresponded with them intermittently, and now wished to make their acquaintance. Bessie wrote to them all at Tomb; she wrote daily to Tom, but in her thoughts, as she lay sleepless in the appalling bed provided for her by her distant kinsmen, she was conscious for the first time of a slight feeling of disappointment and uncertainty. In Australia Tom had seemed so different from everyone else, so gentle and dignified and cultured. Here in England he seemed to recede into obscurity. Everyone in England seemed to be like Tom. And then there was the house. It was exactly the kind of house which she had always imagined English people to live in, with the dear little park—less than a thousand acres—and the soft grass and the old stone. Tom had fitted into the house. He had fitted too well; had disappeared entirely in it and become part of the background. The central place belonged to Gervase—so like Tom but more handsome; with all Tom’s charm but with more personality. Beset with these thoughts, she rolled on the hard and irregular bed until dawn began to show through the lancet window of the Victorian-baronial turret. She loved that turret for all its discomfort. It was so antique. 
XII 
Mrs. Kent-Cumberland was an active woman. It was less than ten days after the MacDougals’ visit that she returned triumphantly from a day in London. After dinner, when she sat alone with Tom in the small drawing-room, she said: “You’ll be very much surprised to hear who I saw to day. Gladys.” “Gladys?” “Gladys Cruttwell.” “Good heavens. Where on earth did you meet her?” “It was quite by chance,” said his mother vaguely. “She is working there now.” “How was she?” “Very pretty. Prettier, if anything.” There was a pause. Mrs. Kent-Cumberland stitched away at a gros-point chair seat. “You know, dear boy, that I never interfere, but I have often wondered whether you treated Gladys very kindly. I know I was partly to blame, myself. But you were both very young and your prospects so uncertain. I thought a year or two of separation would be a good test of whether you really loved one another.” “Oh, I am sure she has forgotten about me long ago.” “Indeed, she has not, Tom. I thought she seemed a very unhappy girl.” “But how can you know, Mother, just seeing her casually like that?” “We had luncheon together,” said Mrs. Kent-Cumberland. “In an A.B.C. shop.” Another pause. “But, look here, I’ve forgotten all about her. I only care about Bessie now.” “You know, dearest boy, I never interfere. I think Bessie is a delightful girl. But are you free? Are you free in your own conscience? You know, and I do not know, on what terms you parted from Gladys.” And there returned, after a long absence, the scene which for the first few months of his Australian venture had been constantly in Tom’s memory, of a tearful parting and many intemperate promises. He said nothing. “I did not tell Gladys of your engagement. I thought you had the right to do that—as best you can, in your own way. But I did tell her you were back in England and that you wished to see her. She is coming here tomorrow for a night or two. She looked in need of a holiday, poor child.” When Tom went to meet Gladys at the station they stood for some minutes on the platform not certain of the other’s identity. Then their tentative signs of recognition corresponded. Gladys had been engaged twice in the past two years, and was now walking out with a motor salesman. It had been a great surprise when Mrs. Kent-Cumberland sought her out and explained that Tom had returned to England. She had not forgotten him, for she was a loyal and good-hearted girl, but she was embarrassed and touched to learn that his devotion was unshaken. They were married two weeks later and Mrs. Kent-Cumberland undertook the delicate mission of “explaining everything” to the MacDougals. They went to Australia, where Mr. MacDougal very magnanimously gave them a post managing one of his more remote estates. He was satisfied with Tom’s work. Gladys has a large sunny bungalow and a landscape of grazing land and wire fences. She does not see very much company nor does she particularly like what she does see. The neighbouring ranchers find her very English and aloof. Bessie and Gervase were married after six weeks’ engagement. They live at Tomb. Bessie has two children and Gervase has six racehorses. Mrs. Kent-Cumberland lives in the house with them. She and Bessie rarely disagree, and, when they do, it is Mrs. Kent-Cumberland who gets her way. The dower house is let on a long lease to a sporting manufacturer. Gervase has taken over the Hounds and spends money profusely; everyone in the neighbourhood is content. 
The Sympahtetic Passenger
As Mr. James shut the side door behind him, radio music burst from every window of his house. Agnes, in the kitchen, was tuned in to one station; his wife, washing her hair in the bathroom, to another. The competing programmes followed him to the garage and into the lane. He had twelve miles to drive to the station, and for the first five of them he remained in a black mood. He was in most matters a mild-tempered person—in all matters, it might be said, except one; he abominated the wireless. It was not merely that it gave him no pleasure; it gave active pain, and, in the course of years, he had come to regard the invention as being directed deliberately against himself, a conspiracy of his enemies to disturb and embitter what should have been the placid last years of his life. He was far from being an old man; he was, in fact, in his middle fifties; he had retired young, almost precipitously, as soon as a small legacy had made it possible. He had been a lover of quiet all his life. Mrs. James did not share this preference. Now they were settled in a small country house, twelve miles from a suitable cinema. The wireless, for Mrs. James, was a link with the clean pavements and bright shop windows, a communion with millions of fellow beings. Mr. James saw it in just that light too. It was what he minded most—the violation of his privacy. He brooded with growing resentment on the vulgarity of womankind. In this mood he observed a burly man of about his own age signalling to him for a lift from the side of the road. He stopped. “I wonder if by any chance you are going to the railway station?” The man spoke politely with a low, rather melancholy voice. “I am; I have to pick up a parcel. Jump in.” “That’s very kind of you.” The man took his place beside Mr. James. His boots were dusty, and he sank back in his seat as though he had come from far and was weary. He had very large, ugly hands, close-cut grey hair, a bony, rather sunken face. For a mile or so he did not speak. Then he asked suddenly, “Has this car got a wireless?” “Certainly not.” “What is that knob for?” He began examining the dashboard. “And that?” “One is the self-starter. The other is supposed to light cigarettes. It does not work. If,” he continued sharply, “you have stopped me in the hope of hearing the wireless, I can only suggest that I put you down and let you try your luck on someone else.” “Heaven forbid,” said his passenger. “I detest the thing.” “So do I.” “Sir, you are one among millions. I regard myself as highly privileged in making your acquaintance.” “Thank you. It is a beastly invention.” The passenger’s eyes glowed with passionate sympathy. “It is worse. It is diabolical.” “Very true.” “Literally diabolical. It is put here by the devil to destroy us. Did you know that it spread the most terrible diseases?” “I didn’t know. But I can well believe it.” “It causes cancer, tuberculosis, infantile paralysis, and the common cold. I have proved it.” “It certainly causes headaches,” said Mr. James. “No man,” said his passenger, “has suffered more excruciating headaches than I. “They have tried to kill me with headaches. But I was too clever for them. Did you know that the BBC has its own secret police, its own prisons, its own torture chambers?” “I have long suspected it.” “I know. I have experienced them. Now it is the time of revenge.” Mr. James glanced rather uneasily at his passenger and drove a little faster. “I have a plan,” continued the big man. “I am going to London to put it into execution. I am going to kill the Director-General. I shall kill them all.” They drove on in silence. They were nearing the outskirts of the town when a larger car driven by a girl drew abreast of them and passed. From inside it came the unmistakable sounds of a jazz band. The big man sat up in his seat, rigid as a pointer. “Do you hear that?” he said. “She’s got one. After her, quick.” “No good,” said Mr. James. “We can never catch that car.” “We can try. We shall try, unless,” he said with a new and more sinister note in his voice, “unless you don’t want to.” Mr. James accelerated. But the large car was nearly out of sight. “Once before,” said his passenger, “I was tricked. The BBC sent one of their spies. He was very like you. He pretended to be one of my followers; he said he was taking me to the Director-General’s office. Instead he took me to a prison. Now I know what to do with spies. I kill them.” He leaned towards Mr. James. “I assure you, my dear sir, you have no more loyal supporter than myself. It is simply a question of cars. I cannot overtake her. But no doubt we shall find her at the station.” “We shall see. If we do not, I shall know whom to thank, and how to thank him.” They were in the town now and making for the station. Mr. James looked despairingly at the policeman on point duty, but was signalled on with a negligent flick of the hand. In the station yard the passenger looked round eagerly. “I do not see that car,” he said. Mr. James fumbled for a second with the catch of the door and then tumbled out. “Help!” he cried. “Help! There’s a madman here.” With a great shout of anger the man dodged round the front of the car and bore down on him. At that moment three men in uniforms charged out of the station doorway. There was a brief scuffle; then, adroitly, they had their man strapped up. “We thought he’d make for the railway,” said their chief. “You must have had quite an exciting drive, sir.” Mr. James could scarcely speak. “Wireless,” he muttered weakly. “Ho, he’s been talking to you about that, has he? Then you’re very lucky to be here to tell us. It’s his foible, as you might say. I hope you didn’t disagree with him.” “No,” said Mr. James. “At least, not at first.” “Well, you’re luckier than some. He can’t be crossed, not about wireless. Gets very wild. Why, he killed two people and half killed a third last time he got away. Well, many thanks for bringing him in so nicely, sir. We must be getting him home.” Home. Mr. James drove back along the familiar road. “Why,” said his wife when he entered the house. “How quick you’ve been. Where’s the parcel?” “I think I must have forgotten it.” “How very unlike you. Why, you’re looking quite ill. I’ll run in and tell Agnes to switch off the radio. She can’t have heard you come in.” “No,” said Mr. James, sitting down heavily. “Not switch off radio. Like it. Homely.” 
Lucky Simmonds
I 
My project of settling in the country was well received by my friends. Each saw in it a likely convenience for himself. I understood their attitude well. Country houses meant something particular and important in their lives, a system of permanent bolt-holes. They had, most of them, gradually dropped out of the round of formal entertaining; country life, for them, meant not a series of invitations, but of successful, predatory raids. Their lives were liable to sharp reverses; their quarters in London were camps which could be struck at an hour’s notice, as soon as the telephone was cut off. Country houses were permanent; even when the owner was abroad, the house was there, with a couple of servants or, at the worst, someone at a cottage who came in to light fires and open windows, someone who, at a pinch, could be persuaded also to make the bed and wash up. They were places where wives and children could be left for long periods, where one retired to write a book, where one could be ill, where, in the course of a love affair, one could take a girl and by being her guide and sponsor in strange surroundings, establish a degree of proprietorship impossible on the neutral ground of London. The owners of these places were, by their nature, a patient race, but repeated abuse was apt to sour them; new blood in their ranks was highly welcome. I detected this greeting in every eye and could not resent it. There was also another, more amiable reason for their interest. Nearly all of them—and, for that matter, myself as well—professed a specialized enthusiasm for comestic architecture. It was one of the peculiarities of my generation and there is no accounting for it. In youth we had pruned our aesthetic emotions hard back so that in many cases they had reverted to briar stock; we, none of us, wrote or read poetry, or, if we did, it was of a kind which left unsatisfied those wistful, half-romantic, half-aesthetic, peculiarly British longings, which, in the past, used to find expression in so many slim lambskin volumes. When the poetic mood was on us, we turned to buildings, and gave them the place which our fathers accorded to Nature—to almost any buildings, but particularly those in the classical tradition, and, more particularly, in its decay. It was a kind of nostalgia for the style of living which we emphatically rejected in practical affairs. The notabilities of Whig society became, for us, what the Arthurian paladins were in the time of Tennyson. There was never a time when so many landless men could talk at length about landscape gardening. Even Roger compromised with his Marxist austerities so far as to keep up his collection of the works of Batty Langley and William Halfpenny. “The nucleus of my museum,” he explained. “When the revolution comes, I’ve no ambitions to be a commissar or a secret policeman. I want to be director of the Museum of Bourgeois Art.” He was overworking the Marxist vocabulary. That was always Roger’s way, to become obsessed with a new set of words and to extend them, deliberately, beyond the limits of sense; it corresponded to some sombre, interior need of his to parody whatever, for the moment, he found venerable; when he indulged it I was reminded of the ecclesiastical jokes of those on the verge of religious melancholy. Roger had been in that phase himself when I first met him. One evening, at his house, the talk was all about the kind of house I should buy. It was clear that my friends had very much more elaborate plans for me than I had for myself. After dinner Roger produced a copper-engraving of 1767 of A Composed Hermitage in the Chinese Taste. It was a preposterous design. “He actually built it,” Roger said, “and it’s still standing a mile or two out of Bath. We went to see it the other day. It only wants putting into repair. Just the house for you.” Everyone seemed to agree. I knew exactly what he meant. It was just the house one would want someone else to have. I was graduating from the exploiting to the exploited class. But Lucy said: “I can’t think why John should want to have a house like that.” When she said that I had a sudden sense of keen pleasure. She and I were on the same side. Roger and Lucy had become my main interest during the months while I was waiting to settle up in St. John’s Wood. They lived in Victoria Square where they had taken three years’ lease of a furnished house. “Bourgeois furniture,” Roger complained, rather more accurately than usual. They shut away the model ships and fire-bucket wastepaper baskets in a store cupboard and introduced a prodigious radio-gramophone; they hung their own pictures in place of the Bartolozzi prints, but the house retained its character, and Roger and Lucy, each in a different way, looked out of place there. It was here that Roger had written his ideological play. They had been married in November. I had spent all the previous autumn abroad on a leisurely, aimless trip before settling at Fez for the winter’s work. My mail at Malta, in September, told me that Roger had taken up with a rich girl and was having difficulty with her family; at Tetuan I learned that he was married. Apparently he had been in pursuit of her all the summer, unknown to us. It was not until I reached London that I heard the full story. Basil Seal told me, rather resentfully, because for many years now he had himself been in search of an heiress and had evolved theories on the subject of how and where they might be taken. “You must go to the provinces,” he used to say. “The competition in London is far too hot for chaps like us. Americans and Colonials want value for money. The trouble is that the very rich have a natural affinity for one another. You can see it happening all the time—stinking rich people getting fixed up. And what happens? They simply double their super tax and no one is the better off. But they respect brains in the provinces. They like a man to be ambitious there, with his way to make in the world, and there are plenty of solid, mercantile families who can settle a hundred thousand on a daughter without turning a hair, who don’t care a hoot about polo, but think a Member of Parliament very fine. That’s the way to get in with them. Stand for Parliament.” In accordance with this plan Basil had stood three times—or rather had three times been adopted as candidate; on two occasions he fell out with his committee before the election. At least, that was his excuse to his friends for standing; in fact he, too, thought it a fine thing to be a Member of Parliament. He never got in and he was still unmarried. A kind of truculent honesty which he could never dissemble for long, always stood in his way. It was bitter for him to be still living at home, dependent on his mother for pocket money, liable to be impelled by her into unwelcome jobs two or three times a year while Roger had established himself almost effortlessly and was sitting back in comfort to await the World Revolution. Not that Lucy was really rich, Basil hastened to assure me, but she had been left an orphan at an early age and her originally modest fortune had doubled itself. “Fifty-eight thousand in trustee stock, old boy. I wanted Lucy to take it out and let me handle it for her. I could have fixed her up very nicely. But Roger wasn’t playing. He’s always groaning about things being bourgeois. I can’t think of anything more bourgeois than three and a half per cent.” “Is she hideous?” I asked. “No, that’s the worst part about it. She’s a grand girl. She’s all right for a chap.” “What like?” “Remember Trixie?” “Vaguely.” “Well not at all like her.” Trixie had been Roger’s last girl. Basil had passed her on to him, then taken her back for a week or two, then passed her on to him again. None of us had liked Trixie. She always gave the impression that she was not being treated with the respect she was used to. “How did he come by her?” Basil told me at length, unable to hide his admiration for Roger’s duplicity in the matter. All the previous summer, during the second Trixie period, Roger had been at work, without a word to any of us. I remembered, now, that he had suddenly become rather conspicuous in his clothes, affecting dark shirts and light ties, and a generally artistic appearance which, had he not been so bald, would have gone with long, untidy hair. It had embarrassed Trixie, she said, when at a bar they saw cousins of hers who were in the Air Force. “They’ll tell everyone I’m going about with a pansy.” So that was the explanation. It was greatly to Roger’s credit we agreed. Improbable as it sounded, the truth was that they had met at a ball in Pont Street, given by a relative of Roger’s. He had gone, under protest, to make up the table at dinner in answer to an S.O.S. half an hour before the time. Someone had fallen out. It was five or six years since he had been in a London ballroom and, he explained afterwards, the spectacle of his pimply and inept juniors had inflated him with a self-esteem which must, he said, have been infectious. He had sat next to Lucy at dinner. She was, for our world, very young but, for her own, of a hoary age; that is to say, she was twenty-four. For six years she had been sent to dances by her aunt, keeping in an unfashionable, middle-strata of life in which her contemporaries had either married or taken to other occupations. This aunt occupied a peculiar position with regard to Lucy; she had brought her up and now did what she described as “making a home” for her, which meant that she subsisted largely upon Lucy’s income. She had two other nieces younger than Lucy, and it was greatly to their interest that they should move to London annually for the season. The aunt was a lady of delicate conscience where the issues of Lucy’s marriage were involved. Once or twice before she had been apprehensive—without cause as it happened—that Lucy was preparing to “throw herself away.” Roger, however, was a case that admitted of no doubt. Everything she learned about him was reprehensible; she fought him in the full confidence of a just cause, but she had no serviceable weapon. In six years of social life Lucy had never met anyone the least like Roger. “And he took care she shouldn’t meet us,” said Basil. “What’s more, she thinks him a great writer.” This was true. I did not believe Basil, but after I had seen her and Roger together I was forced to accept it. It was one of the most disconcerting features of the marriage for all of us. It is hard to explain exactly why I found it so shocking. Roger was a very good novelist—every bit as good in his own way as I in mine; when one came to think of it, it was impossible to name anyone else, alive, who could do what he did; there was no good reason why his books should not be compared with those of prominent writers of the past, nor why we should not speculate about their ultimate fame. But to do so struck us all as the worst of taste. Whatever, secretly, we thought about our own work we professed, in public, to regard it as drudgery and our triumphs as successful impostures on the world at large. To speak otherwise would be to suggest that we were concerned with anyone else’s interest but our own; it would be a denial of the sauve qui peut principle which we had all adopted. But Lucy, I soon realized, found this attitude unintelligible. She was a serious girl. When we talked cynically about our own work she simply thought less of it and of us; if we treated Roger in the same way, she resented it as bad manners. It was greatly to Roger’s credit that he had spotted this idiosyncrasy of hers at once and played his game accordingly. Hence the undergraduate costume and the talk about the Art of the Transition. Lucy had not abandoned her young cousins without grave thought. She perfectly understood that, for them, happiness of a particular kind depended on her continued support; but she also thought it a great wrong that a man of Roger’s genius should waste his talents on film scenarios and advertisements. Roger convinced her that a succession of London seasons and marriage to a well-born chartered accountant were not really the highest possible good. Moreover, she was in love with Roger. “So the poor fellow has had to become a highbrow again,” said Basil. “Back exactly where he started in the New College Essay Society.” “She doesn’t sound too keen on this play of his.” “She isn’t. She’s a critical girl. That’s going to be Roger’s headache.” This was Basil’s version of the marriage and it was substantially accurate. It omits, however, as any narrative of Basil’s was bound to, the consideration that Roger was, in his way, in love with Lucy. Her fortune was a secondary attraction; he lacked the Mediterranean mentality that can regard marriage as an honourable profession, perhaps because he lacked Mediterranean respect for the permanence of the arrangement. At the time when he met Lucy he was earning an ample income without undue exertion; money alone would not have been worth the pains he had taken for her; nor were the pains unique; he habitually went to great inconvenience in pursuit of his girls; even for Trixie he took tepidly to horse-racing for a time; the artistic clothes and the intellectual talk were measures of the respect in which he held Lucy. Her fifty-eight thousand in trustee stock was, no doubt, what made him push his suit to the extreme of marriage, but the prime motive and zest of the campaign came from Lucy herself. To write of someone loved, of oneself loving, above all of oneself being loved—how can these things be done with propriety? How can they be done at all? I have treated of love in my published work; I have used it—with avarice, envy, revenge—as one of the compelling motives of conduct. I have written it up as something prolonged and passionate and tragic; I have written it down as a modest but sufficient annuity with which to reward the just; I have spoken of it continually as a game of profit and loss. How does any of this avail for the simple task of describing, so that others may see her, the woman one loves? How can others see her except through one’s own eyes, and how, so seeing her, can they turn the pages and close the book and live on as they have lived before, without becoming themselves the author and themselves the lover? The catalogues of excellencies of the renaissance poets, those competitive advertisements, each man outdoing the next in metaphor, that great blurb—like a Jewish publisher’s list in the Sunday newspapers—the Song of Solomon, how do these accord with the voice of love—love that delights in weakness, seeks out and fills the empty places and completes itself in its work of completion? How can one transcribe those accents? Love, which has its own life, its hours of sleep and waking, its health and sickness, growth, death and immortality, its ignorance and knowledge, experiment and mastery—how can one relate this hooded stranger to the men and women with whom he keeps pace? It is a problem beyond the proper scope of letters. In the criminal code of Haiti, Basil tells me, there is a provision designed to relieve unemployment, forbidding farmers to raise the dead from their graves and work them in the fields. Some such rule should be observed against the use of live men in books. The algebra of fiction must reduce its problems to symbols if they are to be soluble at all. I am shy of a book commended to me on the grounds that the “characters are alive.” There is no place in literature for a live man, solid and active. At best the author may maintain a kind of Dickensian menagerie, where his characters live behind bars, in darkness, to be liberated twice nightly for a brief gambol under the arc lamps; in they come to the whip crack, dazzled, deafened and doped, tumble through their tricks and scamper out again, to the cages behind which the real business of life, eating and mating, is carried on out of sight of the audience. “Are the lions really alive?” “Yes, lovey.” “Will they eat us up?” “No, lovey, the man won’t let them”—that is all the reviewers mean as a rule when they talk of “life.” The alternative, classical expedient is to take the whole man and reduce him to a manageable abstraction. Set up your picture plain, fix your point of vision, make your figure twenty foot high or the size of a thumbnail, he will be life-size on your canvas; hang your picture in the darkest corner, your heaven will still be its one source of light. Beyond these limits lie only the real trouser buttons and the crepe hair with which the futurists used to adorn their paintings. It is, anyway, in the classical way that I have striven to write; how else can I now write of Lucy? I met her first after I had been some weeks in London; after my return, in fact, from my week at the seaside. I had seen Roger several times; he always said, “You must come and meet Lucy,” but nothing came of these vague proposals until finally, full of curiosity, I went with Basil uninvited. I met him in the London library, late one afternoon. “Are you going to the young Simmondses’?” he said. “Not so far as I know.” “They’ve a party today.” “Roger never said anything to me about it.” “He told me to tell everyone. I’m just on my way there now. Why don’t you come along?” So we took a taxi to Victoria Square, for which I paid. As it turned out, Roger and Lucy were not expecting anyone. He went to work now, in the afternoons, with a committee who were engaged in some fashion in sending supplies to the Red Army in China; he had only just come in and was in his bath. Lucy was listening to the six o’clock news on the wireless. She said, “D’you mind if I keep it on for a minute? There may be something about the dock strike in Madras. Roger will be down in a minute.” She did not say anything about a drink so Basil said, “May I go and look for the whisky?” “Yes, of course. How stupid of me. I always forget. There’s probably some in the dining room.” He went out and I stayed with Lucy in her hired drawing room. She sat quite still listening to the announcer’s voice. She was five months gone with child—“Even Roger has to admit that it’s proletarian action,” she said later—but as yet scarcely showed it in body; but she was pale, paler, I guessed, than normal, and she wore that incurious, self-regarding expression which sometimes goes with a first pregnancy. Above the sound of the wireless I heard Basil outside, calling upstairs, “Roger. Where do you keep the cork-screw?” When they got to the stock prices, Lucy switched off. “Nothing from Madras,” she said. “But perhaps you aren’t interested in politics.” “Not much,” I said. “Very few of Roger’s friends seem to be.” “It’s rather a new thing with him,” I said. “I expect he doesn’t talk about it unless he thinks people are interested.” That was outrageous, first because it amounted to the claim to know Roger better than I did and, secondly, because I was still smarting from the ruthless boredom of my last two or three meetings with him. “You’d be doing us all a great service if you could keep him to that,” I said. It is a most painful experience to find, when one has been rude, that one has caused no surprise. That is how Lucy received my remark. She merely said, “We’ve got to go out almost at once. We’re going to the theatre in Finsbury and it starts at seven.” “Very inconvenient.” “It suits the workers,” she said. “They have to get up earlier than we do, you see.” Then Roger and Basil came in with the drinks. Roger said, “We’re just going out. They’re doing the Tractor Trilogy at Finsbury. Why don’t you come too. We could probably get another seat, couldn’t we, Lucy?” “I doubt it,” said Lucy. “They’re tremendously booked up.” “I don’t think I will,” I said. “Anyway join us afterwards at the Café Royal.” “I might,” I said. “What have you and Lucy been talking about?” “We listened to the news,” said Lucy. “Nothing from Madras.” “They’ve probably got orders to shut down on it. I.D.C. have got the BBC in their pocket.” “I.D.C.?” I asked. “Imperial Defence College. They’re the new hush-hush crypto-fascist department. They’re in up to the neck with I.C.I. and the oil companies.” “I.C.I.?” “Imperial Chemicals.” “Roger,” said Lucy, “we really must go if we’re to get anything to eat.” “All right,” he said. “See you later at the Café.” I waited for Lucy to say something encouraging. She said, “We shall be there by eleven,” and began looking for her bag among the chintz cushions. I said, “I doubt if I can manage it.” “Are we taking the car?” Roger asked. “No, I sent it away. I’ve had him out all day.” “I’ll order some taxis.” “We could drop Basil and John somewhere,” said Lucy. “No,” I said, “get two.” “We’re going by way of Appenrodts,” said Lucy. “No good for me,” I said, although, in fact, they would pass the corner of St. James’s where I was bound. “I’ll come and watch you eat your sandwiches,” said Basil. That was the end of our first meeting. I came away feeling badly about it, particularly the way in which she had used my Christian name and acquiesced in my joining them later. A commonplace girl who wanted to be snubbing, would have been conspicuously aloof and have said “Mr. Plant,” and I should have recovered some of the lost ground. But Lucy was faultless. I have seen so many young wives go wrong on this point. They have either tried to force an intimacy with their husbands’ friends, claiming, as it were, continuity and identity with the powers of the invaded territory or they have cancelled the passports of the old régime and proclaimed that fresh application must be made to the new authorities and applicants be treated strictly on their merits. Lucy seemed serenely unaware of either danger. I had come inopportunely and been rather rude, but I was one of Roger’s friends; they were like his family to her, or hers to him; we had manifest defects which it was none of her business to reform; we had the right to come to her house unexpectedly, to shout upstairs for the corkscrew, to join her table at supper. The question of intrusion did not arise. It was simply that as far as she was concerned we had no separate or individual existence. It was, as I say, a faultless and highly provocative attitude. I found that in the next few days a surprising amount of my time, which, anyway, was lying heavy on me, was occupied in considering how this attitude, with regard to myself, could be altered. My first move was to ask her and Roger to luncheon. I was confident that none of their other friends—none of those, that is to say, from whom I wished to dissociate myself—would have done such a thing. I did it formally, some days ahead, by letter to Lucy. All this, I knew, would come as a surprise to Roger. He telephoned me to ask, “What’s all this Lucy tells me about your asking us to luncheon?” “Can you come?” “Yes, I suppose so. But what’s it all about?” “It’s not ‘about’ anything. I just want you to lunch with me.” “Why?” “It’s quite usual, you know, when one’s friends marry. Just politeness.” “You haven’t got some ghastly foreigners you stayed with abroad?” “No, nothing like that.” “Well, it all seems very odd to me. Writing a letter, I mean, and everything ...” I rang off. Lucy answered with a formal acceptance. I studied her writing. I had expected, I do not know why, a round girlish hand of the post-copper-plate era. Instead she wrote like a man. She used a fountain pen, I noticed; that was unusual in a girl. Dear John, Roger and I shall be delighted to lunch with you at the Ritz on Thursday week at 1.30. Yours sincerely, Lucy Simmonds. Should it not have been “Yours ever” after the “Dear John”? I wondered whether she had wondered what to put. Another girl might have written “Yours” with a noncommittal squiggle, but her writing did not lend itself to that kind of evasion. I had ended my note, “Love to Roger.” Was she not a little over-formal in repeating the place and time? Had she written straight off, without thinking, or had she sucked the top of her pen a little? The paper was presumably the choice of their landlord, in unobtrusive good taste. I smelled it and thought I detected a whiff of soap. At this point I lost patience with myself; it was ludicrous to sit brooding over a note of this kind. I began, instead, to wonder whom I should ask to meet her—certainly none of the gang she had learned to look on as “Roger’s friends.” On the other hand it must be clear that the party was for her. Roger would be the first to impute that they were being made use of. In the end, after due thought and one or two failures, I secured a middle-aged, highly reputable woman-novelist and Andrew Desert and his wife—an eminently sociable couple. When Roger saw his fellow guests he was more puzzled than ever. I could see him all through luncheon trying to work it out, why I should have spent five pounds in this peculiar fashion. I enjoyed my party. Lucy began by talking about my father’s painting. “Yes,” I said, “it’s very fashionable at the moment.” “Oh, I don’t mean that,” she said in frank surprise, and went on to tell me how she had stopped before a shop window in Duke Street where a battle picture of my father’s was on view; there had been two private soldiers construing it together, point by point. “I think that’s worth a dozen columns of praise in the weekly papers,” she said. “Just like Kipling’s Light that Failed,” said the woman-novelist. “Is it? I didn’t know.” She told us she had never read any Kipling. “That shows the ten years between us,” I said, and so the conversation became a little more personal as we discussed the differences between those who were born before the Great War and those born after it; in fact, so far as it could be worked, the differences between Lucy and myself. Roger always showed signs of persecution-mania in the Ritz. He did not like it when we knew people at other tables whom he didn’t know and, when the waiter brought him the wrong dish by mistake, he began on a set-piece which I had heard him use before in this same place. “Fashionable restaurants are the same all over the world,” he said. “There are always exactly twenty per cent more tables than the waiters can manage. It’s a very good thing for the workers’ cause that no one except the rich know the deficiencies of the luxury world. Think of the idea Hollywood gives of a place like this,” he said, warming to his subject. “A maître d’hôtel like an ambassador, bowing famous beauties across acres of unencumbered carpet—and look at poor Lorenzo there, sweating under his collar, jostling a way through for dowdy Middle West Americans ...” But it was not a success. Lucy, I could see, thought it odd of him to complain when he was a guest. I pointed out that the couple whom Roger condemned as Middle West Americans were in fact called Lord and Lady Settringham, and Andrew led the conversation, where Roger could not follow it, to the topic of which ambassadors looked like maîtres d’hôtel. The woman-novelist began a eulogy of the Middle West which she knew and Roger did not. So he was left with his theme undeveloped. All this was worth five pounds to me, and more. I thought it typical of the way Lucy had been brought up that she returned my invitation in a day or two. Roger got in first on the telephone. “I say, are you free on Wednesday evening?” “I’m not sure. Why?” “I wondered if you’d dine with us.” “Not at half past six for the Finsbury Theatre?” “No. I work late these days at the Red China Supply Committee.” “What time then?” “Oh, any time after eight. Dress or not, just as you feel like it.” “What will you and Lucy be doing?” “Well, I suppose we shall dress. In case anyone wants to go on anywhere.” “In fact, it’s a dinner party?” “Well, yes, in a kind of way.” It was plain that poor Roger was dismayed at this social mushroom which had sprung up under his nose. As a face-saver the telephone call was misconceived, for a little note from Lucy was already in the post for me. It was not for me to mock these little notes; I had begun it. But an end had to be made to them, so I decided to answer this by telephone, choosing the early afternoon when I assumed Roger would be out. He was in, and answered me. “I wanted to speak to Lucy.” “Yes?” “Just to accept her invitation to dinner.” “But you’ve already accepted.” “Yes, but I thought I’d better just tell her.” “I told her. What d’you think?” “Ah, good, I was afraid you might have forgotten.” I had come badly out of that. From first to last the whole episode of the dinner was calamitous. It was a party of ten, and one glance round the room showed me that this was an occasion of what Lucy had been brought up to call “duty.” That is to say, we were all people whom for one reason or another she had felt obliged to ask. She was offering us all up together in a single propitiatory holocaust to the gods of the schoolroom. Even Mr. Benwell was there. He did not realize that Lucy had taken the house furnished and was congratulating her upon the decorations; “I like a London house to look like a London house,” he was saying. Roger was carrying things off rather splendidly with a kind of sardonic gusto which he could often assume in times of stress. I knew him in that mood and respected it. I knew, too, that my presence added a particular zest to his performance. Throughout the evening I caught him in constant enquiry of me; was I attending to this parody of himself? I was his audience, not Lucy. The fate in store for myself was manifest as soon as I came into the room. It was Lucy’s cousin Julia, the younger of the two girls Basil had told me of, the one whose début had been so disturbed by Lucy’s marriage. It would not, I felt, be a grave setback. Julia had that particular kind of succulent charm—bright, dotty, soft, eager, acquiescent, flattering, impudent—that is specially, it seems, produced for the delight of Anglo-Saxon manhood. She had no need of a London season to find a happy future. “Julia is staying with us. She is a great fan of yours,” said Lucy in her Pont Street manner; a manner which, like Roger’s, but much more subtly, had an element of dumb crambo in it. What she said turned out to be true. “My word, this is exciting,” said Julia, and settled down to enjoy me as though I were a box of chocolates open on her knees. “What a lot of people Lucy’s got here tonight.” “Yes, it’s her first real dinner party, and she says it will be her last. She says she doesn’t like parties any more.” “Did she ever?” I was ready to talk about Lucy at length, but this was not Julia’s plan. “Everyone does at first,” she said briefly, and then began the conversation as she had rehearsed it, I am sure, in her bath. “I knew you the moment you came into the room. Guess how.” “You heard my name announced.” “Oh, no. Guess again.” An American hero would have said, “For Christ’s sake,” but I said, “Really I’ve no idea, unless perhaps you knew everyone else already.” “Oh, no. Shall I tell you? I saw you in the Ritz the day Lucy lunched with you.” “Why didn’t you come and talk to us?” “Lucy wouldn’t let me. She said she’d ask you to dinner instead.” “Ah.” “You see, for years and years the one thing in the world I’ve wanted most—or nearly most—was to meet you and when Lucy calmly said she was going to lunch with you I cried with envy—literally so I had to put a cold sponge on my eyes before going out.” Talking to this delicious girl about Lucy, I thought, was like sitting in the dentist’s chair with one’s mouth full of instruments and the certainty that, all in good time, he would begin to hurt. “Did she talk about it much, before she came to lunch?” “Oh no, she just said ‘I’m afraid I’ve got to leave you today as Roger wants me to lunch with one of his old friends.’ So I said, ‘How rotten, who?’ and she said, ‘John Plant,’ just like that, and I said, ‘John Plant,’ and she said, ‘Oh, I forgot you were keen on thrillers.’ Thrillers, as though you were just anybody. And I said, ‘Couldn’t I possibly come,’ and she said, ‘Not possibly,’ and then when I was crying she said I might come with her to the lounge and sit behind a pillar and see you come in.” “How did she describe me?” “She just said you’d be the one who paid for the cocktails. Isn’t that just like Lucy, or don’t you know her well enough to tell?” “What did she say about the lunch afterwards?” “She said everyone talked about Kipling.” “Was that all?” “And she thought Roger had behaved badly because he doesn’t like smart restaurants, and she said neither did she, but it had cost you a lot of money so it was nasty to complain. Of course, I wanted to hear all about you and what you said, and she couldn’t remember anything. She just said you seemed very clever.” “Oh, she said that?” “She says that about all Roger’s friends. But, anyway, it’s my turn now. I’ve got you to myself for the evening.” She had. We were sitting at dinner now. Lucy was still talking to Mr. Benwell. On my other side there was some kind of relative of Roger’s. She talked to me for a bit about how Roger had settled down since marriage. “I don’t take those political opinions of his seriously,” she said, “and, anyway, it’s all right to be a communist nowadays. Everyone is.” “I’m not,” I said. “Well, I mean all the clever young people.” So I turned back to Julia. She was waiting for me. “D’you know you once wrote me a letter?” “Good gracious. Why?” “Dear Madam, Thank you for your letter. If you will read the passage in question more attentively you will note that the down train was four minutes late at Frasham. There was thus ample time for the disposal of the bicycle bell. Yours faithfully, John Plant,” she quoted. “Did I write that?” “Don’t you remember?” “Vaguely. It was about The Frightened Footman, wasn’t it?” “Mm. Of course I knew perfectly well about the train. I just wrote in the hopes of getting an answer and it worked. I liked you for being so severe. There was another girl at school was literary too, and she had a crush on Gilbert Warwick. He wrote her three pages beginning, My Dear Anthea, all about his house and the tithe barn he’s turned into his workroom and ending, Write to me again; I hope you like Silvia as much as Heather, those were two of his heroines, and she thought it showed what a better writer he was than you, but I knew just the opposite. And later Anthea did write again, and she had another long letter just like the first all about his tithe barn, and that made her very cynical. So I wrote to you again to show how different you were.” “Did I answer?” “No. So then all the Literary Club took to admiring you instead of Gilbert Warwick.” “Because I didn’t answer letters?” “Yes. You see, it showed you were a real artist and didn’t care a bit for your public, and just lived for your work.” “I see.” After dinner Roger said, “Has little Julia been boring you frightfully?” “Yes.” “I thought she was. She’s very pretty. It’s a great evening for her.” Eventually we returned to the drawing room and sat about. Roger did not know how to manage this stage of this party. He talked vaguely of going on somewhere to dance and of playing a new parlour game that had lately arrived from New York. No one encouraged him. I did not speak to Lucy until I came to say good-bye, which was very early, as soon as the first guest moved and everyone, on the instant, rose too. When I said good-bye to her, Julia said, “Please, I must tell you. You’re a thousand times grander than I ever imagined. It was half a game before—now it’s serious.” I could imagine the relief in the house as the last of us left, Roger and Lucy emerging into one another’s arms as though from shelter after a storm ... “So that’s over. Was it as bad as you expected?” “Worse, worse. You were splendid” ... perhaps they—and Julia too?—were cutting a caper on the drawing-room carpet in an ecstasy of liberation. “That,” I said to myself, “is what you have bought with your five pounds.” That evening, next day and for several days, I disliked Lucy. I made a story for all who knew him, of Roger’s dinner party, leaving the impression that this was the kind of life Lucy enjoyed and that she was driving Roger into it. But for all that I did not abate my resolve to force my friendship upon her. I can give no plausible account of this inconsistency. I was certainly not, consciously, in love with her. I did not, even, at that time find her conspicuously beautiful. In seeking her friendship I did not look for affection nor, exactly, for esteem. I sought recognition. I wanted to assert the simple fact of my separate and individual existence. I could not by any effort of will regard her as being, like Trixie, “one of Roger’s girls,” and I demanded reciprocation; I would not be regarded as, like Basil, “one of Roger’s friends”; still less, like Mr. Benwell, as someone who had to be asked to dinner every now and then. I had little else to think about at the time, and the thing became an itch with me. I felt about her, I suppose, as old men feel who are impelled by habit to touch every third lamppost on their walks; occasionally something happens to distract them, they see a friend or a street accident and they pass a lamppost by; then all day they fret and fidget until, after tea, they set out shamefacedly to put the matter right. That was how I felt about Lucy; our relationship constituted a tiny disorder in my life that had to be adjusted. That at least is how, in those earliest days, I explained my obsession to myself, but looking at it now, down the long, mirrored corridor of cumulative emotion, I see no beginning to the perspective. There is in the apprehension of woman’s beauty an exquisite, early intimation of loveliness when, seeing some face, strange or familiar, one gains, suddenly, a further glimpse and foresees, out of a thousand possible futures, how it might be transfigured by love; the vision is often momentary and transient, never to return in waking life, or else precipitately succeeded by the reality, and so forgotten. With Lucy—her grace daily more encumbered by her pregnancy; deprived of sex, as women are, by its own fulfilment—the vision was extended and clarified until, with no perceptible transition, it became the reality. But I cannot say when it first appeared. Perhaps, that evening, when she said, about the Composed Hermitage in the Chinese Taste, “I can’t think why John should want to have a house like that,” but it came without surprise; I had sensed it on its way, as an animal, still in profound darkness and surrounded by all the sounds of night, will lift its head, sniff, and know, inwardly, that dawn is near. Meanwhile, I moved for advantage as in a parlour game. Julia brought me success. Our meeting, so far from disillusioning her, made her cult of me keener and more direct. It was no fault of mine, I assured Roger, when he came to grumble about it; I had not been in the least agreeable to her; indeed towards the end of the evening I had been openly savage. “The girl’s a masochist,” he said, adding with deeper gloom, “and Lucy says she’s a virgin.” “There’s plenty of time for her. The two troubles are often cured simultaneously.” “That’s all very well, but she’s staying another ten days. She never stops talking about you.” “Does Lucy mind?” “Of course she minds. It’s driving us both nuts. Does she write you a lot of letters?” “Yes.” “What does she say?” “I don’t read them. I feel as though they were meant for somebody else. Besides they’re in pencil.” “I expect she writes them in bed. No one’s ever gone for me like that.” “Nor for me,” I said. “It’s not really at all disagreeable.” “I daresay not,” said Roger. “I thought only actors and sex-novelists and clergymen came in for it.” “No, no, anybody may—scientists, politicians, professional cyclists—anyone whose name gets into the papers. It’s just that young girls are naturally religious.” “Julia’s eighteen.” “She’ll get over it soon. She’s been stirred up by suddenly meeting me in the flesh after two or three years’ distant devotion. She’s a nice child.” “That’s all very well,” said Roger, returning sulkily to his original point. “It isn’t Julia I’m worried about, it’s ourselves, Lucy and me—she’s staying another ten days. Lucy says you’ve got to be nice about it, and come out this evening, the four of us. I’m sorry, but there it is.” So for a week I went often to Victoria Square, and there was the beginning of a half-secret joke between Lucy and me in Julia’s devotion. While I was there Julia sat smug and gay; she was a child of enchanting prettiness; when I was absent, Roger told me, she moped a good deal and spent much time in her bedroom writing and destroying letters to me. She talked about herself, mostly, and her sister and family. Her father was a major and they lived at Aldershot; they would have to stay there all the year round now that Lucy no longer needed their company in London. She did not like Roger. “He’s not very nice about you,” she said. “Roger and I are like that,” I explained. “We’re always foul about each other. It’s our fun. Is Lucy nice about me?” “Lucy’s an angel,” said Julia, “that’s why we hate Roger so.” Finally there was the evening of Julia’s last party. Eight of us went to dance at a restaurant. Julia was at first very gay, but her spirits dropped towards the end of the evening. I was living in Ebury Street; it was easy for me to walk home from Victoria Square, so I went back with them and had a last drink. “Lucy’s promised to leave us alone, just for a minute, to say good-bye,” Julia whispered. When we were alone, she said, “It’s been absolutely wonderful the last two weeks. I didn’t know it was possible to be so happy. I wish you’d give me something as a kind of souvenir.” “Of course. I’ll send you one of my books, shall I?” “No,” she said, “I’m not interested in your books any more. At least, of course, I am, terribly, but I mean it’s you I love.” “Nonsense,” I said. “Will you kiss me, once, just to say good-bye.” “Certainly not.” Then she said suddenly, “You’re in love with Lucy, aren’t you?” “Good heavens, no. What on earth put that into your head?” “I can tell. Through loving you so much, I expect. You may not know it, but you are. And it’s no good. She loves that horrid Roger. Oh, dear, they’re coming back. I’ll come and say good-bye to you tomorrow, may I?” “No.” “Please. This hasn’t been how I planned it at all.” Then Roger and Lucy came into the room with a sly look as though they had been discussing what was going on and how long they should give us. So I shook hands with Julia and went home. She came to my rooms at ten next morning. Mrs. Legge, the landlady, showed her up. She stood in the door, swinging a small parcel. “I’ve got five minutes,” she said, “the taxi’s waiting. I told Lucy I had some last-minute shopping.” “You know you oughtn’t to do this sort of thing.” “I’ve been here before. When I knew you were out. I pretended I was your sister and had come to fetch something for you.” “Mrs. Legge never said anything to me about it.” “No. I asked her not to. In fact I gave her ten shillings. You see she caught me at it.” “At what?” “Well, it sounds rather silly. I was in your bedroom, kissing things—you know, pillows, pajamas, hair brushes. I’d just got to the washstand and was kissing your razor when I looked up and found Mrs. Whatever-she’s-called standing in the door.” “Good God, I shall never be able to look her in the face again.” “Oh, she was quite sympathetic. I suppose I must have looked funny, like a goose grazing.” She gave a little, rather hysterical giggle, and added, “Oh, John, I do love you so.” “Nonsense. I shall turn you out if you talk like that.” “Well, I do. And I’ve got you a present.” She gave me the square parcel. “Open it.” “I shan’t accept it,” I said unwrapping a box of cigars. “But you must. You see, they’d be no good to me, would they? Are they good ones?” “Yes,” I said, looking at the box. “Very good ones indeed.” “The best?” “Quite the best, but ...” “That’s what the man in the shop said. Smoke one now.” “Julia dear, I couldn’t. I’ve only just finished breakfast.” She saw the point of that. “When will you smoke the first one? After luncheon? I’d like to think of you smoking the first one.” “Julia, dear, it’s perfectly sweet of you, but I can’t, honestly ...” “I know what you’re thinking, that I can’t afford it. Well, that’s all right. You see, Lucy gave me five pounds yesterday to buy a hat. I thought she would—she often does. But I had to wait and be sure. I’d got them ready, hidden yesterday evening. I meant to give you them then. But I never got a proper chance. So here they are.” And then, as I hesitated, with rising voice, “Don’t you see I’d much rather give you cigars than have a new hat? Don’t you see I shall go back to Aldershot absolutely miserable, the whole time in London quite spoilt, if you won’t take them?” She had clearly been crying that morning and was near tears again. “Of course I’ll take them,” I said. “I think it’s perfectly sweet of you.” Her face cleared in sudden, infectious joy. “There. Now we can say good-bye.” She stood waiting for me, not petitioning this time, but claiming her right. I put my hands on her shoulders and gave her a single, warm kiss on the lips. She shut her eyes and sighed. “Thank you,” she said in a small voice, and hurried out to her waiting taxi, leaving the box of cigars on my table. Sweet Julia! I thought; it was a supremely unselfish present; something quite impersonal and unsentimental—no keepsake—something which would be gone, literally in smoke, in less than six weeks; a thing she had not even the fun of choosing for herself; she had gone to the counter and left it to the shopman—“I want a box of the best cigars you keep, please—as many as I can get for five pounds.” She just wanted something which she could be sure would give pleasure. And chiefly because she thought I had been kind to her cousin, Lucy took me into her friendship. Roger’s engraving showed a pavilion, still rigidly orthodox in plan, but, in elevation decked with ornament conceived in a wild ignorance of oriental forms; there were balconies and balustrades of geometric patterns; the cornice swerved upwards at the corners in the lines of a pagoda; the roof was crowned with an onion cupola which might have been Russian, bells hung from the capitals of barley-sugar columns; the windows were freely derived from the Alhambra; there was a minaret. To complete the atmosphere the engraver had added a little group of Turkish military performing the bastinado upon a curiously complacent malefactor, an Arabian camel and a mandarin carrying a bird in a cage. “My word, what a gem,” they said. “Is it really all there?” “The minaret’s down and it’s all rather overgrown.” “What a chance. John must get it.” “It will be fun to furnish. I know just the chairs for it.” This was the first time I had been to Victoria Square since Julia left. And Lucy said, “I can’t think why John should want to have a house like that.” II 
Lucy was a girl of few friends; she had, in fact, at the time I was admitted to their number, only two; a man named Peter Baverstock, in the Malay States, whom I never saw, and a Miss Muriel Meikeljohn whom I saw all too often. Peter Baverstock had wanted to marry Lucy since she was seven and proposed to her whenever he came home on leave, every eighteen months, until she married Roger, when he sent her a very elaborate wedding present, an immense thing in carved wood, ivory and gilt which caused much speculation with regard to its purpose; later he wrote and explained; I forget the explanation. I think it was the gift which, by local usage, men of high birth gave to their granddaughters when they were delivered of male twins; it was, anyway, connected with twins and grandparents, of great rarity, and a token of high esteem in the parts he came from. Lucy wrote long letters to Baverstock every fortnight. I often watched her at work on those letters, sitting square to her table, head bowed, hand travelling evenly across the page, as, I remembered reading in some books of memoirs, Sir Walter Scott’s had been seen at a lighted window, writing the Waverley novels. It was a tradition of her upbringing that letters for the East must always be written on very thin, lined paper. “I’m just telling Peter about your house,” she would say. “How can that possibly interest him?” “Oh, he’s interested in everything. He’s so far away.” It seemed an odd reason. Miss Meikeljohn was a pale, possessive girl, who had been a fellow boarder with Lucy in the house of a distressed gentlewoman in Vienna where they had both been sent to learn singing. They had shared a passion for a leading tenor, and had once got into his dressing room at the Opera House by wearing mackintoshes and pretending to be reporters sent to interview him. Lucy still kept a photograph of this tenor, in costume, on her dressing table, but she had shed her musical aspirations with the rest of her Pont Street life. Miss Meikeljohn still sang, once a week to a tutor. It was after these lessons that she came to luncheon with Lucy, and the afternoon was hers by prescriptive right for shopping, or for a cinema, or for what she liked best, a “good talk.” These Tuesdays were “Muriel’s days,” and no one might interfere with them. “They are the only times she comes into London. Her parents are separated and terribly poor,” Lucy said, as though in complete explanation. When they went to the cinema or play together they went in the cheap seats because Miss Meikeljohn insisted on paying her share. Lucy thought this evidence of Miss Meikeljohn’s integrity of character; she often came back from their common entertainments with a headache from having had to sit so close to the screen. The friendship was odd in many ways, notably because Miss Meikeljohn luxuriated in heart-to-heart confidences—in what my father’s generation coarsely called “taking down her back hair”—an exhibition that was abhorrent to Lucy, who in friendship had all the modesty of the naked savage. I must accept the modesty of the naked savage on trust, on the authority of numerous travel books. The savages I have met on my travels have all been formidably overdressed. But if there existed nowhere else on the globe that lithe, chaste and unstudied nudity of which I have so often read, it was there, dazzlingly, in the mind of Lucy. There were no reservations in her friendship, and it was an experience for which I was little qualified, to be admitted, as it were, through a door in the wall to wander at will over that rich estate. The idea of an occasional opening to the public in aid of the cottage hospital, of extra gardeners working a week beforehand to tidy the walks, of an upper housemaid to act as guide, of red cord looped across the arms of the chairs, of special objects of value to be noted, of “that door leads to the family’s private apartments. They are never shown,” of vigilance at the hothouse for fear of a nectarine being pocketed, of “now you have seen everything: please make way for the next party,” and of the open palm—of all, in fact, which constituted Miss Meikeljohn’s, and most people’s, habit of intimacy, was inconceivable to Lucy. When I began to realize the spaces and treasures of which I had been made free, I was like a slum child alternately afraid to touch or impudently curious. Or, rather, I felt too old. Years earlier when Lucy was in her cradle, I had known this kind of friendship. There was a boy at my private school with whom I enjoyed a week of unrestrained confidence; one afternoon sitting with him in a kind of nest, itself a secret, which we had devised for ourselves from a gym mat and piled benches in a corner of the place where we played on wet afternoons, I revealed my greatest secret, that my father was an artist and not, as I had given it out, an officer in the Navy; by tea time the story was all over the school, that Plant’s pater had long hair and did not wash. (Revenge came sooner than I could have hoped, for this was the summer term, 1914, and my betrayer had an aunt married to an Austrian nobleman; he had boasted at length of staying in their castle; when school reassembled in September I was at the head of the mob which hounded him in tears to the matron’s room with cries of “German spy.”) It was the first and, to my mind, most dramatic of the normal betrayals of adolescence. With the years I had grown cautious. There was little love and no trust at all between any of my friends. Moreover, we were bored; each knew the other so well that it was only by making our relationship into a kind of competitive parlour game that we kept it alive at all. We had all from time to time cut out divergent trails and camped in new ground, but we always, as it were, returned to the same base for supplies, and swapped yarns of our exploration. That was what I meant by friendship at the age of thirty-three, and Lucy, finding herself without preparation for them among people like myself, had been disconcerted. That was the origin of what, at first, I took for priggishness in her. Her lack of shyness cut her off from us. She could not cope with the attack and defence, deception and exposure, which was our habitual intercourse. Anything less than absolute intimacy embarrassed her, so she fell back upon her good upbringing, that armoury of schoolroom virtues and graces with which she had been equipped, and lived, as best she could, independently, rather as, it is said, Chinese gentlemen of the old school can pursue interminable, courteous, traditionally prescribed conversations with their minds abstracted in realms of distant beauty. But it was not enough. She was lonely. In particular she was cut off by her pregnancy from Roger. For a term of months she was unsexed, the roots of her love for Roger wintering, out of sight in the ground, without leaf. So she looked for a friend and, because she thought I had been kind to Julia, and because, in a way, I had responded to her in her schoolroom mood, she chose me. I had not misinterpreted her change of manner. She had made up her mind that I was to be a friend and, as her intimation of this had been in talking of my house, that became for many weeks a main bond between us. I began, almost at once, to spend the greater part of the day in her company, and as my preoccupation at the time was in finding a house that quest became the structure of our friendship. Together we went over the sheaves of house-agents’ notices and several times we went on long expeditions together to look at houses in the country. Once on our quest she took me to stay the night with relatives of hers. We talked of everything except the single topic of politics. On that we were agreed; I, because it was old stuff to me; I had been over it all, time and again, since the age of seventeen; she because, I think, she felt her political opinions to be a part of her marriage with Roger. I have known countless communists and not one of them was moved by anything remotely resembling compassion. The attraction of communism for Lucy was double. It was a part of the break she had made with Aldershot and Pont Street, and it relieved her of the responsibility she felt for her own private fortune. Money, her money, was of great importance to her. Is she had lived among the rich it would have been different; she would then have thought it normal to be assured, for life, of the possessions for which others toiled; she would, indeed, have thought herself rather meagrely provided. But she had been brought up among people poorer than herself to regard herself as somebody quite singular. When the age came of her going to dances, her aunt had impressed on her the danger she ran of fortune-hunters and, indeed, nearly all the young men with whom she consorted, and their mothers, regarded £58,000 as a notable prize. “Sometimes by the way that girl talks,” Basil had said, “you’d think she was the Woolworth heiress.” It was quite true. She did think herself extremely rich and responsible. One of the advantages to her of marrying Roger was the belief that her money was being put to good use in rescuing a literary genius from wage-slavery. She was much more afraid of misusing her money than of losing it. Thus when she was convinced that all private fortunes like her own were very shortly to be abolished and all undeserved prominence levelled, she was delighted. Moreover, her conversion had coincided with her falling in love. She and Roger had been to meetings together, and together read epitomes of Marxist philosophy. Her faith, like a Christian’s, was essential to her marriage, so, knowing that I was hostile, she sequestered it from me by making it a joke between us. That defence, at least, she had already picked up from watching Roger and his friends. It was convenient for Roger to have me in attendance. He was not domestic by nature, and it was inevitable that these months should come to him as an anticlimax after the adventure of marriage. He did not, as some husbands do, resent his wife’s pregnancy. It was as though he had bought a hunter at the end of the season and turned him out; discerning friends, he knew, would appreciate the fine lines under the rough coat, but he would sooner have shown something glossy in the stable. He had summer business to do, moreover; the horse must wait till the late autumn. That, at least, was one way in which he saw the situation, but the analogy was incomplete. It was rather he that had been acquired and put to grass, and he was conscious of that aspect too. Roger was hobbled and prevented from taking the full stride required of him, by the habit, long settled, of regarding sex relationships in terms of ownership and use. Confronted with the new fact of pregnancy, of joint ownership, his terms failed him. As a result he was restless and no longer master of the situation; the practical business of getting through the day was becoming onerous so that my adhesion was agreeable to him. Grossly, it confirmed his opinion of Lucy’s value and at the same time took her off his hands. Then one morning, when I made my now habitual call at Victoria Square, Lucy, not yet up but lying in bed in a chaos of newspapers, letters and manicure tools, greeted me by saying, “Roger’s writing.” Couched as she was, amid quilted bed-jacket and tumbled sheets—one arm bare to the elbow where the wide sleeve fell back and showed the tender places of wrist and forearm, the other lost in the warm depths of the bed, with her pale skin taking colour against the dead white linen, and her smile of confident, morning welcome; as I had greeted her countless times and always with a keener joy, until that morning I seemed to have come to the end of an investigation and hold as a certainty what before I had roughly surmised—her beauty rang through the room like a peal of bells; thus I have stood, stunned, in a Somerset garden, with the close turf wet and glittering underfoot in the dew, when, from beyond the walls of box, the grey church tower has suddenly scattered the heavens in tumult. “Poor fellow,” I said. “What about?” “It’s my fault,” she said, “a detective story,” and she went on to explain that since I had talked to her about my books, she had read them—“You were perfectly right. They are works of art. I had no idea”—and talked of them to Roger until he had suddenly said, “Oh, God, another Julia.” Then he had told her that for many years he had kept a plot in his mind, waiting for a suitable time to put it into writing. “He’ll do it very well,” I said, “Roger can write anything.” “Yes.” But while she was telling me this and I was answering, I thought only of Lucy’s new beauty. I knew that beauty of that kind did not come from a suitable light or a lucky way with the hair or a sound eight hours’ sleep, but from an inner secret; and I knew this morning that the secret was the fact of Roger’s jealousy. So another stage was reached in my falling in love with Lucy, while each week she grew heavier and slower and less apt for love, so that I accepted the joy of her companionship without reasoning. Later, on looking back on those unusual weeks, I saw myself and Lucy as characters in the stock intrigue of renaissance comedy, where the heroine follows the hero in male attire and is wooed by him, unknowing, in the terms of rough friendship. In these weeks Lucy and I grew adept in construing the jargon of the estate agents. We knew that “substantially built” meant “hideous,” “ripe for modernization” “ruinous,” that “matured grounds” were a jungle of unkempt laurel; all that belonged to the underworld of Punch humour. We learned, what was far more valuable, to detect omissions; nothing could be taken for granted, and if the agent did not specify a staircase, it had in all probability disappeared. Basil explained to me how much more practical it was to purchase a mansion; really large houses, he said, were sold for the sake of the timber in the park; he had a scheme, rather hazily worked out, by which I should make myself a private company for the development of a thousand acres, a mile of fishing, a castle and two secondary residences which he knew of in Cumberland, and by a system of mortgages, subtenancies, directors’ fees and declared trading losses, inhabit the castle, as he expressed it, “free”; somewhere, in the legal manoeuvres, Basil was to have acquired and divested himself, at a profit, of a controlling interest in the estate. Roger produced a series of derelict “follies” which he thought it my duty to save for the nation. Other friends asked why I did not settle in Portugal where, they said, Jesuit Convents in the Manuelo style could be picked up for a song. But I had a clear idea of what I required. In the first place it must not cost, all told, when the decorators and plumbers had moved out and the lawyers been paid for the conveyance, more than £3,000; it must be in agricultural country, preferably within five miles of an antiquated market town, it must be at least a hundred years old, and it must be a house, no matter how dingy, rather than a cottage, however luxurious; there must be a cellar, two staircases, high ceilings, a marble chimneypiece in the drawing room, room to turn a car at the front door, a coach-house and stable yard, a walled kitchen garden, a paddock and one or two substantial trees—these seemed to me the minimum requisites of the standard of gentility at which I aimed, something between the squire’s and the retired admiral’s. Lucy had a womanly love of sunlight and a Marxist faith 
Tactical Exercise
John Verney married Elizabeth in 1938, but it was not until the winter of 1945 that he came to hate her steadily and fiercely. There had been countless brief gusts of hate before this, for it was a thing which came easily to him. He was not what is normally described as a bad-tempered man, rather the reverse; a look of fatigue and abstraction was the only visible sign of the passion which possessed him, as others are possessed by laughter or desire, several times a day. During the war he passed among those he served with as a phlegmatic fellow. He did not have his good or his bad days; they were all uniformly good and bad; good, in that he did what had to be done, expeditiously without ever “getting in a flap” or “going off the deep end”; bad, from the intermittent, invisible sheet-lightning of hate which flashed and flickered deep inside him at every obstruction or reverse. In his orderly room when, as a company commander, he faced the morning procession of defaulters and malingerers; in the mess when the subalterns disturbed his reading by playing the wireless; at the Staff College when the “syndicate” disagreed with his solution; at Brigade H.Q. when the staff-sergeant mislaid a file or the telephone orderly muddled a call; when the driver of his car missed a turning; later, in hospital, when the doctor seemed to look too cursorily at his wound and the nurses stood gossiping jauntily at the beds of more likeable patients instead of doing their duty to him—in all the annoyances of army life which others dismissed with an oath and a shrug, John Verney’s eyelids drooped wearily, a tiny grenade of hate exploded and the fragments rang and ricocheted round the steel walls of his mind. There had been less to annoy him before the war. He had some money and the hope of a career in politics. Before marriage he served his apprenticeship to the Liberal party in two hopeless by-elections. The Central Office then rewarded him with a constituency in outer London which offered a fair chance in the next General Election. In the eighteen months before the war he nursed this constituency from his flat in Belgravia and travelled frequently on the continent to study political conditions. These studies convinced him that war was inevitable; he denounced the Munich agreement pungently and secured a commission in the territorial army. Into this peacetime life Elizabeth fitted unobtrusively. She was his cousin. In 1938 she had reached the age of twenty-six, four years his junior, without falling in love. She was a calm, handsome young woman, an only child, with some money of her own and more to come. As a girl, in her first season, an injudicious remark, let slip and overheard, got her the reputation of cleverness. Those who knew her best ruthlessly called her “deep.” Thus condemned to social failure, she languished in the ballrooms of Pont Street for another year and then settled down to a life of concert-going and shopping with her mother, until she surprised her small circle of friends by marrying John Verney. Courtship and consummation were tepid, cousinly, harmonious. They agreed, in face of the coming war, to remain childless. No one knew what Elizabeth felt or thought about anything. Her judgments were mainly negative, deep or dull as you cared to take them. She had none of the appearance of a woman likely to inflame great hate. John Verney was discharged from the Army early in 1945 with an M.C. and one leg, for the future, two inches shorter than the other. He found Elizabeth living in Hampstead with her parents, his uncle and aunt. She had kept him informed by letter of the changes in her condition but, preoccupied, he had not clearly imagined them. Their flat had been requisitioned by a government office; their furniture and books sent to a repository and totally lost, partly burned by a bomb, partly pillaged by firemen. Elizabeth, who was a linguist, had gone to work in a clandestine branch of the Foreign Office. Her parents’ house had once been a substantial Georgian villa overlooking the Heath. John Verney arrived there early in the morning after a crowded night’s journey from Liverpool. The wrought-iron railings and gates had been rudely torn away by the salvage collectors, and in the front garden, once so neat, weeds and shrubs grew in a rank jungle trampled at night by courting soldiers. The back garden was a single, small bomb-crater; heaped clay, statuary and the bricks and glass of ruined greenhouses; dry stalks of willow-herb stood breast high over the mounds. All the windows were gone from the back of the house, replaced by shutters of card and board, which put the main rooms in perpetual darkness. “Welcome to Chaos and Old Night,” said his uncle genially. There were no servants; the old had fled, the young had been conscribed for service. Elizabeth made him some tea before leaving for her office. Here he lived, lucky, Elizabeth told him, to have a home. Furniture was unprocurable, furnished flats commanded a price beyond their income, which was now taxed to a bare wage. They might have found something in the country, but Elizabeth, being childless, could not get release from her work. Moreover, he had his constituency. This, too, was transformed. A factory, wired round like a prisoner-of-war camp, stood in the public gardens. The streets surrounding it, once the trim houses of potential Liberals, had been bombed, patched, confiscated, and filled with an immigrant proletarian population. Every day he received a heap of complaining letters from constituents exiled in provincial boardinghouses. He had hoped that his decoration and his limp might earn him sympathy, but he found the new inhabitants indifferent to the fortunes of war. Instead they showed a sceptical curiosity about Social Security. “They’re nothing but a lot of reds,” said the Liberal agent. “You mean I shan’t get in?” “Well, we’ll give them a good fight. The Tories are putting up a Battle-of-Britain pilot. I’m afraid he’ll get most of what’s left of the middle-class vote.” In the event John Verney came bottom of the poll, badly. A rancorous Jewish schoolteacher was elected. The Central Office paid his deposit, but the election had cost him dear. And when it was over there was absolutely nothing for John Verney to do. He remained in Hampstead, helped his aunt make the beds after Elizabeth had gone to her office, limped to the greengrocer and fishmonger and stood, full of hate, in the queues; helped Elizabeth wash up at night. They ate in the kitchen, where his aunt cooked deliciously the scanty rations. His uncle went three days a week to help pack parcels for Java. Elizabeth, the deep one, never spoke of her work, which, in fact, was concerned with setting up hostile and oppressive governments in Eastern Europe. One evening at a restaurant, a man came and spoke to her, a tall young man whose sallow, aquiline face was full of intellect and humour. “That’s the head of my department,” she said. “He’s so amusing.” “Looks like a Jew.” “I believe he is. He’s a strong Conservative and hates the work,” she added hastily, for since his defeat in the election John had become fiercely anti-Semitic. “There is absolutely no need to work for the State now,” he said. “The war’s over.” “Our work is just beginning. They won’t let any of us go. You must understand what conditions are in this country.” It often fell to Elizabeth to explain “conditions” to him. Strand by strand, knot by knot, through the coalless winter, she exposed the vast net of government control which had been woven in his absence. He had been reared in traditional Liberalism and the system revolted him. More than this, it had him caught, personally, tripped up, tied, tangled; wherever he wanted to go, whatever he wanted to do or have done, he found himself baffled and frustrated. And as Elizabeth explained she found herself defending. This regulation was necessary to avoid that ill; such a country was suffering, as Britain was not, for having neglected such a precaution; and so on, calmly and reasonably. “I know it’s maddening, John, but you must realize it’s the same for everyone.” “That’s what all you bureaucrats want,” he said. “Equality through slavery. The two-class state—proletarians and officials.” Elizabeth was part and parcel of it. She worked for the State and the Jews. She was a collaborator with the new, alien, occupying power. And as the winter wore on and the gas burned feebly in the stove, and the rain blew in through the patched windows, as at length spring came and buds broke in the obscene wilderness round the house, Elizabeth in his mind became something more important. She became a symbol. For just as soldiers in far-distant camps think of their wives, with a tenderness they seldom felt at home, as the embodiment of all the good things they have left behind, wives who perhaps were scolds and drabs, but in the desert and jungle become transfigured until their trite air-letters become texts of hope, so Elizabeth grew in John Verney’s despairing mind to more than human malevolence as the archpriestess and maenad of the century of the common man. “You aren’t looking well, John,” said his aunt. “You and Elizabeth ought to get away for a bit. She is due for leave at Easter.” “The State is granting her a supplementary ration of her husband’s company, you mean. Are we sure she has filled in all the correct forms? Or are commissars of her rank above such things?” Uncle and aunt laughed uneasily. John made his little jokes with such an air of weariness, with such a droop of the eyelids that they sometimes struck chill in that family circle. Elizabeth regarded him gravely and silently. John was far from well. His leg was in constant pain so that he no longer stood in queues. He slept badly; as also, for the first time in her life, did Elizabeth. They shared a room now, for the winter rains had brought down ceilings in many parts of the shaken house and the upper rooms were thought to be unsafe. They had twin beds on the ground floor in what had once been her father’s library. In the first days of his homecoming John had been amorous. Now he never approached her. They lay night after night six feet apart in the darkness. Once when John had been awake for two hours he turned on the lamp that stood on the table between them. Elizabeth was lying with her eyes wide open staring at the ceiling. “I’m sorry. Did I wake you?” “I haven’t been asleep.” “I thought I’d read for a bit. Will it disturb you?” “Not at all.” She turned away. John read for an hour. He did not know whether she was awake or asleep when he turned off the light. Often after that he longed to put on the light, but was afraid to find her awake and staring. Instead he lay, as others lie in a luxurious rapture of love, hating her. It did not occur to him to leave her; or, rather, it did occur from time to time, but he hopelessly dismissed the thought. Her life was bound tight to his; her family was his family; their finances were intertangled and their expectations lay together in the same quarters. To leave her would be to start fresh, alone and naked in a strange world; and lame and weary at the age of thirty-eight, John Verney had not the heart to move. He loved no one else. He had nowhere to go, nothing to do. Moreover he suspected, of late, that it would not hurt her if he went. And, above all, the single steadfast desire left to him was to do her ill. “I wish she were dead,” he said to himself as he lay awake at night. “I wish she were dead.” Sometimes they went out together. As the winter passed, John took to dining once or twice a week at his club. He assumed that on these occasions she stayed at home, but one morning it transpired that she too had dined out the evening before. He did not ask with whom, but his aunt did, and Elizabeth replied, “Just someone from the office.” “The Jew?” John asked. “As a matter of fact, it was.” “I hope you enjoyed it.” “Quite. A beastly dinner, of course, but he’s very amusing.” One night when he returned from his club, after a dismal little dinner and two crowded Tube journeys, he found Elizabeth in bed and deeply asleep. She did not stir when he entered. Unlike her normal habit, she was snoring. He stood for a minute, fascinated by this new and unlovely aspect of her, her head thrown back, her mouth open and slightly dribbling at the corner. Then he shook her. She muttered something, turned over and slept heavily and soundlessly. Half an hour later, as he was striving to compose himself for sleep, she began to snore again. He turned on the light, looked at her more closely and noticed with surprise, which suddenly changed to joyous hope, that there was a tube of unfamiliar pills, half empty, beside her on the bed table. He examined it. “24 Comprimés narcotiques, hypnotiques,” he read, and then in large, scarlet letters, “NE PAS DEPASSER DEUX.” He counted those which were left. Eleven. With tremulous butterfly wings Hope began to flutter in his heart, became a certainty. He felt a fire kindle and spread inside him until he was deliciously suffused in every limb and organ. He lay, listening to the snores, with the pure excitement of a child on Christmas Eve. “I shall wake up tomorrow and find her dead,” he told himself, as once he had felt the flaccid stocking at the foot of his bed and told himself, “Tomorrow I shall wake up and find it full.” Like a child, he longed to sleep to hasten the morning and, like a child, he was wildly, ecstatically sleepless. Presently he swallowed two of the pills himself and almost at once was unconscious. Elizabeth always rose first to make breakfast for the family. She was at the dressing table when sharply, without drowsiness, his memory stereoscopically clear about the incidents of the night before, John awoke. “You’ve been snoring,” she said. Disappointment was so intense that at first he could not speak. Then he said, “You snored, too, last night.” “It must be the sleeping tablet I took. I must say it gave me a good night.” “Only one?” “Yes, two’s the most that’s safe.” “Where did you get them?” “A friend at the office—the one you called the Jew. He has them prescribed by a doctor for when he’s working too hard. I told him I wasn’t sleeping, so he gave me half a bottle.” “Could he get me some?” “I expect so. He can do most things like that.” So he and Elizabeth began to drug themselves regularly and passed long, vacuous nights. But often John delayed, letting the beatific pill lie beside his glass of water, while, knowing the vigil was terminable at will, he postponed the joy of unconsciousness, heard Elizabeth’s snores, and hated her sumptuously. One evening while the plans for the holiday were still under discussion, John and Elizabeth went to the cinema. The film was a murder story of no great ingenuity but with showy scenery. A bride murdered her husband by throwing him out of a window, down a cliff. Things were made easy for her by his taking a lonely lighthouse for their honeymoon. He was very rich and she wanted his money. All she had to do was confide in the local doctor and a few neighbours that her husband frightened her by walking in his sleep; she doped his coffee, dragged him from the bed to the balcony—a feat of some strength—where she had already broken away a yard of balustrade, and rolled him over. Then she went back to bed, gave the alarm next morning, and wept over the mangled body which was presently discovered half awash on the rocks. Retribution overtook her later, but at the time the thing was a complete success. “I wish it were as easy as that,” thought John, and in a few hours the whole tale had floated away in those lightless attics of the mind where films and dreams and funny stories lie spider-shrouded for a lifetime unless, as sometimes happens, an intruder brings them to light. Such a thing happened a few weeks later when John and Elizabeth went for their holiday. Elizabeth found the place. It belonged to someone in her office. It was named Good Hope Fort, and stood on the Cornish coast. “It’s only just been derequisitioned,” she said: “I expect we shall find it in pretty bad condition.” “We’re used to that,” said John. It did not occur to him that she should spend her leave anywhere but with him. She was as much part of him as his maimed and aching leg. They arrived on a gusty April afternoon after a train journey of normal discomfort. A taxi drove them eight miles from the station, through deep Cornish lanes, past granite cottages and disused, archaic tin-workings. They reached the village which gave the house its postal address, passed through it and out along a track which suddenly emerged from its high banks into open grazing land on the cliff’s edge, high, swift clouds and sea-birds wheeling overhead, the turf at their feet alive with fluttering wild flowers, salt in the air, below them the roar of the Atlantic breaking on the rocks, a middle-distance of indigo and white tumbled waters and beyond it the serene arc of the horizon. Here was the house. “Your father,” said John, “would now say, ‘Your castle hath a pleasant seat.’” “Well, it has rather, hasn’t it?” It was a small stone building on the very edge of the cliff, built a century or so ago for defensive purposes, converted to a private house in the years of peace, taken again by the Navy during the war as a signal station, now once more reverting to gentler uses. Some coils of rusty wire, a mast, the concrete foundations of a hut, gave evidence of its former masters. They carried their things into the house and paid the taxi. “A woman comes up every morning from the village. I said we shouldn’t want her this evening. I see she’s left us some oil for the lamps. She’s got a fire going, too, bless her, and plenty of wood. Oh, and look what I’ve got as a present from father. I promised not to tell you until we arrived. A bottle of whisky. Wasn’t it sweet of him. He’s been hoarding his ration for three months ...” Elizabeth talked brightly as she began to arrange the luggage. “There’s a room for each of us. This is the only proper living room, but there’s a study in case you feel like doing any work. I believe we shall be quite comfortable ...” The living room was built with two stout bays, each with a french window opening on a balcony which overhung the sea. John opened one and the sea-wind filled the room. He stepped out, breathed deeply, and then said suddenly: “Hullo, this is dangerous.” At one place, between the windows, the cast-iron balustrade had broken away and the stone ledge lay open over the cliff. He looked at the gap and at the foaming rocks below, momentarily puzzled. The irregular polyhedron of memory rolled uncertainly and came to rest. He had been here before, a few weeks ago, on the gallery of the lighthouse in that swiftly forgotten film. He stood there, looking down. It was exactly thus that the waves had come swirling over the rocks, had broken and dropped back with the spray falling about them. This was the sound they had made; this was the broken ironwork and the sheer edge. Elizabeth was still talking in the room, her voice drowned by wind and sea. John returned to the room, shut and fastened the door. In the quiet she was saying “... only got the furniture out of store last week. He left the woman from the village to arrange it. She’s got some queer ideas, I must say. Just look where she put ...” “What did you say this house was called?” “Good Hope.” “A good name.” That evening John drank a glass of his father-in-law’s whisky, smoked a pipe and planned. He had been a good tactician. He made a leisurely, mental “appreciation of the situation.” Object: murder. When they rose to go to bed he asked: “You packed the tablets?” “Yes, a new tube. But I am sure I shan’t want any tonight.” “Neither shall I,” said John, “the air is wonderful.” During the following days he considered the tactical problem. It was entirely simple. He had the “staff-solution” already. He considered it in the words and form he had used in the army. “... Courses open to the enemy ... achievement of surprise ... consolidation of success.” The staff-solution was exemplary. At the beginning of the first week, he began to put it into execution. Already, by easy stages, he had made himself known in the village. Elizabeth was a friend of the owner; he the returned hero, still a little strange in civvy street. “The first holiday my wife and I have had together for six years,” he told them in the golf club and, growing more confidential at the bar, hinted that they were thinking of making up for lost time and starting a family. On another evening he spoke of war-strain, of how in this war the civilians had had a worse time of it than the services. His wife, for instance; stuck it all through the blitz; office work all day, bombs at night. She ought to get right away, alone somewhere for a long stretch; her nerves had suffered; nothing serious, but to tell the truth he wasn’t quite happy about it. As a matter of fact, he had found her walking in her sleep once or twice in London. His companions knew of similar cases; nothing to worry about, but it wanted watching; didn’t want it to develop into anything worse. Had she seen a doctor? Not yet, John said. In fact she didn’t know she had been sleep-walking. He had got her back to bed without waking her. He hoped the sea air would do her good. In fact, she seemed much better already. If she showed any more signs of the trouble when they got home, he knew a very good man to take her to. The golf club was full of sympathy. John asked if there was a good doctor in the neighbourhood. Yes, they said, old Mackenzie in the village, a first-class man, wasted in a little place like that; not at all a stick-in-the-mud. Read the latest books; psychology and all that. They couldn’t think why Old Mack had never specialized and made a name for himself. “I think I might go and talk to Old Mack about it,” said John. “Do. You couldn’t find a better fellow.” Elizabeth had a fortnight’s leave. There were still three days to go when John went off to the village to consult Dr. Mackenzie. He found a grey-haired, genial bachelor in a consulting room that was more like a lawyer’s office than a physician’s, book-lined, dark, permeated by tobacco smoke. Seated in the shabby leather armchair he developed in more precise language the story he had told in the golf club. Dr. Mackenzie listened without comment. “It’s the first time I’ve run up against anything like this,” he concluded. At length Dr. Mackenzie said: “You got pretty badly knocked about in the war, Mr. Verney?” “My knee. It still gives me trouble.” “Bad time in hospital?” “Three months. A beastly place outside Rome.” “There’s always a good deal of nervous shock in an injury of that kind. It often persists when the wound is healed.” “Yes, but I don’t quite understand ...” “My dear Mr. Verney, your wife asked me to say nothing about it, but I think I must tell you that she has already been here to consult me on this matter.” “About her sleep-walking? But she can’t ...” then John stopped. “My dear fellow, I quite understand. She thought you didn’t know. Twice lately you’ve been out of bed and she had to lead you back. She knows all about it.” John could find nothing to say. “It’s not the first time,” Dr. Mackenzie continued, “that I’ve been consulted by patients who have told me their symptoms and said they had come on behalf of  friends or relations. Usually it’s girls who think they’re in the family-way. It’s an interesting feature of your case that you should want to ascribe the trouble to someone else, probably the decisive feature. I’ve given your wife the name of a man in London who I think will be able to help you. Meanwhile I can only advise plenty of exercise, light meals at night ...” John Verney limped back to Good Hope Fort in a state of consternation. Security had been compromised; the operation must be cancelled; initiative had been lost ... all the phrases of the tactical school came to his mind, but he was still numb after this unexpected reverse. A vast and naked horror peeped at him and was thrust aside. When he got back Elizabeth was laying the supper table. He stood on the balcony and stared at the gaping rails with eyes smarting with disappointment. It was dead calm that evening. The rising tide lapped and fell and mounted again silently among the rocks below. He stood gazing down, then he turned back into the room. There was one large drink left in the whisky bottle. He poured it out and swallowed it. Elizabeth brought in the supper and they sat down. Gradually his mind grew a little calmer. They usually ate in silence. At last he said: “Elizabeth, why did you tell the doctor I had been walking in my sleep?” She quietly put down the plate she had been holding and looked at him curiously. “Why?” she said gently. “Because I was worried, of course. I didn’t think you knew about it.” “But have I been?” “Oh yes, several times—in London and here. I didn’t think it mattered at first, but the night before last I found you on the balcony, quite near that dreadful hole in the rails. I was really frightened. But it’s going to be all right now. Dr. Mackenzie has given me the name ...” It was possible, thought John Verney; nothing was more likely. He had lived night and day for ten days thinking of that opening, of the sea and rock below, the ragged ironwork and the sharp edge of stone. He suddenly felt defeated, sick and stupid, as he had as he lay on the Italian hillside with his smashed knee. Then as now he had felt weariness even more than pain. “Coffee, darling.” Suddenly he roused himself. “No,” he almost shouted. “No, no, no.” “Darling, what is the matter? Don’t get excited. Are you feeling ill? Lie down on the sofa near the window.” He did as he was told. He felt so weary that he could barely move from his chair. “Do you think coffee would keep you awake, love? You look quite fit to drop already. There, lie down.” He lay down and, like the tide slowly mounting among the rocks below, sleep rose and spread in his mind. He nodded and woke with a start. “Shall I open the window, darling, and give you some air?” “Elizabeth,” he said, “I feel as if I have been drugged.” Like the rocks below the window—now awash, now emerging clear from falling water; now awash again, deeper; now barely visible, mere patches on the face of gently eddying foam—his brain was softly drowning. He roused himself, as children do in nightmare, still scared, still half asleep. “I can’t be drugged,” he said loudly, “I never touched the coffee.” “Drugs in the coffee?” said Elizabeth gently, like a nurse soothing a fractious child. “Drugs in the coffee? What an absurd idea. That’s the kind of thing that only happens on the films, darling.” He did not hear her. He was fast asleep, snoring stertorously by the open window. 
Compassion
I 
The military organization into which Major Gordon drifted during the last stages of the war enjoyed several changes of name as its function became less secret. At first it was called “Force X”; then “Special Liaison Balkan Irregular Operations”; finally, “Joint Allied Mission to the Yugoslav Army of Liberation.” Its work was to send observing officers and wireless operators to Tito’s partisans. Most of these appointments were dangerous and uncomfortable. The liaison parties parachuted into the forests and the mountains and lived like brigands. They were often hungry, always dirty, always on the alert, prepared to decamp at any move of the enemy’s. The post to which Major Gordon was sent was one of the safest and softest. Begoy was the headquarters of a partisan corps in Northern Croatia. It lay in a large area, ten miles by twenty, of what was called “Liberated Territory,” well clear of the essential lines of communication. The Germans were pulling out of Greece and Dalmatia and were concerned only with main roads and supply points. They made no attempt now to administer or patrol the hinterland. There was a field near Begoy where aircraft could land unmolested. They did so nearly every week in the summer of 1944 coming from Bari with partisan officials and modest supplies of equipment. In this area congregated a number of men and women who called themselves the Praesidium of the Federal Republic of Croatia. There was even a Minister of Fine Arts. The peasants worked their land undisturbed except by requisitions for the support of the politicians. Besides the British Military Mission, there was a villa full of invisible Russians, half a dozen R.A.F. men who managed the landing ground and an inexplicable Australian doctor who had parachuted into the country a year before with orders to instruct the partisans in field hygiene and had wandered about with them ever since rendering first aid. There were also one hundred and eight Jews. Major Gordon met them on the third day of his residence. He had been given a small farmhouse half a mile outside the town and the services of an interpreter who had lived for some years in the United States and spoke English of a kind. This man, Bakic, was in the secret police. His duty was to keep Major Gordon under close attention and to report every evening at OZNA headquarters. Major Gordon’s predecessor had warned him of this man’s proclivities, but Major Gordon was sceptical for such things were beyond his experience. Three Slav widows were also attached to the household. They slept in a loft and acted as willing and tireless servants. After breakfast on the third day Bakic announced to Major Gordon: “Dere’s de Jews outside.” “What Jews?” “Dey been dere two hour, maybe more. I said to wait.” “What do they want?” “Dey’re Jews. I reckon dey always want sometin. Dey want see de British major. I said to wait.” “Well, ask them to come in.” “Dey can’t come in. Why, dere’s more’n a hundred of dem.” Major Gordon went out and found the farmyard and the lane beyond thronged. There were some children in the crowd, but most seemed old, too old to be the parents, for they were unnaturally aged by their condition. Everyone in Begoy except the peasant women was in rags, but the partisans kept regimental barbers and there was a kind of dignity about their tattered uniforms. The Jews were grotesque in their remnants of bourgeois civility. They showed little trace of racial kinship. There were Semites among them, but the majority were fair, snub-nosed, high-cheekboned, the descendants of Slav tribes judaized long after the Dispersal. Few of them, probably, now worshipped the God of Israel in the manner of their ancestors. A low chatter broke out as Major Gordon appeared. Then three leaders came forward, a youngish woman of better appearance than the rest and two crumpled old men. The woman asked him if he spoke French, and when Major Gordon nodded introduced her companions—a grocer from Mostar, a lawyer from Zagreb—and herself—a Viennese, wife of a Hungarian engineer. Here Bakic roughly interrupted in Serbo-Croat and the three fell humbly and hopelessly silent. He said to Major Gordon: “I tell dese peoples dey better talk Slav. I will speak for dem.” The woman said: “I only speak German and French.” Major Gordon said: “We will speak French. I can’t ask you all in. You three had better come and leave the others outside.” Bakic scowled. A chatter broke out in the crowd. Then the three with timid little bows crossed the threshold, carefully wiping their dilapidated boots before treading the rough board floor of the interior. “I shan’t want you, Bakic.” The spy went out to bully the crowd, hustling them out of the farmyard into the lane. There were only two chairs in Major Gordon’s living room. He took one and invited the woman to use the other. The men huddled behind and then began to prompt her. They spoke to one another in a mixture of German and Serbo-Croat; the lawyer knew a little French; enough to make him listen anxiously to all the woman said, and to interrupt. The grocer gazed steadily at the floor and seemed to take no interest in the proceedings. He was there because he commanded respect and trust among the waiting crowd. He had been in a big way of business with branch stores throughout all the villages of Bosnia. With a sudden vehemence the woman, Mme. Kanyi, shook off her advisers and began her story. The people outside, she explained, were the survivors of an Italian concentration camp on the island of Rab. Most were Yugoslav nationals, but some, like herself, were refugees from Central Europe. She and her husband were on their way to Australia in 1939; their papers were in order; he had a job waiting for him in Brisbane. Then they had been caught by the war. When the King fled the Ustashi began massacring Jews. The Italians rounded them up and took them to the Adriatic. When Italy surrendered, the partisans for a few weeks held the coast. They brought the Jews to the mainland, conscribed all who seemed capable of useful work, and imprisoned the rest. Her husband had been attached to the army headquarters as electrician. Then the Germans moved in; the partisans fled, taking the Jews with them. And here they were, a hundred and eight of them, half  starving in Begoy. Major Gordon was not an imaginative man. He saw the complex historical situation in which he participated, quite simply in terms of friends and enemies and the paramount importance of the war-effort. He had nothing against Jews and nothing against communists. He wanted to defeat the Germans and go home. Here it seemed were a lot of tiresome civilians getting in the way of this object. He said cheerfully: “Well, I congratulate you.” Mme. Kanyi looked up quickly to see if he was mocking her, found that he was not, and continued to regard him now with sad, blank wonder. “After all,” he continued, “you’re among friends.” “Yes,” she said, too doleful for irony, “we heard that the British and Americans were friends of the partisans. It is true, then?” “Of course it’s true. Why do you suppose I am here?” “It is not true that the British and Americans are coming to take over the country?” “First I’ve heard of it.” “But it is well known that Churchill is a friend of the Jews.” “I’m sorry, madam, but I simply do not see what the Jews have got to do with it.” “But we are Jews. One hundred and eight of us.” “Well, what do you expect me to do about that?” “We want to go to Italy. We have relations there, some of us. There is an organization at Bari. My husband and I had our papers to go to Brisbane. Only get us to Italy and we shall be no more trouble. We cannot live as we are here. When winter comes we shall all die. We hear aeroplanes almost every night. Three aeroplanes could take us all. We have no luggage left.” “My dear madam, those aeroplanes are carrying essential war equipment, they are taking out wounded and officials. I’m very sorry you are having a hard time, but so are plenty of other people in this country. It won’t last long now. We’ve got the Germans on the run. I hope by Christmas to be in Zagreb.” “We must say nothing against the partisans?” “Not to me. Look here, let me give you a cup of cocoa. Then I have work to do.” He went to the window and called to Bakic for cocoa and biscuits. While it was coming the lawyer said in English: “We were better in Rab.” Then suddenly all three broke into a chatter of polyglot complaint, about their house, about their property which had been stolen, about their rations. If Churchill knew he would have them sent to Italy. Major Gordon said: “If it was not for the partisans you would now be in the hands of the Nazis,” but that word had no terror for them now. They shrugged hopelessly. One of the widows brought in a tray of cups and a tin of biscuits. “Help yourselves,” said Major Gordon. “How many, please, may we take?” “Oh, two or three.” With tense self-control each took three biscuits, watching the others to see they did not disgrace the meeting by greed. The grocer whispered to Mme. Kanyi and she explained: “He says will you excuse him if he keeps one for a friend?” The man had tears in his eyes as he snuffed his cocoa; once he had handled sacks of the stuff. They rose to go. Mme. Kanyi made a last attempt to attract his sympathy. “Will you please come and see the place where they have put us?” “I am sorry, madam, it simply is not my business. I am a military liaison officer, nothing more.” They thanked him humbly and profusely for the cocoa and left the house. Major Gordon saw them in the farmyard disputing. The men seemed to think Mme. Kanyi had mishandled the affair. Then Bakic hustled them out. Major Gordon saw the crowd close round them and then move off down the lane in a babel of explanation and reproach. 
II 
There were thermal springs at Begoy. The little town had come into being about them. Never a fashionable spa, it had attracted genuine invalids of modest means from all over the Hapsburg Empire. Serbian rule changed it very little. Until 1940 it retained its Austrian style; now the place was ravaged. Partisans and Ustashi had fought there, or, rather, each in turn had fired it and fled. Most houses were gutted and the occupants camped in basements or improvised shelters. Major Gordon’s normal routine did not take him into the town, for the officials and military were in farmhouses like his own on the outskirts, but he daily frequented the little park and public gardens. These had been charmingly laid out sixty years before and were, surprisingly, still kept in order by two old gardeners who had stayed on quietly weeding and pruning while the streets were in flames and noisy with machine-gun fire. There were winding paths and specimen trees, statuary, a bandstand, a pond with carp and exotic ducks, and the ornamental cages of what had once been a little zoo. The gardeners kept rabbits in one of these, fowls in another, a red squirrel in a third. The partisans had shown a peculiar solicitude for these gardens; they had cut a bed in the centre of the principal lawn in the shape of the Soviet star and had shot a man whom they caught chopping a rustic seat for firewood. Above the gardens lay a slope wooded with chestnut and full of paths carefully graded for the convalescent with kiosks every kilometre, where once postcards and coffee and medicinal water had been on sale. Here for an hour a day in the soft autumn sunshine Major Gordon could forget the war. More than once on his walks there he met Mme. Kanyi, saluted her, and smiled. Then, after a week, he received a signal from his headquarters in Bari saying: Unrra research team require particulars displaced persons Yugoslavia stop report any your district. He replied: One hundred and eight Jews. Next day (there was wireless communication for only two hours daily): Expedite details Jews names nationality conditions. So his duty took him away from the gardens into the streets where the lime trees still flourished between the stucco shells. He passed ragged, swaggering partisans, all young, some scarcely more than children; girls in battle dress, bandaged, bemedalled, girdled with grenades, squat, chaste, cheerful, sexless, barely human, who had grown up in mountain bivouacs, singing patriotic songs, arm-in-arm along the pavements where a few years earlier rheumatics had crept with parasols and light, romantic novels. The Jews lived in a school near the ruined church. Bakic led him there. They found the house in half darkness for the glass had all gone from the windows and been replaced with bits of wood and tin collected from other ruins. There was no furniture. The inmates for the most part lay huddled in little nests of straw and rags. As Major Gordon and Bakic entered they roused themselves, got to their feet and retreated towards the walls and darker corners, some raising their fists in salute, others hugging bundles of small possessions. Bakic called one of them forward and questioned him roughly in Serbo-Croat. “He says de others gone for firewood. Dese ones sick. What you want me tell em?” “Say that the Americans in Italy want to help them. I have come to make a report on what they need.” The announcement brought them volubly to life. They crowded round, were joined by others from other parts of the house until Major Gordon stood surrounded by thirty or more all asking for things, asking frantically for whatever came first to mind—a needle, a lamp, butter, soap, a pillow; for remote dreams—a passage to Tel Aviv, an aeroplane to New York, news of a sister last seen in Bucharest, a bed in a hospital. “You see dey all want somepin different, and dis is only a half of dem.” For twenty minutes or so Major Gordon remained, overpowered, half-suffocated. Then he said: “Well, I think we’ve seen enough. I shan’t get much further in this crowd. Before we can do anything we’ve got to get them organized. They must make out their own list. I wish we could find that Hungarian woman who talked French. She made some sense.” Bakic inquired and reported: “She don’t live here. Her husband works on the electric light so dey got a house to demselves in de park.” “Well, let’s get out of here and try to find her.” They left the house and emerged into the fresh air and sunshine and the singing companies of young warriors. Major Gordon breathed gratefully. This was the world he understood, arms, an army, allies, an enemy, injuries given and taken honourably. Very high above them a huge force of minute shining bombers hummed across the sky in perfect formation on its daily route from Foggia to somewhere east of Vienna. “There they go again,” he said. “I wouldn’t care to be underneath when they unload.” It was one of his duties to impress the partisans with the might of their allies, with the great destruction and slaughter on distant fields which would one day, somehow, bring happiness here where they seemed forgotten. He delivered a little statistical lecture to Bakic about block-busters and pattern-bombing. But another part of his mind was all the time slowly being set in motion. He had seen something entirely new, which needed new eyes to see clearly: humanity in the depths, misery of quite another order from anything he had guessed before. He was as yet not conscious of terror or pity. His steady Scottish mind would take some time to assimilate the experience. 
III 
They found the Kanyis’ house. It was a tool shed hidden by shrubs from the public park. A single room, an earth floor, a bed, a table, a dangling electric globe; compared with the schoolhouse, a place of delicious comfort and privacy. Major Gordon did not see the interior that afternoon for Mme. Kanyi was hanging washing on a line outside, and she led him away from the hut, saying that her husband was asleep. “He was up all night and did not come home until nearly midday. There was a breakdown at the plant.” “Yes,” said Major Gordon, “I had to go to bed in the dark at nine.” “It is always breaking. It is quite worn out. He cannot get the proper fuel. And all the cables are rotten. The General does not understand and blames him for everything. Often he is out all night.” Major Gordon dismissed Bakic and talked about U.N.R.R.A. Mme. Kanyi did not react in the same way as the wretches in the schoolhouse; she was younger and better fed and therefore more hopeless. “What can they do for us?” she asked. “How can they? Why should they? We are of no importance. You told us so yourself. You must see the Commissar,” she said. “Otherwise he will think there is some plot going on. We can do nothing, accept nothing, without the Commissar’s permission. You will only make more trouble for us.” “But at least you can produce the list they want in Bari.” “Yes, if the Commissar says so. Already my husband has been questioned about why I have talked to you. He was very much upset. The General was beginning to trust him. Now they think he is connected with the British, and last night the lights failed when there was an important conference. It is better that you do nothing except through the Commissar. I know these people. My husband works with them.” “You have rather a privileged position with them.” “Do you believe that for that reason I do not want to help my people?” Some such thoughts had passed through Major Gordon’s mind. Now he paused, looked at Mme. Kanyi and was ashamed. “No,” he said. “I suppose it would be natural to think so,” said Mme. Kanyi gravely. “It is not always true that suffering makes people unselfish. But sometimes it is.” Major Gordon returned to his quarters in a reflective mood that was unusual to him. 
IV 
The partisans were nocturnal in their habits. They slept late in the mornings, idled about at midday smoking, ate in the early afternoon, and then towards sundown seemed to come alive. Most of their conferences took place after dark. That evening Major Gordon was thinking of going to bed when he was summoned to the General. He and Bakic stumbled along cart tracks to the villa which housed the general staff. They found the General, his second-in-command, the Commissar, and the old lawyer who was called the Minister of the Interior. Most meetings in this room were concerned with supplies. The General would submit a detailed, exorbitant list of immediate requirements—field artillery, boots, hospital equipment, wireless apparatus—and so forth. They worked on the principle of asking for everything and item by item reducing their demands to practicable size. In these tedious negotiations Major Gordon enjoyed the slight advantage of being the giver and the final judge of what was reasonable; all the partisans could do was dissipate any sense he might have of vicarious benefaction. He always left feeling a skinflint. Formal politeness was maintained and sometimes even a faint breath of cordiality. Tonight, however, the atmosphere was entirely changed. The General and the Commissar had served together in Spain, the second-in-command was a professional officer from the Royal Yugoslav Army, the Minister of the Interior was a nonentity introduced to give solemnity to the occasion. They sat round the table. Bakic stood in the background. His place as interpreter was taken by a young communist of undefined position whom Major Gordon had met once or twice before at headquarters. He spoke excellent English. “The General wishes to know why you went to visit the Jews today.” “I was acting on orders from my headquarters.” “The General does not understand how the Jews are the concern of the Military Mission.” Major Gordon attempted an explanation of the aims and organization of U.N.R.R.A. He did not know a great deal about them and had no great respect for the members he had met, but he did his best. General and Commissar conferred. Then: “The Commissar says if those measures will take place after the war, what are they doing now?” Major Gordon described the need for planning. U.N.R.R.A. must know what quantities of seed corn, bridge-building materials, rolling stock and so on were needed to put ravaged countries on their feet. “The Commissar does not understand how this concerns the Jews.” Major Gordon spoke of the millions of displaced persons all over Europe who must be returned to their homes. “The Commissar says that is an internal matter.” “So is bridge building.” “The Commissar says bridge building is a good thing.” “So is helping displaced persons.” Commissar and General conferred. “The General says any questions of internal affairs should be addressed to the Minister of the Interior.” “Tell him that I am very sorry if I have acted incorrectly. I merely wished to save everyone trouble. I was sent a question by my superiors. I did my best to answer it in the simplest way. May I now request the Minister of the Interior to furnish me with a list of the Jews?” “The General is glad that you understand that you have acted incorrectly.” “Will the Minister of the Interior be so kind as to make the list for me?” “The General does not understand why a list is needed.” And so it began again. They talked for an hour. At length Major Gordon lost patience and said: “Very well. Am I to report that you refuse all cooperation with Unrra?” “We will cooperate in all necessary matters.” “But with regard to the Jews?” “It must be decided by the Central Government whether that is a necessary matter.” At length they parted. On the way home Bakic said: “Dey mighty sore with you, Major. What for you make trouble with dese Jews?” “Orders,” said Major Gordon, and before going to bed drafted a signal: “Jews condition now gravely distressed will become desperate winter stop Local authorities uncooperative stop Only hope higher level.” A fortnight passed. Three aeroplanes landed, delivered their loads and took off. The R.A.F. officer said: “There won’t be many more of these trips. They usually get snow by the end of October.” The partisans punctiliously checked all supplies and never failed to complain of their quantity or quality. Major Gordon did not forget the Jews. Their plight oppressed him on his daily walks in the gardens, where the leaves were now falling fast and burning smokily in the misty air. The Jews were numbered, very specially, among his allies and the partisans lapsed from his friendship. He saw them now as a part of the thing he had set out hopefully to fight in the days when there had been a plain, unequivocal issue between right and wrong. Uppermost in his conscious mind was resentment against the General and Commissar for their reprimand. By such strange entrances does compassion sometimes slip, disguised, into the human heart. At the end of the fortnight he was elated to receive the signal: “Central Government approves in principle evacuation Jews stop Dispatch two repeat two next plane discuss problem with Unrra.” Major Gordon went with this signal to the Minister of the Interior who was lying in bed drinking weak tea. Bakic explained, “He’s sick and don’t know nothing. You better talk to de Commissar.” The Commissar confirmed that he had received instructions. “I suggest we send the Kanyis.” “He say, why de Kanyis?” “Because they make most sense.” “Pardon me?” “Because they seem the most responsible pair.” “De Commissar says, responsible for what?” “They are the best able to put their case sensibly.” A long discussion followed between the Commissar and Bakic. “He won’t send de Kanyis.” “Why not?” “Kanyi got plenty work with de dynamo.” So another pair was chosen and sent to Bari, the grocer and the lawyer who had first called on him. Major Gordon saw them off. They seemed stupefied and sat huddled among bundles and blankets on the airfield during the long wait. Only when the aeroplane was actually there, illumined by the long line of bonfires lit to guide it, did they both suddenly break into tears. When Major Gordon held out his hand to them, they bent and kissed it. Two days later Bari signalled: “Receive special flight four Dakotas 1130 hrs tonight stop dispatch all Jews.” In a mood of real joy Major Gordon set about making the arrangements. 
V 
The landing strip was eight miles from the town. Before dusk the procession started. Some had somehow contrived to hire peasant carts. Most went on foot, bowed and laden. At ten o’clock Major Gordon drove out and found them, a dark mass, on the embankment of what had once been a railway. Most were asleep. There was mist on the ground. He said to the Squadron Leader: “Is this going to lift?” “It’s been getting thicker for the last hour.” “Will they be able to land?” “Not a chance.” “We’d better get these people home.” “Yes, I’m just sending the cancellation signal now.” Major Gordon could not bear to wait. He drove back alone but could not rest; hours later, he went out and waited in the mist at the junction of lane and road until the weary people hobbled past into the town. Twice in the next three weeks the grim scene was repeated. On the second occasion the fires were lit, the aeroplanes were overhead and could be heard circling, recircling and at length heading west again. That evening, Major Gordon prayed: “Please God make it all right. You’ve done things like that before. Just make the mist clear. Please God help these people.” But the sound of the engines dwindled and died away, and the hopeless Jews stirred themselves and set off again on the way they had come. That week came the first heavy fall of snow. There would be no more landing until the spring. Major Gordon despaired of doing anything for the Jews, but powerful forces were at work on their behalf in Bari. He soon received a signal: “Expect special drop shortly relief supplies for Jews stop Explain partisan HQ these supplies only repeat only for distribution Jews.” He called on the General with this communication. “What supplies?” “I presume food and clothing and medicine.” “For three months I have been asking for these things for my men. The Third Corps have no boots. In the hospital they are operating without anaesthetics. Last week we had to withdraw from two forward positions because there were no rations.” “I know. I have signalled about it repeatedly.” “Why is there food and clothes for the Jews and not for my men?” “I cannot explain. All I have come to ask is whether you can guarantee distribution.” “I will see.” Major Gordon signalled: “Respectfully submit most injudicious discriminate in favour of Jews stop Will endeavour secure proportionate share for them of general relief  supplies,” and received in answer: “Three aircraft will drop Jewish supplies point C 1130 hrs 21st stop These supplies from private source not military stop Distribute according previous signal.” On the afternoon of the 21st the Squadron Leader came to see Major Gordon. “What’s the idea?” he said. “I’ve just been having the hell of a schemozzle with the Air Liaison comrade about tonight’s drop. He wants the stuff put in bond or something till he gets orders from higher up. He’s a reasonable sort of chap usually. I’ve never seen him on such a high horse. Wanted everything checked in the presence of the Minister of the Interior and put under joint guard. Never heard such a lot of rot. I suppose someone at Bari has been playing at politics as usual.” That night the air was full of parachutes and of “free-drops” whistling down like bombs. The Anti-Fascist Youth retrieved them. They were loaded on carts, taken to a barn near the General’s headquarters and formally impounded. 
VI 
The war in Yugoslavia took a new turn. The first stage of German withdrawal was complete; they stood now on a line across Croatia and Slovenia. Marshal Tito flew from Vis to join the Russian and Bulgarian columns in Belgrade. A process of reprisal began in the “liberated” areas. The Germans remained twenty miles to the north of Begoy, but behind nothing except snow now closed the road to Dalmatia. Major Gordon took part in many Victory Celebrations. But he did not forget the Jews; nor did their friends at Bari. In mid-December Bakic one day announced: “De Jews again,” and going out into the yard Major Gordon found it full of his former visitors, but now transformed into a kind of farcical army. All of them, men and women, wore military greatcoats, Balaclava helmets, and knitted woollen gloves. Orders had been received from Belgrade, and distribution of the stores had suddenly taken place, and here were the recipients to thank him. The spokesmen were different on this occasion. The grocer and lawyer had disappeared forever. Madame Kanyi kept away for reasons of her own; an old man made a longish speech which Bakic rendered “Dis guy say dey’s all very happy.” For the next few days a deplorable kind of ostentation seemed to possess the Jews. A curse seemed to have been lifted. They appeared everywhere, trailing the skirts of  their greatcoats in the snow, stamping their huge new boots, gesticulating with their gloved hands. Their faces shone with soap, they were full of Spam and dehydrated fruits. They were a living psalm. And then, as suddenly, they disappeared. “What has happened to them?” “I guess dey been moved some other place,” said Bakic. “Why?” “People make trouble for them.” “Who?” “Partisan people dat hadn’t got no coats and boots. Dey make trouble wid de Commissar so de Commissar move dem on last night.” Major Gordon had business with the Commissar. The Anti-Fascist Theatre Group was organizing a Liberation Concert and had politely asked him to supply words and music of  English anti-fascist songs, so that all the allies would be suitably represented. Major Gordon had to explain that his country had no anti-fascist songs and no patriotic songs that anyone cared to sing. The Commissar noted this further evidence of Western decadence with grim satisfaction. For once there was no need to elaborate. The Commissar understood. It was just as he had been told years before in Moscow. It had been the same thing in Spain. The Attlee Brigade would never sing. When the business was over Major Gordon said: “I see the Jews have moved.” Bakic was left outside nowadays, and the intellectual young man acted as interpreter. Without consulting his chief he answered: “Their house was required for the Ministry of Rural Economy. New quarters have been found for them a few miles away.” The Commissar asked what was being said, grunted and rose. Major Gordon saluted and the interview was at an end. On the steps the young interpreter joined him. “The question of the Jews, Major Gordon. It was necessary for them to go. Our people could not understand why they should have special treatment. We have partisan women who work all day and have no boots or overcoats. How are we to explain that these old people who are doing nothing for our cause, should have such things?” “Perhaps by saying that they are old and have no cause. Their need is greater than a young enthusiast’s.” “Besides, Major Gordon, they were trying to make business. They were bartering the things they had been given. My parents are Jewish and I understand these people. They want always to make some trade.” “Well, what’s wrong with that?” “War is not a time for trade.” “Well, anyway, I hope they have decent quarters.” “They have what is suitable.” 
VII 
The gardens in winter seemed smaller than they had done in full leaf. You could see right through them from fence to fence; snow obliterated lawns and beds; the paths were only traceable by bootprints. Major Gordon daily took a handful of broken biscuits to the squirrel and fed him through the bars. One day while he was thus engaged, watching the little creature go through the motions of concealment, cautiously return, grasp the food, jump away and once more perform the mime of digging and covering, he saw Mme. Kanyi approach down the path. She was carrying a load of brushwood, stooping under it, so that she did not see him until she was quite close. Major Gordon was particularly despondent that day for he had just received a signal for recall. The force was being re-named and reorganized. He was to report as soon as feasible to Bari. Major Gordon was confident that word had come from Belgrade that he was no longer persona grata. He greeted Mme. Kanyi with warm pleasure. “Let me carry that.” “No, please. It is better not.” “I insist.” Mme. Kanyi looked about her. No one was in sight. She let Major Gordon take the load and carry it towards her hut. “You have not gone with the others?” “No, my husband is needed.” “And you don’t wear your greatcoat.” “Not out of doors. I wear it at night in the hut. The coats and boots make everyone hate us, even those who had been kind before.” “But partisan discipline is so firm. Surely there was no danger of violence?” “No, that was not the trouble. It was the peasants. The partisans are frightened of the peasants. They will settle with them later, but at present they are dependent on them for food. Our people began to exchange things with the peasants. They would give needles and thread, razors, things no one can get, for turkeys and apples. No one wants money. The peasants preferred bartering with our people to taking the partisans’ bank-notes. That was what made the trouble.” “Where have the others gone?” She spoke a name which meant nothing to Major Gordon. “You have not heard of that place? It is twenty miles away. It is where the Germans and Ustashi made a camp. They kept the Jews and gypsies and communists and royalists there, to work on the canal. Before they left they killed what were left of the prisoners—not many. Now the partisans have found new inhabitants for it.” They had reached the hut and Major Gordon entered to place his load in a corner near the little stove. It was the first and last time he crossed the threshold. He had a brief impression of orderly poverty and then was outside in the snow. “Listen, Mme. Kanyi,” he said. “Don’t lose heart. I am being recalled to Bari. As soon as the road is clear I shall be leaving. When I get there I promise I’ll raise Cain about this. You’ve plenty of friends there and I’ll explain the whole situation to them. We’ll get you all out, I promise.” Major Gordon had one further transaction with Mme. Kanyi before his departure. There fell from the heavens one night a huge parcel of assorted literature—the gift of one of the more preposterous organizations which abounded in Bari. This department aimed at re-educating the Balkans by distributing Fortune, The Illustrated London News and handbooks of popular, old-fashioned agnosticism. From time to time during Major Gordon’s tour of duty bundles of this kind had arrived. He had hitherto deposited them in the empty office of the Director of Rest and Culture. On this last occasion, however, he thought of Mme. Kanyi. She had a long, lonely winter ahead of her. She might find something amusing in the pile. So he despatched it to her by one of the widows, who finding her out, left it on the step in the snow. Then within a few days the road to the coast was declared open and Major Gordon laboriously made his way to Split and so to Bari. 
VIII 
Bari had much besides the bones of St. Nicholas. Those who were quartered there complained but they constituted the Mont Parnasse of the Allied Armies. One met more queer old friends in its messes and clubs than anywhere else in the world at this last stage of the war, and to those on leave from the Balkans its modest amenities seemed the height of luxury. But Major Gordon, during his fortnight of “reporting to headquarters” had deeper interests than on earlier leaves. He was determined to get the Jews out of Croatia and by dint of exploring the byways of semi-official life, of visiting committees and units with noncommittal designations in obscure offices, he was in fact able to quicken interest, supply detailed information and in the end set the official machine to work which eventually resulted in a convoy of new Ford trucks making the journey from the coast to Begoy and back for the sole and specific purpose of rescuing the Jews. By the time that they arrived in Italy Major Gordon was back in Yugoslavia for a brief appointment as liaison with a camp of escaped prisoners of war, but he got news of the move and for the first time tasted the sweet and heady cup of victory. “At least I’ve done something worthwhile in this bloody war,” he said. When next he passed through Bari it was on his way home to England, for the military mission was being wound up and replaced by regular diplomatic and consular officials. He had not forgotten his Jews, however, and, having with difficulty located them, drove out to a camp near Lecce, in a flat country of olive and almond and white beehive huts. Here they rested, part of a collection of four or five hundred, all old and all baffled, all in army greatcoats and Balaclava helmets. “I can’t see the point of their being here,” said the Commandant. “We feed them and doctor them and house them. That’s all we can do. No one wants them. The Zionists are only interested in the young. I suppose they’ll just sit here till they die.” “Are they happy?” “They complain the hell of a lot but then they’ve got quite a lot to complain about. It’s a lousy place to be stuck in.” “I’m particularly interested in a pair called Kanyi.” The Commandant looked down his list. “No trace of them here.” “Good. That probably means they got off to Australia all right.” “Not from here, old man. I’ve been here all along. No one has ever left.” “Could you make sure? Anyone in the Begoy draft would know about them.” The Commandant sent his interpreter to inquire while he took Major Gordon into the shed he called his mess, and gave him a drink. Presently the man returned. “All correct, sir. The Kanyis never left Begoy. They got into some kind of trouble there and were jugged.” “May I go with the interpreter and ask about it?” “By all means, old man. But aren’t you making rather heavy weather of it? What do two more or less matter?” Major Gordon went into the compound with the interpreter. Some of the Jews recognized him and crowded round with complaints and petitions. All he could learn about the Kanyis was that they had been taken off the truck by the partisan police just as it was about to start. He had one more day in Bari before his flight home. He spent it revisiting the offices where he had begun his work of liberation. But this time he received little sympathy. “We don’t really want to bother the Jugs any more. They really cooperated very well about the whole business. Besides the war’s over now in that part. There’s no particular point in moving people out. We’re busy at the moment moving people in.” This man was in fact at that moment busy despatching royalist officers to certain execution. The Jewish office showed no interest when they understood that he had not come to sell them illicit arms. “We must first set up the State,” they said. “Then it will be a refuge for all. First things first.” So Major Gordon returned to England unsatisfied and he might never have heard any more of the matter, had he not a cousin in the newly reopened Ministry at Belgrade. Months later he heard from him: “I’ve been to a lot of trouble and made myself quite unpopular in getting information about the couple you’re interested in. The Jugs are very close but at last I got matey with the head of the police who wants us to return some refugees we’ve got in our zone in Austria. He dug out the file for me. Both were condemned by a Peoples’ Court and executed. The man had committed sabotage on the electric light plant. The woman had been a spy for a “foreign power.” Apparently she was the mistress of a foreign agent who frequented her house while the husband was busy destroying the dynamo. A lot of foreign propaganda publications were found in her house and produced as evidence. What very unsavoury friends you seem to have.” It so happened that this letter arrived on the day when the Allies were celebrating the end of the war in Asia. Major Gordon was back with his regiment. He did not feel inclined to go out that evening and join in the rejoicing. The mess was empty save for the misanthropic second-in-command and the chaplain (although of Highland origin the regiment was full of Glasgow Irish and had a Benedictine monk attached to them). The second-in-command spoke as he had spoken most evenings since the General Election..... “I don’t know what they mean by ‘Victory.’ We start the bloody war for Poland. Well that’s ceased to exist. We fight it in Burma and Egypt—and you can bet your boots we shall give them up in a few months to the very fellows who’ve been against us. We spent millions knocking Germany down and now we shall spend millions building it up again.....” “Don’t you think, perhaps, people feel better than they did in 1938?” said the chaplain. “No,” said the second-in-command. “They haven’t got rid of that unhealthy sense of guilt they had?” “No,” said Major Gordon. “I never had it before. Now I have.” And he told the story of the Kanyis. “Those are the real horrors of war—not just people having their legs blown off,” he concluded. “How do you explain that, padre?” There was no immediate answer until the second-in-command said: “You did all you could. A darn sight more than most people would have done.” “That’s your answer,” said the chaplain. “You mustn’t judge actions by their apparent success. Everything you did was good in itself.” “A fat lot of good it did the Kanyis.” “No. But don’t you think it just possible that they did you good? No suffering need ever be wasted. It is just as much part of Charity to receive cheerfully as to give.” “Well, if you’re going to start preaching a sermon, padre,” said the second-in-command, “I’m off to bed.” “I’d like you to tell me a bit more about that,” said Major Gordon. 
Love Among The Ruins
I 
Despite their promises at the last Election, the politicians had not yet changed the climate. The State Meteorological Institute had so far produced only an unseasonable fall of snow and two little thunderbolts no larger than apricots. The weather varied from day to day and from county to county as it had done of old, most anomalously. This was a rich, old-fashioned Tennysonian night. Strains of a string quartet floated out from the drawing-room windows and were lost amid the splash and murmur of the gardens. In the basin the folded lilies had left a brooding sweetness over the water. No gold fin winked in the porphyry font and any peacock which seemed to be milkily drooping in the moon-shadows was indeed a ghost, for the whole flock of them had been found mysteriously and rudely slaughtered a day or two ago in the first disturbing flush of this sudden summer. Miles, sauntering among the sleeping flowers, was suffused with melancholy. He did not much care for music and this was his last evening at Mountjoy. Never again, perhaps, would he be free to roam these walks. Mountjoy had been planned and planted in the years of which he knew nothing; generations of skilled and patient husband-men had weeded and dunged and pruned; generations of dilettanti had watered it with cascades and jets; generations of collectors had lugged statuary here; all, it seemed, for his enjoyment this very night under this huge moon. Miles knew nothing of such periods and processes, but he felt an incomprehensible tidal pull towards the circumjacent splendours. Eleven struck from the stables. The music ceased. Miles turned back and, as he reached the terrace, the shutters began to close and the great chandeliers were one by one extinguished. By the light of the sconces which still shone on their panels of faded satin and clouded gold, he joined the company dispersing to bed through the islands of old furniture. His room was not one of the grand succession which lay along the garden front. Those were reserved for murderers. Nor was it on the floor above, tenanted mostly by sexual offenders. His was a humbler wing. Indeed he overlooked the luggage porch and the coal bunker. Only professional men visiting Mountjoy on professional business and very poor relations had been put here in the old days. But Miles was attached to this room, which was the first he had ever called his own in all his twenty years of Progress. His next-door neighbour, a Mr. Sweat, paused at his door to say good-night. It was only now after twenty months’ proximity, when Miles’s time was up, that this veteran had begun to unbend. He and a man named Soapy, survivals of another age, had kept themselves to themselves, talking wistfully of cribs they had cracked, of sparklers, of snug bar-parlours where they had met their favourite fences, of strenuous penal days at the Scrubs and on the Moor. They had small use for the younger generation; crime, calvinism and classical music were their interests. But at last Mr. Sweat had taken to nodding, to grunting, and finally, too late for friendship, to speaking to Miles. “What price the old strings tonight, chum?” he asked. “I wasn’t there, Mr. Sweat.” “You missed a treat. Of course nothing’s ever good enough for old Soapy. Made me fair sick to hear Soapy going on all the time. The viola was scratchy, Soapy says. They played the Mozart just like it was Haydn. No feeling in the Debussy pizzicato, says Soapy.” “Soapy knows too much.” “Soapy knows a lot more than some I could mention, schooling or no schooling. Next time they’re going to do the Grosse Fugue as the last movement of the B-flat. That’s something to look forward to, that is, though Soapy says no late Beethoven comes off. We’ll see. Leastways, me and Soapy will; you won’t. You’re off tomorrow. Pleased?” “Not particularly.” “No, no more wouldn’t I be. It’s a funny thing but I’ve settled down here wonderful. Never thought I should. It all seemed a bit too posh at first. Not like the old Scrubs. But it’s a real pretty place once you’re used to it. Wouldn’t mind settling here for a lifer if they’d let me. The trouble is there’s no security in crime these days. Time was, you knew just what a job was worth, six months, three years; whatever it was, you knew where you were. Now what with prison commissioners and Preventive Custody and Corrective Treatment they can keep you in or push you out just as it suits them. It’s not right. “I’ll tell you what it is, chum,” continued Mr. Sweat. “There’s no understanding of crime these days like what there was. I remember when I was a nipper, the first time I came up before the beak, he spoke up straight: ‘My lad,’ he says, ‘you are embarking upon a course of life that can only lead to disaster and degradation in this world and everlasting damnation in the next.’ Now that’s talking. It’s plain sense and it shows a personal interest. But last time I was up, when they sent me here, they called me an ‘antisocial phenomenon’; said I was ‘maladjusted.’ That’s no way to speak of a man what was doing time before they was in long trousers, now is it?” “They said something of the same kind to me.” “Yes and now they’re giving you the push, just like you hadn’t no Rights. I tell you it’s made a lot of the boys uncomfortable your going out all of a sudden like this. Who’ll it be next time, that’s what we’re wondering? “I tell you where you went wrong, chum. You didn’t give enough trouble. You made it too easy for them to say you was cured. Soapy and me got wise to that. You remember them birds as got done in? That was Soapy and me. They took a lot of killing too; powerful great bastards. But we got the evidence all hid away tidy and if there’s ever any talk of me and Soapy being ‘rehabilitated’ we’ll lay it out conspicuous. “Well, so long, chum. Tomorrow’s my morning for Remedial Repose so I daresay you’ll be off before I get down. Come back soon.” “I hope so,” said Miles and turned alone in his own room. He stood briefly at the window and gazed his last on the cobbled yard. He made a good figure of a man, for he came of handsome parents and all his life had been carefully fed and doctored and exercised; well clothed too. He wore the drab serge dress that was the normal garb of the period—only certified homosexuals wore colours—but there were differences of fit and condition among these uniforms. Miles displayed the handiwork of tailor and valet. He belonged to a privileged class. The State had made him. No clean-living, God-fearing, Victorian gentleman, he; no complete man of the renaissance; no genteel knight nor dutiful pagan nor, even, noble savage. All that succession of past worthies had gone its way, content to play a prelude to Miles. He was the Modern Man. His history, as it appeared in multuplet in the filing cabinets of numberless State departments, was typical of a thousand others. Before his birth the politicians had succeeded in bringing down his father and mother to penury; they, destitute, had thrown themselves into the simple diversions of the very poor and thus, between one war and the next, set in motion a chain-reaction of divorces which scattered them and their various associates in forlorn couples all over the Free World. The aunt on whom the infant Miles had been quartered was conscribed for work in a factory and shortly afterwards died of boredom at the conveyer-belt. The child was put to safety in an Orphanage. Huge sums were thenceforward spent upon him; sums which, fifty years earlier, would have sent whole quiversful of boys to Winchester and New College and established them in the learned professions. In halls adorned with Picassos and Légers he yawned through long periods of Constructive Play. He never lacked the requisite cubic feet of air. His diet was balanced and on the first Friday of every month he was psychoanalysed. Every detail of his adolescence was recorded and microfilmed and filed, until at the appropriate age he was transferred to the Air Force. There were no aeroplanes at the station to which he was posted. It was an institution to train instructors to train instructors to train instructors in Personal Recreation. There for some weeks he tended a dish-washing machine and tended it, as his adjutant testified at his trial, in an exemplary fashion. The work in itself lacked glory, but it was the normal novitiate. Men from the Orphanages provided the hard core of the Forces, a caste apart which united the formidable qualities of Janissary and Junker. Miles had been picked early for high command. Dish-washing was only the beginning. The adjutant, an Orphan too, had himself washed both dishes and officers’ underclothes, he testified, before rising to his present position. Courts Martial had been abolished some years before this. The Forces handed their defaulters over to the civil arm for treatment. Miles came up at quarter sessions. It was plain from the start, when Arson, Wilful Damage, Manslaughter, Prejudicial Conduct and Treason were struck out of the Indictment and the whole reduced to a simple charge of Antisocial Activity, that the sympathies of the Court were with the prisoner. The Station Psychologist gave his opinion that an element of incendiarism was inseparable from adolescence. Indeed, if checked, it might produce morbid neuroses. For his part he thought the prisoner had performed a perfectly normal act and, moreover, had shown more than normal intelligence in its execution. At this point some widows, mothers and orphans of the incinerated airmen set up an outcry from the public gallery and were sharply reminded from the Bench that this was a Court of Welfare and not a meeting of the Housewives’ Union. The case developed into a concerted eulogy of the accused. An attempt by the prosecution to emphasize the extent of the damage was rebuked from the Bench. “The jury,” he said, “will expunge from their memories these sentimental details which have been most improperly introduced.” “May be a detail to you,” said a voice from the gallery. “He was a good husband to me.” “Arrest that woman,” said the Judge. Order was restored and the panegyrics continued. At last the Bench summed up. He reminded the jury that it was a first principle of the New Law that no man could be held responsible for the consequences of his own acts. The jury must dismiss from their minds the consideration that much valuable property and many valuable lives had been lost and the cause of Personal Recreation gravely retarded. They had merely to decide whether in fact the prisoner had arranged inflammable material at various judiciously selected points in the Institution and had ignited them. If he had done so, and the evidence plainly indicated that he had, he contravened the Standing Orders of the Institution and was thereby liable to the appropriate penalties. Thus directed the jury brought in a verdict of guilty coupled with a recommendation of mercy towards the various bereaved persons who from time to time in the course of the hearing had been committed for contempt. The Bench reprimanded the jury for presumption and impertinence in the matter of the prisoners held in contempt, and sentenced Miles to residence during the State’s pleasure at Mountjoy Castle (the ancestral seat of a maimed V.C. of the Second World War, who had been sent to a Home for the Handicapped when the place was converted into a gaol). The State was capricious in her pleasures. For nearly two years Miles enjoyed her particular favours. Every agreeable remedial device was applied to him and applied, it was now proclaimed, successfully. Then without warning a few days back, while he lay dozing under a mulberry tree, the unexpected blow had fallen; they had come to him, the Deputy Chief-Guide and the sub-Deputy, and told him bluntly and brutally that he was rehabilitated. Now on this last night he knew he was to wake tomorrow on a harsh world. Nevertheless he slept and was gently awoken for the last time to the familiar scent of china tea on his bed table, the thin bread and butter, the curtains drawn above the luggage porch, the sunlit kitchen-yard and the stable clock just visible behind the cut-leaf copper beech. He breakfasted late and alone. The rest of the household were already engaged in the first community-songs of the day. Presently he was called to the Guidance Office. Since his first day at Mountjoy, when with other entrants Miles had been addressed at length by the Chief Guide on the Aims and Achievements of the New Penology, they had seldom met. The Chief Guide was almost always away addressing penological conferences. The Guidance Office was the former housekeeper’s room stripped now of its plush and patriotic pictures; sadly tricked out instead with standard civil-service equipment, class A. It was full of people. “This is Miles Plastic,” said the Chief Guide. “Sit down, Miles. You can see from the presence of our visitors this morning what an important occasion this is.” Miles took a chair and looked and saw seated beside the Chief Guide two elderly men whose faces were familiar from the television screen as prominent colleagues in the Coalition Government. They wore open flannel shirts, blazers with numerous pens and pencils protruding from the breast pocket, and baggy trousers. This was the dress of  very high politicians. “The Minister of Welfare and the Minister of Rest and Culture,” continued the Chief Guide. “The stars to which we have hitched our wagon. Have the press got the handout?” “Yes, Chief.” “And the photographers are all ready?” “Yes, Chief.” “Then I can proceed.” He proceeded as he had done at countless congresses, at countless spas and university cities. He concluded, as he always did: “In the New Britain which we are building, there are no criminals. There are only the victims of inadequate social services.” The Minister of Welfare, who had not reached his present eminence without the help of a certain sharpness in debate, remarked: “But I understood that Plastic is from one of our own Orphanages ...” “Plastic is recognized as a Special Case,” said the Chief Guide. The Minister of Rest and Culture, who in the old days had more than once done time himself, said: “Well, Plastic, lad, from all they do say I reckon you’ve been uncommon smart.” “Exactly,” said the Chief Guide. “Miles is our first success, the vindication of the Method.” “Of all the new prisons established in the first glorious wave of Reform, Mountjoy alone has produced a complete case of rehabilitation,” the Minister of Welfare said. “You may or may not be aware that the Method has come in for a good deal of criticism both in Parliament and outside. There are a lot of young hotheads who take their inspiration from our Great Neighbour in the East. You can quote the authorities to them till you’re black in the face but they are always pressing for all the latest gadgets of capital and corporal punishment, for chain gangs and solitary confinement, bread and water, the cat-o’nine-tails, the rope and the block, and all manner of new-fangled nonsense. They think we’re a lot of old fogeys. Thank goodness we’ve still got the solid sense of the people behind us, but we’re on the defensive now. We have to show results. That’s why we’re here this morning. To show them results. You are our Result.” These were solemn words and Miles in some measure responded to the occasion. He gazed before him blankly with an expression that might seem to be awe. “You’d best watch your step now, lad,” said the Minister of Rest and Culture. “Photographs,” said the Minister of Welfare. “Yes, shake my hand. Turn towards the cameras. Try to smile.” Bulbs flashed all over the dreary little room. “State be with you,” said the Minister of Welfare. “Give us a paw, lad,” said the Minister of Rest and Culture, taking Miles’s hand in his turn. “And no funny business, mind.” Then the politicians departed. “The Deputy-Chief will attend to all the practical matters,” said the Chief wearily. “Go and see him now.” Miles went. “Well, Miles, from now on I must call you Mr. Plastic,” said the Deputy-Chief. “In less than a minute you become a Citizen. This little pile of papers is You. When I stamp them, Miles the Problem ceases to exist and Mr. Plastic the Citizen is born. We are sending you to Satellite City, the nearest Population Centre, where you will be attached to the Ministry of Welfare as a sub-official. In view of your special training you are not being classified as a Worker. The immediate material rewards, of course, are not as great. But you are definitely in the Service. We have set your foot on the bottom rung of the non-competitive ladder.” The Deputy Chief Guide picked up the rubber stamp and proceeded to his work of creation. Flip-thump, flip-thump the papers were turned and stained. “There you are, Mr. Plastic,” said the Deputy-Chief handing Miles, as it were, the baby. At last Miles spoke: “What must I do to get back here?” he asked. “Come, come, you’re rehabilitated now, remember. It is your turn to give back to the State some of the service the State has given you. You will report this morning to the Area Progressive. Transport has been laid on. State be with you, Mr. Plastic. Be careful, that’s your Certificate of Human Personality you’ve dropped—a vital document.” 
II 
Satellite City, one of a hundred such grand conceptions, was not yet in its teens but already the Dome of Security showed signs of wear. This was the name of the great municipal edifice about which the city was planned. The eponymous dome had looked well enough in the architect’s model, shallow certainly but amply making up in girth what it lacked in height, the daring exercise of some new trick of construction. But to the surprise of all, when the building arose and was seen from the ground, the dome blandly vanished. It was hidden forever among the roofs and butting shoulders of the ancillary wings and was never seen again from the outside except by airmen and steeplejacks. Only the name remained. On the day of its dedication, among massed politicians and People’s Choirs the great lump of building materials had shone fine as a factory in all its brilliance of glass and new concrete. Since then, during one of the rather frequent weekends of international panic, it had been camouflaged and its windows blackened. Cleaners were few and usually on strike. So the Dome of Security remained blotched and dingy, the sole permanent building of Satellite City. There were no workers’ flats, no officials’ garden suburb, no parks, no playgrounds yet. These were all on the drawing boards in the surveyor’s office, tattered at the edges, ringed by tea cups; their designer long since cremated and his ashes scattered among the docks and nettles. Thus the Dome of Security comprised, even more than had been intended, all the aspirations and amenities of the city. The officials subsisted in perpetual twilight. Great sheets of glass, planned to “trap” the sun, admitted few gleams from scratches in their coat of tar. At evening when the electric light came on, there was a faint glow, here and there. When, as often, the power station was “shedding its load” the officials stopped work early and groped their way back to their darkened huts where in the useless refrigerators their tiny rations were quietly putrefying. On working days the officials, male and female, trudged through cigarette ends round and round, up and down what had once been lift-shafts, in a silent, shabby, shadowy procession. Among these pilgrims of the dusk, in the weeks that followed his discharge from Mountjoy, moved the exiled Miles Plastic. He was in a key department. Euthanasia had not been part of the original 1945 Health Service; it was a Tory measure designed to attract votes from the aged and the mortally sick. Under the Bevan-Eden Coalition the service came into general use and won instant popularity. The Union of Teachers was pressing for its application to difficult children. Foreigners came in such numbers to take advantage of the service that immigration authorities now turned back the bearers of single tickets. Miles recognized the importance of his appointment even before he began work. On his first evening in the hostel his fellow sub-officials gathered round to question him. “Euthanasia? I say, you’re in luck. They work you jolly hard, of course, but it’s the one department that’s expanding.” “You’ll get promoted before you know your way about.” “Great State! You must have pull. Only the very bright boys get posted to Euthanasia.” “I’ve been in Contraception for five years. It’s a blind alley.” “They say that in a year or two Euthanasia will have taken over Pensions.” “You must be an Orphan.” “Yes, I am.” “That accounts for it. Orphans get all the plums. I had a Full Family Life, State help me.” It was gratifying, of course, this respect and envy. It was well to have fine prospects; but for the time being Miles’s duties were humble enough. He was junior sub-official in a staff of half a dozen. The Director was an elderly man called Dr. Beamish, a man whose character had been formed in the nervous ’30s, now much embittered, like many of his contemporaries, by the fulfilment of his early hopes. He had signed manifestos in his hot youth, had raised his fist in Barcelona and had painted abstractedly for Horizon; he had stood beside Spender at great concourses of Youth, and written “publicity” for the Last Viceroy. Now his reward had come to him. He held the most envied post in Satellite City and, sardonically, he was making the worst of it. Dr. Beamish rejoiced in every attenuation of official difficulties. Satellite City was said to be the worst served Euthanasia Centre in the State. Dr. Beamish’s patients were kept waiting so long that often they died natural deaths before he found it convenient to poison them. His small staff respected Dr. Beamish. They were all of the official class, for it was part of the grim little game which Dr. Beamish played with the higher authorities to economize extravagantly. His department, he maintained, could not, on its present allotment, afford workers. Even the furnace-man and the girl who despatched unwanted false teeth to the Dental Redistribution Centre were sub-officials. Sub-officials were cheap and plentiful. The Universities turned them out in thousands every year. Indeed, ever since the Incitement to Industry Act of 1955, which exempted workers from taxation—that great and popular measure of reform which had consolidated the now permanent Coalition Government—there had been a nefarious one-way traffic of expensively State-educated officials “passing,” as it was called, into the ranks of the workers. Miles’s duties required no special skill. Daily at ten the service opened its doors to welfare-weary citizens. Miles was the man who opened them, stemmed the too eager rush and admitted the first half-dozen; then he closed the doors on the waiting multitude until a Higher Official gave the signal for the admission of another batch. Once inside they came briefly under his charge; he set them in order, saw that they did not press ahead of their turn, and adjusted the television set for their amusement. A Higher Official interviewed them, checked their papers and arranged for the confiscation of their property. Miles never passed the door through which they were finally one by one conducted. A faint whiff of cyanide sometimes gave a hint of the mysteries beyond. Meanwhile he swept the waiting room, emptied the wastepaper basket and brewed tea—a worker’s job, for which the refinements of Mountjoy proved a too rich apprenticeship. In his hostel the same reproductions of Léger and Picasso as had haunted his childhood still stared down on him. At the cinema, to which he could afford, at the best, a weekly visit, the same films as he had seen free at Orphanage, Air Force station and prison, flickered and drawled before him. He was a child of Welfare, strictly schooled to a life of boredom, but he had known better than this. He had known the tranquil melancholy of the gardens at Mountjoy. He had known ecstasy when the Air Force Training School had whirled to the stars in a typhoon of flame. And as he moved sluggishly between Dome and hostel there rang in his ears the words of the old lag: “You didn’t give enough trouble.” Then one day, in the least expected quarter, in his own drab department, hope appeared. Miles later remembered every detail of that morning. It had started in the normal way; rather below normal indeed, for they were reopening after a week’s enforced idleness. There had been a strike among the coal-miners and Euthanasia had been at a standstill. Now the necessary capitulations had been signed, the ovens glowed again, and the queue at the patients’ entrance stretched halfway round the Dome. Dr. Beamish squinted at the waiting crowd through the periscope and said with some satisfaction: “It will take months to catch up on the waiting list now. We shall have to start making a charge for the service. It’s the only way to keep down the demand.” “The Ministry will never agree to that, surely, sir?” “Damned sentimentalists. My father and mother hanged themselves in their own backyard with their own clothesline. Now no one will lift a finger to help himself. There’s something wrong in the system, Plastic. There are still rivers to drown in, trains—every now and then—to put your head under; gas-fires in some of the huts. The country is full of the natural resources of death, but everyone has to come to us.” It was not often he spoke so frankly before his subordinates. He had overspent during the week’s holiday, drunk too much at his hostel with other unemployed colleagues. Always after a strike the senior officials returned to work in low spirits. “Shall I let the first batch in, sir?” “Not for the moment,” said Dr. Beamish. “There’s a priority case to see first, sent over with a pink chit from Drama. She’s in the private waiting room now. Fetch her in.” Miles went to the room reserved for patients of importance. All one wall was of glass. Pressed to it a girl was standing, turned away from him, looking out at the glum queue below. Miles stood, the light in his eyes, conscious only of a shadow which stirred at the sound of the latch and turned, still a shadow merely but of exquisite grace, to meet him. He stood at the door, momentarily struck silent at this blind glance of beauty. Then he said: “We’re quite ready for you now, miss.” The girl came nearer. Miles’s eyes adjusted themselves to the light. The shadow took form. The full vision was all that the first glance had hinted; more than all, for every slight movement revealed perfection. One feature only broke the canon of pure beauty; a long, silken, corn-gold beard. She said, with a deep, sweet tone, all unlike the flat conventional accent of the age: “Let it be quite understood that I don’t want anything done to me. I consented to come here. The Director of Drama and the Director of Health were so pathetic about it all that I thought it was the least I could do. I said I was quite willing to hear about your service, but I do not want anything done.” “Better tell him inside,” said Miles. He led her to Dr. Beamish’s room. “Great State!” said Dr. Beamish, with eyes for the beard alone. “Yes,” she said. “It is a shock, isn’t it? I’ve got used to it by now but I can understand how people feel seeing it for the first time.” “Is it real?” “Pull.” “It is strong. Can’t they do anything about it?” “Oh they’ve tried everything.” Dr. Beamish was so deeply interested that he forgot Miles’s presence. “Klugmann’s Operation, I suppose?” “Yes.” “It does go wrong like that every now and then. They had two or three cases at Cambridge.” “I never wanted it done. I never want anything done. It was the Head of the Ballet. He insists on all the girls being sterilized. Apparently you can never dance really well again after you’ve had a baby. And I did want to dance really well. Now this is what’s happened.” “Yes,” said Dr. Beamish. “Yes. They’re far too slap-dash. They had to put down those girls at Cambridge, too. There was no cure. Well, we’ll attend to you, young lady. Have you any arrangements to make or shall I take you straight away?” “But I don’t want to be put down. I told your assistant here, I’ve simply consented to come at all, because the Director of Drama cried so, and he’s rather a darling. I’ve not the smallest intention of letting you kill me.” While she spoke, Dr. Beamish’s geniality froze. He looked at her with hatred, not speaking. Then he picked up the pink form. “Then this no longer applies?” “No.” “Then for State’s sake,” said Dr. Beamish, very angry, “what are you wasting my time for? I’ve got more than a hundred urgent cases waiting outside and you come in here to tell me that the Director of Drama is a darling. I know the Director of Drama. We live side by side in the same ghastly hostel. He’s a pest. And I’m going to write a report to the Ministry about this tomfoolery which will make him and the lunatic who thinks he can perform a Klugmann, come round to me begging for extermination. And then I’ll put them at the bottom of the queue. Get her out of here, Plastic, and let some sane people in.” Miles led her into the public waiting room. “What an old beast,” she said. “What a perfect beast. I’ve never been spoken to like that before even in the ballet school. He seemed so nice at first.” “It’s his professional feeling,” said Miles. “He was naturally put out at losing such an attractive patient.” She smiled. Her beard was not so thick as quite to obscure her delicate ovoid of cheek and chin. She might have been peeping at him over ripe heads of barley. Her smile started in her wide grey eyes. Her lips under her golden moustachios were unpainted, tactile. A line of pale down sprang below them and ran through the centre of the chin, spreading and thickening and growing richer in colour till it met the full flow of the whiskers, but leaving on either side, clear and tender, two symmetrical zones, naked and provocative. So might have smiled some carefree deacon in the colonnaded schools of fifth-century Alexandria and struck dumb the heresiarchs. “I think your beard is beautiful.” “Do you really? I can’t help liking it too. I can’t help liking anything about myself, can you?” “Yes. Oh, yes.” “That’s not natural.” Clamour at the outer door interrupted the talk. Like gulls round a lighthouse the impatient victims kept up an irregular flap and slap on the panels. “We’re all ready, Plastic,” said a senior official. “What’s going on this morning?” What was going on? Miles could not answer. Turbulent sea birds seemed to be dashing themselves against the light in his own heart. “Don’t go,” he said to the girl. “Please, I shan’t be a minute.” “Oh, I’ve nothing to take me away. My department all think I’m half dead by now.” Miles opened the door and admitted an indignant half-dozen. He directed them to their chairs, to the registry. Then he went back to the girl who had turned away slightly from the crowd and drawn a scarf peasantwise round her head, hiding her beard. “I still don’t quite like people staring,” she said. “Our patients are far too busy with their own affairs to notice anyone else,” said Miles. “Besides you’d have been stared at all right if you’d stayed on in ballet.” Miles adjusted the television but few eyes in the waiting-room glanced towards it; all were fixed on the registrar’s table and the doors beyond. “Think of them all coming here,” said the bearded girl. “We give them the best service we can,” said Miles. “Yes, of course, I know you do. Please don’t think I was finding fault. I only meant, fancy wanting to die.” “One or two have good reasons.” “I suppose you would say that I had. Everyone has been trying to persuade me, since my operation. The medical officials were the worst. They’re afraid they may get into trouble for doing it wrong. And then the ballet people were almost as bad. They are so keen on Art that they say: ‘You were the best of your class. You can never dance again. How can life be worth living?’ What I try to explain is that it’s just because I could dance that I know life is worth living. That’s what Art means to me. Does that sound very silly?” “It sounds unorthodox.” “Ah, but you’re not an artist.” “Oh, I’ve danced all right. Twice a week all through my time at the Orphanage.” “Therapeutic dancing?” “That’s what they called it.” “But, you see, that’s quite different from Art.” “Why?” “Oh,” she said with a sudden full intimacy, with fondness. “Oh what a lot you don’t know.” The dancer’s name was Clara. 
III 
Courtship was free and easy in this epoch but Miles was Clara’s first lover. The strenuous exercises of her training, the austere standards of the corps-de-ballet and her devotion to her art had kept her body and soul unencumbered. For Miles, child of the State, Sex had been part of the curriculum at every stage of his education; first in diagrams, then in demonstrations, then in application, he had mastered all the antics of procreation. Love was a word seldom used except by politicians and by them only in moments of pure fatuity. Nothing that he had been taught prepared him for Clara. Once in drama, always in drama. Clara now spent her days mending ballet shoes and helping neophytes on the wall bars. She had a cubicle in a Nissen hut and it was there that she and Miles spent most of their evenings. It was unlike anyone else’s quarters in Satellite City. Two little paintings hung on the walls, unlike any paintings Miles had seen before, unlike anything approved by the Ministry of Art. One represented a goddess of antiquity, naked and rosy, fondling a peacock on a bank of flowers; the other a vast, tree-fringed lake and a party in spreading silken clothes embarking in a pleasure boat under a broken arch. The gilt frames were much chipped but what remained of them was elaborately foliated. “They’re French,” said Clara. “More than two hundred years old. My mother left them to me.” All her possessions had come from her mother, nearly enough of them to furnish the little room—a looking glass framed in porcelain flowers, a gilt, irregular clock. She and Miles drank their sad, officially compounded coffee out of brilliant, riveted cups. “It reminds me of prison,” said Miles when he was first admitted there. It was the highest praise he knew. On the first evening among this delicate bric-a-brac his lips found the bare twin spaces of her chin. “I knew it would be a mistake to let the beastly doctor poison me,” said Clara complacently. Full summer came. Another moon waxed over these rare lovers. Once they sought coolness and secrecy among the high cow-parsley and willow-herb of the waste building sites. Clara’s beard was all silvered like a patriarch’s in the midnight radiance. “On such a night as this,” said Miles, supine, gazing into the face of the moon, “on such a night as this I burned an Air Force Station and half its occupants.” Clara sat up and began lazily smoothing her whiskers, then more vigorously tugged the comb through the thicker, tangled growth of her head, dragging it from her forehead; re-ordered the clothing which their embraces had loosed. She was full of womanly content and ready to go home. But Miles, all male, post coitum tristis, was struck by a chill sense of loss. No demonstration or exercise had prepared him for this strange new experience of the sudden loneliness that follows requited love. Walking home they talked casually and rather crossly. “You never go to the ballet now.” “No.” “Won’t they give you seats?” “I suppose they would.” “Then why don’t you go?” “I don’t think I should like it. I see them often rehearsing. I don’t like it.” “But you lived for it.” “Other interests now.” “Me?” “Of course.” “You love me more than the ballet?” “I am very happy.” “Happier than if you were dancing?” “I can’t tell, can I? You’re all I’ve got now.” “But if you could change?” “I can’t.” “If?” “There’s no ‘if.’” “Damn.” “Don’t fret, darling. It’s only the moon.” And they parted in silence. November came, a season of strikes; leisure for Miles, unsought and unvalued; lonely periods when the ballet school worked on and the death house stood cold and empty. Clara began to complain of ill health. She was growing stout. “Just contentment,” she said at first, but the change worried her. “Can it be that beastly operation?” she asked. “I heard the reason they put down one of the Cambridge girls was that she kept growing fatter and fatter.” “She weighed nineteen stone,” said Miles. “I know because Dr. Beamish mentioned it. He has strong professional objections to the Klugmann operation.” “I’m going to see the Director of Medicine. There’s a new one now.” When she returned from her appointment, Miles, still left idle by the strikers, was waiting for her among her pictures and china. She sat beside him on the bed. “Let’s have a drink,” she said. They had taken to drinking wine together, very rarely because of the expense. The State chose and named the vintage. This month the issue was “Progress Port.” Clara kept it in a crimson, white-cut, Bohemian flagon. The glasses were modern, unbreakable and unsightly. “What did the doctor say?” “He’s very sweet.” “Well?” “Much cleverer than the one before.” “Did he say it was anything to do with your operation?” “Oh, yes. Everything to do with it.” “Can he put you right?” “Yes, he thinks so.” “Good.” They drank their wine. “That first doctor did make a mess of the operation, didn’t he?” “Such a mess. The new doctor says I’m a unique case. You see, I’m pregnant.” “Clara.” “Yes, it is a surprise, isn’t it?” “This needs thinking about,” said Miles. He thought. He refilled their glasses. He said: “It’s hard luck on the poor little beast not being an Orphan. Not much opportunity for it. If he’s a boy we must try and get him registered as a worker. Of course it might be a girl. Then,” brightly, “we could make her a dancer.” “Oh, don’t mention dancing,” cried Clara, and suddenly began weeping. “Don’t speak to me of dancing.” Her tears fell fast. No tantrum this, but deep uncontrolled inconsolable sorrow. And next day she disappeared. 
IV 
Santa-Claus-tide was near. Shops were full of shoddy little dolls. Children in the schools sang old ditties about peace and goodwill. Strikers went back to work in order to qualify for their seasonal bonus. Electric bulbs were hung in the conifers and the furnaces in the Dome of Security roared again. Miles had been promoted. He now sat beside the assistant registrar and helped stamp and file the documents of the dead. It was harder work than he was used to and Miles was hungry for Clara’s company. The lights were going out in the Dome and on the Goodwill Tree in the car park. He walked the half-mile of hutments to Clara’s quarters. Other girls were waiting for their consorts or setting out to find them in the Recreatorium, but Clara’s door was locked. A note, pinned to it, read: Miles, Going away for a bit. C. Angry and puzzled he returned to his hostel. Clara, unlike himself, had uncles and cousins scattered about the country. Since her operation she had been shy of visiting them. Now, Miles supposed, she was taking cover among them. It was the manner of her flight, so unlike her gentle ways, that tortured him. For a busy week he thought of nothing else. His reproaches sang in his head as the undertone to all the activities of the day and at night he lay sleepless, repeating in his mind every word spoken between them and every act of intimacy. After a week the thought of her became spasmodic and regular. The subject bored him unendurably. He strove to keep it out of his mind as a man might strive to control an attack of hiccups, and as impotently. Spasmodically, mechanically, the thought of Clara returned. He timed it and found that it came every seven and one-half minutes. He went to sleep thinking of her, he woke up thinking of her. But between times he slept. He consulted the departmental psychiatrist who told him that he was burdened by the responsibility of parentage. But it was not Clara the mother who haunted him, but Clara the betrayer. Next week he thought of her every twenty minutes. The week after that he thought of her irregularly, though often; only when something outside himself reminded him of her. He began to look at other girls and considered himself cured. He looked hard at other girls as he passed them in the dim corridors of the Dome and they looked boldly back at him. Then one of them stopped him and said: “I’ve seen you before with Clara” and at the mention of her name all interest in the other girl ceased in pain. “I went to visit her yesterday.” “Where?” “In hospital, of course. Didn’t you know?” “What’s the matter with her?” “She won’t say. Nor will anyone else at the hospital. She’s top secret. If you ask me she’s been in an accident and there’s some politician involved. I can’t think of any other reason for all the fuss. She’s covered in bandages and gay as a lark.” Next day, December 25th, was Santa Claus Day; no holiday in the department of Euthanasia, which was an essential service. At dusk Miles walked to the hospital, one of  the unfinished edifices, all concrete and steel and glass in front and a jumble of huts behind. The hall porter was engrossed in the television, which was performing an old obscure folk play which past generations had performed on Santa Claus Day, and was now revived and revised as a matter of historical interest. It was of professional interest to the porter for it dealt with maternity services before the days of Welfare. He gave the number of Clara’s room without glancing up from the strange spectacle of an ox and an ass, an old man with a lantern, and a young mother. “People here are always complaining,” he said. “They ought to realize what things were like before Progress.” The corridors were loud with relayed music. Miles found the hut he sought. It was marked “Experimental Surgery. Health Officers Only.” He found the cubicle. He found Clara sleeping, the sheet pulled up to her eyes, her hair loose on the pillow. She had brought some of her property with her. An old shawl lay across the bed table. A painted fan stood against the television set. She awoke, her eyes full of frank welcome, and pulled the sheet higher, speaking through it. “Darling, you shouldn’t have come. I was keeping it for a surprise.” Miles sat by the bed and thought of nothing to say except: “How are you?” “Wonderful. They’ve taken the bandages off today. They won’t let me have a looking glass yet but they say everything has been a tremendous success. I’m something very special, Miles—a new chapter in surgical progress.” “But what has happened to you? Is it something to do with the baby?” “Oh no. At least, it was. That was the first operation. But that’s all over now.” “You mean our child?” “Yes, that had to go. I should never have been able to dance afterwards. I told you all about it. That was why I had the Klugmann operation, don’t you remember?” “But you gave up dancing.” “That’s where they’ve been so clever. Didn’t I tell you about the sweet, clever new medical director? He’s cured all that.” “Your dear beard.” “Quite gone. An operation the new director invented himself. It’s going to be named after him or even perhaps after me. He’s so unselfish he wants to call it the Clara operation. He’s taken off all the skin and put on a wonderful new substance, a sort of synthetic rubber that takes grease-paint perfectly. He says the colour isn’t perfect but that it will never show on the stage. Look, feel it.” She sat up in bed, joyful and proud. Her eyes and brow were all that was left of the loved face. Below it something quite inhuman, a tight, slippery mask, salmon pink. Miles stared. In the television screen by the bed further characters had appeared—Food Production Workers. They seemed to declare a sudden strike, left their sheep and ran off at the bidding of some kind of shop-steward in fantastic dress. The machine by the bedside broke into song, an old, forgotten ditty: “O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy, O tidings of comfort and joy.” Miles retched unobtrusively. The ghastly face regarded him with fondness and pride. At length the right words came to him; the trite, the traditional sentence uttered by countless lips of generations of baffled and impassioned Englishmen: “I think I shall go for a short walk.” But first he walked only as far as his hostel. There he lay down until the moon moved to his window and fell across his sleepless face. Then he set out, walking far into the fields, out of sight of the Dome of Security, for two hours until the moon was near setting. He had travelled at random but now the white rays fell on a signpost and he read: “Mountjoy 3/4.” He strode on with only the stars to light his way till he came to the Castle gates. They stood open as always, gracious symbol of the new penology. He followed the drive. The whole lightless face of the old house stared at him silently, without rebuke. He knew now what was needed. He carried in his pocket a cigarette lighter which often worked. It worked for him now. No need for oil here. The dry old silk of the drawing-room curtains lit like paper. Paint and panelling, plaster and tapestry and gilding bowed to the embrace of the leaping flames. He stepped outside. Soon it was too hot on the terrace and he retreated further, to the marble temple at the end of the long walk. The murderers were leaping from the first-storey windows but the sexual offenders, trapped above, set up a wail of terror. He heard the chandeliers fall and saw the boiling lead cascading from the roof. This was something altogether finer than the strangulation of a few peacocks. He watched exultant as minute by minute the scene disclosed fresh wonders. Great timbers crashed within; outside, the lily pond hissed with falling brands; a vast ceiling of smoke shut out the stars and under it tongues of flame floated away into the treetops. Two hours later when the first engine arrived, the force of the fiery storm was already spent. Miles rose from his marble throne and began the long walk home. But he was no longer at all fatigued. He strode out cheerfully with his shadow, cast by the dying blaze, stretching before him along the lane. On the main road a motorist stopped him and asked: “What’s that over there? A house on fire?” “It was,” said Miles. “It’s almost out now.” “Looks like a big place. Only Government property, I suppose?” “That’s all,” said Miles. “Well hop in if you want a lift.” “Thanks,” said Miles, “I’m walking for pleasure.” 
V 
Miles rose after two hours in bed. The hostel was alive with all the normal activity of morning. The wireless was playing; the sub-officials were coughing over their wash basins; the reek of State sausages frying in State grease filled the asbestos cubicle. He was slightly stiff after his long walk and slightly footsore, but his mind was as calm and empty as the sleep from which he had awoken. The scorched-earth policy had succeeded. He had made a desert in his imagination which he might call peace. Once before he had burned his childhood. Now his brief adult life lay in ashes; the enchantments that surrounded Clara were one with the splendours of Mountjoy; her great golden beard, one with the tongues of flame that had leaped and expired among the stars; her fans and pictures and scraps of old embroidery, one with the bilded cornices and silk hangings, black, cold and sodden. He ate his sausage with keen appetite and went to work. All was quiet too at the Department of Euthanasia. The first announcement of the Mountjoy disaster had been on the early news. Its proximity to Satellite City gave it a special poignancy there. “It is a significant phenomenon,” said Dr. Beamish, “that any bad news has an immediate effect on our service. You see it whenever there is an international crisis. Sometimes I think people only come to us when they have nothing to talk about. Have you looked at our queue today?” Miles turned to the periscope. Only one man waited outside, old Parsnip, a poet of the ’30s who came daily but was usually jostled to the back of the crowd. He was a comic character in the department, this veteran poet. Twice in Miles’s short term he had succeeded in gaining admission but on both occasions had suddenly taken fright and bolted. “It’s a lucky day for Parsnip,” said Miles. “Yes. He deserves some luck. I knew him well once, him and his friend Pimpernell. New Writing, the Left Book Club, they were all the rage. Pimpernell was one of my first patients. Hand Parsnip in and we’ll finish him off.” So old Parsnip was summoned and that day his nerve stood firm. He passed fairly calmly through the gas chamber on his way to rejoin Pimpernell. “We might as well knock off for the day,” said Dr. Beamish. “We shall be busy again soon when the excitement dies down.” But the politicians seemed determined to keep the excitement up. All the normal features of television were interrupted and curtailed to give place to Mountjoy. Survivors appeared on the screen, among them Soapy, who described how long practice as a cat burglar had enabled him to escape. Mr. Sweat, he remarked with respect, had got clear away. The ruins were surveyed by the apparatus. A sexual maniac with broken legs gave audience from his hospital bed. The Minister of Welfare, it was announced, would make a special appearance that evening to comment on the disaster. Miles dozed intermittently beside the hostel set and at dusk rose, still calm and free; so purged of emotion that he made his way once more to the hospital and called on Clara. She had spent the afternoon with looking glass and makeup box. The new substance of her face fulfilled all the surgeon’s promises. It took paint to perfection. Clara had given herself a full mask as though for the lights of the stage; an even creamy white with sudden high spots of crimson on the cheekbones, huge hard crimson lips, eyebrows extended and turned up catwise, the eyes shaded all round with ultramarine and dotted at the corners with crimson. “You’re the first to see me,” she said. “I was half-afraid you wouldn’t come. You seemed cross yesterday.” “I wanted to see the television,” said Miles. “It’s so crowded at the hostel.” “So dull today. Nothing except this prison that has been burned down.” “I was there myself. Don’t you remember? I often talked of it.” “Did you, Miles? Perhaps so. I’ve such a bad memory for things that don’t concern me. Do you really want to hear the Minister? It would be much cosier to talk.” “It’s him I’ve come for.” And presently the Minister appeared, open-necked as always but without his usual smile; grave to the verge of tears. He spoke for twenty minutes. “... The great experiment must go on ... the martyrs of maladjustment shall not have died in vain ... A greater, new Mountjoy shall rise from the ashes of the old ...” Eventually tears came—real tears for he held an invisible onion—and trickled down his cheeks. So the speech ended. “That’s all I came for,” said Miles, and left Clara to her cocoa-butter and face towel. Next day all the organs of public information were still piping the theme of Mountjoy. Two or three patients, already bored with the entertainment, presented themselves for extermination and were happily despatched. Then a message came from the Regional Director, official-in-chief of Satellite City. He required the immediate presence of Miles in his office. “I have a move order for you, Mr. Plastic. You are to report to the Ministers of Welfare and Rest and Culture. You will be issued with a Grade A hat, umbrella and briefcase for the journey. My congratulations.” Equipped with these insignia of sudden, dizzy promotion, Miles travelled to the capital leaving behind a domeful of sub-officials chattering with envy. At the terminus an official met him. Together in an official car they drove to Whitehall. “Let me carry your briefcase, Mr. Plastic.” “There’s nothing in it.” Miles’s escort laughed obsequiously at this risqué joke. At the Ministry the lifts were in working order. It was a new and alarming experience to enter the little cage and rise to the top of the great building. “Do they always work here?” “Not always, but very very often.” Miles realized that he was indeed at the heart of things. “Wait here. I will call you when the Ministers are ready.” Miles looked from the waiting-room window at the slow streams of traffic. Just below him stood a strange, purposeless obstruction of stone. A very old man, walking by, removed his hat to it as though saluting an acquaintance. Why? Miles wondered. Then he was summoned to the politicians. They were alone in their office save for a gruesome young woman. The Minister of Rest and Culture said: “Ease your feet, lad” and indicated a large leatherette armchair. “Not such a happy occasion, alas, as our last meeting,” said the Minister of Welfare. “Oh, I don’t know,” said Miles. He was enjoying the outing. “The tragedy at Mountjoy Castle was a grievous loss to the cause of penology.” “But the great work of Rehabilitation will continue,” said the gruesome young woman. “A greater Mountjoy will arise from the ashes,” said the Minister. “Those noble criminal lives have not been lost in vain.” “Their memory will inspire us.” “Yes,” said Miles. “I heard the broadcast.” “Exactly,” said the Minister. “Precisely. Then you appreciate, perhaps, what a change the occurrence makes in your own position. From being, as we hoped, the first of a continuous series of successes, you are our only one. It would not be too much to say that the whole future of penology is in your hands. The destruction of Mountjoy Castle by itself was merely a setback. A sad one, of course, but something which might be described as the growing pains of a great movement. But there is a darker side. I told you, I think, that our great experiment had been made only against considerable opposition. Now—I speak confidentially—that opposition has become vocal and unscrupulous. There is, in fact, a whispering campaign that the fire was no accident but the act of one of the very men whom we were seeking to serve. That campaign must be scotched.” “They can’t do us down as easy as they think,” said the Minister of Rest and Culture. “Us old dogs know a trick or two.” “Exactly. Counter-propaganda. You are our Exhibit A. The irrefutable evidence of the triumph of our system. We are going to send you up and down the country to lecture. My colleagues have already written your speech. You will be accompanied by Miss Flower here, who will show and explain the model of the new Mountjoy. Perhaps you will care to see it yourself. Miss Flower, the model please.” All the time they were speaking Miles had been aware of a bulky, sheeted object on a table in the window. Miss Flower now unveiled it. Miles gazed in awe.The object displayed was a familiar, standard packing case, set on end. “A rush job,” said the Minister of Welfare. “You will be provided with something more elaborate for your tour.” Miles gazed at the box. It fitted. It fell into place precisely in the void of his mind, satisfying all the needs for which his education had prepared him. The conditioned personality recognized its proper pre-ordained environment. All else was insubstantial; the gardens of Mountjoy, Clara’s cracked Crown Derby and her enveloping beard were trophies of a fading dream. The Modern Man was home. “There is one further point,” continued the Minister of Welfare. “A domestic one but not as irrelevant as it may seem. Have you by any chance formed an attachment in Satellite City? Your dossier suggests that you have.” “Any woman trouble?” explained the Minister of Rest and Culture. “Oh, yes,” said Miles. “Great trouble. But that is over.” “You see, perfect rehabilitation, complete citizenship should include marriage.” “It has not,” said Miles. “That should be rectified.” “Folks like a bloke to be spliced,” said the Minister of Rest and Culture. “With a couple of kids.” “There is hardly time for them,” said the Minister of Welfare. “But we think that psychologically you will have more appeal if you have a wife by your side. Miss Flower here has every qualification.” “Looks are only skin deep, lad,” said the Minister of Rest and Culture. “So if you have no preferable alternative to offer.....?” “None,” said Miles. “Spoken like an Orphan. I see a splendid career ahead of the pair of you.” “When can we get divorced?” “Come, come, Plastic. You mustn’t look too far ahead. First things first. You have already obtained the necessary leave from your Director, Miss Flower?” “Yes, Minister.” “Then off you both go. And State be with you.” In perfect peace of heart Miles followed Miss Flower to the Registrar’s office. Then the mood veered. Miles felt ill at ease during the ceremony and fidgeted with something small and hard which he found in his pocket. It proved to be his cigarette lighter, a most uncertain apparatus. He pressed the catch and instantly, surprisingly, there burst out a tiny flame—gemlike, hymeneal, auspicious. 
The Curse Of The Horse Race
Chap I Betting I bet you 500 pounds I’ll win. The speaker was Rupert a man of about 25 he had a dark bushy mistarsh and flashing eyes. I shouldn’t trust to much on your horse said Tom for ineed he had not the sum to spear. The race was to take place at ten the following moring 
Chap II The next moring Tom took his seat in the grant stand while Rupert mounted Sally (which was his horse) with the others to wate for the pistol shot which would anounse the start. The race was soon over and Rupet had lost. What was he to do could he do the deed? Yes I’ll kill him in the night, he thought. 
Chap III The Fire Rupert crept stedfustly along with out a sound but as he drew his sword it squeeked a little this awoke Tom seasing a candle he lit it just at that moment Rupert struch and sent the candle flying The candle lit the cuntain Rupert trying to get away tumbled over the bed Tom maid a dash for the dorr and cleided with a perlisman who had come to see what was the matter and a panic took place. 
Chap IIII Explaind While Tom and the peliesman were escapeing through the door Rupert was adaping quite a diffrat methand of escape he puld the matris of the bed and hurld the it out of the window then jumped out he landed safe and sound on the matris then began to run for all he was worth now let us leave Rupert and turn to Tom and the peliesman as soon as they got out Tom told the peliesman what had hapend. 
Chap V Hot on the Trail “See there he is” said Tom “We must folow him and take him to prizen” said the peliesman. There’s no time to spere said Tom letts get horses said the peliesman so they bort horses and and galerpin in the direcion they had seen him go. On they went aintil they were face to face with each other. the peliesman lept from his horse only to be stabed to the hart by Rupert then Tom jumped down and got Rupert a smart blow on the cheak. 
Chap VI A Deadly Fight This enraged Rupert thake that he shouted and made a plung but tom was too quick for him artfully dogeing the sword he brout his sword round on Rupert’s other cheak. Just at that moment Ruper slashed killed the peliesmans horse then lept on Toms horse and galapt off. 
Chap VII The Mysterious Man Of cause then was no chance of catching him on foot so Tom walked to the nearest inn to stay the night but it was ful up he had to share with a nother man.Thou Tom was yerry tired he could not sleep, their was something about the man he was he did not like he reminded him of some one he didnot know who. Sudnly he felt something moveing on the bed looking up he saw the man fully dressed just getting off the bed. 
Chap VIII Run to Erth Now Tom could see that the mysteraous man was Rupert. Has he come to do a merder? Or has he only come to stay the night? thees were the thoughts that rushed throu Toms head he lay still to what Rupert would do first he opened a cubord and took out a small letter bag from this he took some thing wich made Toms blod turn cold it was a bistol Tom lept forward and seesed Rubert by the throught and flung him to the ground then snaching a bit of robe from the ground he bound Rupert hand and foot. 
Chap IX Hung Then Tom drest himself then Tom took Rupert to the puliese cort Rupert was hung for killing the pulies man. I hope this story will be aleson to you never to bet. 
Mulia Pecunia
Chapter I Sir Alfred James, a great collector of books, one day chanced to look at an old volume which had the curious name of “Multa Pecunia,” which told him that under his house there was a cave in which was untold of wealth. He did not trouble to read any more, for he had heard the yarn before, and did not believe it. When Tom came home, being Sir Alfred’s son, he was treated with great respect by the servants and therefore was allowed to go into every nook and corner of the house. He was in a little poky room one day, when he saw this carving “Multa Pecunia.” He stared for some time at the carving, when suddenly he remembered seeing a book in the library with the same title. Immediately he ran to the library and took out the catalogue. There he saw these words, “Multa Pecunia, shelf 7, place 13.” He was immediately at shelf 7, but place 13 was empty! 
Chapter II What could it mean? Why had the book gone? He was quite bewildered. “Jumping Golliwogs” cried Tom at last, “I must tell the Pater.” He left the room with the intention of going to tell his father about the mysterious disappearance of the old volume; perhaps his father had it, or—Hark! what was that! the rustling of stiff paper was audible. He was now quite close to Smith, the butler’s room. The door was open so he looked in. There he saw Smith leaning over the old volume deeply engrossed. Suddenly he got up and walked stealthily to the door. Then he walked off in the direction of the room with the carving. When he got there he pressed the letter “U” and immediately a little trap door opened which was about 17 by 13 inches. Into this crept Smith followed by Tom. The two crept along a passage, and stopped at the sight of a great granite door. “Smith! what does this mean?” cried Tom putting his hand on Smith’s collar. Smith fairly staggered when he saw Tom; in fact he simply lost his head, and flew at Tom’s throat. A tremendous fight ensued in which Tom with his knowledge of boxing gave him, gave Smith an “up shot” blow that fairly staggered him. But in the end weight won and Tom was knocked senseless to the ground: but Smith was not a fellow to leave him there, he carried him up the steps and laying him down at the door of the library, then closing the door of the secret cave, and putting back the old volume in the library as he found it, he went back to bed. Sir Alfred came striding along the passage to the library when he suddenly stopped in utter astonishment. “Tom!” he gasped as he saw the boy’s pale face. 
Chapter III When Tom came to consciousness he found himself in a soft feather bed with a nurse at his bedside. “Ah! that’s good, he is conscious now” she whispered. “Why did Smith attack me? asked Tom feebly. “He’s delirious” said the nurse turning to the doctor, “I thought he would be after that fall, poor boy”; for the library being at the foot of a flight of steps, Sir Alfred and the nurse naturally thought he had fallen down them. A long time had past and Tom had not been allowed to see anyone as he had concussion of the brain. At last he was allowed to see someone and nurse asked him who he would choose for his first visitor. “Smith” was the reply. In came Smith very shyly. Why did you fling me down on that stone” demanded Tom. 
Chapter IV Now Smith was not usually a butler. He was really a professional thief and so he soon thought of what to say, so turning to the nurse he said “I think I had better go for the excitement of seeing anybody after such a long time of quiet has made him a bit mad,” with that he left the room. Tom was quite well and able to run about the house, so he thought he would see Smith. Smith was not in his room, so Tom thought that he would go into the secret cave. He went to the old carving, pressed the letter “U,” immediately the same door opened. He went along the passage. Suddenly he stopped abruptly, for footsteps could be heard coming towards him. He crouched down waiting ready to spring. The footsteps came nearer and nearer. Tom could feel his heart thumping against his ribs. Suddenly appeared round the corner of the passage, Tom was on his in a minute and taken by surprise Smith was flung senseless to the ground. Tom was just getting up when he saw a piece of old parchment, he opened it and this is what he read—“I, Wilfred James have stolen these articles of great price from Queen Elizabeth. I could not keep the secret so I put my confidence in Sir Walter Raleigh who gave a hint about it to the great statesman Bacon, who told Queen Elizabeth. The troops of soldiers will be here in one hour and if they find the jewels I shall be locked in the Tower.” There the paper ended, so Tom began to look for the jewels, and found them in Smith’s pocket. Then putting Smith back on his bed he went to his father’s study and told Sir Alfred all the paper had said, and showed him the jewels. The next day Sir Alfred gave Smith the “sack” and the day after he was found to be the worst thief that ever puzzled Scotland Yard and was arrested and sent to Dartmoor convict prison. 
Fragment Of A Novel
To myself, Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh to whose sympathy and appreciation alone it owes its being, this book is dedicated. Dedicatory letter, My dear Evelyn, Much has been written and spoken about the lot of the boy with literary aspirations in a philistine family; little can adequately convey his difficulties, when the surroundings, which he has known from childhood, have been entirely literary. It is a sign of victory over these difficulties that this book is chiefly, if at all, worthy of attention. Many of your relatives and most of your father’s friends are more or less directly interested in paper and print. Ever since you first left the nursery for meals with your parents downstairs, the conversation, to which you were an insatiable listener, has been of books, their writers and producers; ever since, as a sleepy but triumphantly emancipate school-boy, you were allowed to sit up with our elders in the “bookroom” after dinner, you have heard little but discussion about books. Your home has always been full of them; all new books of any merit, and most of none, seem by one way or another to find their place in the files which have long overflowed the shelves. Among books your whole life has been layed and you are now rising up in your turn to add one more to the everlasting bonfire of the ephemeral. And all this will be brought up against you. “Another of these precocious Waughs,” they will say, “one more nursery novel.” So be it. There is always a certain romance, to the author at least, about a first novel which no reviewer can quite shatter. Good luck! You have still high hopes and big ambitions and have not yet been crushed in the mill of professionalism. Soon perhaps you will join the “wordsmiths” jostling one another for royalties and contracts, meanwhile you are still very young. Yourself, Evelyn 
I Peter Audley awoke with “second bell” ringing dismally down the cloisters and rolling over in bed looked at his watch. Reassured that he had another five minutes before he need begin getting up, he pulled his rug up over his shoulders and lay back gazing contentedly down the dormitory, which was already stirring with the profoundly comforting sounds made by other people dressing. The splashing of the showers next door, the chipping of the thick crockery and the muttered oaths at backstuds accentuated the pleasure of the last minutes. Early school was kept up practically all the year round at Selchurch, which took a certain pride in the gloom of these early mornings. Peter, however, had got his “privileges” which took away the bitterest sting of frantic punctuality and allowed him, after reporting to his form master, to sit out and work in his study. With a heave he got out of bed and went to wash. The showers looked singularly uninviting but the water for the basins was stone cold—the furnaces were not lit until midday in March 1918—and with rising gloom he returned shivering and half dry to the dormitory. Some fanatic had opened one of the high Gothic windows and a cold gust of wind swept down the room. There was a chorus of protestastion and the window was closed. He dressed dully and leaving the dormitory at a few minutes past seven crossed the quad to “report.” Several fags, laden with books, dashed past him, trying desperately to avoid recognition by the prefect “taking lates.” His form master nodded to him and he turned on his heel and made for his study. The gravel was dark with fallen rain, the sky menacing with monstrous rough hewn clouds; over everything spread a fine, wet mist. The handle of his study door was cold; he went in, kicked the door to and fell into an easy chair gazing round the tiny room. It was pleasant enough and he had spent considerable pains on it, but this morning it afforded him no pleasure. The carpet was black—a burst of aestheticism which he had long regretted as it took a great deal of brushing and earned his study the name of the “coal cellar”—and the walls distempered a bluish grey. On them were hung four large Medici prints, the gift of his grandmother but his own choice; Botticelli’s Mars & Venus—he had had some difficulty over this with his house master, to whom a nude was indecent whether it came from the National Gallery or La Vie Parisienne—Beatrice d’Este, Rembrandt’s “Philosopher” and Holbein’s Duchess of Milan. These he liked either because they were very beautiful or because they gave an air of distinction which his friends’ Harrison Fishers and Rilette pictures lacked. The curtains, cushions on the window seat and table cloth were blue; the whole room was pleasantly redolent of the coffee of the evening before. Peter, however, lay back staring gloomily at the grey block of class rooms opposite. It was Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon was the time chosen, as being the longest uninterrupted time in the week, for the uniform parade. He could just remember when, his first term, summer 1914, it had been the great social time of the week when tea was brewed and quantities of eclaires eaten, and now that he had grown to an age to have a study and enjoy these things, they were all blotted out and from two to six he would have to manoeuvre a section of sullen fags over the wet downs in some futile “attack scheme.” He knew exactly what would happen. They would fall in on one of the quads and be inspected—that meant half an hours work with reeking brasso and s.a.p. cleaning his uniform and equipment. They would then march up to the downs and in a driving wind stand easy while the O.C. explained the afternoons work. Ordnance maps would be issued to all N.C.O.’s with which to follow the explanation; these always bulged with incorrect folding and flapped in the wind. It was never considered sufficient for one company merely to come and attack the other; a huge campaign of which they formed a tiny part would have to be elaborated. A company would be the advanced guard of part of an army, which had landed at Littlehampton and was advancing upon Hasting, intending to capture important bridge heads on the local river on their way; B company, with white hat bands, would be a force set to hold the spur of the downs above the Sanatorium cooperating with hypothetical divisions on either flank, until another division could arrive from Arundel. Rattles would be issued to serve as Lewis guns and this game of make-believe would go on for three hours, with extreme discomfort to both sides, when whistles and bugles would sound and the corps form up again for a criticism of the afternoon’s work. They would be told that, when the parade was dismissed, all rifles were to be wiped over with an oily rag before being returned to the armoury and that all uniforms were to be back in the lockers before six o’clock. They would then dismiss, hungry, bad tempered and with only twenty minutes in which to change for Chapel. He hated the corps and all the more now that he had to take it seriously. He was seventeen and a half; next year, if the war was still on, as it showed every sign of being, would see him fighting. It brought everything terribly near. He had learnt much of what it was like over there from his brother, but Ralf saw everything so abstractedly with such imperturbable cynicism. Peter flattered himself that he was far more sensitive and temperamental. He was sure that he would not be able to stand it; Ralf had won the D.S.O. some months ago. He collected his thoughts with a start and looked at his time table. He had to finish the chapter of Economics which he had left the evening before. The book was lying where he had tossed it and, like everything that morning, looked singularly uninviting. It was bound in a sort of greasy, limp, oil cloth, “owing,” a label half scraped off the back proclaimed, “to shortage of labour”; it was printed crookedly on a thin greyish paper with little brown splinters of wood in it; it was altogether a typical piece of wartime workmanship. He took it up with listless repulsion and began to read. “From considerations of this nature,” he read, “which, while not true of every person, taken individually, are yet on the average true, it may be inferred, with approximate accuracy, that by adding to the wealth of the poor, something taken, by some recognised and legal process, from the wealth of the rich, while some dissatisfaction as well as satisfaction is inevitably caused, yet, provided that the poor be greater in number than the rich, the satisfaction is greater than the dissatisfaction. Inequality of wealth, insofar as ...” It was all ineffably tedious. He tossed the book on to the table in the corner and taking up a novel passed the next half hour in dissatisfied gloom. 
II The clock in the quad struck quarter to eight and voices and shuffling sounded across the gravel as the forms began emptying. The door of his study was burst open and Bellinger came in. “Edifying spectacle of history specialist at work! Here have I been doing geography with the ‘door mouse’ for three mortal quarters of an hour, while you read low novels.” Bellinger was in the army class, a cheery soul, athletic, vacant, with an obsession for clothes. This was the only subject about which he could talk; he was always perfectly dressed himself and had earned something of a reputation by it. People would bring him patterns of cloth and consult him when they were getting suits, which was complimentary, although they never took his advice. It was said of him that he had once cut the headmaster in London because he met him wearing a brown overcoat with evening dress. Peter turned down the corner of his page—a pernicious habit even in a wartime “Outlines of Economics” of which he could never cure himself—and got up. “Come across to hall, you silly old ass, and tell me the latest bulletins from Sackville Street.” “Nothing doing,” said Bellinger with the self righteous gloom of one whose religion has been insulted and pulled at the points of his waistcoat, “nothing doing at all. It’s the curse of this infernal war. While all the best people are in uniform they don’t pay any attention to civilian fashions. Thank the Lord I shall be in khaki in a couple of months.” They linked up and walked down to hall, Bellinger earnestly enlarging upon the advantages of the R.A.F. over the ordinary uniform. When they arrived at the “pits-table,” where people with studies sat, a heated discussion was going on. The head, Peter gathered, had proposed to the Games Committee the night before that none of the house cups should be competed for until after the war and that the time saved should be devoted to more parades and longer digging upon the house potatoe plots. Cook, the captain of Lane’s, had apparently been the only one with the courage to hold out against him. Lane’s were certain to get the open football and stood a good chance for the Five Mile. Beaton, a small science specialist, was voluble in the head’s defence. “After all,” he was saying, “what effects has the war had on us here? We’ve had a little less food and coal, people have been leaving a little earlier, the young masters have gone and these antiquated old fools like Boyle have taken their places, parades have become a bit longer, but is this enough? Has anything been done to make us realize that we are in the middle of the biggest war in history?” “Everything has been done,” said Peter, “to make school life excessively unpleasant—after you with the bread, please Travers—what little of the old life does remain, is what keeps it just tolerable. Good God, isn’t it bad enough for you. I pity the men who’ve come during the last year and know only this side of Selchurch. I hate school, now, and shall be only too glad to get away; why utterly spoil it for the ‘underschools’?” “Yes,” said Travers a large, sad “historian” on the other side of the table, “You seem to be one of the maniacs who believe in making themselves wretched because other people are. It’s only by the misery of three quarters, that life can be even tolerable for a quarter of society. It’s unjust but it’s better than the whole show being miserable. It’s a fundamental principle of political science”—any particularly sweeping cynicism was a “fundamental principle” with Travers. “My pater had that craze badly in 1914,” said Garth, a pleasant, spotty youth, next to Peter, “he dug up the tennis court to grow vegetables when there was plenty of waste ground behind the stable yard.” “And the mater makes me wear old clothes,” said Bellinger, “because she thinks it looks bad to wear new ones in war time.” “Everyone is quite imbecile about the war”—Travers loved dismissing subjects—“they don’t realize that it is a natural function of development. It’s a fundamental principle that society can only remain normal if it is decimated at regular periods.” The “paper boy” came to the table. Every day it was the duty of one of the fags to fetch the house papers from the porter’s lodge, as soon as he came out of early school, and bring them up to hall. They were supposed to go to the people who had bought them at the “paper auction” at the beginning of term, but in practice they went first to the high table where the prefects sat with the housemaster; when they had made their choice, he took them to the “pits-table” and distributed what were left as he liked. “Times, please” said Peter over his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Audley, that’s gone.” “All right, Morning Post. Thanks.” He spread it out over the table and glanced down the columns. It was full of the usual war news (Peter wondered vaguely what they managed to put in the papers in peace time); there were rumours of preparations for a big German offensive, factious political questions in the house, pages of minor engagements in the East. He folded it and passed it on to Bellinger. 
III It was a gloomy morning; gloomy even for the Easter term 1918. For half an hour after breakfast he sat in his study cleaning his uniform; in chapel he could smell the cleaning stuff up his nails. After chapel he had to go in for a double period of European History. He went into school profoundly depressed. The “historians” were now taken by one Boyle. He had been, until the outbreak of war, the headmaster of a prosperous preparitory school on the East coast and had lived a life of lucrative dignity, making himself agreeable to distinguished parents and employing a large and competent staff to do the teaching. For two years he had kept doggedly on, feeling that it would be a surrender to the barbarian enemy if he left, but the numbers steadily sank, until one night a bomb was actually dropped onto the gymnasium breaking every frame of glass in the house. Then he realized that he must give it up, “St. Pendred’s” was commandeered to house a garrison staff, and Mr. Boyle set about finding other employment. The head forced to choose between Mr. Boyle and a mistress, to his eternal discredit chose Mr. Boyle and in less than a year the Senior History Specialist Set had sunk from the intellectual mekka of the school to the haven which sheltered those who considered that the work they had had to do to pass the School Certificate absolved them from any further exertions, at any rate, while they were at Selchurch. Not that he was ragged—that would have been beneath the dignity of a Sixth Form set—They merely sat through his hours in complete apathy. His predecessor had been a young man fresh from Cambridge and had made his history extremely entertaining, they had held debates, read each other papers and discussed current politics, but now there were no Varsity scholarships, the battle clouds of France shut out all but the immediate future and no one had any particular motive for, or interest in, working. Mr. Boyle certainly had not and Youth, far from being the time of burning quests and wild, gloriously vain ideals beloved of the minor poets, is essentially one of languor and repose. Every hour he dictated notes, from a large leather bound note book, which most people took; every week he set an essay which several people wrote; every month he gave out a syllabus of books for out of school study, which nobody read. He asked for little and was content with far less but the Senior History Specialist set often seemed unsatisfactory even to Mr. Boyle. He came into the class room smiling a dignified welcome all round, laid his note book on one side of the high oak desk, his mortar board on the other, and sat down smoothing out his gown. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he began in his usual formula, “What are we doing this morning? European history, isn’t it Travers? Thank you. Ah yes, well I don’t think we can do better than go on with our notes for a little. Now let me see where was it we had got to. Alberoni? Yes I see I have the place marked. The last thing I gave you was ‘willing to cede Sardinia to secure her nephew’s succession to the Duchy of Parma’ wasn’t it? Well then, head this ‘D. Alberoni’s third coalition.’” For two hours he dictated an essay on XVIIth diplomacy. Peter had reduced the taking of notes to an entirely subconscious exercise. He could now sit schooled by long practice, with his mind completely blank or filled with other things while his pen wrote out pages of notes industriously and quite correctly. Sometimes he would be woken from his reverie by a pause over some proper name, but often on looking them through he would find names which he had no recollection of having heard before. He sat writing out, “... invited ‘pretender’ to Spain and arranged with Görz a northern alliance with Sweden and Russia to support the Stuart claims, while at the same time he entered into correspondence with Polignac and the Duchess of Main, to overthrow the Regency. The death of Charles XII, however.....” Mr. Boyle’s notes did not elucidate any difficult problems or sift the important facts of history from the trivial. They merely stated things in direct paraphrase of Lodge; for the whole double period Peter steadily took them down. At last the clock chimed and Mr. Boyle stood up, shut his note book and took up his mortar board. “That will be enough for this morning, I think. Remember that I want the essays on ‘The Freedom of the civilized State’ by Monday evening, without fail this time please. I will ask you to read up Catherine the Great for next Tuesday, if you will—I recommend Lecky. Thank you, good morning.” Wearily they filed out for break. In the war time efficiency mania P.T. had been innovated which effectually took up all the break—ten minutes in which to change and twenty minutes drill. Peter hurried to the changing room and began undressing; he suddenly remembered that he had broken the lace of his gym shoe the day before. He succeeded in borrowing another and then realized that he had forgotten to get a new hat for parade as he had been told to last time. Everything seemed to be conspiring against him this morning. “You never lose a stud but you lose the lot,” sighed Bellinger, “Hullo, what the devil does he want.” Peter looked round and saw the porter’s burly figure framed in the doorway. “Telegram for Mr. Audley, sir.” “Hullo, what?” Peter tore open the orange envelope and hurriedly took out the telegram; it was getting late for P.T. “Ralf on leave,” it ran, “return home wiring head will meet 4:52 Bulfrey.” 
IV One of the awfully clever things that Ralf had said was that life should be divided into water tight compartments and that no group of friends or manner of living should be allowed to encroach upon any other. Peter lay back and compared the day with the prospects early that morning. As soon as he had got the telegram he had put on his shoes and told the porter to ’phone for a taxi. After a frantic search for his house master and an incoherent but convincing explanation to him and a hurried interview with the matron about his bag, he had managed to get away in time to catch the 11:12 to Victoria. There he had had a hasty but excellent lunch at the Grosvenor and had dashed across to Paddington and got into the train just as it was starting. He now had a clear two hours run to Bulfrey. He lay back and took a cigarette from the box he had bought at lunch. Very contentedly he watched the telegraph wires rising falling and recrossing each other, mile after mile. He had not had time in the rush of half packed pyjamas, moving trains and lost tickets, to think of what it all meant; now in the empty first class carriage with magazines and cigarettes he began to shake off the shadows of the prison house. He looked at his watch. At the very time that he was swaying into the country through the short wayside stations, Bellinger and Beaton and Garth and everyone else with whose lives his own had seemed so inextricably bound that morning were marching about on the downs. It was very cold at Selchurch, he reflected and the sea mist was lying in the valleys; he was warm with the close atmosphere of the carriage and the glass of port he had had after lunch and with a deep inward content. Mile succeeded mile through the avenue of telegraph poles. Outside the weather was clearing up and a bright cool sun came out. He watched the fields reeling by and began to pass the landmarks which had grown familiar through many home comings, an imposing patent medicine factory, the neat beds of a large market garden, an Elizabethan farmhouse. He wondered how long this unexpected holiday was going to last; he supposed about four days. This was really the first time that Ralf had made any mark in his life; he was five years older and had always kept himself very much aloof. They had had many quarrels as brothers always have. At times Ralf had been almost a prig, particularly when he was head of the house at Selchurch, and his first year at Oxford. Anyway it was through him that Peter was now sitting in comfort instead of marching his section up a wet hill in “blob” formation, and in the warmth of heart that can come only from physical comfort, Peter prepared to be very gracious towards his brother. At last the train slowed to a stop and stood panting but unexhausted like a well-trained runner. Peter suddenly realized that they had reached Bulfrey. He snatched up his hat and bag, buttoned his coat and leapt onto the platform. Ralf was striding down towards him. Peter had seen him in uniform before but then it had been with the timid pride of a 1914 subaltern. Now after three years fighting he looked wonderfully fit and hansome. A slanting ray of sunlight lit up his fair hair; he was wearing no cap. “Hullo, Peter,” he cried, shaking hands, “we were afraid that you mightn’t be able to get the train. I suppose you’ve had lunch?” “Yes thanks, I managed to get some in town. Pretty fair rush though. Hold on a second while I find my ticket.” He handed Ralf his bag and began exploring his pockets. Finding it, at last, between the leaves of his school “blue-book,” he gave it to the collector and taking back his bag followed his brother out. “Is that all the luggage you’ve got?” he asked, “That’s splendid; we shall be able to bring it up with us now. I’ve got the dog-cart outside. Moira’s looking after it. She was coming into Bulfrey to do some shopping so I asked her to come and meet you.” Moira Gage was the daughter of the vicar of Bulfrey Combe. Peter’s age, she and her brother had been the constant companions of the Audley boys before they went to school. They had seen less of each other as they grew up, Chris had gone to Winchester, Ralf and Peter to Selchurch, but the Vicarage was next door to the Hall and they had seen a good deal of each other in the holidays. Their fathers were close friends. “Good work, I was afraid she would be away doing that V.A.D. work. I only saw her once all last holidays. Ah there she is.” They had come out into the small station yard. On the other side of it stood the dog-cart and in it stood Moira Gage, one hand holding the reins, the other shading her eyes. She was tall, slim and pale, not really pretty but graceful and attractive; from a distance she looked like a Shepperson drawing but when you got nearer you saw depths in her grey, scrutable eyes, which his charming mannerisms could never convey; she was dressed in a tweed coat and a skirt with a grey silk scarf over her shoulders. Peter ran forward and greeted her. “Peter,” she said, “before you do anything else, do make Ralf put his hat on. He looks simply dreadful and I’m sure he’d be court-martialled or something, if anyone saw.” “Three years of military life shatter any illusions about military discipline,” Ralf replied, climbing up into the dog-cart, “the only hardened militarist nowadays is the newly conscripted civilian.” “Now he’s being clever again,” Moira laughed, “I really thought you lost that when you came down from Oxford. Among other things, it’s very bad manners when you are in stupid company.” “Thank you,” Peter expostulated, “I wish you’d speak for yourself. I’m in the sixth now and write essays on industrial history and all sorts of things.” “You seem to regard your history with most unreasonable pride,” said Moira, “from all I hear it sounds only slack.” “All pride is unreasonable” said Ralf. To Peter it seemed that he had paused a moment hesitating whether “no pride is unreasonable” was the more impressive; he had long gone beyond the stage when a sweeping generalization could pass as an epigram. “The aphorisms of a disappointed man,” said Moira. “The next remark like that Ralf and I get out and walk.” 
Essay 
“Oh, yes,” said Lurnstein, “I had ideals at one time all right—we all do, you know.” He was leaning back from the small table, on which the tea was set, eyeing my half finished portrait. I had had a long sitting and his beautiful china tea in his thin blue and white china came as a great relief. He looked extremely handsome, I thought, in the golden afternoon light, in his picturesque studio overall; Jewish, of course, but with a distinguished air that made one overlook his stumpy hands and other signs of ill-breeding. “Perhaps you’d like to hear something of my life,” he said, “it has not been without interest.” He lit another cigarette, pushed the box, a beautiful piece of Moorish inlaid work, to within my easy reach, and then drawing a deep breath of smoke, began: “I started life about as low as any new peer. My father was a Jew and we lived in the Jewish quarter off the Commercial Road. When he was sober he was very kind to me and my brothers. My mother never had any great significance for me, but I realize now that she must have been a very hard worked and hard treated woman as upon her fell the sole burden of supporting her husband and large family. “From the time when my first memories start I have always been interested in drawing, and I used to use every scrap of paper and every stump of pencil I could find, but lines never satisfied me—I wanted colours and tones. And these I could not afford. Coloured chalks used to be my chief delight and I used to take them from the desk of the Rabbi who managed the local synagogue and to whom I used to go once a week for religious instruction. For my father, though quite indifferent himself, was always most particular that I should attend. The Rabbi used the chalks, I remember, to draw maps of the divisions of the tribes with. “Well one day he caught me taking his chalks, but instead of beating me, as the red-haired master at the board school would have done, he asked me all about my drawing and finally persuaded me to let him take some of my work away to show to his rich friends. For he was the son of a very rich man himself and had been to the ’Varsity but had sacrificed it all to help his fellow countrymen in the slums. I tell you that there are just as fine acts of self-sacrifice done by the rabbis in the Yiddish quarter as by any of your parsons at Kennington, only they don’t brag about it. “Well, he showed my work to his friends in the West, with the result that a few days later a man with a top hat and spats came to the door and asked to see me and my work. He gave half-crowns to all my brothers but he didn’t give me half a crown, and I remember, I was very offended until I heard that I was to be taken away and taught painting. “That was the beginning of my ‘career.’ Those Jews ran me for the next five years, and I painted just as I was told to at the Academy school, to which I was sent. And everyone was very kind to me and I was introduced to lots of rich men, not only the moneyed Jews but men of your class who spend lots of money on being bored and are called ‘in society’ by lower middle class novelists. I began to acquire social polish and was being shaped into a pretty little gentleman; but all the time particularly when I could feel the grain of the canvas under my brush, I was dissatisfied. “When I was nineteen they gave me a studio, nothing like this, of course, but a decent enough shed with a good north light—and set me up as a Society portrait painter. Well I painted and flattered the ugly old women, that came to me, for a time; but after a little I found I could stand it no longer. I was painting badly, insipidly, insincerely, and I knew I could do better. I saw that the whole Academic conception was false—yes, that sounds funny from me nowadays, doesn’t it? But we all see things more clearly when we’re young. “That autumn the Italian futurists came to London and Marinetti delivered his epoch making series of broken-English lectures at the Dorée galleries. It was there, and particularly in Severini’s ball-room scenes, that I found what I and half Chelsea had been looking for. “I always acted on impulses then, and when I came back and found in my room the luggage I had been packing for a tour through Italy with the Jews—they still ran me, though by that time I was making a fairly decent living—I was filled with revulsion. I wrote a brief, I am afraid rude, note to them, and slamming the door of my studio rushed out into the night. “I have no clear idea of what happened that night. I went to the Café Royal and drank absinthe. And soon I joined a group at the next table and together, as the sham English Bohemians do, we drank a lot, & laughed a lot, and finally all reeled out into the cool air of Regent Street. There were girls with us too, who had their hair cut short though it was not fashionable then. The leader of the set was a beautiful youth with red-gold hair whom we all called Ronald. I never learned his sirname though I met him continually for the next year and shared his studio with him. He painted fierce warm-colored ‘abstractions’ in tremendous bouts of energy which left him lethargic and apathetic. He was a great friend of mine in the year I spent in our sham Quartier Latin. For after that night I left the Jews and spent my time with the young art students and futurists. We were a happy enough lot and I should always have looked back to that year as the best of my life if — “Well, during that year I painted as I have never painted before or since. I painted as I knew I ought to without convention or restraint. I exhibited at the Mansard Gallery and in the Adelphi and reviews of my work appeared in ‘Blast’ and ‘The Gypsy.’ I was gloriously happy in my work & then it was all spoilt, and by a woman. “I won’t say much about that, if you don’t mind. I was desperately in love and Ronald kept telling me not to be a fool. I wouldn’t listen to him and began to break with my friends. She was a model and her vision remains to me now as the most beautiful thing I need ever fear to see..... Well, the crash came, as Ronald said it would, and I tore up all my drawings and stuffed the stove in the studio full of them. And I scraped the paint off my canvases with my palette knife; and I had one tremendous night with the whole set ‘flung roses, roses, riotously with the throng, seeking to put thy pale lost lilies out of my mind.’ We were all very noisy and drunk and we told Rabellaisian jokes till far into the morning, and then in the grey of dawn I slunk back to the respectability and the Jews.” He was speaking, up till now, very seriously and bitterly. Now he shook his great shoulders like a dog, tossed his head, & motioning me to resume my pose took up his palette. “Oh yes, they received me with open arms. And Mayfair accepted me as its season’s attraction. The old life went on. They made me an R.A. and—Happy? why yes. Why not? I’ve made a good thing out of life. Ask any of your club friends, they’ll tell you so. But there are times when I see reviews of Ronald’s work and hear my academic colleagues’ sneers of him that I—Oh well; we must get on with the damned picture while the light lasts.” 
The House:An Anti-Climax
Never, in its varied and not always unqualifiedly successful career, had the school been in a state of such utter disorganization and prostration, as in the Easter term, 1917. In France & Flanders, our thinly guarded, inadequately munitioned lines, were quite incapable of successfully resisting the menaced German “push,” every paper brought news of further mis-management and ill-success, every post news of some friend or relation who had been killed. At school, the houses had mostly been taken over, in the absence of their younger housemasters, by well meaning but incompetent elderly assistant masters; the prefects were young, and knowing that in a few weeks, at the most a few months, they would be “called up” to go to possible death, almost certain mutilation, cared little for school or house affairs. All over the country nerves were strained to the breaking point. This must be borne in mind when reading a story which at any other period would have been utterly impossible. Every house, of course, claims to be the best, and in all probability has hypnotized itself into believing so, but there is one House that is more exclusive, more arrogantly self-confident, more self-contained, than any other. The House has many exclusive points of etiquette that the out-houses look on with contempt or resentment. They have largely their own slang, a great many of their own customs, and above all an unshakable contempt for the corps and all its machinations. Every flight of Inspection-day oratory leaves them the same, and even when all over the country militarism was all powerful, when soldiers drilled on the Christ Church quads at Oxford, they kept up their contempt with unmitigated bitterness. And then came Ross. A prefect, an excellent all round athlete, with a high place in the Classical sixth, he had remained quite a nonentity until he returned at the beginning of the Easter term to find himself head of the House, now demoralized and bereft of all its earlier dignity. He had to take the entire management of the House into his own hands, and very soon he made himself felt. He stopped people getting “orders” for confectionery from their temporary housemaster, he stopped people getting leaves off Clubs & Parades without consulting the matron at all, he generally raised the house to something like its former standard and on the whole people liked it, for fundamentally men rather like being kept in order if it is done in the right way. For the first three weeks all went well—too well really. Then came the Monday afternoon parade in which the corps started organizing for the House Platoons Shield. Ross delivered a violent little speech and, as in most of his speeches, he said rather more than he meant to. “Stand easy and pay attention. The display that you have given so far has been perfectly monstrous. I’ve never seen such marching in my life before—might be a whole lot of boy scouts. I can tell you, that if you think that because this House has been disgustingly slack in the past, you are going to be disgustingly slack now, you are quite wrong for once in your lives. You’re going to sweat for this—sweat your guts out—and I’m going to make you! Got that?” and he called the platoon up. The House looked on him with undisguised amazement and disgust and slowly meandered through the platoon drill with their customary negligence. Next Tuesday’s uniform parade saw the House with tarnished buttons, mud caked boots, and fouled rifles as usual. Next day saw the whole platoon doing “defaulters.” And so it went on, and gradually the House began to give way to his personality and even attained a certain sullen efficiency when suddenly a few days after the House Trials, an occurrence happened which altered the whole complexion of affairs. One afternoon Ross was sitting in the house captain’s room reading, when Stewart burst in, in running change, rather dirty, obviously just returned from a run. Stewart was captain of Running and certain, people said, to be, at any rate, in the first three in the Five Mile—very possibly a winner. He sat down on the window seat and began idly fingering the congealing mud on his knees. Then he looked up. “Ross,” he said in the drawl always affected by prefects & house captains in the House, “I suppose you know that you are playing hell with the House, with your corps-mania?” Ross said nothing but pushed his book onto the table after carefully marking the place. After a pause Stewart went on. “The House hasn’t got either the time or inclination to do your beastly corps, and clubs properly. We’ve no chance for the Footer, I know, but we’ve got a damned good chance for the Five Mile Jerry; and we aren’t going to throw it away to play soldiers.” Still Ross said nothing; only the corners of his mouth moved. “Well to give you an example. I told young Merrivale that I wanted him for a training run today and he said that he had to clean his bayonet to show to you before hall, because it was rusty yesterday. I said I would make it all right with you, of course, but I can’t train a team decently if your beastly bayonets are going to get in the way every minute.” Then Ross spoke. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but Merrivale’s bayonet has got to be clean before he goes for any run.” Stewart was genuinely astounded. “D’you mean to say you put your ruddy platoon shield before the Five Mile Jerry?” he demanded. “You put it rather crudely” drawled Ross, “but that is what, I suppose, it comes to eventually.” Then Stewart lost his temper. “There’s one thing you’re forgetting” he said, “and that’s that I’m not going to try and train a team with you getting in my light all the time. I’m a house-captain and needn’t run if I don’t want to. If you don’t chuck your corps-mania I shan’t run in the five-mile.” Stewart of course meant this as a threat that could not be argued against, the idea that he would be taken at his word was unthinkable, as indeed in a cooler moment it would have been to Ross. But now he was out to score. “Then I suppose Caven will have to run after all—he’s first spare man isn’t he?” They had both made a decision which they knew quite well would be disastrous but now neither could withdraw. Stewart, who had a great sense for the dramatic, went straight to the house board and crossed himself off the head of the list in a breathless silence. The news spread round the House and then round the school with Oriental speed. The out-houses were openly exultant, the House sullen. Why, they asked, should they lose a cup, just because the bloods quarrelled. They split up into factions and argued incessantly. Ross had missed the House trials in the last two years & no one knew his capabilities as a runner, but he immediately began to train rigorously, and people soon saw that he meant to win the house the cup without Stewart, who watching with the appreciation of the connoisseur, saw that he was a very fine runner. The house settled down to watch the five mile as the settling of the feud. Stewart, very repentant, came down in a great coat to watch the finish. The House did not win. Personality and will can do as much as the Pelmen advertisements say, but they cannot force the pace up the Cow-Top and then lead a quarter mile sprint to Combs. A huddled heap after the Valley dyke was all that was left of Ross’s training. A week later came the house Platoons competition and muffled up and very white Ross came down from the San to watch. He was bitterly conscious of his failure and wondering how he would be able to endure another term of the cold superiority of Stewart and the glowering animosity of the whole House. But suddenly he saw that the House Platoon were drilling as they had never drilled before or—thank God!—have since. Public opinion is the most unaccountable thing in the world and with his failure had suddenly come a popularity that he would never have enjoyed before had he been triumphant. The House, in their own great way were showing him their change of opinion. Their equipment was clean, and under Stewart as platoon commander they were drilling with an enthusiasm which went far to counteract the effect of the lethargy of their previous efforts. It would make a splendid ending if the House could be allowed to win the Shield, but this is a story of school life and anyone who knows the House will know that that is out of the question. Suffice it to say, however, that they were third, and that as Ross went down the grass slope to Chapel that evening, arm in arm with Stewart it seemed almost as if he had forgiven the House rather than that they had forgiven him. And after all that is greatness. 
Portrait Of Young Man With Career
Jeremy came into my room at half-past six, just as I was assembling my sponge and towels and dressing gown and things for a bath. I saw him as I came out of my bedroom, looking for something to write a message on. He was making straight for my portfolio of drawing paper. I called and made myself known to him. Jeremy was in my house at school; he has what would be known in North Oxford as a “personality.” That is to say he is rather stupid, thoroughly well satisfied with himself, and acutely ambitious. Jeremy purposes to be President of the Union. I said to him, “Hullo, Jeremy, I am afraid you find me on the point of going to have a bath. I never miss a bath before dinner; I shall tonight if I do not go at once. The bathroom is shut at seven. But do stay and drink some sherry won’t you?” “Thanks,” said Jeremy, and sat down. I reached for the decanter and found it empty. There must have been nearly a bottle there that morning. “Jeremy, that damned man of mine has finished the sherry. I am sorry.” “Never mind. I’ll just smoke a cigarette and go.” My cigarettes are particularly large and take at least a quarter of an hour to smoke. I banished all my dreams of white tiles and steam and took a cigarette myself. “I haven’t anything particular to say,” said Jeremy, “I was just passing your College and thought I might as well drop in for a little. It is hard to know what to do before hall, isn’t it?” “I generally have a bath.” “Ah, our baths are not open at this hour.” He propped his feet on the side of the fireplace. He was wearing that detestable sort of dark brown suede shoes that always looks wet. “Oh, I know one thing I wanted to ask you. I want to meet Richard Pares. I feel he is a man to know.” “An amiable rogue.” “Well, will you introduce me to him.” “You know, I hardly know him.” It was quite true and, besides, I dislike introducing Jeremy to people; as a rule he begins by calling them by their Christian names. “Nonsense, I’m always seeing you about together. I am not doing anything ’fore lunch on Tuesday. How about then? Or Friday I could manage, but I should prefer Tuesday.” So it was arranged. There was a pause; I looked at my watch; Jeremy took no notice; I looked again. “What is the time,” he said, “Twenty-three to. Oh, good!—hours yet.” “Before a fool’s opinion of himself the gods are silent—aye and envious too,” I thought. “On Thursday I’m speaking ‘on the paper’.” “Good.” “About the Near East. Macedonia. Oil, you know.” “Ah.” “I think it ought to be rather a good speech.” “Yes.” “Evelyn, you aren’t listening; now seriously, what do you really think is wrong with my speaking. What I feel about the Union myself is.....” A blind fury, a mist of fire. We struggled together on the carpet. He was surprisingly weak for his size. The first blow with the poker he dodged and took on his shoulder; the second and third caved his forehead in. I stood up, quivering, filled with a beastly curiosity to find what was inside his broken skull. Instead I restrained myself and put his handkerchief over his face. Outside the door I met my scout. I forgot the sherry. “Hunt”—I almost clung to him. “There is a gentleman in the room lying on the carpet.” “Yes sir. Drunk, sir?” I remembered the sherry. “No, as a matter of fact he’s dead.” “Dead, sir?” “Yes, I killed him.” “You don’t say so, sir!” “But Hunt, what are we to do about it?” “Well, sir, if he’s dead, there doesn’t seem to be much we can do, does there? Now I remember a gentleman on this staircase once, who killed himself. Poison. It must have been ’93 I should think, or ’94. A nice quiet gentleman, too, when he was sober. I remember he said to me.....” The voice droned on, “... I liked your speech, but I thought it was ‘a little heavy.’ What do you think Bagnall meant by that?” It was the voice of Jeremy. My head cleared. We were still there on opposite sides of the fire. He was still talking. “... Scaife said.....” At seven o’clock Jeremy rose. “Well, I mustn’t keep you from your bath. Don’t forget about asking Richard to lunch on Tuesday, will you? Oh, and Evelyn, if you know the man who reports the Union for the Isis, you might ask him to give me a decent notice this time.” I try to think that one day I shall be proud of having known Jeremy. Till then..... 
Antony,Who Sought Things That Were Lost
Revolution came late to St. Romeiro and suddenly. Cazarin, the journalist who had been educated in Paris, was said to have proclaimed it. Messengers came to him with the news that students at Vienna had driven out Prince Metternich and perhaps had murdered him; that all Lombardy was in revolt, that the Pope had fled and all his cardinals. And from the coast the fishermen brought other tales, of how the foreigners were torturing men and women at Venice and of things that were done in Naples; how when the Pope left Rome the pillars of St. Peter’s were shaken and many of the peasants affirmed that it was the Emperor Napoleon who had done these things, not knowing that he was dead. Thus and thus revolution came to St. Romeiro and Cazarin and the people came out in the heat of the day and cried before the Duke’s palace; Cazarin crying for liberty and the people for the removal of the duty on olives. Then the news came that the Duke had fled and with him all his family. So the people broke down the iron gates which the Duke’s grandfather had brought from Milan and burst into the Palace. And they found only a very few, very young soldiers, and since these seemed ill inclined to resist, they killed them; and then feeling much enraged at their own valour, they sought what further they might do. And they cried, “To the Castle!” for there were the prisoners kept and each had some near relative who for some crime or foolishness was imprisoned. And Cazarin remembered the Count Antony who had been shut up with his lady in the Castle ten years ago. But when the prison was broken open, they found many debtors and thieves and a poor mad woman who had thought herself to be the Queen of Heaven, but of the Count Antony they found nothing, nor of his lady. Now this is the story of Antony, called by his friends, “Antony, who sought things that were lost.” Cazarin, who had been educated at Paris, learned it, in part from what he himself knew and in part from what the turnkey told him. He was a tall man, this Count Antony, and very beautiful and he was born of a proud family. His fathers had been great men in Italy and had fought with the Spaniards against the French and had their origin, it was said, from no less a person than a Pope himself. And Count Antony had the estates of his fathers and their beauty, but there was that in the heart of Antony which none of his fathers had known. And for this cause Antony’s friends called him, “Antony, who sought things that were lost,” because he seemed always to be seeking in the future for what had gone before. And Antony was betrothed to the Lady Elizabeth who was fair and gentle, and with his sad, wondering eyes he would watch her, for she moved graciously; and in the eyes of both of them was love greater than the fathers of Antony had known. But there were whisperings at St. Romeiro at this time; behind high shutters men would sit long over their wine and talk of “Freedom” and “Unity” and many foolish words; and they would swear oaths together round the table and sign papers, being very young and somewhat kindled with wine. And these things seemed noble to the Count Antony. But the whisperings were too loud and echoed in the Palace; and thus it was that one day, as he returned from visiting the Lady Elizabeth, he found men of the ducal guard waiting before his house; and they took him to the Castle. Then the Lady Elizabeth, full of love for him, cried to the Duke and prayed for Antony. And when her prayers for his liberty were of no avail she prayed that she might be locked up with him, for, she said, there would be no captivity where Antony was and no freedom where he was not; for she was still a maid and very full of love. And the Duke who, albeit a great lover in his time, was now sunken into a life of gluttony, was afraid of the love in the Lady Elizabeth’s eyes and so granted her wish; thus she was borne to the Castle, rejoicing. These things Cazarin had seen with his own eyes before he went to Paris; what followed after to Antony and Elizabeth he learned from the turnkey, a lame and ugly man, before he was killed by the people of St. Romeiro. They shut Antony and Elizabeth in a cell cut deeply in the grey stone; it was a dark place and water dripped monotonously from the damp roof to the damp floor and foul things crept about the damp walls. At the side of the cell furthest from the door was a broad step raised from the floor and covered with straw. And here the Lady Elizabeth sat and when the turnkey brought them their food, Antony knelt by her and served her. And after they had eaten thus, they wrapped their hands in each other’s and talked; and as they talked, they kissed. And they made a bed of straw on the step and thus among the foul and creeping things was their marriage made; and the turnkey envied them that were so happy in so foul a place. So a week wore itself out and another; and the cheeks of the Lady Elizabeth became pale and her hair became dull and coarse and the brows of the Count Antony that had been white, were dirty and his beard was long; but ever in his smouldering eyes there was love and a seeking for things that were lost. But the turnkey, who had so envied them, saw that now there was in the eyes of the lady Elizabeth no love but only a great weariness. Now when the turnkey brought them their food, Antony knelt to serve his lover as he had done before. And some of the bread which the turnkey brought was rotten and the Lady Elizabeth would tear out what was good with her dirty hands and eat it, and then sullenly roll herself over on the straw and stare at the wall; and Antony would eat what the Lady Elizabeth left. And after a short time these two, who had so loved each other, slept together in the straw no longer, but Antony slept on the wet stone; and by day they talked little to each other and never kissed; and the turnkey saw that in the eyes of Antony there was a wild and bewildered sorrow and a seeking for what was no more; but in the eyes of his lover there grew hate. So the autumn grew into winter and a new year began. And the turnkey was lame and his face was scarred with pox and his mouth was drawn with laughing at the sorrow about him; and daily he came to the cell and no other man did the Lady Elizabeth see, except Antony who had been her lover. And as winter grew into spring and the hate increased in the eyes of Elizabeth, so there grew also desire for the love of that man that was lost to her. And Antony who slept on the wet stones and ate the rotten bread was agued and sick and too weak to move from his corner; only his eyes followed Elizabeth as she moved in the cell. One day when the food had been set before her, the Lady Elizabeth said, “Turnkey, am I still beautiful?” And the turnkey answered: “Not with the beauty in which I first saw you, Lady Elizabeth; for your cheeks are grown pale and your hair dull and coarse, and all your fair skin is blotched and dirty. Yet are you still very beautiful.” “I have not seen my image for many months. Let me look in your eyes and see if I am still beautiful.” So the turnkey thrust his face which was pock-marked and drawn with derision near to the face of the Lady Elizabeth; and there was desire in their eyes. And she put her hands in his hair and she leaned her breast against his and so the Lady Elizabeth, who had known the white arms of Antony, loved this turnkey who was ugly and low born. And Antony made no sound but lay in his corner burdened with his ague and the great chain which he could barely move; but in his eyes there was pain as is seldom seen in men. And the turnkey said, “I will go and bring wine and we will make a feast for this new love which we have found.” And they spoke of this new thing which had come to them, and how they would entertain it; and the turnkey promised that she should leave the cell and live with him in his lodgings, where there should be water for her to wash herself and clean food for her to eat and a small courtyard to walk in, whence could be seen the tops of trees. And she cried, “O my love, return to me soon.” Thus was she left with Antony. And Antony was weak and burdened with his chain but there was pain in him which raised him from his corner; and he spoke no word but crept to Elizabeth, who had been his lover, silently, as the foul things on the walls. And she rose in alarm and made to escape him, but he caught at her ankle and drew her to the floor. And between his hands was the heavy chain and he stretched it across her throat and knelt on the two ends between his wrists so that the great links pressed into her neck. And Elizabeth, who had been his lover, struggled with him, but the pain lent him strength and he prevailed; and the struggling of her hands ceased and thus the Lady Elizabeth died. And so the turnkey found them when he returned; and he uttered a cry and the flask of wine slipped from his fingers and scattered itself on the wet floor. And he ran to where the Lady Elizabeth lay and laid his hand on her breast and knew that she was dead. And spoke no word but left her with Antony and shut the great door and locked it and threw the key into the Castle moat. And he never returned to the cell to tend the body of Elizabeth, for he had known love there. These things he told Cazarin, who had been educated at Paris, before the people of St. Romeiro killed him. 
A Tale Of Blood And Alchol In An Oxford College
I have for a long time hesitated to tell this story of Edward. For six weeks past, since Edward late one evening interrupted my essay to grow expansive over my whiskey, I have done the manly thing and told no one—at least practically no one. But lately this wasting of “copy”—as all good journalists are wont to describe the misfortunes of their friends—has been for me a matter of increasing and intolerable regret; and now that I have learned from Anne “in a manner which it is not convenient to record,” much of which Edward and Poxe are ignorant, I find it wholly impossible to remain silent. I have obscured the identities of the chief actors so far as it has been in my power to do so. Edward at any rate I feel should be safe from detection. The more I consider the nature of Edward the more incredible it all seems. He is to all outward showing the most wholly and over-masteringly ordinary undergraduate. Every afternoon, nearly, he may be heard ordering his tea down the Carlton Club telephone, “China tea, dry toast and butter and white cake, for one, please.” He is clothed in tweeds or flannels and usually wears an old Wykamist tie. No proctor would hesitate to recognize him as a member of the University. Yet in this is Edward alone among all the other young men in Old Wykamist ties and the Carlton Club. Some few weeks ago he murdered his tutor, a Mr. Curtis. So very few people out of College were aware of Mr. Curtis’s existence that his sudden death was received without consternation. He was just no more seen, as undistinguished dons do disappear in large Colleges. After all it was to everyone’s interest to keep things quiet—Mr. Curtis’s sole relative, a brother with a large practice at Pangbourne, quite realized this when the Warden explained things to him. The police, I think, never heard of it; if they did it was quite soon forgotten. It was said by Poxe—though with how much truth I would not venture to judge—that pressure was brought on Cockburn to keep the affair out of the Isis (there was some doubt about his degree—the Dean of Edward’s College was examining it—but, as I say, I will not make myself responsible for anything Poxe says). I do not know why Edward hated Mr. Curtis so much. I never had the privilege of meeting him but as I used to watch him moving about the quad, usually alone or with Anne, who is married to the Warden, I thought that he seemed, considering that he was a history tutor, a pleasant young man enough. But, however that may be, Edward hated him with an absorbing and unmeasurable hatred, so that at last he became convinced that Mr. Curtis’s existence was not compatible with his own. This was a state of mind into which any undergraduate might have slipped; where Edward showed himself essentially different from the other young men in Old Wykamist ties in the Carlton Club, was in his immediate perception that the more convenient solution was not suicide but murder. Most undergraduates would kill themselves sooner or later if they stayed up long enough, very few would kill anyone else. Once decided upon, the murder was accomplished with the straightforward efficiency which one would expect from a student of the cinematograph and one who, until his second failure in History previous (through his inability to draw maps) had been a senior History scholar. Mr. Curtis’s room was on the first floor just above the side gate. The side gate was closed at nine and the key kept in the porter’s lodge. The other key was kept in the Bursary. Edward knew that this was the key which he would have to take. He went into the Bursary at lunch time and found the Bursar there. The keys were hung on a nail by his desk. The Bursar sat at the desk. Edward began a story of a burned carpet; the Bursar became angry but did not move. He included the sofa; the Bursar stood up but remained at his desk. Edward threw a chair into the conflagration and then described how the three mini-max extinguishers which he had promised were all empty, “perhaps during the Bump Supper; you know, sir.” It was enough; the Bursar strode up and down thoroughly moved; Edward secured the key and hurrying to his room burned the carpet and the sofa and the chair and emptied the extinguishers in case the Bursar should come to investigate. His scout thought him drunk. Edward then hurried to Mr. Curtis and secured an interview for ten that evening; he sent a note to the President of the Union desiring to speak that evening, it was on Thursday that these things occurred—and then feeling that he had accomplished a good work, lunched very quietly at the Carlton Club. After lunch Edward set out on his bicycle and rode through much dust to Abingdon. There not at the first antique shop but at the smaller one on the other side of the square, he bought a dagger; at Radley he bought a stone and sitting under a hedge, he sharpened it. Returning with this in his pocket, he lay for a long time in a very hot bath. It was with considerable contentment that he sat down to eat dinner alone at the George—there were still several details to be thought out. The Union that evening was fuller than usual; some politician from London of enormous distinction was speaking. Edward, in private business, asked questions of force and ingenuity about the despatch boxes, the clock, the gas burners in the roof and the busts of the Prime Ministers: he was observed by all. At five to ten he slipped out saying to the Teller as he went that he was coming back; others were about him who were making for the coffee room while drinks could still be obtained. Edward’s bicycle was among the others at the St. Michael Street gate, clustering about the notice which forbade their presence. In eight minutes he was back again in his place, reviewing with complete satisfaction his evening’s achievement; almost immediately he was called upon to speak. His speech was, perhaps, more successful as an alibi than as a piece of oratory, but few were there to hear it. As he walked home that evening there was singing in his heart. It had been an admirable murder. Everything had happened perfectly. He had gone in at the side gate, unobserved, and reached Mr. Curtis’s room. His tutor had that habit, more fitting for a house master than a don, of continuing to read or write some few words after his visitors entered, in order to emphasize his superiority. It was while he was finishing his sentence that Edward killed him and the sentence was merged into a pool of blood. On his way back, Edward had gone down George Street as far as the canal and there had sunk the dagger. It had been a good evening, Edward thought. Hastings, the night porter at Edward’s College, always liked to delay people and talk to them in the porch. It was a habit which many resented, but Edward tonight was so overflowing with good nature that he actually started the conversation. “A dull debate at the Union tonight, Hastings.” “Indeed, sir; and did you speak?” “I tried to.” “Ah, well, sir; if you wanted excitement you should have stayed in College tonight. Most unusual happenings, sir. I don’t think I ever remember anything quite like it happening before, not since I’ve been at the College.” “Why, what’s happened, Hastings?” “You may well ask, sir. I knew his Lordship would come to a bad end.” “Do tell me what has happened, Hastings.” “Well, sir, you knows what Lord Poxe is when he gets drunk, sir. There’s no stopping him. Well, he come in tonight, sir, oh, very drunk. He never see me when I opened the door—just ran straight in and fell down on the grass. Then he gets up and starts swearing something wicked—said the dons hadn’t no right to put grass there for a gentleman to fall over. Said he was going to go and murder the lot of them.” “Well, Hastings?” “Well, he’s done it, sir.” “What! all of them, Hastings?” “No, sir, not all; but Mr. Curtis sir. The Dean went to find him to tell him to go to bed and found him asleep on the floor of Mr. Curtis’s room and Mr. Curtis,” with great glee, “dripping blood, sir. Quite slowly, pit-a-pat, as you might say.” “Well, I’m damned!” “Yes, indeed, sir. So was the Dean. He is with the Warden now, sir.” The sky filled with chimes; it was twelve o’clock. “Well, I must go to bed, Hastings. It’s a funny business.” “Yes, sir, and good night, sir.” “Good night, Hastings.” So Edward went to bed with a grave disquiet. It was a pity that Poxe should have done this; it was really a very great pity. But as he grew sleepier the conviction grew that perhaps this was the best that could have happened. He thought of Poxe—a sad figure. His father had been forced to resign from the Diplomatic Corps after that disgraceful business with the Montenegrin minister’s younger daughter, and had then married his first cousin, begotten an heir and drunken himself to death at the age of forty-two. It was thought that Poxe would never beget an heir, and it was certain that he would not live to be forty-two. He was nearly always half-sober. And so Edward’s thoughts drifted to the decay of great families, to renaissance Italy, and then far away beyond St. Mary’s tower where it was just striking half past twelve. A good evening and sleep..... Everyone in College had heard the story next morning. It reached me through my scout who called me with: “Half-past-seven sir, and Lord Poxe has murdered Mr. Curtis.” I met Poxe in the bathroom, very white and dejected. I asked him about the murder. “Well, I suppose I’ve rather rotted things up this time. I can’t remember a thing about it except that I was furious about some grass, and that two people put me to bed. It’s a melancholy business. They can’t hang me, can they?” I suggested inebriates’ asylum and had my bath. I was sincerely sorry about poor Poxe, but felt he would probably be better shut up. After all it was not safe to have a man who did that sort of thing about the College; it was not as though he was seldom drunk. I went to breakfast at the Old Oak tea rooms and found Edward there. He was in great form, and for this I disliked him that he should be in good form at breakfast; however, he was really rather amusing about the Poxe murder as it was already called. Edward asked if he might work in my rooms—he knew I never used them—as he had had a fire in his. I said that I wanted them this morning and advised the Union. Then I went back. At about eleven, I saw from my window the Warden’s side door open and Poxe come out, radiantly cheerful. I called him into my room, and he told me of what had happened. It must certainly have been a cheering interview for Poxe. He had gone to see the Warden with all the trepidation that should befit a young nobleman suddenly confronted with the prospect of being hanged. The old man had been seated on one side of the table with the Dean next to him. Poxe had been asked to sit down. The Warden had begun: “I have asked you to come and see me, Lord Poxe, in what for both of us, I think, and certainly for me, is a very bitter occasion. Last night, when in a state of intoxication, as you will perhaps have been informed, you entered the room of your tutor, Mr. Curtis, and stabbed him to death. I suppose that you do not deny this?” Poxe was silent. “It was a foolish act, Lord Poxe, an act of wanton foolishness, but I do not wish to be hard on you,” the Warden’s voice broke with emotion, “my poor boy, you are the fifteenth Lord Poxe and, as I have at different occasions reminded you, not unconnected with my own family. Lady Emily Crane, your great aunt, you will remember, married a Mr. Arthur Thorn, my grandfather. I feel that the College owes it to your position to treat this matter as discreetly as possible.” Poxe nodded enthusiastically. Among tradesmen and dons he had always found his title of vast value. “The Dean and I have discussed the matter at some length and have come to the conclusion that there is no reason why this matter should be referred to the ordinary State authorities at all; it has, as, of course, you are aware, always been a principle of University government so far as is possible to impede and nullify the workings of the ordinary courts of law. In this case it seems particularly advisable, as it is only too likely that the criminal courts would be unwilling to treat this matter with the clemency which we think desirable. “Nor, indeed, is a precedent far to seek. In the fifteenth century a commoner of this College struck off the head of the Bursar—true, that was in open fight and not before the young man had received severe injuries; but things, of course, were far rougher then. On that occasion the distinguished scholar, who held the position it is my privilege unworthily to occupy, inflicted upon the delinquent the fine of twopence to be paid to the Bursar’s relatives.” Poxe brightened. “Of course, the value of the penny has, since that time, markedly decreased, but calculating it as nearly as one can in days of rather haphazard accountancy, the Dean and I decided that the fine must have valued about thirteen shillings. “I need hardly say, Lord Poxe, that this whole matter has been acutely distressing to the Dean and myself. We hope and trust that it will not occur again. It is probable that in the event of a second offence, the College would find itself unable to treat the matter with the same generosity. Thank you, Lord Poxe.” And thus the interview closed and Poxe went out, elated, to celebrate his escape in the manner which most immediately suggested itself to him; and Edward, in his fire-blackened room, felt that everything was turning out well. Without difficulty, an aged and dissolute doctor was unearthed in St. Ebbs, where he lodged in squalor with one of the College servants, and earned an irregular livelihood by performing operations in North Oxford; this sorry man was persuaded to write a certificate of death from natural causes. The funeral was brief and ill attended. The Warden toiled for three days in the composition of a Greek epitaph and on the third evening persuaded the Dean to write one in Latin. And so for Poxe and Edward the matter ended. One thing I feel should be added. It is merely an incident that may be of no significance but which may explain much that seems improbable. I was told it in an intimate moment by Anne, who is married to the Warden, and of whom many stories are told. This is what she said, that on the night when Mr. Curtis died, she ran in a high state of emotion to her husband, the Warden, and cried, “Oh why, why did you kill him? I never really loved him.” She stopped, seeing the Dean there also. He, a gentleman, rose to go, but the Warden detained him. And then Anne, falling on her knees, pounded out a tale of the most monstrous and unsuspected transactions between herself and Mr. Curtis. “Supposing there were a trial,” asked the Warden, “could this be kept a secret?” The Dean doubted gravely whether this would be possible. And then came to the Warden the full realization of the imperishable obligations of precedent, the memory of the head of the Bursar, the appreciation of the greatness of families not unconnected with his own. “At least, I think it must have been then,” Anne said as she turned up the light. 
They Dine With The Past
Almost the first thing which Toby said to me when we met was, “Imogen is in London again.” Even to Toby to whom this could never mean as much as to the rest of us, it seemed the only thing of immediate importance; to me, more than as pleasure or pain, though, of course, it was both of these, it came as a breaking away of near memories. For some moment of time the bar where we stood was frozen in space; the handles, the slopped wood, the pallid man beyond them lost perspective; “If you like our beer tell your friends; if you don’t tell us” stood as cut in stone, the ordainment of priest kings, immeasurably long ago; the three years or a little more that stood between now and that grim evening in April fell, unhonoured, into the remote past and there was no sound from the street. Then, instantly almost, the machine fell to its work again and I said as though nothing had intervened between his voice and mine: “Was she with him?” For even now, after three years or more, I could not easily say his name; I spoke of him, as slatternly servants will speak of their master, impersonally. And indeed it was thus I thought of him; the name was an insignificant thing labelling an event. Toby understood something of this as anyone who had known Imogen, must have understood, even he; for he was associated with much that was wholly alien to him; he had been in Adelphi Terrace in that strange evening in April when Hauban had gazed out across the river for two, three hours, and scarcely a word spoken. To my question, down such valleys of thought, his answer made a way; she had been with him; they in a taxi; Toby had seen it from the top of a bus in Regent Street. And so, quite naturally, I went to find Hauban, whom I had not thought to seek when I had landed that morning—or was it three and a half years ago? Thus suddenly had I returned to the past. And when I found Hauban, he said: “So you, also, are returned to England.” Thus I knew that he too had seen Imogen and with his next words he invited me to dinner where I should meet many old friends, whom he would assemble to greet my return. But he and I and his guests knew that not for my welcome were we assembled, though no word was spoken of Imogen all the evening through. And the thought of her was about and between us all; with such shy courtesy did we treat her, who had been Queen, for all who had loved her were gathered there and none dared speak even her name. 
Conspiracy To Murder
During the first week of term, Guy first mentioned his neighbour to me. We were sitting on my window seat looking over the quad, when I noticed slinking out of the J.C.R. a strange shambling man of middle age. He was ill-dressed and rather dirty, and he peered forward as he walked. “That strange man,” said Guy, “has got the room opposite me.” We decided that this would be dull for Guy, for we had often seen these strange old men before and knew that they had no interest to offer, except the dull curiosity of asking why they had come to Oxford. And they were nearly always ready to tell their story of miserly saving and the thirst for knowledge. Therefore when, a fortnight later, Guy began to talk of him again, I was considerably surprised. “You know, he leads an incredible life; my scout told me that he has never been out to a meal or had a single man in to see him. He doesn’t know one of the other freshers and can’t find his way about Oxford. He’s never heard of half the Colleges. I think I shall go in and talk to him one evening. Come up with me.” So one evening at about half past ten, Guy and I went across to this strange man’s room. We knocked, and getting no answer, opened the door. The room was in darkness, and we were about to go, when Guy said: “Let’s have a look at his room.” I turned on his light and then gave a gasp of astonishment. The little man was sitting in his arm chair with his hands in his lap looking straight at us. We began to apologize, but he interrupted us. “What do you want? I do not wish to be disturbed.” “Our names are Guy Legge and Barnes,” I said, “we just came in to see you, but if you’re busy —” I was strangely discomforted by this man and had not yet recovered from the shock of finding him sitting there in the dark. “It was unnecessary to come and see me. I don’t want to know you Barnes, or you Legge, or anyone else.” And outside the door I said, “Well I’m damned. Of all the abominable men —” But Guy took me by the arm and said, “Dick, that man scared me.” So it began. A few nights later I was engrossed in an essay when I heard someone beating on my oak. “Go away, I’m busy.” “It’s I, Guy. May I come in?” “Oh, it’s you. Well do you mind awfully if I work tonight? I’ve got to get this essay done by eleven tomorrow.” “Let me in, Dick. I won’t disturb you. I only wanted to know if I could come in and read in here.” So I opened the oak and when he came into the light I saw that he was looking pale and worried. “Thanks awfully, Dick. I hope you don’t mind my coming in. I couldn’t work in my room.” So I returned to my essay and in two hours it was finished. I turned round and saw that Guy was not working. He was just sitting gazing into my fire. “Well,” I said, “I’ve finished this thing and I’m going to bed.” He roused himself, “Well, I suppose I must get back,” and then at the door, “You know, Dick, that man next door haunts me. I’ve never met a man who hated me as he does. When we meet on the stairs, he shrinks away and snarls like a beast.” And I, sleepily, laughed at him and went to bed. And for the next week or so, Guy came to my room every evening until one Sunday night he said, “Dick, I don’t want to go back, I’m not sleepy. May I read in front of your fire all night?” I told him not to be a fool; he was looking thoroughly tired. And then he said, “Dick, don’t you understand, I’m afraid of that man next door. He wants to kill me.” “Guy,” I said, “go to bed and don’t be an ass. You have been working too hard.” But a quarter of an hour later, I felt that I could not go to bed and leave Guy like this, so I went up to his room. As I passed the strange man’s door, I could not help a little qualm of fear. I knocked at Guy’s bedroom door and inside I heard a little cry of terror and the sound of bare feet. I turned the handle, but the door was locked and I could hear Guy’s breathing through the door; he must have been pressed against it on the other side. “D’you always lock your bedder door?” I asked, and at the sound of my voice, I heard him sigh with relief. “Hullo, Dick. You quite startled me. What do you want?” So I went in and talked to him; he always slept with his door locked now, and his light on; he was very much scared but after a few minutes he became calmer and soon I went away, but behind me I heard him lock his door. Next day he avoided me until evening; then he came in again and asked if he might work. I said: “Look here, Guy, tell me what is the matter with you.” And almost immediately I wished that I had not asked him, because he poured out his answers so eagerly. “Dick, you can’t think what I’ve been through in the last ten days. I’m living up there alone with only a door between me and a madman. He hates me, Dick, I know it. It is not imagination. Every night he comes and tries at my door and then shuffles off again. I can’t stand it. One night I shall forget and then God knows what that man will do to me.” So it went on and one day I went up to Guy’s room in the morning. He was not there, but his scout was, and I found him in the act of taking the key from Guy’s bedroom door. I knew I had no right to ask him, but I said: “Hullo, Ramsey, what are you doing with Mr. Legge’s key?” Ramsey showed, as only a scout can show, that I had been guilty of a gross breach of good manners and answered me: “The gentleman next door wanted it, sir. He has lost his and wanted to see if it would fit.” “Did Mr. Legge say that you could take it?” “No, sir. I did not think it necessary to ask him.” “Then put it back at once and don’t touch things in his room whatever the gentleman next door says.” I had no right to say this to Guy’s scout, but I was definitely frightened. A sudden realization had come to me that Guy might have some reason for his fear. That evening I went up to see him and we decided to work in his room. He did not mind if I were with him. “But shut the oak, Dick,” he said. We worked until eleven o’clock and then we both sat up listening; someone was fumbling against the oak; then he knocked quietly. Guy had started up white and panting. “You see, I haven’t been lying. He’s coming at me. Keep him off, Dick, for God’s sake.” The knocking was repeated. “Guy,” I said, “I’m going to open that oak. Brace up, man, we two can look after ourselves against anyone. Don’t you see? We’ve got to open that oak.” “Dick, for God’s sake don’t. I can’t stand it,” but I went towards the door. I opened it and there was only the oak between us and the man beyond. Suddenly Guy’s face became twisted with hatred and his voice harsh. “So you’re in it, too. You’re going to betray me to that fiend. He’s bought you as he has bought Ramsey. There’s not a man in the College he hasn’t bought or bullied into it and I can’t fight the lot,” his voice suddenly fell to a tone of blind despair and he rushed into his bedroom, slamming the door. I hesitated between the two doors and then, picking up a heavy candlestick, opened the oak. On the threshold, blinking in the light, was the strange man. “So you’re here, too, Barnes,” he said slowly; “but that is excellent. What I wish to say is for you as well as Legge. I want to apologize for being so rude that evening when you two came up to see me. I was very nervous. But where is Legge?” And from the bedroom came a sound of hysterical sobbing, the wild, hideous sobbing of a mad man. 
Unacademic Exercise:A Nature Story
After half an hour I said what I had been pondering ever since we started. “Billy, this is a crazy business. I’m willing to call the bet off if you are.” But he answered gravely. “I’m sorry, my friend, but I’m not going to lose the opportunity of making a fiver.” Then there was silence again until Anderson looked back from the wheel and said: “Look here, Billy, let’s stop at this pub and then go home. I can lend you a fiver or more if you want it. You needn’t pay me until you want to.” But Billy was resolute: “No, Dick, I owe enough already. I should like to earn an honest meal for once.” So Anderson drove on and soon we came into sight of the grim place which Craine had chosen for our experiment. I saw that Billy was beginning to lose his nerve for he was shivering in his big overcoat and his feet were very still, pressed down with all his might. “Billy,” I said, “I don’t think we need go any further; we should only be wasting time. You’ve obviously won the bet.” And I think he would have yielded—for he was rather a child—when Craine’s voice answered for him. “What damned nonsense. The thing isn’t begun yet. Donne’s bet that he has the nerve to go through the whole werewolf ceremony. Just getting to the place is nothing. He doesn’t yet know what he has to do. I’ve got as far as this twice before—once in Nigeria with a man of forty, but he hadn’t the nerve to go through with it, and once in Wales with the bravest thing in the world, a devoted woman; but she couldn’t do it. Donne may, because he’s young and hasn’t seen enough to make him easily frightened.” But Billy was frightened, badly, and so were Anderson and I and for this reason we let ourselves be overborne by Craine because he knew that we were; and he smiled triumphant as a stage Satan in the moonlight. It was strange being beaten like this by Craine who in College was always regarded as a rather unsavoury joke. But then this whole expedition was strange and Craine was an old man—thirty-three—an age incalculable to the inexperience of twenty-one; and Billy was only just nineteen. We had started off merrily enough down St. Aldate’s; Billy had said: “I wonder what human flesh tastes like; what d’you suppose one should drink with it?” and when I had answered with utter futility, “Spirits, of course,” they had all laughed; which shows that we were in high good humour. But once in Anderson’s car and under that vast moon, a deep unquiet had settled upon us and when Craine said in his sinister way: “By the way, Donne, you ought to know in case you lose us; if you want to regain your manhood all you have to do is to draw some of your own blood and take off the girdle.” Anderson and I shuddered. He said it with a slight sneer on “manhood” and we resented it that he should speak to Billy in this way, but more than this we were shocked at the way in which the joke was suddenly plunged into reality. This was the first time that evening on which I had felt fear and all through the drive it had grown more and more insistent, until on the heath, bleak and brilliantly moonlit, I was sickeningly afraid and said: “Billy, for God’s sake let’s get back.” But Craine said quietly: “Are you ready, Donne? The first thing you have to do is to take off your clothes; yes, all of them.” And Billy without looking at us, began with slightly trembling hands to undress. When he stood, white beside his heap of clothes under the moon, he shivered and said: “I hope I get a wolf skin soon; it’s damned cold.” But the pathetic little joke faltered and failed and left us all shivering; all except Craine who was pouring something out into the cup of his flask. “You have to drink this—all right it isn’t poisonous. I brewed it myself out of roots and things.” So the rites began. Billy was told to draw a circle about himself in the ground and he obeyed silently. Another potion was given to him. “Put this on your hands, eyelids, navel and feet. Just a drop or two. That’s right.” I was trembling unrestrainedly and I dared not look at Anderson because I knew that he was too. Craine went on evenly: “And now comes a less pleasant part. I am afraid that you have to taste human blood,” and then to us, like a conjuror borrowing a watch, “will either of you two volunteer to lend some?” Anderson and I started, thoroughly alarmed. “Look here, Craine, this is beastly.” “You can’t go on, Craine.” But Craine said: “Well, Donne, what are we going to do?” and Billy answered evenly, “Go on with it, Craine.” It was the first time he had spoken since he drew the circle and he stood now quite calm and looking incredibly defenceless. “Well, if neither of you two friends of his are willing, I suppose I must offer my blood.” But by a sudden intuition, we both of us knew that this thing must be averted at all costs; I was conscious of the most immediate and overpowering danger and dreamlike stood unmoving; Anderson had started forward. “If Billy wants to go on with this, he had better have mine.” And Craine answered easily: “As you like, my friend. Do not step inside the circle and cut deeply because he will need a good deal. That is all I ask you,” but he and Anderson and I knew that he had been in some strange way checked. So Anderson rolled up his sleeve and cut his arm and Billy without hesitation put his lips to the wound. After a few moments, Craine said, “That should be enough”; so Anderson bound up his arm roughly with a handkerchief and Billy straightened himself; there was a small trickle of blood running down his chin. He was made to repeat some jumbled sentences in a foreign tongue and then Craine produced a strip of fur. “The girdle,” he said, “put it on Donne.” “And now you have to kneel down and say a paternoster backwards. You had better repeat it after me.” And then there occurred something of which, I think, I shall never lose the memory. Billy did not kneel down; he crouched back on his haunches like an animal and threw his head right back; his fair hair stirred in the moonlight, but on his face there came a look of awakening and of savagery, his lips drawn back and showing his teeth. I stood there in wild horror and saw this happen. “Amen, Saeculorum Saecula in gloria.” And the Thing in the circle drew in its breath. I dare not now think what that sound might have been. I refuse resolutely to let myself consider the possibility that it might not have been Billy’s voice; that the Thing in the circle was not Billy, his face contorted by some trick of the moonlight. Even then, in that moment of terror, I would not let myself consider this but I knew by an animal apprehension of the Unknown that that sound must be stopped if we were to keep our sanity; that from the moment we heard it our lives must be wholly altered. Anderson knew this, too; and, always quicker to act than I, he was in the circle while I stood numb with horror. He was a strong man and he flung Billy across the scratched circumference, tearing the girdle from him; he fell in a heap and his elbow struck on a stone; a drop of blood oozed through the earth. Then he raised himself, and, holding his elbow said, “Dick, are you mad? Why on earth did you do that? You’ve hurt me damnably.” And then suddenly turning on to his face he burst into a fit of hysterical crying and lay there shaking from head to foot and we three watching him. Craine, of course, spoke first.
The National Game
My brother said to me at breakfast: “When you last played cricket, how many runs did you make?” And I answered him, truthfully, “Fifty.” I remembered the occasion well for this was what happened. At school, oh! many years ago now, I had had my sixth form privileges taken away for some unpunctuality or other trifling delinquency and the captain of cricket in my house, a youth with whom I had scarcely ever found myself in sympathy, took advantage of my degraduation to put me in charge of a game, called quite appropriately a “Remnants’ game.” I had resented this distinction grimly, but as a matter of fact the afternoon had been less oppressive than I had expected. Only twenty-one boys arrived so, there being none to oppose me, I elected to play for both while they were batting. I thus ensured my rest and for an hour or so read contentedly having gone in first and failed to survive the first over. When eventually by various means the whole of one side had been dismissed—the umpire was always the next batsman, and, eager for his innings, was usually ready to prove himself sympathetic with the most extravagant appeal—I buckled on the pair of pads which a new boy had brought, although they were hotly claimed by the wicket keeper, and went out to bat. This other side bowled less well and after missing the ball once or twice, I suddenly and to my intense surprise hit it with great force. Delighted by this I did it again and again. The fielding was half-hearted and runs accumulated. I asked the scorer how many I had made and was told: “Thirty-six.” Now and then I changed the bowlers, being still captain of the fielding side and denounced those who were ostentatiously slack in the field. Soon I saw a restiveness about both sides and much looking at watches. “This game shall not end,” I ordained, “until I have made fifty.” Almost immediately the cry came “Fifty” and with much clapping I allowed the stumps to be drawn. Such is the history of my only athletic achievement. On hearing of it my brother said, “Well, you’d better play today. Anderson has just fallen through. I’m taking a side down to a village in Hertfordshire—I’ve forgotten the name.” And I thought of how much I had heard of the glories of village cricket and of that life into which I had never entered and so most adventurously, I accepted. “Our train leaves King’s Cross at nine-twenty. The taxi will be here in five minutes. You’d better get your things.” At quarter past nine we were at the station and some time before eleven the last of our team arrived. We learned that the village we were to play was called Torbridge. At half past twelve, we were assembled with many bags on the Torbridge platform. Outside two Fords were for hire and I and the man who had turned up latest succeeded in discovering the drivers in the “Horse and Cart”; they were very largely sober; it seemed that now everything would be going well. My brother said, “Drive us to the cricket ground.” “There isn’t no cricket ground,” brutishly, “is there, Bill?” “I have heard that they do play cricket on Beesley’s paddock.” “Noa, that’s football they plays there.” “Ah;” very craftily, “but that’s in the winter. Mebbe they plays cricket there in the summer.” “I have heard that he’s got that field for hay this year.” “Why, so ’e ’ave.” “No, there ain’t no cricket ground, mister.” And then I noticed a sign post. On one limb was written “Lower Torbridge, Great Torbridge, Torbridge St. Swithin,” and on the other “Torbridge Heath, South Torbridge, Torbridge Village,” and on the third just “Torbridge Station,” this pointing towards me. We tossed up and, contrary to the lot, decided to try Torbridge Village. We stopped at the public house and made enquiries. No, he had not heard of no match here. They did say there was some sort of festification at Torbridge St. Swithin, but maybe that was the flower show. We continued the pilgrimage and at each public house we each had half a pint. At last after three-quarters of an hour, we found at the “Pig and Hammer” Torbridge Heath, eleven disconsolate men. They were expecting a team to play them—“the Reverend Mr. Bundles.” Would they play against us instead? Another pint all round and the thing was arranged. It was past one; we decided to lunch at once. At quarter to three, very sleepily the opposing side straddled out into the field. At quarter past four, when we paused for tea, the score was thirty-one for seven, of these my brother had made twenty in two overs and had then been caught; I had made one and that ingloriously. I had hit the ball with great force on to my toe from which it had bounced into the middle of the pitch. “Yes, one,” cried the tall man at the other end; he wanted the bowling; with great difficulty I limped across; I was glad that the next ball bowled him. One man did all the work for the other side—a short man with very brown forearms and a bristling moustache. At quarter to five we went out to field and at seven, when very wearily we went back to the pavilion, only one wicket had fallen for 120. The brown-armed man was still in. Even on the occasion of my triumph I had not fielded; this afternoon, still with a crushed toe, I did not do myself credit. After a time it became the habit of the bowler whenever a ball was hit near me, immediately to move me away and put someone else there; and for this I was grateful. In the shed at the end of the field there was no way of washing. We all had to change in one little room each with his heap of clothes; we all lost socks, studs and even waistcoats; it was all very like school. And finally when we were changed and feeling thoroughly sticky and weary, we learned from the cheery captain with the brown arms that there were no taxis in Torbridge Heath and no telephone to summon one with. It was three miles to Torbridge Station and the last train left at half past eight. There would be no time for any dinner; we had heavy bags to carry. One last sorrow came upon us when it would have seemed that all was finished, and just as we were coming into King’s Cross I found that somewhere in that turmoil of changing I had lost my return ticket. My poor brother had to pay, I having no money. When he had paid he discovered that he would have no money left for a taxi. We must go back by tube and walk. To travel by tube with a heavy bag is an uneasy business. And when I returned home, I reasoned thus with myself; today I have wearied myself utterly; I have seen nothing and no one of any interest; I have suffered discomfort of every sense and in every limb; I have suffered acute pain in my great toe; I have walked several miles; I have stood about for several hours; I have drunken several pints of indifferently good beer; I have spent nearly two pounds; I might have spent that sum in dining very well and going to a theatre; I might have made that sum by spending the morning, pleasantly, in writing or drawing. But my brother maintained that it had been a great day. Village cricket, he said, was always like that.