by Hugh Walpole
Albert Edward came in for a chat She told him what she had done.
“Well,” he said, “that’s fine.”
She stared at him.
“I want you to marry me,” he said; “I’ve been wanting it a long time. I like you. You’re just the companion for me, sense of humour and all that. And a business head. I’m past the sentimental stuff. What I want is a pal. What do you say to the little restaurant?”
The grandfather’s clock rose up and struck Fanny in the face. She could have endured that had not the green and white staircase done the same So strange was the world that she was compelled to put her hand on Albert Edward’s arm.
Behind the swimming, dazzling splendour of her happiness was the knowledge that she had secured a job from which no man in the world would have the right to oust her.
THE HON. CLIVE TORBY
HE was now the only son of old Lord Dronda; his elder brother had been killed at Mona early in the war. He had been aware of his good looks ever since he was a week old. Tom, the elder brother, had been fat and plain; everyone had told him so. He did not mind now, being dead. Clive was the happiest fellow possible, even though he had lost an arm late in’17. He had not minded that. It was his left arm, and he could already do almost everything quite well without it; women liked him all the better for having lost it. He had always been perfectly satisfied with himself, his looks, his home, his relations — everything. His critics said that he was completely selfish, and had horrible manners or no manners at all, but it was difficult to underline his happy unconscious young innocence so heavily. Certainly if, in the days before the war, you stayed with his people, you found his indifference to your personal needs rather galling — but “Tom looked after all that,” although Tom often did not because he was absent-minded by nature and fond of fishing. The fact is that poor Lady Dronda was to blame. She had educated her children very badly, being so fond of them and so proud of them that she gave in to them on every opportunity. She was known amongst her friends as “Poor Lady Dronda” because, being a sentimentalist and rather stupid, life was perpetually disappointing her. People never came up to her expectations, so she put all her future into the hands of her sons, who, it seemed, might in the end also prove disappointing. The favourite word on her lips was, “Now tell me the truth. The one thing I want to hear from my friends is the truth.” However, the truth was exactly what she never did get, because it upset her so seriously and made her so angry with the person who gave it her. Tom being dead, she transformed him into an angel, and told sympathetic acquaintances so often that she never spoke of him that his name was rarely off her lips. Nevertheless she was able to devote a great deal of her time to Clive, who was now “All Her Life.”
The results of this were two: first, that Clive, although retaining all his original simple charm, was more sure than ever before that he was perfect; secondly, that he found his mother tiresome and, having been brought up to think of nobody but himself, was naturally as little at home as possible.
He took up his abode at Hortons, finding a little flat, No. 11, on the second floor, that suited him exactly. Into it he put his “few sticks of things,” and the result was a charming confusion of soda-water syphons and silver photograph frames.
He very happily throughout the whole of 1918 resided there, receiving innumerable young women to meals of different kinds, throwing the rooms open to all his male acquaintances, and generally turning night into day — with the caution that he must not annoy Mr. Nix, the manager, for whom he had the very greatest respect. The odd thing was that with all his conceit and bad manners, he was something of a hero. He had received both the M.C. and the D.S.O., and was as good an officer as the Guards could boast. This sounds conventional and in the good old Ouida tradition, but his heroism lay rather in the fact that he had positively loathed the war. He hated the dirt, the blood, the confusion, the losing of friends, what he called “the general Hell.” No one was more amusing and amiable during his stay out there, and, to be Ouidaesque again for a moment, he was adored by his men.
Nevertheless it was perhaps the happiest moment of his life when he knew he was to lose his arm. “No more going back to jolly old France for me, old bean,” he wrote to a friend. “Now I’m going to enjoy myself.”
That was his rooted determination. He had not gone through all that and been maimed for life for nothing. He was going to enjoy himself. Yes, after the war he would show them....
He showed them mainly at present by dancing all hours of the day and night He had danced before the war like any other human being, and had faithfully attended at Murray’s and the Four Hundred and the other places. But he did not know that he had very greatly enjoyed it; he had gone in the main because Miss Poppy Darling, who had just then caught his attention, commanded him to do so. Now it was quite another matter — he went simply for the dance itself. He was not by nature a very introspective young man, and he did not think of himself as strange or odd or indeed as anything definite at all; but it was perhaps a little strange that he, who had been so carefully brought up by his fond mother, should surrender to a passion for torn-toms and tin kettles more completely than he had ever surrendered to any woman. He did not care with whom it was that he danced; a man would have done as well. The point was that, when those harsh and jarring noises began to beat and battle through the air, his body should move and gyrate in sympathy just as at that very moment perhaps, somewhere in Central Africa, a grim and glistening savage was turning monotonously beneath the glories of a full moon. He danced all night and most of the day, with the result that he had very little time for anything else. Lady Dronda complained that he never wrote to her. “Dear Mother,” he replied on a postcard, “jolly busy. Ever so much to do. See you soon.”
Young men and young women came to luncheon and dinner. He was happy and merry with them all. Even Fanny, the portress downstairs, adored him. His smile was irresistible.
The strangest fact of all, perhaps, was that the war had really taught him nothing. He had for three years been face to face with Reality, stared into her eyes, studied her features, seeing her for quite the first time.
And his vision of her had made no difference to him at all. He came back into this false world to find it just exactly as he had left it Reality slipped away from him, and it was as though she had never been. He was as sure as he had been four years before that the world was made only for him and his — and not so much for his as for him. Had you asked he would not have told you, because he was an Englishman and didn’t think it decent to boast — but you would have seen it in his eyes that he really did believe that be was vastly superior to more than three-quarters of the rest of humanity — and this although he had gone to Eton and had received therefore no education, although he knew no foreign language, knew nothing about the literature of his own or any other country, was trained for no business and no profession, and could only spell with a good deal of hit-and-miss result.
Moreover, when you faced him and thought of these things, you yourself were not sure whether, after all, he were not right. He was so handsome, so self-confident, so fearless, so touching with his youth and his armless sleeve, that you could not but wonder whether the world, after all, was not made for such as he. The old world perhaps — but the new one?...
Meanwhile Clive danced.
He flung himself into such an atmosphere of dancing that he seemed to dance all his relations and acquaintances into it with him. He could not believe that everyone was not spending the time in dancing. Albert Edward, whose official name was Banks, assured him that he had no time for dancing.
“No time!” said Clive, greatly concerned. “Poor devil! I don’t know how you get along.”
Albert Edward, who approved of the Hon. Clive because of his pluck, his birth, his good looks, and his generosity, only smiled.
“Got to earn my living, sir,” he said.
“Really, must you?” Clive was concerned. “Well, it’s a damned shame after all you’v
e done over there.”
“Someone’s got to work still, I suppose, sir,” said Albert Edward; “and it’s my belief that it’s them that works hardest now will reap the ‘arvest soonest — that’s my belief.”
“Really!” said Clive in politely interested tone. “Well, Banks, if you want to know my idea, it is that it’s about time that some of us enjoyed ourselves — after all wé’ve been through. Let the old un’s who’ve stayed at home do the work.”
“Yes, sir,” said Albert Edward.
It did indeed seem a shame to Clive that anyone should have to work at all — that nice girl Fanny, for instance, who was portress downstairs, or that poor old decrepit-looking thing who was nightrporter and opened the door for Clive at four in the morning.
He told Fanny what he thought. Fanny laughed. “I love my work, sir,” she said; “I wouldn’t be without it for anything.”
“Wouldn’t you really, now?” said Clive, staring at her.
Dimly he perceived that these months after the Armistice and during the early months of 1919 were a queer time — no one seemed to know what was going to happen. The state of the world was very uncomfortable did one look into it too closely; even into the chaste and decorous quarter of St. James’s rumours of impending revolution penetrated. People were unhappy — had not enough to eat, had no roof over their heads, always one thing or another. The papers were beastly, so Clive gave up looking at them, save only the Sporting Times, and devoted his hours that were saved from dancing to a little gentle betting, to wondering whether Joe Beckett would beat Goddard, and when he had beaten him to wondering whether he would beat Georges Carpentier, and to playing a rubber or two of auction bridge at Whited, and to entertaining the ladies and gentlemen already mentioned.
He was not, during this period, worrying at all about money. He very seldom saw his old father, who never came up to town and never wrote letters. Old Lord Dronda, who was now nearly seventy, stayed at the place in Hertfordshire — he loved cows and pigs and horses, and Clive imagined him perfectly happy in the midst of these animals.
He had an ample allowance, but was compelled to reinforce it by writing cheques on his mother’s account. She had, when he lost his arm, given him an open cheque-book on her bank. There was nothing too good for such a hero. He did not naturally think about money, he did not like to be bothered about it, but he was vaguely rather proud of himself for keeping out of the money-lenders’ hands and not gambling more deeply at bridge. Luckily, dancing left one little time for that— “Keeps me out of mischief, jazzing does,” he told his friends. He had, in his room, a photograph of his father — an old photograph, but like the old man still. Lord Dronda was squarely built and had side-whiskers and pepper-and-salt trousers. He looked like a prosperous fanner. His thighs were thick, his nose square, and he wore a billycock a little on one side of his head. Clive had not seen his father for so long a time that it gave him quite a shock to come in one afternoon and find the old man sitting under his photograph, a thick stick in his hand and large gaiters above his enormous boots. He was looking about him with a lost and bewildered air and sitting on the very edge of the sofa. His grey bowler was on the back of his head.
“Hullo, Guvnor!” Clive cried. Clive was a little bewildered at the sight of the old man. His plan had been a nap before dressing for dinner. He had been dancing until six that morning, and was naturally tired, but he was a kindly man, and therefore nice to his father.
“I’m delighted to see you!” he said. “But whatever are you doing up here?”
The old man was not apparently greatly delighted to see Clive. He was lost and bewildered, and seemed to have trouble in finding his words. He stammered and looked helplessly about him.
His son asked him whether he’d have any tea. No, he wouldn’t have any tea — no, nothing at all.
“The fact is,” he brought out at last, “that Dronda’s to be sold, and I thought you ought to know.”
Dronda to be sold! The words witched back before Clive’s eyes that figure of Reality that recently he had forgotten. Dronda to be sold! He saw his own youth coloured with the green of the lawns, the silver of the lake, the deep red brick of the old house. Dronda to be sold!
“But that’s impossible, father!” he cried.
He found, however, that a great deal more than that was possible. He had never possessed, as he had been used sometimes proudly to boast, a very good head for figures, and the old man had not a great talent for making things clear, but the final point was that the Income Tax and the general increased expenses of living had made Dronda impossible.
“Also, my boy,” Lord Dronda added, “all the money you’ve been spending lately — your mother only confessed to me last week. You’ll have to get some work and settle down at it I’m sorry, but the old days are gone.”
I’m quite aware that this is not a very original story. On how many occasions in how many novels has the young heir to the entails been suddenly faced with poverty and been compelled to sit down and work? Nine times out of ten most nobly has he done it, and ten times out of ten he has won the girl of his heart by so doing.
The only novelty here is the moment of the catastrophe. Here was the very period towards which, through years and years of discomfort and horror in France, young Clive had been looking. “After the war he would have the time of his life”; “after the war” had arrived and Dronda was to be sold! His first impulse was to abuse fate generally and his father in particular. One glance at the old man checked that. How funny he looked, sitting there on the edge of the sofa, his thick stick between his knees, his hat tilted back, and that air of bewildered perplexity on his round face as of a baby confronted with his first thunder-storm. His thick-set, rather stout body, his side-whiskers, his rough red hands — all seemed to remove him completely from the smart, slim, dark young man who sat opposite him. Nevertheless Clive felt the bond. He was suddenly in unison with his father as he had never been, in all his life, with his mother. His father and he had never had what one would call a “heart-to-heart” conversation in their lives — they did not have one now. They would have been bitterly distressed at such an idea. All Clive said was:
“What a bore! I didn’t know things were like that. You ought to have told me.”
To which Dronda replied, his eyes wistfully on his son’s empty sleeve:
“I didn’t think it would get so bad. You’ll have to find some work. No need for us to bother your mother about it.”
The old man got up to go. His eyes moved uncomfortably from one photograph to another. He pulled at his high collar as though he felt the room close.
“Sure you won’t have anything?” said Clive.
“No, thanks,” said his father.
“Well, don’t you worry. I’ll get some work all right I’ll have to pull my horns in a bit, though.”
And that was positively all that was said. Dronda went away, that puzzled, bewildered look still hovering between his mouth and his eyes, his grey bowler still a little to one side.
After he was gone Clive considered the matter. Once the first shock was over things were really not so bad. The loss of Dronda was horrible, of course, and Clive thought of that as little as might be, but even there the war had made a difference, having shaken everything, in its tempestuous course, to the ground, so that one looked on nothing now as permanent As to work, Clive would not mind that at all. There was quite a number of things that he would like to do. There were all these new Ministries, for instance; he thought of various friends that he had. He wrote down the names of one or two. Or there was the City. He had often fancied that he would like to go into the City. You made money there, he understood, in simply no time at all. And you needed no education.... He thought of one or two City men whom he knew and wrote down their names.
One or two other things occurred to him. Before he went out to dine he had written a dozen notes. He liked to think that he could be prompt and business-like when there was need.
Duri
ng the next day or two he had quite a merry time with his friends about the affair. He laughingly depicted himself as a serious man of business, one of those men whom you see in the cinemas, men who sit at enormous desks and have big fists and Rolls-Royces. He spent one especially jolly evening, first at Claridge’s, then “As you Were” at the Pavilion (Sir Billion de Boost was what he would shortly be, he told his laughing companion), then dancing. Oh, a delightful evening! “My last kick!” he called it; and looking back afterwards, he found that he had spoken more truly than he knew.
His friends answered his notes and asked him to go and see them. He went There then began a very strange period of discovery. First he went to the Labour Ministry and saw his old friend Reggie Burr.
Reggie looked most official in his room with his telephone and things. Clive told him so. Reggie smiled, but said that he was pressed for time and would Clive just mind telling him what it was he wanted. Clive found it harder to tell him than he had expected. He was modest and uneloquent about his time in France, and after that there really was not very much to say. What had he done? What could He do?... Well, not very much. He laughed. “I’m sure I’d fit into something,” he said.
“I’ll let you know if there is anything,” said Reggie Burr.
And so it went on. It was too strange how definite these men wanted him to be! As the days passed Clive had the impression that the world was getting larger and larger and emptier and emptier. It seemed as though he could not touch boundaries nor horizons.... It was a new world, and he had no place in it....
The dancing suddenly receded, or rather was pushed and huddled back, as the nurse in old days took one’s toys and crammed them into a corner. Clive found it no longer amusing. He was puzzled, and dancing did not help him to any discovery. He found that he had nothing to say to his friends on these occasions. He was aware that they were saying behind his back: “What’s come to Clive Toby?... Dull as ditchwater.”