‘Oh,’Ridley said. ‘Thanks.’
In the street he experienced the greatest difficulty in walking at a proper speed. He wanted to run, to fling his arms about. Not disengaged. What a way to put it! Was it or was it not an insult? Have I been snubbed? He stood still and felt his forehead. It was dry and burning, and yet the inside of his hand was wet. A man passing looked at him inquisitively. He hurried on.
In the state he was he thought of Evelyn with dislike and impatience—as if it were her fault he had overshot his mark. Not for the first time, he regretted involving himself with her. Thank God, he cried, I have better friends. Grand chaps. Working writers and reviewers, no nonsense about them. He forgot that Evelyn had first given him these friends. Thinking, In future I’ll stick closer to my own sort, he began to be comforted. The miserable wrigglings of his lower self dropped out of sight. He walked on slowly. The air was mild and pleasant. On a May evening London enchanted, more surely and subtly than any other city. He began to notice things. A pale child passed him crying silently and bitterly, and he turned himself about. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. No answer. Wanting to comfort her, he felt in his pocket. ‘Here you are, poor little thing,’ he said with a smile.
The bad taste of a city with pavements as wide as Regent Street and no café tables. I’ll write in the Review about it, he promised. But with the thought of drinking he began to die of thirst. He hurried on as far as Charing Cross Road and went into a bar there. A leaning man made room for him and as he did so looked up. This man had a face as grotesque as a dream. It was long, thin, bent, one grey eye and one green, mouth as wide as a street, rick of black hair. Ridley knew him at once—how could you forget such a face?—a farm boy who in 1915 had been with him in France. They shook hands with the proper joy. ‘Well? How’s life?’
‘I’m writing—articles in the papers and so forth,’ Ridley answered.
‘Are you now? You’ll be getting famous,’ the other said. His bright eyes searched Ridley’s face with the little sharp malice of a peasant. ‘Trust you to make the best of yourself! Now look at me—I’ve travelled in Germany in style, I married a French wife, I’ve a grand farm near Dunkirk with a house and furniture all present and correct, and here I am, with a few shillings in my pocket. In December my officer took me to Cologne and Berlin with him and when he stayed at the best hotels I did, too—not in the same part, but it was all right. Investigating. Yes there was children starved so that they had stomachs blown out to a point and the insides of their cheeks meeting! ‘He went off into a fit of laughter. ‘And yes when I was snug in Berlin I gets a letter from France, from a friend of mine, tells me she has a fine baby—and wouldn’t I come back tsweet and marry her, and look after the farm. Why and mind you, she was no girl, but I said to myself, The best stock comes out of the oldest pot. Here’s where I went wrong. Back I went, yes, marries—with considerable trouble—and starts farming. Lord, lord, I soon found I’m married to her mother, father, fifteen great-aunts, a whole tribe of blossoming frogs. Mouldering mumping maggots. Up before dawn working, no money, all scraped up by the old woman and hidden away somewhere. One day what do they do but trust me with five hundred francs. Did I run? I ran, I ran, I ran.’
‘You’re a nice scoundrel,’ Ridley said, grinning. He took an envelope out of his pocket and scribbled on it: Best stock comes out of oldest pot. The beer and the fellow’s crazy chatter exhilarated him. He left the place smiling, and as he walked he took pains to etch the man’s face on his mind. It was a fine item snatched into the Rogues’ Gallery he kept there. All these with the sounds and sights he added daily and with some were not rogues, like that pale child to whom he had given sixpence for her crying, he meant to use, when the time came. Yes, yes, he could and would use them—but he loved them dearly too.
5. Conversation with Philip
Renn could visit his friend only between six and seven o’clock. This was after hours, but with T.S.’s help he got himself in, and because Philip was alone now in a private ward, and because he was considered to be dying. (This had not been in Philip’s plans.) He went every day.
For a long time he thought that Philip had not changed. There are some changes the body conceals within itself until the last possible minute and they are even less alarming to the onlooker for coming in this way, without warning, as when the light dies rapidly from a scene, turning to the grey colour of water all that has been fields and woods. To-day, looking towards the bed as he crossed the room, Renn had the impression that Philip was half asleep. Philip smiled at him, began to talk, but remained drowsy, his head drooping over his chest. He spoke, too, as if Renn had been with him all along.
‘What became of your ex-soldier in the end?’
‘Oh, he’s learning to think,’ Renn said. ‘I give him books and take him to meetings. Now and then he earns a guinea. He learns as fast as he thinks. He is as strong as a bear, lazy, and likes being alive. All his family is dead. Father a sea captain, the mother had some ambition in her thoughts and tried to train the boy. He has a head for languages, and speaks French, and he’s learning German fast. Out of all this I’ll find work for him in time.’
‘I’ll talk to him when I get out of here,’ Philip said. ‘Perhaps I can help him.’
He had been following one train of thought in his mind for many days. It was not new, but it had forced itself on him with threats, and he could have no peace until he dealt with it. How can one bear the evil in man, knowing that there is no justice or pity in life, and knowing that when Jesus said: ‘Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?’ He was saying only what He willed to believe? Children are born into poverty and young men eat their hearts out in it; infinite care, infinite ingenuity, is daily given to the filthy and bloody traffic in armaments. For all these things there is no compensation. The hungry are not fed, the defrauded young are not comforted in another life. They were born to be defrauded. In the last War the flower of England died uselessly.
This spectre followed him day and night. At last he came to it that the only good in life lies in one kernel with the evil. Just as death always triumphs over life, so cruelty is stronger than gentleness and hate than pity, and greed than kindness. A man can live until he dies; so also can he raise his voice against cruelty until his tongue is torn from its roots. I too feel hate, Philip thought. I hate age, cruelty, greed, ignorance, dying. I should be ashamed to submit to what is forced on me.
He was not surprised to look up and find Renn standing beside him. In the last week he had felt pain less. A curious dualism—of body, not of mind—possessed him. He had two bodies, one which sweated and rebelled, and another which remained apart and could think clearly concerning everything except concerning time. Time eluded this self, and he was often surprised to find night falling on a day no longer than the single thought that had occupied him since waking. At one moment his friends were with him, the next gone. After another moment, or a year, there they stood again. His thoughts played with him—one came alone, then a flight passed, a cloud of birds winging strongly across a clear sky. He was not unhappy.
‘I made a will before coming in here,’ he next told Renn. ‘You know I have almost eight thousand pounds. I’ve left the whole of it to you, to spend on the paper.’
‘You’re going to spend it yourself,’ Renn said.
‘I know that,’ Philip said, smiling. ‘But just suppose I don’t—suppose I were to die. The odds are poor—I’ve had eight doctors at me in a fortnight—eight to one against! In that case, I want you—will you take it on?’
‘Certainly,’ Renn said.
Philip laughed. ‘Do you remember our first week in the line—Hannescamps—and the sudden descent, terrifying us two poor children, of a full-blown Corps Commander? He asked me—rather like Jove, I thought—how I should act if I were in command of the company and a battalion of the enemy attacked at once without warning. I couldn’t get out a word. I daren’t tell him—if he didn
’t know—that a battalion couldn’t attack in full daylight without warning. I nearly burst into tears. When he tried you, you said in a kind voice: “ I should engage them at once.” He can’t have been such an ass after all—he laughed.’
‘I’ve forgotten,’ Renn said.
‘Well, I thought I had,’ Philip said. ‘I remembered it when you said Certainly.’
‘I’ve been trying to write an account of the retreat,’ Renn said, after a moment. ‘I can’t find any words hard enough. They ought to be as sharp and hard as flints. I’ve given it up.’
‘Did you write any more poetry?’
‘No,’ Renn said.
‘Don’t give that up.’
Renn did not answer. He was watching the shadow on his friend’s face—no trick of the light, but the deepening, otherwise imperceptible, of an inward tide. Where had been clear stream, leaf, sand, and pebble, shining in sunlight, was now a gathering swirl of darkness, nothing to be seen, all, all lost. He roused himself to question Philip about the policy of the paper.
Afterwards he forgot the answers but remembered that Philip said he hated the new standardising of life, which has touched a pitch that whereas even chairs and candlesticks used to be signed by their makers you now, wading chin-deep in the flood of books, can find scarcely one that bears the signature of its maker in any line. The spring that runs living out of our English past is being choked with these piles of rubbish. Rubbish Shot Here.
Philip proposed a patient sifting of the writings and speeches of all kinds of men, from leaders of industry, politicians, divines, bankers, trades union officials, to novelists. We shall wash a great deal of muck for a thimbleful of metal, he said. He thought that a wide public would welcome his efforts on behalf of their inheritance. Really, one cannot be sorry he died without having to admit he had been deceived.
When Renn left the hospital he rang up T. S. Heywood and asked him this question. ‘What are they doing to Philip in——’s?’
‘Trying a new lead treatment on him.’
‘Will it cure him?’
There was a short silence, during which he had the sensation of supporting an immense weight, the burden of the space between himself and T.S.
‘No. I don’t think so. It will kill him off,’ T.S. said.
‘Quickly?’
‘Oh yes. Fairly quickly.’
Chapter XV
What the Soldier said is not Evidence
Late June, there was no shade in the room in which Hervey and David Renn worked. Opening the windows wider availed nothing—bringing in another layer of dust and stench from the narrow street running to Covent Garden. The sun laid its hot dry hands on everything in the room. Renn had grown pale and Hervey scarlet. Strands of hair like wet seaweed clung to her forehead.
The work on Harriman’s Saloxide had been delayed and was going forward now by forced marches. They had worked late together for three days. On the morning of the fourth they were both short-tempered, Renn’s body ached, and under the surface his mind watched Philip. Mr Harriman was giving trouble. None of the drawings prepared in the studio pleased him. At first it seemed that he disliked the uniform worn by English soldiers; when he had resigned himself to what could not be helped, he disliked the pose. Six times the artist had redrawn his figure of a young subaltern, without achieving the desired air of martial and joyous confidence. This although Mr Harriman gave himself the trouble to visit the studio. He explained patiently to the artist that the air of confidence was essential: ‘he’s sure confident; he knows that if he’s wounded Saloxide will save him.’ The artist had a wife and child to consider.
At last—‘imagination is not enough,’ Mr Harriman said : he begged them to use a live model. Renn seized the chance for his friend the young ex-soldier, and Henry Smith, wearing a uniform borrowed from the artist, posed for some hours. He was in the studio this morning. From curiosity Renn and Hervey climbed up there to see how nearly ready the new drawings were. They saw Mr Harriman going away by the main staircase and Henry Smith dissolving in silent laughter. He had just persuaded Mr Harriman that it would not do for him to stand with a foot on the neck of a machine-gun and an arm waving a rifle aloft. The light fell on him; he had thrown his head back, smiling in pure pleasure. Standing so, he was incomparably beautiful—the sun had warmed him and laughter made him radiant.
Mr Harriman had crept back and was looking at him with a complacent smile. This was at last the right air. He flew whirring across the room, immobilised the young man, and only then caught sight of Renn and Hervey leaning against a door.
He hurried to them with a friendly air. ‘I was just calling on you two. I want you to get that lovely confidence into your copy. Maybe I could read us out a few sentiments I took down. I don’t want you to quote any of them—but, listen, it’s a trifle of spirit.’
He held a notebook out in front of him and raising his voice for all to hear, read :
‘Yet say whose ardour bids them stand
At bay by yonder bank,
Where a boy’s voice and a boy’s hand’
—waving his hand towards Henry Smith, ‘as it might be this lovely boy—
Close up the quivering rank
Who under those all-shattering skies
Plays out his captain’s part
With the last darkness in his eyes
And Domum in his heart.
How’s that, eh? Listen:
So the boys, undismayed,
Walked the dark valley singing as they went.
That’s fine, fine’—squeezing Hervey’s arm—‘but now listen: They went with songs to the battle, they were young. See where it says?—they were young. You two’ve got to get that idea of youth into your copy—and a kind of wistful note—At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them. Don’t you like it? Why don’t you like it? Maybe you didn’t lose anyone. Listen, I’m going to let you keep these sentiments by you. I’m working on the idea that everyone in this country lost someone, if it was only a friend. When they look at the picture of this boy they’ll remember—like it says—and here’s where you’ll touch in something young and wistful, until they’re catching their breath, then—Saloxide!’
He tore the page from his notebook and put it into Hervey’s hand. Renn had gone.
Towards four o’clock T.S. spoke to Hervey on the telephone. He asked her to come to the hospital at five. She repeated the message to Renn.
On the way to the hospital they were more friends than they had been. T.S. was sauntering in the square formed by the two wings and because he looked no different silly Hervey supposed that Philip was better. It was a fortnight since she had seen him. In that fortnight he had altered quickly. He was colourless and had violet rings under his eyes. His head hung forward as though he were falling asleep.
Hervey did not realise that he was drugged. Out of politeness she talked as if she did not notice that he left words half spoken and seemed not to hear what they said. His half-closed eyelids gave him a sulky air. Except for the light contraction of his forehead his face was smooth like a boy’s. You would say that dying was doing him good. At every stage in this journey he was making against his will another burden of responsibility fell from him. The only grievous thing was that he was alone and could not communicate to his friends his new lightness and confidence. Renn and T.S. had been seeing him every day. They did not realise that he was already away from them, their words less clear to him than words spoken so many years earlier that they had outlived time. Hervey was alone aware of it. She felt constrained and shy with the new Philip.
She sat close to the bed, and after a moment Philip reached out and took her hand. He held it clasped lightly in his own all the time she was there. She strove to keep herself calm, so that no tremor of her nerves could touch him. She was ashamed of disliking the pressure, dry and lax, of Philip’s hand.
He took no notice when Renn spoke to him. T.S. had been looking out of the window, but he came back when he s
aw that Renn was at a loss and began to talk to him across Philip. ‘I tried to speak to you this morning, but you weren’t in your room when I telephoned and I couldn’t wait.’
‘I was in the studio,’ Renn said. He bit his lip and smiled.
‘Tell me where we can meet tomorrow night.’
‘At my rooms,’ Renn said after a moment’s thought.
‘Why didn’t you come sooner, our Hervey?’ Philip said in a distinct voice. ‘You might have come. I would have come to you. To seek the unforgotten face. Who wrote that? They won’t give me any of my books, damn them.’
‘I’ll bring you some as soon as you’re better,’ Hervey said. ‘Which do you want?’
As if he had forgotten about it already Philip did not answer.
‘I had a letter from your old sergeant, from Frank, asking about you,’ Hervey said. ‘They’re going to make a new road and he thinks he’ll have to move. He wants you to tell him what to do about your caravan.’
‘Frank,’ Philip repeated. His eyes opened wide. ‘Oh God young Martinson at Loos,’ he said. His body trembled.
‘You don’t have to think about it now,’ Renn said.
Philip shut his eyes. In a few moments his head sank lower and he breathed as though he were going to sleep. T.S. and Renn talked to each other in their ordinary voices. They ignored Hervey, who as usual could not think of anything to say; she moved gently to draw away her hand but Philip closed his own over it quickly and firmly. After a time he lifted his head and said drowsily: ‘I’ll wait, Hervey love.’
Hervey looked anxiously at T.S. She felt her calmness going and he was doing nothing to help her. T.S. looked at her and looked at Philip, his eyelids twitching as they did when he was tired. He stood up and leaned over Philip.
‘They won’t let us stay with you,’ he said in a low voice.
‘You know that, don’t you?’
And after a pause Philip said : ‘Very well.’ He released Hervey’s hand when she pulled it gently. She stood up, sighing with relief.
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