Hervey felt her anger increasing. She sprang away from him. ‘And you? What did you say?’ she asked.
‘Oh, I refused,’ Penn said lightly. ‘I told him what I thought of him and came away.’ He stood up and put his arms round her again. ‘What did you think?’
Chapter XVII
The Sin of Ananias and Sapphira
That year a few people saw that they were living in a new age: it was as impossible to return to the old as to Elizabethan England—both were now historic and the child Richard, born during the four years’ destruction, would feel the one no less strange and distant than the other. The many turned back in mind to the past and lived as though the change had not taken place, thus sowing the seeds of future disorders, even of madness. Over vast acres of Europe the destruction itself had not come to an end. In what were still called the enemy countries vast numbers of the enemy were still dying. It is true that most of them were under five years of age.
Luckily it cost less to kill these than to kill soldiers. And it happened with decent modesty. No telegrams were delivered: Regret to inform you … twenty children … death due to starvation … Vienna yesterday. What was an even more serious omission, no disengaged poet seized the chance to picture Heaven joyfully preparing nurseries for this invasion of babies.
A Save the Children movement had begun earlier, and saved certain who would otherwise have died. Nine out of ten persons considered the labour unnecessary or perverse. When a well-meaning woman invited George Ling to contribute his mite, he drew up the strings of his mouth and said: ‘I see no reason for sending money to the ends of the earth; we have our own poor.’ ‘Then give it to me for the East End,’ she cried—but he remained true to himself, and his money stayed with him. David Renn told Hervey about an Austrian woman who had five children. She saw that one of them was stronger than the others. The thought came to her to save him at least. Daily she took a little from the tiny portions of the others to add to his. The plan succeeded, but one day she confessed to a doctor at the American Mission and killed herself that night.
This story shocked Hervey so that she could not sleep for it. For a time she lived on one meal a day and gave the few shillings saved to the Fund. But she wanted to do more, and plucked up courage to call on Marcel Cohen again. He received her kindly and said: ‘Well, what do you want now?’
‘I should like to write an article for the Daily Post,’ Hervey said.
‘Well, why not? A particular article? Do you want to see your name in print?’
‘That’s not necessary,’ Hervey said directly. She felt that she must at all costs keep an air of coolness. ‘I want to write about the children dying in Austria. If necessary I can write it for nothing, but if you pay me I could give the money to the Save the Children Fund.’ She went on with a pounding heart: ‘If I’m to write to order, I mean if you choose the subject, I should charge you ten guineas.’
‘Your grandmother couldn’t have put it more clearly.’ He smiled at her indulgently, while his eyes searched her face for the flaw he expected to find in everything.
‘Why must you drag in my grandmother every time r ‘Hervey said.
‘Because you remind me of her. You don’t mind, surely?’
‘I would rather remind you of myself,’ Hervey said, smiling. She felt less anxious, now that she had said all that she had arranged with herself to say.
‘You do that, too. Let me think. Could you write a fairly straightforward article on the future of advertising?’
‘Yes,’ Hervey said.
‘I’ll pay you eight guineas.’
His liking for her had increased, but it was impersonal, the emotion he felt before a piece of china of which no copy is known to exist. He admired her and wanted to ask questions, and at the same time he was anxious to feel sure that the object was actually valuable and unique. If there was a personal element in this feeling it was the watch he kept on her for any signs of an attempt to exploit him. He felt certain that so much shrewdness could not exist without at least the impulse to take advantage of a powerful friend.
‘Very well,’ Hervey said. She looked round for her despatch case, a shabby monster that she tried to hide on coming into a room, and usually forgot where she had stowed it. It was behind her chair and she could not see it unless she turned right round.
Cohen had noticed that she no longer went to Evelyn Heywood’s house. He had tried to find out from Evelyn what had become of her protégée, and had to content himself with a long involved tale in which there was no central fact but a great many accusations of treachery and ingratitude, all of which he dismissed, cynically, as applying to Evelyn herself. He was curious to know the truth. Human nature, more especially what we call the under side (thus revealing at once our fears and our aspirations), interested him as passionately as music. He liked to pick minds to pieces, and when he could watch a strangely involved motive at work he was as exhilarated by it as by music. He had twenty minutes to spare and he imagined that, even allowing for the eager anxiety of the young to explain themselves, he would hear the whole in that time.
He did not expect to have the truth from Hervey. His practice was by comparing two or more untruths to deduce the truth.
‘You don’t go to our dear Evelyn’s Fridays any more.’
Hervey was instantly alert. I must say nothing, she thought. ‘No, I don’t go out much,’ she said in a placid voice.
‘But you used to go there a good deal.’
‘Yes,’ Hervey said.
He scarcely believed that he was being baffled. ‘Don’t you like meeting people?’
‘Not very much,’ Hervey said. ‘Either I talk too much, or I can think of nothing at all to say. I make a fool of myself either way.’
She had discovered her despatch case. Reaching for it in a careless way, as if she had had her eye on it for a long time, she rose to go. It was after she had gone that Marcel Cohen reflected on the extent of his failure. He had not even asked her how she intended to write the article. It could easily be useless. If it is I have been taken in by her specious air of competence, he thought, astonished. He was far from thinking eight guineas a small sum to risk.
The article came in a week later. He read it himself and had no fault to find with it. Mr Shaw-Thomas could have been content with his pupil.
When Hervey got her cheque she meant at first to pass it straight on to the Save the Children Fund. The cheque came by the morning post. During the lunch hour she saw a brown linen frock in the window of a shop in Regent Street. It was marked ‘Sale Price £2.’ The wish that seized her, as she looked at it, was no mere fancy. It took instant and complete possession of her. Scarcely giving herself time to think—as she well might—that the dress she was wearing to the office was shabby and too thick for summer, she went into the shop, had the dress taken out of the window, bought it and went back to the office wearing it, carrying the old one. Her feelings as she walked in the sun in her new frock were a mingling of joyfulness and discontent.
When she entered the room David Renn, who was in a good mood, said : ‘That’s a fine new frock, young Russell.’
To his surprise, and her own, tears stood in Hervey’s eyes. ‘I stole it,’ she said, in a rough voice.
She told him what she had done. He listened patiently, her air of young dejection was amusing and touching, and at last said: ‘I consider you were entitled to it. I haven’t noticed your buying many clothes, I think you needed this.’
His voice gave Hervey a happy feeling of relief. It was the being approved by him. For the first time in the months she had worked for him she felt nearly at ease. In the same moment she noticed that his mouth was beautiful. This gave her an impersonal pleasure. It is true that from one cause and another his lips were colourless, but they had been drawn with extreme delicacy. She wished she were an artist, since there is more satisfaction in it than in writing. She said nothing in answer but began to feel that she could in time save the missing two pounds.
Chapter XVIII
Renn Meets a Social Democrat
Still thinking of Hervey—she had surprised him into taking her seriously—David Renn walked out of the office and sauntered towards the Earlhams’ flat. He wanted to laugh about the new dress and could not. It seemed to him that there was something strained and unnatural in her remorse. The remorse was genuine—but it was wrong. A young woman ought not to feel that she had committed a crime in buying a new dress, even if the money is part of a sum dedicated to good works. She takes life too hard, he thought. But the smallest thing made her laugh like a boy—and he had himself seen how easily she forgot to think of Philip.
There were violent contradictions in her, under her stolid bearing. She conceals too many things, he thought. That explained her better. He frowned and smiled, wondering what sort of life she had beyond the office. Philip—he remembered now—had distrusted the husband, and thinking of Philip he let Hervey pass out of his mind.
He walked slowly, afraid of catching his friends at their meal. They would invite him to join them and since there was never enough for two——! Moreover he enjoyed the walk. London, he said to himself, is perfect in June. Delicious in May, perfect in June. The trees—if the trees growing in London’s streets and yards could be brought together they would make a thick wood—are still green and glossy. No one hurries. The young men loiter along the pavements. He liked to look at them, at their dreaming faces, the child not yet ousted by the young man, almost innocent, only the first, the lightest tracing in their looks of the insolence of experience.
A lorry clattered down the street, driving with its back to the sun. It was carrying a big piece of machinery, the steel and the enamel flung out rays and flashes of light. The cover at the back of the lorry was looped up, so that a wedge of sunlight fell on the face of a boy seated between two men. The men were talking to him. He looked from one to the other, laughing not speaking. Renn noticed everything, the boy’s strong white teeth, the light, a branch of green tied to the pole. He felt excited, as though what he had seen was beautiful and significant, a sight he could never forget. I must never forget it, he thought. In some way that he did not understand it released for him his feelings about London, more than that, about life itself. Something had been revealed to him, and if for the moment he did not understand it he could feel the excitement and the elation.
Earlham’s flat looked out over the roofs of other houses. He climbed up the stairs, pausing on the third landing to rest his leg. The fourth was so dark that if he had not known where to look for them he might have missed name-plate and door. Henry Smith, coming an hour later, did miss them. He felt round the walls and, the door opening suddenly, fell into the flat.
He stood up, laughing and embarrassed. There were three people, and the Earlhams, in the room already. Rachel Earlham looked helplessly at the newcomer: he seemed to fill it to suffocation, so that she thought the walls might give way. There were no more chairs in the flat. He settled the question for himself by sitting down on the floor with his back to the window. Even here his long legs were in her way. He laughed. His eyes were candid and very bright.
On the wall near him hung a portrait of an old man with a serious kind face. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked.
Rachel looked at him with astonished eyes. ‘Keir Hardie. Don’t you know that?’
‘Oh.’ He threw his head back and nodded at Renn. ‘I only know what he has had time to tell me. Do forgive me. I’m beginning to learn.’
‘Are you a socialist?’
‘I’m against society,’ he laughed.
‘Why? If you know nothing.’
‘A decent society wouldn’t tolerate the slums : the existing society does tolerate them, therefore it is not decent. That’s logic, isn’t it?’ He pleased her with his sunny face.
Louis Earlham said fiercely: ‘Mr Marcel Cohen, who owns the newspaper I work for, owns some of the worst slums in London. The ground they’re built on belongs also to the Church. That’s nice, isn’t it?—the slum-owning hog supported on the parson’s back.’
‘Why do you go on working for him?’ Henry Smith asked.
‘We all have to live. Why does David Renn write advertisements?’
One of the two men, strangers to Renn, broke in, with a sarcastic smile. ‘Louis admits that he is selling himself. He’ll go on doing it, too. You all do it, three-quarters of the Labour Party is only holding out for a better price. As for Trade Union officials—’ He jerked his head contemptuously towards a big rosy man, middleaged and stout. ‘Like Bradford Joe here.’
‘We should starve to death if Louis didn’t work,’ Rachel cried. Her clear pale face coloured with her indignation. She folded her arms and sat upright.
The man who had been called Bradford Joe chuckled in a placid way. He had a shrewd snouty face and small eyes, a remarkable but not an agreeable face. ‘Don’t worry yourself, Mrs Earlham,’ he laughed. ‘Grassart’s mad. Downright mad. No better than a Communist.’ He said ‘mad’ as only northerners of all races can say it, Yorksiremen best of all. It sounded like a large square strong hand coming down flat on a table.
‘We were talking before you came about the dockers’ strike on Tyneside,’ Louis said. ‘Grassart thinks the Unions ought to have made a transport strike of it and demanded the nationalisation of docks and railways.’
‘It’s no time for that,’ Joe said soberly.
‘Ay, and never will be, as long as you think more of your safety and your comfortable places than of the revolution,’ Grassart sneered. ‘Revolution! You won’t move—now or in a hundred years. Your paws are too well buttered’
Still smiling and good-tempered, the other rose to go. He held Rachel’s arm and patted it and told her she ought to eat more. A few minutes later Grassart went, too. He had sat silent, hanging his head, after his enemy had gone and now he went without saying good night to Rachel. She made a funny childish face at his back. Henry Smith shook with silent laughter. He was already enchanted with her. When she brought in the tray of cheese and bread he looked quickly at Renn, and noticing that he took only the smallest piece, helped himself sparingly and made it last out a long time. He was sensitive, for all that he was young and noisy.
Renn said quietly : ‘Grassart’s not altogether in the wrong. If the Unions were to strike now. They’re well-off and powerful. As it is, the controls are coming off everything with a rush. All we used to hear about the rebirth of the nation has been shelved for an indefinite time. It costs too much.’
‘You forget the difficulties,’ Louis said. ‘There’s distress—ex-soldiers looking for work. The country’s dead against making experiments.’
‘Are you going to wait until the other classes beg you to change society for them?’ Renn said, with growing irony.
He smiled at Rachel. She came over to him and stood stroking his hair. ‘Naughty David,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You’re teaching your friend to be reckless and impatient. Don’t I tell you—you ought to get married and have a wife to keep and to look after you. Then you would give up all your wildness.’
‘Am I so wild?’ Renn said, smiling. He looked up at her, with his fine eyebrows lifted as high as they would go. She blushed and went back to her chair, pausing on the way to run her finger across her husband’s sleeve. Her childish air of delicacy and enthusiasm was overlaid now by drowsiness. Renn saw it—he saw too much, everything—and very soon went away.
At one point on the dark narrow stairs he caught at Henry Smith’s shoulder. His leg had begun suddenly to pain him. It was like a knife working between the flesh and the bone. He controlled himself and walked on. He felt dejected—less by the pain than by the feeling he had had in his friend’s flat. Those two—he had believed in them. They meant well! But Louis was too quickly swayed. He had been impressed, actually, by that Union official—and if ever, thought Renn, there was a self-seeking complacent hog of a man—
‘How many brands of Socialists are there?’ Henry Smith asked sudd
enly.
‘As many as of the other religions,’ Renn said.
He could not add another word. He felt ashamed of his evil dispostion. In their rooms he helped the younger man to arrange his bed on the couch, then went quickly to his own room. He sat for a long time on the side of the bed, rubbing his leg, and thinking.
Chapter XIX
Hervey Loses her Place and Finds Another
A Fortnight later Renn gave notice that he was leaving his firm. He had completed the arrangements for Philip’s paper, which he proposed to call simply The Week. Part of its duty—and these were Philip’s plans—was to reprint significant statements made (in speech or writing) by well-known politicians, priests, leaders of industry and finance, writers. Philip’s idea of himself as a watchdog was responsible for this. He wanted to keep an eye on these people, who can change our lives, to pursue them with a relentless energy. ‘Look, this is what they are saying this week. This one is lying again, to soothe you. That is an enemy of peace and the common man. T’other grudges you your liberties.’
For the rest, Philip had supposed that, without writing the whole all himself, or making many enemies, he could deal as faithfully with literature as with politics, finance, the Church. He expected the support of tens of thousands of young men and women, as eager, patient, and uncompromising as himself.
When Renn spoke to Hervey she said directly: ‘Philip wanted my help.’
‘So do I,’ Renn said, with a calm smile. ‘But I can’t offer you as much as you’re getting here. I shall take five pounds a week. I can pay you four.’ He did not give himself the trouble of explaining that of his five pounds almost half would be needed by his mother.
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