Mufti

by Sapper

  It seemed to the man staring into the fireplace that he was very near to holy ground; and suddenly he rose and strode to the window. With eyes that were a trifle dim he saw the beautifully kept little garden – a mass of colour; he saw the name plate, “Sea View,” on the gate, glinting bravely in the sun. Something of the hopeless tragedy of that “Some day” was getting him by the throat… “Made good” – dear Lord! and he thought of his two travelling companions in the morning…

  For perhaps five minutes he stood there silently, and then he turned back into the room. It had come to him quite clearly that Philip Vernon had indeed made good; that the real tragedy would have been his return to “Sea View.” By his death he had justified himself; in his life he would have failed… For he had been branded with the brand of Culman Terrace, and there is no need to say more. He was relieved to see that Mrs Vernon was quite composed again. He had performed the first part of his mission, and now the second required tackling. And something warned him that he would have to tread very delicately; any suspicion of the word charity would be fatal to success…

  “About your eldest boy, Mrs Vernon,” he began; “your husband often spoke about him to me. Let me see – what age is he?”

  “Jack is fifteen, Captain Vane,” she said quietly.

  “Fifteen! Couldn’t be better. Now I was wondering, Mrs Vernon, whether you would care in a year or two, to let him come to me. I’m in a very big business in the City, and my boss is always on the look out for bright boys. I know your boy is clever – but so much depends on getting a good start these days. Of course he’d be judged entirely on his merits…but he’d start with a real good chance of making the best of his talents.” He looked quickly at her, and found she was watching him gravely. “It’s part of the privilege of the brotherhood of the trenches, Mrs Vernon, to be allowed to make such an offer…” He was finding it easier now. “To do anything for your husband’s son would be a real pleasure; though, I need hardly say that, beyond giving him the chance, I could offer nothing else. It would be up to him to make good.”

  For a while Mrs Vernon was silent, and he flashed a quick look at her. Had he put it well? Had he kept every suspicion of patronage out of his offer?

  “Thank you very much, Captain Vane,” she said at last, “for your offer. I hope you won’t think me ungrateful when I refuse. Four years ago I think I should have accepted it with gratitude; but now…” She shook her head. “A lot of the shams have gone; we see clearer – some of us… And I tell you that I would not willingly condemn Jack to such a life as his father led – even if I was penniless. Wait – let me finish” – as Vane started to speak – “Of course with you he would have better chances than his father had before him – but the city life would kill him – even as it has killed thousands of others… I wonder if you can realise the hideous tragedy of the poor clerk. He can’t strike for higher wages, like the British working man. He just goes on and on and suffers in silence… In Jack’s case it would be the same… What – four hundred a year?” She laughed a little scornfully. “It’s not much to bring up a family on, Captain Vane… Four hundred a year, and Acacia Avenue – two streets up… Acacia Avenue doesn’t call on Culman Terrace, you know…” Again she laughed. “No, Jack isn’t made for that sort of life, thank God. He aches for the big spaces in his boyish way, for the lands where there are big things to be done… And I’ve encouraged him. There’ll be nobody there to sneer if his clothes get frayed and he can’t buy any more – because of the children’s boots. There’ll be no appearances to keep up there. And I’d a thousand times rather that Jack should stand – or fall – in such surroundings, than that he should sink slowly…here.”

  She paused for a moment, and then stood up and faced him. “It’s emigration, Captain Vane, that I and people like me have got to turn to for our boys. For ourselves – it doesn’t much matter; we’ve had our day, and I don’t want you to think the sun never shined on us, for it did… Just wonderfully at times…” She gave a quick sigh. “Only now…things are different… And up till now, Culman Terrace hasn’t considered emigration quite the thing. It’s not quite respectable… Only aristocratic ne’er-do-wells and quite impossibly common men emigrate. It’s a confession of failure… And so we’ve continued to swell the ranks of the most pitiful class in the country – the gentleman and his family with the small fixed income. The working man regards him with suspicion because he wears a black coat – or, with contempt because he doesn’t strike; the Government completely ignores him because they know he’s too much a slave to convention to do anything but vote along so-called gentlemanly lines. What do you suppose would be the result if the enormous body of middle class slaves in this country did, one day, combine and refuse to be bled by every other class? We’re bled by the people on top for their own advantage; and then we’re bled again for the advantage of the dear workman…” She laughed a little. “Forgive me talking so much; but not for Jack, thank you.”

  Vane bowed. “Mrs Vernon, I think you’re perfectly right – and I wish you and him the very best of luck.” He shook hands gravely and a few moments later he was walking back towards the station with Binks trotting sedately at his heels. In all probability he would never see Mrs Vernon again; war and its aftermath had brought their paths together for a space, and now they were diverging again. But that short space had been enough to make him feel ashamed and proud. Ashamed of himself for his cynicism and irritability; proud of the woman who, with her faith clear and steadfast, could face the future without faltering. Her man’s job had been laid upon her; she would never fail him till the time came for her to join him… And by then she would have earned her reward – rest… She will deserve every moment of it… Surely the Lord of True Values will not grudge it to her…

  And though he had said nothing to her of his thoughts – men when deeply moved are so hopelessly inarticulate – somehow he wished going up in the train that he had. Falteringly, crudely, he might have said something, which would have helped her. If only a man had the power of expressing sympathy without words. He needn’t have worried, had he known…and Binks, who was looking out of the window with interest, could not tell him. Anyway, it was not anything to make a song or dance about – putting a cold wet nose into a hand that hung down from a chair, and letting it rest there – just for a while… But it was not the first time, and it will not be the last, that the Peace that passeth all understanding has been brought to the human heart by the touch of a dog… Binks had justified his inclusion in the trip…

  Chapter 7

  The days that followed passed pleasantly enough. Gradually the jaundice was disappearing, and Vane was becoming normal again. The war seemed very far away from Rumfold; though occasionally a newcomer brought some bit of intimate gossip about Crucifix Alley or Hell Fire Corner, or one of the little places not shown on any map, which mean so much more to the actual fighting man than all the big towns rolled together. Pipes would come out and men would draw together in the smoking-room – while in imagination the green flares would go hissing up again, silhouetted against the velvet of the night. But for the most part the war had ceased to count; tennis and golf, with a visit now and then to London, filled the days.

  Vane’s arm prevented him playing any game, but the country around was admirably suited for walking, and most afternoons he found himself strolling out past the lodge gates for a ramble. Sometimes one of the other officers accompanied him; but more often he went alone. And on those long lonely walks he found himself obeying Margaret’s injunctions, given to him at Paris Plage – “Go and find out…”

  In common with many others who were beginning, almost unconsciously, to think for the first time, he found considerable difficulty in knowing where to start the quest. Vane was no fool, but in days gone by he had accepted a certain order of things as being the only possible order – just as England had been the only possible country. But now it seemed to him that if England was to rem
ain the only possible country an alteration would have to be made in the order. Before, any danger to her supremacy had come from without – now the trouble lay within.

  Each day, alongside the war news, he read of strikes and rumours of strikes, and when he came to ask himself the reason why, he was appalled at his own ignorance. Something was wrong somewhere; something which would have to be put right. And the trouble was that it did not seem a matter of great ease to put it right. He felt that the glib phrases about Capital and Labour pulling together, about better relations between employers and men, about standing shoulder to shoulder, failed to bit the point. They were rather like offering a hungry lion a halfpenny bun. They could always be relied on to raise a cheer from a political platform provided the right audience was present; but it seemed doubtful whether even such a far-reaching result as that was quite enough.

  At times his natural indolence made him laugh inwardly. “What on earth is the use?” he would mutter, throwing pebbles into the pond below him. “What has to be – has to be.” It was a favourite haunt of his – that pond; in the heart of a wood, with a little waterfall trickling over some rounded stones and falling musically into the pond a few feet below. The afternoon sun used to shine through the branches of some great beech trees, and the dense undergrowth around screened him from the observation of any chance passer by walking along the path behind… “You can’t do anything,” the mocking voice would continue. “So why worry?”

  But the mental jaundice was passing – and the natural belief of man in himself was coming back. He felt the gas expert had been right, even though he had died. And so Vane became a reader of books of a type which had not formerly been part of his daily programme. He was groping towards knowledge, and he deliberately sought every help for the way. He tried some of H G Wells’ to start with… Previously he had read the “First Men in the Moon,” because he’d been told it was exciting; and “Ann Veronica,” because he had heard it was immoral. Now he tried some of the others.

  He was engaged thus when Joan Devereux found him one afternoon in his favourite haunt. She had stumbled on his hiding place by mistake, and her first instinct was to retire as quickly as she had come. Since their first meeting, their conversation, on the rare occasions they had met at Rumfold Hall, had been confined to the most commonplace remarks, and those always in the presence of someone else. Any possibility of a tête-à-tête she had avoided; and the necessary mental effort had naturally caused her to think all the more about him. Now, just as she halted in her tracks and prepared to back out through the undergrowth, Vane looked up at her with his slow lazy smile.

  “Discovered!” he remarked scrambling to his feet, and saluting her. “Joan, you have come in the nick of time.”

  “I would prefer you not to call me Joan,” she answered coldly. “And after your abominable rudeness last time we were alone together, I don’t want to talk to you at all.”

  “I suppose I was rather rude,” answered Vane reflectively. “Though, if it’s any comfort to you to know, I was much ruder to two men going up in the train a few days later…”

  “It isn’t of the slightest interest to me,” she returned, “whom you’re rude to, or how you spend your spare time. The habits of an ill-mannered boor are not of great importance, are they?” She turned her back on him, and parted the undergrowth with her hands, preparatory to leaving.

  “Don’t go.” His voice close behind her made her pause. “I need you – officially.”

  She looked round at him, and despite herself the corners of her lips began to twitch. “You really are the most impossible person,” she remarked. “What do you need me for?”

  He stepped back to his usual seat, and pointed to a small mossy bank beside him. “Come and sit down there, and let’s think…”

  After a moment’s hesitation she did as he said.

  “It’s rather a knotty problem, isn’t it?” he continued after a moment. “I might want you to flirt with me in order to avert my suicide in the pond through boredom…”

  “You may want,” she retorted.

  “But it’s in the official programme?”

  “You’re not on the official list,” she flashed back.

  “Worse and worse,” he murmured. “I begin to despair. However, I won’t try you as highly as that. I will just ask you a plain, honest question. And I rely on you to answer me truthfully… Do you think I should be a more attractive being; do you think I should be more capable of grappling with those great problems which – ah – surround us on all sides, if I could dissect rats – or even mice?” he added thoughtfully after a pause.

  The girl looked at him in amazement. “Are you trying to be funny?” she asked at length.

  “Heaven forbid! “he said fervently. “I was never more serious in my life. But, in that book,” – he pointed to one lying between them – “everybody, who is anybody dissects rodents.”

  She picked up the book and gazed at the title. “But this is the book everybody’s talking about,” she said.

  “I am nothing if not fashionable,” returned Vane.

  “And do they dissect rats in it?”

  “Don’t misunderstand me, and take too gloomy a view of the situation,” said Vane reassuringly. “They do other things besides… Brilliant things, all most brilliantly written about; clever things, all most cleverly told. But whenever there’s a sort of gap to be filled up, a mauvais quart d’heure after luncheon, the hero runs off and deals with a mouse. And even if he doesn’t, you know he could… And the heroine! It’s a fundamental part of all their educations, their extraordinary brilliance seems to rest on it as a foundation.”

  She looked at him curiously. “I’m not particularly dense,” she said after a while, “but I must admit you rather defeat me.”

  “Joan,” answered Vane seriously, and she made no protest this time at the use of her name, “I rather defeat myself. In the old days I never thought at all – but if I ever did I thought straight. Now my mind is running round in circles. I chase after it; think I’m off at last – and then find myself back where I started. That’s why I’ve put up the SOS, and am trying to get help.” He laid his hand on the book beside him.

  “Are you reading all the highbrows?” she asked.

  “Most of ’em,” he answered. “In the first place they’re all so amazingly well written that it’s a pleasure to read them for that alone; and, secondly – I’m hoping…still hoping…” He took out his cigarette case and offered it to her. “I feel that it’s I who am wrong – not they – that it’s my lack of education that huffs me. I expect it’s those damned rats…”

  Joan laughed, and lit a cigarette. “They’re all so frightfully clever, Joan,” went on Vane blowing out a cloud of smoke. “They seem to me to be discussing the world of men and women around them from the pure cold light of reason… Brain rules them, and they make brain rule their creations. Instead of stomach – stomach really rules the world, you know.” For a while they sat in silence, watching a dragon-fly darting like a streak of light over the pond below them.

  “I wouldn’t bother if I were you,” said the girl after a while. “After all, if one is happy oneself, and tries to make other people happy too, it’s bound to help things along a bit, isn’t it? It strikes me that whatever people write, or say, everything will go on much the same. Besides – it’s so impertinent. You don’t want to be reconstructed; nor does anybody else. So why worry?”

  ‘But, my dear girl,” said Vane feebly, “don’t you think one ought…”

  “No, I don’t,” she interrupted. ‘ You listen to me for a bit, my friend; and you can take it or leave it, just as you like. It strikes me you’re a great deal too occupied about other people, and you don’t pay sufficient attention to yourself. You’ve got to live your own life – not the man’s next door. And you’ll do most good by living that life, as you want to live
it. If you really want to reform other people – well go and do it, and get a thick ear… It’s part of your job. But if you don’t want to, there’s no earthly use trying to pretend you do; you’re merely a hypocrite. There’s no good telling me that everybody can be lumped into classes and catered for like so many machines. We’re all sorts and conditions, and I suppose you’d say I was one of the supremely selfish sort. In fact, you have said so,” she said defiantly.

  “All right – we’ll leave it at that,” she went on before he could speak. “But I’m happy – and I’m sincere. I do the most awful things at times – because I like doing them. I should loathe to be a nurse, and the WAAC uniform makes me look a fright. I may not realise the horrors over the water; I don’t want to. And do you suppose half these women who talk about them so glibly do either?… Of course they don’t; they’re just posing. They pretend it’s awful and horrible to dance and play the fool; and all the while their teeth are chattering with envy and malice…”

  “We seem,” remarked Vane, taking advantage of a temporary lull in the flood, “to have arrived at rather a personal discussion.”

  “Of course we have,” she took him up. “Isn’t it I – I – I everywhere? Only a lot of people aren’t sufficiently truthful to admit it. It’s Number One first all the way through, right from the people up at the top down to the poor brutes in the slums. All the wonderful schemes of reform are for the glory of the schemer first, with the happy recipients amongst the also rans.” She paused a moment, and a sudden tender look came into her eyes. “Of course there are exceptions. There’s a boy I know – he’s a cousin of mine – with weak lungs. Rejected for the Army three times as totally unfit. For the last four years he’s been living in a slum off Whitechapel and the people there love him… He just walks in and planks down a pork chop in the back room; or a bottle of Bass, or something and has a talk to the woman…he’s dying…but he’s dying happy… I couldn’t do that; no more could you… We should loathe it, and so we should be fools to attempt it…”