Self Condemned

by Lewis, Wyndham

  Only when the station platform was out of sight, he drew his head in, and returned to his own compartment. Quietly he took his place in the window seat facing the engine. This parting had been so unexpectedly painful. He had had no anticipation of anything unusual, owing to his careful insulation from the centre of emotional awareness. As he had explained to his sister, he was able to fasten himself down to the unemotional daily routine: but suddenly, without any warning, floodgates of realization would fly open. The insulation would break down. In order not to be at the mercy of his emotions, he had been obliged to effect a division of his personality into two parts: he had created a kind of artificial “unconscious” of his own, and thus locked away all acuity of realization. If a doctor had told him he had only three months to live, all the significance for him of this announcement would be hurried away and put under lock and key. He of course could not guarantee that something would not release it at any moment, but he had for so long mastered his reactions that it would be unlikely to burst out until permitted to do so. His callous self was so well insulated from the compartment of the imagination that he was able to pass as a somewhat unemotional man. On the other hand, he did, as in the present case, experience a certain number of violent surprises.

  So he sat almost rigid in his corner; for the “floodgates” in question had not yet shut-to. On the other hand, in the past forty-eight hours his nervous system had undergone quite sufficient strain, and he wished to return to the callous norm as quickly as possible. But this could not be instantaneous — his mental machinery was not so streamlined as all that: so for a short while the glare of awareness was still present.

  A number of things came under review, and not of the most agreeable. But he sometimes succeeded in exercising the right of selection. He now threw back the beam of his acutely awakened awareness upon the statement he had recently made to his sister. For he knew from experience that this heightened perceptivity was capable of distorting, and even of transforming, facts. Was he, in his parting with Helen, speaking in a moment of natural depression consequent upon the dinner scene of the night before? Making every allowance for temporary depression, he could not see how any real account of his present circumstances could be more optimistic.

  He might pull down over the reality a fire curtain, which was what his insulation system amounted to; he might gamble upon the one chance in a million, the chance that his fortunes would radically mend, and he find himself, in, from the worldly standpoint, as favourable a position as before. It was as open to the rag-picker to nurse a golden dream as it was for him to soothe himself with reflections upon the Miracles of Chance. Certainly by eating his words he might teach in some comic little college in a neck of the woods. That appeared to be the summit of future possibilities. So the searchlight showed quite as empty a scene as, to his surprise, he had depicted in his farewell to Helen.

  Now he had visited all the members of his family in turn; he had got a flea in his ear in every case except one, the exception being Percy. It is true that these visits had taken a different form in each case: he had done scarcely more than show himself to Janet and the egregious Victor — what more could he do, and, of course, why should he do that? To his mother and Mary he had made a very superficial statement: but again, what more could he do? With Helen, alone, had he attempted a real explanation (an explanation which would have been entirely wasted upon his mother and Mary). To Percy, there had been no need to say anything; it would, indeed, have been quite impossible to make him understand a single syllable. Percy knew René was a rebel and a martyr, that was what Percy knew and no one could have altered that.And so these visits had been futile, as far as elucidations went; no one was any wiser as a result of his visit than they had been beforehand, excepting only Helen.

  He had, in the course of his summing up, a moment of gaiety in considering what reaction the Dragon of his recent cab-talk would have had upon Percy. But, of course, Mary and her husband would have decided that as a result of overwork, his reason had been affected. What these duty calls had done was to destroy a schoolboy picture of a circle of loving hearts.That junk, at least, had been got rid of, forever.

  But he thought that mothers must receive a brief analytical scrutiny; something more had to be hacked away from the old domestic monument. Now, one’s old bitch of a mother was a figure one approached with reverence, because she had given birth to one. A fact of such importance that one must reverence her for that; though indeed she had only loaned her belly for the prenatal drama. She is always supposed to be awfully fond of Me because of her having permitted all this to go on in the spare room she’s got down there, for Little Strangers. Often one hears of “her bowels yearning” for the one-time occupant of the spare room. The fact of course is that, except for the extent to which she may be influenced by the stream of waffle she had to consume on the subject of her “love,” she must feel what most landladies do about their lodgers. There is no evidence at all that a woman has any of these beautiful sensations, invented for her by man. Once the nursing job imposed upon her by nature is over, and the “little toddler” has grown to be a noisy and bumptious schoolboy as big as herself, and still worse, a little later, the obviously extremely limited but absurdly self-important young man, she must realize (if she has not realized it before) that she has simply been made a convenience of by Nature; and, in any case, that it has been a great deal of fuss and trouble about nothing. (If instead of a schoolboy it is a big fat schoolgirl, peering at herself in the mirror all the time, it is hardly necessary, in that case, to stress what her real sensations must be.) Women of the working class go on turning out “Little Strangers,” because of the importance it gives them among the neighbours, and as an insurance in old age. If by nature bossy, it gives the woman a little community to bully, scold, make favourites of: and eventually this little community will work for you — or that is the idea.

  The dogmas of Western European religions and much romance have been built up around the figure of the Mother. Any number of tough old girls are quite ready to regard this as their “big part” — just as formerly they would play the “little angel” to some masculine moron, who had been taught to expect “love” from that quarter — meaning a sort of combination of worship and “bowel yearning.” Many women, quite naturally, develop a superiority-complex listening to so much man-waffle.

  Having arrived at this point, he was able to focus his eye upon the old French lady, very comfortably installed, in a St. John’s Wood mansion-flat, with whom he played a tiresome little farce every time he visited her. No wonder elle rigolait, and was full of well-matured mirth. To see him arrive, walk quickly across the room, his face screwed into a certain expression, reserved for old ladies who at one time have changed one’s diapers (and earlier of course have given one house room in their intestines) all that must fill so intelligent an old woman with amused contempt. — When she had called him a fool — which had so astonished him at the time — it was something she had often thought, no doubt, but had not, until that moment of exasperation, given utterance to.

  To his Testament of Mothers he added a codicil. — There were, of course, women in the Mother-part who are Great Lovers. But he could see nothing agreeable in such forms of incest, where one of the parties is anything up to fifty years older than the other.

  René promised himself to analyze properly, when in his callous norm once more, the nature of family love; to analyze carefully the cement which caused the average Christian family to adhere. He had done, in the past, a good deal of serious fieldwork on the Family. In England, he had concluded, there was little more than animal attraction left: and when we get down to the animal level we only have to think of the pigeons on our windowsill. There would be no maternal recognition for a young pigeon who flew down upon our windowsill and reminded the old hen-bird, sunning herself there, that he was a one-time egg of hers. He would be roughly repulsed; and in any case, recognition on the part of the ex-chick would be just as impossible, and unl
ess men would somehow communicate the idea to the younger pigeon, even if he recognized the hen-bird as his parent, it could never occur to him that she owed him any interest or assistance.

  With the very slightest Christian hangover, the mid-twentieth-century English family still retained a traditional cement, which guaranteed it a thin cohesion. For a middle-class family desirous of some show of blood attachments, the best solution would be to become a Mutual Admiration Society. In his own case, his mother had provided the basic ingredients of solidarity owing to her French Catholic origin. For the rest, the Mutual Admiration Society was the best way of describing what had existed there. When tested, as had recently been done by him, it had proved sadly inadequate. So his family was a junk he had no further use for. His sister Helen was another matter. For her he had an attachment produced by something far stronger than the usual old family cement. But (he remembered something) he must salvage Percy from this universal demolition of old ties.

  His own personality came up for consideration, as it always did on such occasions. This time he selected for special notice the fact that his natural gaiety was an exasperating thing to have been endowed with in view of the extreme severity imposed on him by his destiny. He had been born into a time supremely unfavourable for the enjoyment of la gaya scienza. He then smiled his first smile for half an hour; for Rotter’s article came back to him with its dogmatic “René Harding is a Jansenist”: and he reflected that one adherent at least of Port Royal was not devoid of wit. But as soon as he had riveted his eyes upon the obvious incompatibility of the age and of his personality, he realized it was not quite so important as he had supposed. Its main disadvantage was that people found it difficult to associate in their minds tragedy and gaiety.The motives for his resignation were, however, of the grimmest semi-ethical order. Looked at from that angle, he was almost a dour enough man to be typical of his time. Something in him was as severe and mirthless as those uncivilized forces with which he had contended. But something apprised him that his spell of unlicensed awareness was nearly ended. He was exceedingly tired and, after looking at his watch, he arranged himself in the corner and almost at once fell asleep.

  X

  THE PASSENGER WHO

  WORE THE RIBBON OF THE

  LEGION OF HONOUR

  “This is the last boat out of Europe,” the young Swiss told him, “the last boat.”

  It was possible that no more unescorted passenger ships would leave this French port. Like people making a frenzied exit from a building which was on fire, the continental crowds pouring from train after train all had the automatism of a great emergency. Europe on fire again for the second time in a generation. On principle, René approved of any exodus, at such a moment. But he would have liked to see the entire coast of France humming with people in flight, thousands putting out to sea in rowboats, and this port packed with vessels flying panic flags, and all their sirens shrieking. This was too detached a young Swiss fugitive.

  There were no women doing what the occasion demanded, no tearing of the hair, as the Muse of History ordains. In disgust he pushed his way through this inexpressive crowd, but one woman of the old historic kind scratched him and brought blood.

  Hester was lying down in their stateroom. The plea was a headache, but he knew that she was frightened at going away from family and friends, upon a journey which René had never pretended could have a happy ending, nor that her absence could be anything but long. As he entered she was crying hysterically.

  “Come, my darling. What is baby girl crying about?” He put his hand upon her heaving back. His voice had been so unusually kind that Hester clutched his hand gratefully. “I am sorry,” she choked, “just baby feelings as you say.”

  “Baby feelings, I know them, I had an awful baby feeling myself just now.”

  Hester gave a big hoarse sob. “Mummie!” she gurgled. “It isn’t all mummie, it’s everything and everybody. I am going away in this boat from everything I have ever known and from all those I have ever cared for. No wonder that one gets baby feelings,” she sobbed. “I am sorry, darling, I know what you’re thinking, but I just can’t help it. All this is too much for me.”

  René was much affected. The realization of what this would be for poor Hester struck him now for the first time. He always forgot that Hester was a human being, because she was so terribly much the Woman. And then her world must appear to him such a petty world, that losing it could hardly mean very much. Indeed, it is rather what the grown-up traditionally thinks about the child; it cries its eyes out and it is impossible for the mature to understand that its heart is breaking, if for no other reason because it breaks so many thousands of times.

  But René looked grave and was really sorry, as much as it was possible for him to be. It was the beginning of a new way of thinking about Hester, although, at that time, it did not continue for very long.

  As he got down on the bed beside her, he muttered, “Poor old Ess!” tenderly for him, and Hester pushed aside her grief and turned towards him her big — her too big — eyes, clouded with tears. But then, alas, the usual thing occurred: alas, because grief is a more serious thing than pleasure, and it had been too unceremoniously pushed aside. The effect of that, too, upon René was devastating, mocking, as it did, his momentary glimpse of a human reality.

  However, not long afterwards, thoroughly purged of her mother, and all the endearing scenes of the life she was leaving, Hester’s mind turned to the function that awaited them in an hour or so. She passed nimbly over René and began opening up their cabin luggage, and picking out what she would require. She was watched morosely by René, who lay, a little somnolent upon the bed. She darted hither and thither, as if pretending, as it seemed to him, to find something: and assuming a series of display poses, as though she had been modelling for Esquire’s most risqué draughtsman. He wondered if she worked out these poses when he was not there. What a way of spending one’s life. She was the most frightful reflection of himself, the image of his lubricity. Worse than pinning up Esquire in his room, he maintained a live Esquire colour-block — he had always been teasing himself after this fashion. Oh well, what more, what better, had he to do now, except that! Hester’s obscene person must henceforth be his Muse, in succession to History. He was going to Canada in order to fornicate with Hester. What else!

  When these reflections grew unendurable, and an outburst against Hester threatened, he got slowly up and dressed. He went out, saying that he must fix with the purser about their table for dinner. Going up in the lift to the main promenade, he found that they were out at sea. A powerful wind slapped him in the face, the ocean’s reaction at the appearance of the flushed amorist. The ocean had nothing to offer him like the scented femininity in his stateroom down below. But what had the ocean got if it set itself up against Venusberg? He thought of all its wonders which had captivated men. Its trump card, perhaps, was that delicious solitude, of which the poet speaks. And, what in marine terms, he wondered, would be the equivalent of “a green thought in a green shade”? That would resolve itself, it seemed, into a battle between blue and green. Ah, the ocean could produce something far more secret than a garden.

  He walked quickly sternwards until he came to a spot where he was quite alone. He looked down at the romantic water. A beautiful mercurial substance seemed to be moving in one direction, they towards the other horizon. Moon and ocean were overwhelming and commonplace. Is it worth while to go on looking at this changing but monotonous element?

  With business-like grimness the railway porter had said, “They may be here at any moment.” This had been at Waterloo. But there had been no announcement that war had been declared; and this was the Empress of Labrador, and no one allowed the doings of landsmen to intrude upon the immemorial trinity of man, moon, and ocean.

  Above the coast of France searchlights made the clouds look sinisterly bright, and a storm was advancing from perhaps Boulogne, announced by the appearance and disappearance of its flashes. The dull
y glowing clouds and moving beams made the scene look enigmatically dramatic, but there could be no battles in progress just yet. Hitler would dash into France, it was to be presumed.The frantic fool, the Brummagem Bismarck. But there was not time for the fastest vehicle to have rushed into France, had there been nothing to stop them. What René was witnessing, he imagined, was the preliminary lighting up of the clouds over France.Yet it already, from afar, looked like a battle.

  They were five miles, perhaps, out of the French port.All these people, packed tightly into the Empress, were rapidly receding from the terror. In London, at the last moment, there had been a shuffling of berths, and René and Hester had been offered a stateroom on the Athenia, or on the Duchess of York. Since the Duchess was sailing on a Friday, René declined that suggestion of the shipping office, and declined the Athenia because it was not a Canadian ship. Had it not been for that, they would have crossed in the Athenia. Afterwards Hester regarded this as a typical action of her Providence. “Kismet,” she was heard to remark. For otherwise, of course, a torpedo might have burst into the Dining Saloon as they were discussing the menu with a steward — or is it waiter? At present, later events made evident, the Athenia was somewhere on its way not far from them.

  In the sequel the Empress may have passed over the same Unterseeboot, but the Empress of Labrador was not the name written upon the torpedo.

  Meanwhile, all its lights showing, the grand hotel was on the swim again across the dark rolling abyss. Apprehension must be unknown. The multi-ribboned master up in his little clangorous house aloft, ringing his bells and tilting his braided cap, never thought of the liquid element through which the Empress was passing. The Master had long ago stopped thinking of his ship as seen by the fishes.To ring a thousand bells, seaworthy and jauntily naval at the captain’s table, was all his life. Until the broadcast informing him of war had ordered him out of the spotlight, his imagination did not reach below the plimsoll line. René was as callous as the captain; he believed as profoundly as did that officer in the magic character of the word war: though when he looked down at the dark and heaving mass, he agreed that the word ought not to be uttered until they were in the New World.