Self Condemned

by Lewis, Wyndham

  René’s personality suffered the routine inflation of those who spike their beer. Hester almost forgot Momaco, as René imagined for her the demise of Mr. Starr; and how, since he had been a good little fairy, going to a Starrish heaven, he would find himself in the salon of Madame de Villeparisis, the “little old monkey.” At last the real thing! But there would be disenchantment. The performers would seem too violent, the women too carnal (like a lot of Jewesses, with the voices of men), and the wit, like the scent, would be too violent. Mr. Starr, deafened and stunned, would creep away, and without too much difficulty introduce himself into Madame de Villeparisis’ boudoir; lie down upon a chaise longue and, curled up like a little dog, a tired little pet doggie, he would dream of Mrs. Moir and of Mrs. Taylor, and the imaginary St. Germain upon the hill at Momaco. In that insipid make-believe, with the soft growl of Canadian voices, he was back in his earthly heaven — much to be preferred to the glare and rattle of the real thing, and the hard scintillation of the Gallic wit.

  Both René and Hester were shouting with laughter, the image of the shabby little pansy, with his hairless skull and dirty white silk scarf, curled up in the boudoir of Madame de Villeparisis, dreaming of an imaginary Madame de Villeparisis with a Canadian accent, turned Mr. Starr into a little curled-up dog-man of Salvator Dali’s. René became more and more exuberant, as he drank his fifth beer, and Hester’s eyes, like starry lamps, hung over the table, as they both were sealed up in their private world of joy. She lifted her arm to drink, when her right breast and hip were inundated with beer — which however was not her beer. Her neighbour’s glass bounced off her body, and fell to the floor.

  “I’ve wetted you, lady. My hand slipped.”

  Hester sprang up with a startled cry.All that either of them had noticed was that a dark man, thinking his own thoughts, which must be ill-favoured, was sitting against the wall. René shouted at him angrily, “You clumsy brute! Are you unable to carry your glass to your mouth without upsetting it over other people?”

  “‘Brutes’ are we, you big-mouthed old limey! An’mals, huh!”

  This came from the table behind him. René turned abruptly to identify the voice, and, more in astonishment than anger, found himself, at a distance of five or six feet, looking into a face of a most unprepossessing kind. The mouth was twisted into an ugly sneer right across the face.

  “Yes, sir!” the man drawled. “That was me. Another brute.

  Why is you and that Jane with you doin’ us the honour, down in this saloon….”

  “René! Let us leave here.”

  Hester pulled him by the sleeve. He sprang up, as a dark face, full of platonic hatred, picked itself out, and Hester’s neighbour of the unsteady hand struck him below the eye. He swung at this hateful countenance with an unexpected precision, and the man went down, with a great deal of noise, between the two tables, Hester jumping away with a gasp. He was gazing at the man between the tables, and, with the other part of his eye, aware of Jim Greevy wiping the beer off Hester’s dress, when he was struck very heavily on the left cheek, and bounded back to meet this new attack. It was with no surprise that he saw his assailant blotted out by a large person who seemed to move up from the floor, and heard a deep voice observe, in an as-it-were official voice, “Do you want to say anything to me, Tom Thorne?” But there was so much noise by this time that he did not find out whether Tom Thorne wanted to say anything to the tall stranger.

  The next thing he really knew was a panic-stricken entreaty, “Do come away at once, darling”; and while he was hearing this, he focused something of an entirely different character to anything else in this phantasmagoria. It was much more integrated and purposeful. A crouched, medium-sized figure was dancing in front of him. There was no angry face — there was hardly any face at all. It was an engine rather than a man, or a man who was so highly trained that his personality was submerged. There was something very dangerous about this taut and dancing body.

  The presence of this figure in front of him admitted of only one interpretation, and he struck it with all his force, as if it were an adder, or any other dangerous thing in nature. The next thing he knew was that he could no longer strike it because it was so near to him. The next thing he knew after that was how the lightning snaps and is gone, and it hits you, and he had been slammed in the stomach, and he was shut up over the pain like a book that had tried to slap itself shut. The pain filled the Room, and he was crouched in the middle of it, hugging his pain. He felt a warm cheek against his, and there was a soft voice near his ear; it said, “So you like that, budd” (much too dulcet for a Canadian but still in the accents of North America). A stallion kicked a tattoo — four more like the first, until he became no more than a solar plexus, and the Room was a solar plexus too.

  He stood gasping, with his neck stuck out, like a bearded rooster. It was then that he saw the face — the face of the engine, which had attacked him. It was a smooth, young, and rather thoughtful face; just now it was looking at him with a calm concentration, one eyebrow a little lifted. Before he could be aware of anything more, he found himself hitting the floor, his hands still pressed in the pit of his stomach.

  The uproar was intense, and someone must have been playing about with the electric light, for the light kept going out and coming back again. Then there was a deafening scream, and simultaneously a boot hit him in the face, and then more boots began hitting him, elsewhere. Three or four boots perhaps. Then that stopped, and there was a trampling all around him, and sometimes on him.

  The trampling went on, but it seemed to have moved a little way away. He heard Jim Greevy’s voice saying, “Get up now, quick!” He was pulled, and crawled towards a chair. “Can you stand?” said Jim. He lifted himself with Jim’s aid upon the chair. There he stopped a moment, and then rose to his feet. Hester, in a hollow voice, was imploring him to try and come away, then Jim Greevy pushed him through a door, and Hester and he found themselves in the staff quarters. The uproar of a fight still reached them, but, he still doubled up, they were able to reach the street at the back. From there it was only a few steps to the annexe entrance. “I will tell Mrs. Plant, you have been beated up,” Jim said as he left them.

  “For heaven’s sake don’t do that,” René answered. “Jim, say nothing to her.”

  Back in the Room, René sank upon the sofa. He felt himself all over with his fingertips. “No fatal damage,” he told the pale and shaking Hester.

  “You must see a doctor,” she answered.

  René shook his head; he felt so sick and dazed that he was not able to cope any more just then. Hester flung herself in a chair with a terrible fit of weeping. Her experience in the beverage room had been such a monstrosity, there had been so much hatred, suddenly released, and it had then filled her with such a dreadful fear, not to mention the hateful humiliation of having beer poured over her head — all this she had to meet without breakdown, and so now she broke into a hundred pieces.

  This was not an indulgence, but a necessity on Hester’s part: she was unable to control herself. But having acquired the requisite relief, she rose and went over to the telephone. The doctor arrived in a quarter of an hour. One of the most obvious effects of the melee had been a stiffening of the arm, the loss of use in the left hand, and a considerable swelling around the elbow, with, of course, a great deal of pain. There were other areas which demanded investigation as well. Of this invitation to probe Dr. Mackinnon took the fullest advantage.

  René made no pretence to like the doctor. He was persuaded that Dr. Mackinnon would, in the ordinary course of business, make his scrutiny as painful as possible.The more the examination hurt, the more justified would the physician’s visit seem.Were the patient to wince, or if possible groan, the more serious would the case appear to the family: and so the more likely they would be to ask the physician to return. That, at least, was René’s account, when the doctor had left, and the patient recovered a little from his maltreatment. Further, the fact that he did not r
ecommend an X-ray signified there was absolutely nothing there but bruises and the dislocation of the left arm and a sprained wrist, and it had been unwarrantably alarmist to call him in. As the doctor refused to push the disjointed arm back into its proper position because of its swollen state, that was merely an excuse for returning several times. René said for two pins he would push the arm back into place himself. Nevertheless he allowed Hester to take the prescription to the druggist. Since his arm and head were both painful he would have been unable to sleep without Dr. Mackinnon’s sleeping draught.

  Hester, however, lay awake and listened to the screams of the woman in the apartment beneath theirs, it being the husband’s nightly habit to half-murder her. (Three or four weeks later the police were called in, and they removed the wife out of danger.) What a fearful place they had come to! She must try and prevail upon René to return to England. — As soon as he was better — it would be no use to begin talking of that now. She watched for some time to see that he did not toss about and do some further harm to his left arm. When at last she went to sleep, her dreams were so appalling that she kept waking up, and in the end preferred to be awake than to be asleep.

  So the next morning, dressings on his head, a sling for his left arm with only a slight bend in it, and several band-aids plastered about on face and hands, René was propped up on the settee. The arm was a good deal swollen, and the pain had not abated: he kept this at bay, to some extent, with Veganin.

  After breakfast at about the usual time, the screams of the young German woman continued for more than an hour. She was married to an Indian — a North American Indian, not a Hindu. Bess was of the opinion she nagged the Indian until he gave her a punch or two to make her stop: and that she often would scream before he had done anything: this made him so angry he would perhaps hold her upside down and shout “Will you stop that — noise!” This, apparently, was the only way to stop her. But soon she would start again. When the screaming began, René said, “I feel sorry for that poor Indian.”

  Hester looked at him in surprise.

  “Oh,” she said, “Why?”

  “If I were that Indian, I would take a pillow and put it on her face and sit on it for half an hour.”

  Hester stretched over and squeezed his hand.

  “Darling, you have grown very ferocious in the last twenty-four hours. Has that kick on the head turned you into a new man?”

  He gave his ho-ho-ho laugh, the first for perhaps two years.

  “The fellow may have kicked some sense into me, there is always that. I made an uncommonly sensible remark.”

  “You think so?” Hester became aware of a contradiction in her husband. He was not really gentle: she did not mean that he was ungentle, but he could not claim to be gentle. Yet he had always exhibited an authentic distaste for physical violence. At school he had been an athlete. But he tended to avoid the more brutal sports. It was as a gymnast that he had excelled. He had once told her how it had always thrilled him to fly through the air in a large gymnasium. The sight of him bandaged there on the settee, delivering himself of an exceptionally brutal remark (it was the sort of remark that most men make, but he had been a refrainer) naturally provoked her attention.

  It was almost as though he had been privy to her thoughts: for he remarked, “We have had our baptism of fire, have we not, in the violent life of this hotel. It is an astonishingly violent place, but no more violent than the world of which it is so perfect a microcosm.”

  “Oh,” Hester murmured.

  “How extraordinarily, when one shuts oneself up in a little segment of the world like this hotel, it is brought home to one what a violent place the world is.”

  “This hotel is not typical,” she demurred.

  “It is. The kind of bourgeois family we were brought up in is highly deceptive. War is cheerfully maintained by everybody; our military aristocrats glory in ‘blood and sweat and tears.’ But if a bank clerk were given power he would kill even more millions.

  So far no one has been killed in this hotel. But thousands are killed on the roads, and millions over in the battlefields. You are right, this hotel is not typical. It is a nice quiet hotel — a rather mild microcosm.”

  The Indian’s wife gave a bloodcurdling shriek.

  “That woman,” he observed, “is asking to be killed, as loudly as she knows how to.”

  “I am afraid that you are right,” Hester agreed.

  “And now we are in harmony with the hotel,” he told her. “If I lived here much longer I should be a full-scale blood sacrifice.”

  He was now himself again, Hester thought, and she looked over at him fondly.

  “Oughtn’t you to get a little sleep?” she reminded him. But there was a knock on the door: it was Jim Greevy, and instead of sleep, René visibly braced himself, and stuck bravely out his beard.

  “How do you feel, Mr. Harding? You struck a very bad patch.

  I did all I could. But it wasn’t much.”

  “We do not underestimate what you did, Jim. You were splendid.”

  “Oh rats,” said Jim, with violent modesty; turning to Hester, “I wiped the beer off you as it was thrown over you! That’s all I did.”

  “You did more than that. You sided with the limey — you, an Irishman!”

  “There is that,” Jim laughed.“TomThorne is a dangerous man.

  A year back he served a term of imprisonment for manslaughter.

  I would not have him in the place if it were mine. He fights every time he comes here. And tonight he had that Yank with him.”

  “Ah yes, that Yank.” René patted the sling. “I had this arm over my face. That was when I was on the ground. That Yank kicked it pretty hard.”

  “Yes, I’ll bet he did,” said Jim. “He’s a nasty piece of work.

  Of course he’s a draft-dodger; that seems to contradict what they say. They say he’s very well known in the States, at his weight a champion. But if he is a champ, what the heck is he doing draft dodging? Uncle Sam looks after his champions. He would not be wasted in Guadalcanal, I mean.”

  “Perhaps he’s no champ,” René laughed. “But he felt like a champion to me when he was doing that tattoo on my belly.”

  “No, he may be a champ all right, but there must be something else. Anyway, he goes everywhere now with Tom Thorne. That shows the sort of man he is. He ought to be pushed back into the

  States. Last night I noticed he didn’t take on that big chap, you know, who went after Tom Thorne.”

  “Oh, didn’t he? The little coward.”

  Jim shook his head. “No. It would not be that. Everyone knows that Fitz was a Mountie.”

  “Ah, I see what you mean. As a draft dodger he would prefer not to draw attention to himself.”

  “Yes,” Jim nodded; “yes, that, and probably something else.”

  “So that big fellow used to be in the Mounties?” René enquired.

  “Yes. He’s a good scout is Fitz. I knew he would not see a stranger like yourself beaten up. All the same” (he rubbed his hand over his eyes in a quick bashful gesture), “I had just stuck my spectacles in my pocket when I saw old Fitz get up; and he knocked Tom down with a proper haymaker. Tom Thorne is a man who doesn’t usually find himself on his back.”

  “Mr. Greevy, I do think that was splendid of you …”

  “Yes, Jim, it was jolly decent of you to get ready to do battle in that way. The ex-Mountie’s intervention was a wonderful stroke of luck for all of us.”

  “It was that. He is a very popular man, is old Fitz, with all except thugs like Tom Thorne.”

  There was a pause, and then Hester spoke.

  “But what had my husband done to these people? It all seems very extraordinary looking back on it.”

  “Yes, that puzzles me too,” René said. “What on earth had poor Hester done? Why pour beer over her head? Apart from its being blackguardedly, it doesn’t seem to make sense, does it, Jim?”

  Jim smiled wryly, and gave his face anot
her violent rub. “Yes, Mr. Harding, unfortunately it does make sense to me all right.”

  “Sense of what kind!” almost shouted René. “You mean we are the kind of people over whom it is natural to empty beer and to kick ’em in the teeth?”

  Jim laughed nervously.“Well, you put it that way, Mr. Harding, but it is a fact that in such a place as I am the manager of it is natural for almost anything to happen. — Especially to strangers. — You don’t make a noise like a Canadian!”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “It isn’t even that. I might as well say it, it is the English accent I’m afraid.”

  “Mr. Greevy, you really mean that? ...” Hester looked very distressed.

  “I don’t like saying it, Mr. Harding, but you must have noticed yourself that the English are not very much liked. Let me be frank …”

  “Please do,” René told him.

  “There is always the high-hatting charge. You see, in such a place as ours, Mr. Harding — who has a voice that can be heard …”

  “And why not?” clamoured René. “Are we to speak in whispers then?”

  “No, Mr. Harding, of course not, I did not say that. But you are a man who knows the world, and there is a time to speak soft and low. People think you are swanking, the sort we have down there, if you talk very loud about things they don’t understand.”

  René gave an angry and dramatic sigh. Turning to Hester he said, “You see how it is, being English is an unpopular thing to be. To be Scotch is all right, to be Irish is just fine” (he winked at Jim), “but being what we are, we had better stop here in this Room, rather than go out and expose ourselves to the displeasure of the natives — everymanjack of whom comes from the British Islands.”

  René pushed over a packet of cigarettes to Jim, after taking one himself. Jim looked uncomfortable. The direction the conversation had taken made him regret his frankness. But René continued, and Jim looked up a little apprehensively.