by James Hilton
“Yes, I see. But that would take time.”
“You are in a hurry?”
“No—not really—but I must get away.”
“Where to?”
“I don’t know.”
The Harvard man stared at the desk, thinking how typically Russian the reply was—so like a piece out of a Chekov play—in fact, to be candid, more than a little imbecile. Contenting himself with a final rally of his official self, he rejoined: “I trust there has been no mistake of any kind. We have it noted here that you came with the child, that you denied that you were the child’s father, and that you indicated that the child was without parents. That being so—”
“Oh yes, quite,” answered A.J., taking up his paper parcel. “It doesn’t matter, I assure you.”
And, after all, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. He was just passing out of the office after a perfunctory good-day, when the other called him back. “Just a moment. I don’t know whether—you see, you said you didn’t know where you were going to—”
“Yes?”
“Well, perhaps in that case you’d consider staying on here for a little while?”
“Why?”
“Well, you’d be pretty useful as an interpreter. The pay would be a dollar a day, and you could feed and sleep here, of course.”
“Thanks. I’ll stay.”
Such an instant acceptance seemed rather to disconcert the young man, but he managed to express his pleasure, and soon afterwards set A.J. to work on a pile of letters waiting to be deciphered from the Russian.
Thus A.J. became part of the American Relief detachment at Pavlokoff. His jobs, besides the translating and answering of letters, included the receiving and questioning of applicants for assistance, and he was also called for by anybody and everybody in all linguistic emergencies of every kind. He worked hard and was rather a success. Yet at the end of six months nobody knew him any better than at the beginning. The Harvard graduate, as well as many of the doctors and nurses, made innumerable efforts to break down the harrier and become intimate; hut, though always polite, A.J. never yielded an inch. They all concluded that he must be slightly mad, yet they all trusted him to a degree oddly inharmonious with such a conclusion.
One day in April the Harvard man approached him with an item of news that he evidently felt sure would lead to confidences. “Oh, I put through an enquiry,” he began, trying to appear very official, “about that young girl you were interested in. It seems she was in the first batch sent over to America. She must be there by now. Very lucky for her—I don’t think they’re intending to send any more.”
A.J. made no comment, and the other went on: “Yes, that’s right—she must have crossed on the Bactria some weeks ago. She hadn’t any name that our people knew of, so she was given one—’Mary Denver’—Denver being the city she was to be sent to on arrival the other side. Of course that’s only provisional—doubtless she’ll eventually take the name of the family that adopts her. I could find out who they are, I daresay though strictly speaking it would be against the rules.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” was all that A.J. said.
In the summer of 1919 the American Relief detachment was ordered home. A.J. had by that time saved up two hundred and fifty American dollars. When the time approached for the break-up of the organisation, he was rather surprised to find that he disliked the prospect of wandering vaguely about the earth again, even with American money in his pocket; he had grown so used to the clean, orderly rhythm of events with the Americans, to the daily baths, and the breakfast cereals, and the card-indexing system. Decadence, perhaps, but excusable. He felt too tired to break out of the comfortable groove, too uninterested ever again to find his own way about the world; he wanted just to be told quietly to do certain things, and to be given regular meals and a bed in return for doing them.
He applied for permission to go to America with the others, but though the heads of the medical staff strongly supported his application, it was turned down because of his supposedly Russian nationality. Then he told them, suddenly communicative after all those months of reticence, that he was not Russian but English by birth and parentage, and that his real name was Fothergill. The psycho-analyst doctor, who had all along been deeply interested in his case, was more than ever interested now. He questioned him further, about his birth, education, family, and so on, and to every question A.J. gave full and simple, answers, no longer wishing to conceal anything if concealment were to mean being flung back into the chaos of the world around.
All these particulars, together with the doctor’s earnest recommendation, were sent to the American Embassy at Constantinople, with the request that the hitherto mysterious but now elucidated Fothergill should be given a visa and allowed to proceed with the Relief detachment to America, where his services would continue to be of value. After a week or so came a somewhat curious reply. The visa could not be granted, but one of the attachés had been so interested in the case that he had got into touch with a friend of his in a British Military Mission. This friend knew the Fothergill family, it appeared, and knew, further, that one of them, presumably a brother of the applicant, had been an officer in Palestine during the War, and was now, he believed, stationed in Cairo awaiting demobilisation.
The American doctor informed A.J. of this, and suggested that he should proceed to Cairo on the trail of the long-lost brother. A.J. agreed, willing enough for anything, and after some further delay was provided with a visa from the British authorities at Constantinople.
He left Odessa on August 11th, 1919, and arrived in Cairo a week later. Captain William Fothergill had been informed, and the two men met at Shepheard’s Hotel. Neither, of course, could recognise the other, but by the time the second cocktail appeared they were in no doubt as to their proved brotherhood. As befitted Englishmen in such an emergency, they were restrained almost to the point of being embarrassed. “I suppose you must have had all sorts of adventures, living in Russia throughout the Revolution?” Captain William Fothergill remarked, with one finger running down the wine- list; and A.J. answered: “Oh yes, a few.”
Captain Fothergill was apt to be equally cursory about his own personal affairs: he owned rubber and coconut plantations in Sumatra which he had had to leave in the hands of a ‘damned artful Dutchman’ during the period of his war service. Now, of course, he was only waiting for demobilisation to be off to Singapore by the first available boat. “Seems to me you might as well come along too, if you’re at a loose end,” he said, and A.J. replied: “Yes, all right, I don’t mind. Will there be any job for me?”
“Oh Lord, yes, I can find you plenty to do. Ever looked after niggers’”
“No.”
“I don’t mean real niggers—just Chinks and Malays, you know. Queer fellers—all right as long as they’ve got someone to keep a strict eye on ’em. If you can do that, you’ll be worth your weight in gold on any rubber plantation.”
Captain Fothergill’s demobilisation papers arrived before the end of the month, and the two brothers caught a boat for Singapore, by way of Colombo, at the beginning of October.
* * *
PART V
From the “Golden Arrow” at Victoria there stepped a man whom the porters, even on that plutocratic platform, singled out, attracted not so much by a leather handbag plastered with foreign hotel-labels as by a certain unanalysable but highly significant quietness of manner. And the voice was equally quiet. “Taxi—yes, and there are a trunk and two large suit-cases in the van. The name is Fothergill.” To the driver a few moments later he said merely: “The Cecil.” It was the only hotel he could remember from the London of his youth.
They gave him a lofty bedroom overlooking the dazzling semicircle of the Embankment, and he spent the first few minutes gazing down at the trams and the electric advertisements across the river. He was a little tired after the journey, and a little thrilled by the sensation of being in London again. He changed, though not into evening clothes, and
dined in the grill-room, chatting desultorily with the waiter. Then he smoked a cigar in the lounge and went up to his room rather early. In bed with a novel, he heard Big Ben chime several successive quarters; then he switched off the light and tried to believe that this small, comfortable, well-carpeted, and entirely characterless hotel bedroom was somehow different from all the dozens of similar ones he had occupied in other cities.
In the morning he breakfasted in bed, enjoyed a long hot bath, made himself affable with the hotel-porter, and strode out into the cheerful, sunny streets. There were so many little odd jobs to do—some of which he had been saving up for a long time. He saw his lawyer, and made an appointment to see a Harley Street doctor later on in the week. He called at a firm of publishers and heard that his book Rubber and the Rubber Industry had crept into a second edition. The publisher asked him to dinner the following evening; he accepted. Then he bought some tics and handkerchiefs and a hat of rather more English style than the one he was wearing. By that time, as it was noon and he was in the Strand, he stepped down to Romano’s Bar for a glass of sherry and exchanged a few words with the dark-haired girl who served him. He liked, when he could, to obtain the intimacy of talking to people without the bother of knowing them, and that, of course, was always more easily accomplished with one’s so-called inferiors. The barmaid at Romano’s was a type he liked—pretty, alert, friendly, and fundamentally virtuous. He asked her what were the best shows to see, and she gave him the names of several which he imagined he would be sure to detest exceedingly. Then she asked if this were his first visit to London, and he rather enjoyed answering: “My first for twenty-three years. I used to live here.” Afterwards he lunched at Rule’s in Maiden Lane—the first place he found that seemed to him very little changed since the old days. In the afternoon he took a ’bus to the Marble Arch and walked through the September sunshine to Hyde Park Corner and the Green Park, just in time for tea at Rumpelmayer’s. And after that there was nothing to do but return to the Cecil, change into dinner clothes, and begin the journey out to Surbiton.
“There is a good electric service from Waterloo,” she had written in her letter to him, and the sentence echoed in his mind with fatuous profundity all the time he was fixing his collar and tie in front of the bedroom mirror. It was strange to be visiting a person whom you had not seen for twenty-three years. It had been on impulse that he had written to her, and he was not sure, even now, that the impulse had been wise. She had married, of course, a second time—that was something. She had even a nineteen- year-old daughter. And, if one chanced to think of it, she had the vote—that vote for which in the past she had clamoured so much. She would be forty-eight—his own age. Her letter had really told him very little except that her name was now Newburn, that she would be delighted to see him, and that there was that good electric service from Waterloo.
When he arrived at Surbiton station an hour later he declined a cab and enquired the way from a policeman. The walk through placid suburban roads gave him a chance to meditate, to savour in full the rich unusualness of the situation. He lit a cigarette, stopped a moment to watch some boys playing with a dog, kicked a few pieces of orange-peel into the gutter with an automatic instinct for tidiness; it was past seven before he found the house. It looked smaller than he had expected (for, after all, hadn’t she inherited the bulk of old Jergwin’s fortune?); just a detached suburban villa with sham gables and a pretentious curved pathway between the garden-gate and the porch. The maid who opened the door to his ring took his hat and coat and showed him into a drawing-room tastefully if rather depressingly furnished. He stood with his back to the fire-grate and continued to wonder what she would look like.
She came in with her daughter. She was rather thin and pale and eager, and the daughter was a large-limbed athletic-looking girl who moved about the room as if it were a hockey-pitch.
“Isn’t it romantic, Ainsley, for you to have come back after all these years?”
He found himself shaking hands and being presented to the girl. “I suppose it is,” he answered, smiling. Rather to his astonishment he felt perfectly calm. He began to chatter pointlessly about the journey. “Found nay way quite easily—as you said, the service is very good. Didn’t think I’d be here half so quickly. You must be pretty far out of town, though—twenty miles, I should guess.”
“Twelve,” the girl corrected.
They began to discuss Surbiton. Then the maid brought in complicated and rather sugary cocktails. They continued to discuss Surbiton. By that time he was beginning to anticipate the arrival of Mr. Newburn with almost passionate eagerness, and was rather surprised when they adjourned to the dining-room without waiting for the gentleman. “Is Mr. Newburn away?” he asked, noticing that places were only laid for three. The girl answered, with outright simplicity: “Father died two years ago.”
Well, that was that, and there was nothing for it but to look sympathetic and change the subject. So, to avoid at all costs the resumption of the Surbiton discussion, he began to talk about Paris, Vienna, and other cities he had lived in during recent years. The girl said: “Mother told me you were in Russia during the Revolution. Do tell us about it!” He smiled and answered: “Well, ell, you know, there was a revolution and a lot of shooting and trouble of most kinds—I don’t know that I can remember much more.” She then said: “I suppose you saw Lenin and Trotsky?”—and he replied: “No, never—and neither of them. I’m rather a fraud, don’t you think?”
Then Philippa chatted about various causes and enterprises she was connected with; they ranged from a hospital for crippled children and a birth- control clinic to Esperanto and Dalcroze eurhythmics. He listened tolerantly, but shook his head when she offered to show him authentic photographs of slum children suffering from rickets. “I’ll willingly subscribe to them,” he said, “but I never care to have my feelings harrowed after a good dinner.” The girl choked with laughter. “I don’t blame you,” she said. “I think they’re horrible photographs, and mother will show them to everybody.” Philippa replied: “I show them because they are so horrible—people ought to realise the horrible things that go on in the world.” He felt suddenly sorry for her then, and said: “It’s a splendid cause, I’m sure, and I didn’t mean to make fun. You will let me send you a cheque, won’t you?”
But he soon perceived that his compassion had been unnecessary. She was tough; she was thick-skinned; she was obviously used to all kinds of gibes. When she told him that it was her habit to stand at street-corners lecturing about birth-control, he felt that he need no longer be afraid of hurting her feelings. He was more sorry, then, for the girl; she was such an ordinary, straightforward, averagely decent girl.
They took coffee in the drawing-room, and when they were comfortably smoking, Philippa suddenly said: “My husband isn’t really dead—my daughter had to tell you that because the maid was there and that is what we tell her. The truth is, he left me.”
“Really?”
Then she launched into a detailed account of the catastrophe of her second marriage. The man had been a labour organiser, and he had run off with a girl secretary. He had also speculated with his wife’s money and lost most of it. It was all a rather pathetic story, taking so long to tell that by the time it was nearly over he was having to look at his watch and make hints about a return train. Then followed the usual conventionalities. It had been a most charming evening, he assured her—delightful to have seen her again. She urged him to stay the night, but he said he thought he wouldn’t—all his things at his hotel, and so on. She said she hoped they would meet again soon. She told him that she ran a little informal literary circle that met on alternate Wednesdays in her drawing-room. “We read each other papers, you know—not necessarily on literary subjects—sometimes we get strangers to talk to us—Mr. Wimpole, for instance, gave us a most fascinating chat about old English silver last week. I was wondering, you see, whether you would care to tell us a few of your experiences in Russia; if you would, I am sure�
��”
But he replied, smiling and shaking his head: “My dear Philippa, none of my Russian experiences were nearly so dreadful as the one you are suggesting.” The girl again laughed. “I’m afraid I’ll have to refuse—that sort of thing really isn’t in my line at all.”
It was raining and the girl went to the telephone to ring for a taxi. While she was away, Philippa contrived a word or two tęte-ŕ- tęte; she said: “You know, Ainsley, I do hope you’ll soon he conning again and then you must arrange to stay at least for a week-end. I dare-say ’you’ve found it rather odd, meeting me and my daughter together like this—there have been restraints, I know—lots of things I haven’t cared to tell you in front of her. And perhaps you too—what have you been doing, really, since I saw you last? We must meet again soon and tell each other everything.” Hearing the girl approaching, she added: “Anyway, now that you’re intending to make a home in England, we shall simply insist on getting to know you.”
But he was not intending to make a home in England, he reflected a few moments later, as he sat in the corner of the cab.
In his hotel bedroom that night he felt a slow and rather comfortable disappointment soaking into him. Subconsciously he knew he had been expectant over this meeting with Philippa; now he realised, not without relief, that all such expectancy had vanished. It wasn’t only she who had failed him, but he who had failed himself. He didn’t want to know anybody in that eager, confidential way; he had no energy for it; he would rather chat with a stranger in a train whom he would never sec again. It had been a mistake to go to Surbiton; perhaps it had been a mistake even to come to England.
The next morning, after he had talked to the girl in Romano’s Bar- about some theatres he was intending to visit, she said: “You seem to go about a lot by yourself. Haven’t you any friends?”