by A. A. Milne
But in London what can we do but go deliberately to our room, close the door, pick up a pen, and—work? (Or look at the wall-paper?)
Sylvia was busily happy. A talk with Mrs. Stoker; a talk with Alice; getting ready to go out; ordering this and that in a leisurely way; stopping for a moment at this or that shop-window; home again; getting ready for lunch; lunching; arranging flowers; going to the library and changing books; home again; getting ready to go out to tea or to welcome a friend to tea; going out to tea, or giving a last touch to flowers and cushions; tea; chatter; showing Laura or Letty the latest purchases, or being shown; good-byes; home again, or feet up on the sofa for half an hour; leisurely bath; leisurely dress . . . and the evening with her husband.
And when you think, said Reginald, that that allows no time either for the weekly permanent wave or for the permanent weekly wave, you realize what a very busy woman she is. Half-past twelve; I’m going to the club.
Curious how few people at the club realized that one was now a Londoner, and lunching there every day. And if, when he had lunched there every day for a year, he were to go to Patagonia for seven years, curious how few people would realize that his lunches had seemed so much less regular. ‘Hallo, where have you been these last few weeks?’ The more observant might give him this much greeting on his return.
He turned round, hair-brushes in hand, at the sound of a voice.
‘It is you,’ said Ormsby. ‘Thought so. Difficult to be sure of a face in a mirror. Ever noticed that? I come in here sometimes and see three blighters brushing their hair, and I say, “Three more dam fellers got their brothers into the club.” ’
Reginald laughed and said that there should never be more than one member of a family in a club.
‘Right. Funny about that. Got any brothers?’
‘No.’
‘Well, if you had a brother and he was George the Fifth and George Washington and George Robey all in one, do you know what I should say?’
‘No.’
‘I should say “Of all the damned anaemic imitations of Wellard——” See? The first one you meet is the family; the others are just trying to be like him and making a heluva bad job of it. Crippen’s brothers would have been just as disappointing. No character of their own at all.’
He tossed his towel into the basket, and began to manicure his nails.
‘Look here, I’ve got some blasted soap-boilers lunching with me. But come and have coffee up in the little smoking-room at 2.15. I’ll have got rid of them by then. So long.’
He nodded and went confidently off.
How wonderful, thought Reginald, to be as certain as that. ‘Hallo, you. You look as if you wanted to lunch with me. Well, you can’t; but, as a special treat, we’ll have coffee together.’ And then to walk off, taking it for granted that the other will be there. I suppose that’s how millionaires are made. That utter single-mindedness and certainty.
For the other was there, as Ormsby knew he would be. At 2.15 they were having coffee in the little smoking-room upstairs, and the secret of Hayward’s Grove was out.
‘You must come and have supper with us one night,’ said Ormsby. ‘I’ll tell her ladyship to drop your missis a line. Don’t suppose you want to bother with formal calls and that sort of jiggery.’
Ormsby and Sylvia! What on earth would Sylvia make of him? And what would he make of her, being what he was?
‘Like to write for me?’ And then as Reginald began to speak, Ormsby held up a delaying hand, and said, ‘I know. You weren’t going to write any more. Your first and your last, eh? And I said, “That be damned!” ’
Another essential of the millionaire’s makeup. Memory. Everybody you meet may mean something to you later on, and therefore, when you meet him again, you must know at once whether the occasion has arrived.
‘Really,’ said Reginald, ‘I don’t quite know why we did come to London. There was talk of making the book into a play, and there was an American publisher I wanted to see, and—and one thing and another. Things which seemed rather important when I was some miles away from them, and less important now I’m closer. I should imagine that—well, I must do something. It isn’t like the country. Only——’ He hesitated.
‘My papers, aren’t quite your style, eh?’
‘Well——’ and Reginald smiled apologetically.
‘Go on. Be frank. I’m nothing to you, and you’re nothing to me. We shan’t die if we never see each other again. What the hell does it matter what we think of each other?’
‘All right,’ said Reginald suddenly. ‘Then, frankly, Ormsby, your papers really do make me shudder sometimes. I mean the daily ones—I don’t quite know which of the weeklies are yours. The—the vulgarity of them! Oh, God!’
‘Vulgar, eh?’
‘Frankly, yes.’
‘Finished your pipe? Then have a cigar.’
As Reginald took one, he began to laugh, and then explained, ‘When I was sixteen, I was office boy in a firm of printers, small stuff, bills of sale, “Lost, a Pekinese puppy”, that sort of thing. Fulham way. The local rag was having one of its periodic bankruptcies, and I went round to see the proprietor—and editor he was, and printer and the whole bag of tricks. Sudden idea of mine. Sixteen, hair plastered down the middle, very high collar, black satin tie with crimson horse-shoes on it. I must have looked foul. He said, “What the hell do you want?” I said, “I’ve come to buy your paper.” He looked me up and down—there wasn’t much of me, so it didn’t take him long—and said, “Well, why don’t you? Plenty of copies.” I said, “Don’t be funny. Why should anybody want a copy of the dam thing? I’m negotiating for the transfer of all rights.” “You’re what?” he said. I said it again, I was rather proud of the phrase. “You’re not serious?” he said. “Absolutely. My bankers are Lloyds and Co.” I had taken my fifteen pounds savings out of the post office that morning. He said “My God!” took a cigar out of his waistcoat pocket, pinched it, got it half-way to his mouth, hesitated suddenly and then handed it to me, saying, “Here, shove that in your face, and tell me all about it.” And for years afterwards I used to say, “Here, shove that in your face,” whenever I offered anybody a cigar. I thought it was a heluva smart thing to say.’
Reginald stared at him.
‘Is that really how you began?’ he asked.
‘Yum. That’s why I was laughing, wondering how vulgar you’d think me if I said, “Here, shove that in your face!” ’
‘That’s different.’
‘Don’t think I’m vulgar then?’
‘You’ve got character. Nobody with character is vulgar.’
‘And how many people who can read and write have character? You don’t think I sell my papers to a million different people every day? If I sell ’em to ten, I’m lucky. And each one thinks like the ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine others in the herd. They’re vulgar people, and they want a vulgar paper.’
‘I wonder.’
‘Ever listen in?’
‘I have sometimes.’
‘Concerts and Hallelujahs?’
‘Cricket results, I’m afraid,’ smiled Reginald.
‘Then perhaps you’ve heard what they call their News Bulletin?’
‘I don’t think——’
‘You’re lucky. I’ll tell you what it’s like. Now just imagine a million people, two million, three million, all sitting in their little bloody sitting-rooms with their damned ear-phones on, looking like God knows what, all waiting to be thrilled. And then suddenly a refined gentlemanly voice tells them that owing to the drought in Alabama President Hoover has postponed his visit to Ohio, that the Finnish Prime Minister unveiled a statue to Professor Winkelstein, that there has been an unprecedented fall of snow in Eastern Rhodesia, and that Major-General Foxtrot has passed away peacefully at Southsea at the advanced age of a hundred and one. And who
the hell cares? Well—that’s refinement. Telling people something with no guts in it.’ He looked at his watch and got up. ‘Trouble is, Wellard, life’s vulgar. Being born’s vulgar, dying’s vulgar, and as for living, well, three-quarters of it is stomach, and stomachs are dam vulgar. My God, when you think of what goes on in your stomach.’
‘Yes, yes, but that isn’t what I mean by vulgar. What I mean——’
‘Sorry, but I’ve got to go now. You’ll come to supper. I’ll tell the missis. Hayward’s Grove, you said. What number? You’ll like her ladyship. She’s a very remarkable woman.’
‘Six. But——’
‘Right. So long.’
And that, thought Reginald, is the last essential quality of the millionaire. Knowing when to say, ‘Sorry, but I’ve got to go now.’
Chapter Twelve
I
AS his lordship said from time to time, Margaret Ormsby was a very remarkable woman. But this was not surprising; for her father, John Fondeveril, had always been a very remarkable man.
John Fondeveril was one of those unworldly souls who ‘might have been anything’ if they had really cared about it, but who, unfortunately for their country, preferred to go on being accountants in a tea-broker’s. At Philpot Lane, saying ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘No, sir’ to the partners, Mr. Fondeveril could wrap himself up in his illusion of greatness without subjecting it to any strain. His appearance helped him; a magnificently whiskered six-foot-three was obviously Somebody. No doubt his name helped him too. To hear that this magnificent gentleman was Mr. Smith would leave one unmoved; to hear that he was Mr. Fondeveril set one asking, ‘Who is Mr. Fondeveril? I know I’ve seen him somewhere.’ He was lavish with his name. He would give it to a chance acquaintance before the other had time to ask for it, adding, as a matter of popular interest, ‘Always the same, always game, John Fon Deveril.’ Possibly somebody had so toasted him in the ‘eighties; possibly not; but he was assured by now that so they had always toasted him. His romantic interest in himself never wavered.
He married a Miss Stokes from some small Midland town; ‘a Stokes of Leicestershire, the great hunting country’, as he would explain to his friends, adding, with one of his inevitable flights of imagination, ‘Ah, she misses it now, poor girl.’ Certainly she had felt the loss of the country, if not of the sport, and after ten years of the Kilburn end of Maida Vale, she returned, in the picturesque phrase of her husband, ‘to the happy hunting-fields’. Mr. Fondeveril bore her loss bravely. His friends knew his motto:
Always the same,
Always game,
John
Fon
Deveril.
Perhaps he realized that six-foot-three of magnificent mourning had lost nothing in romantic interest for the travellers on his omnibus. Descending from his seat next to the driver (his almost by right) he would make for Philpot Lane as for an exit up-stage, leaving, as he well knew, the driver and the other front-seat passenger in conversation. ‘That’s Mr. Fondeveril I was talking to, just lost his wife, poor gentleman,’ the other passenger would hear, and ‘Dear, dear’ would say, wondering, as everybody did, who Mr. Fondeveril was. And sometimes Mr. Fondeveril himself would wonder. This transmigration of souls which that fellow had been talking about. What more natural than that the soul of (say) the great Alexander should return to earth, seeking suitable quarters? He hummed lightly to himself at the thought, and returned the salute of the commissionaire with the preoccupied but military gesture which Alexander would have given it. An Alexander who had just lost a general.
He had been fond of his wife, in the rather absent way in which great men are fond of their wives, and faithful to her, for she had been a good listener. Fortunately she had left an even better listener behind her: a nine-year-old Maggie. On Sundays he and Maggie would walk out to Hampstead Heath together, Mr. Fondeveril explaining on the way what he would do if the King suddenly decided to make him Lord Mayor of London, ‘but with real power, Maggie. Power’, and he made a semicircular movement with his free hand, ‘to sweep away this or that. Power to say No!! or Yes!! as the case might be. For instance, dear, just to give you a small example of what I mean, I might—’ he looked round for inspiration—‘well, now, the Leg-of-mutton Pond here, just take that as an example. I might decide to—sweep it away. Well, of course that means—plans have to be made. It’s a question of drainage—and—er—seepage, and so forth. It would have to be emptied, filled-in, levelled and so on. I should give the necessary instructions. And then when it was done I should decide what I was going to have here instead. A cricket ground perhaps. If so, I should of course be prepared to take the best advice. I should.’ he made a beckoning movement with his finger, ‘I should say to Dr. Grace, “Just come here a moment, Doctor. Now if you were——” You see what I mean?’
‘Yes, Pa,’ said his daughter meekly.
‘The point is I should have Power. Real power. They want men with power at the helm, that’s what it comes to.’
On other Sundays, when Maggie was a little older, he would take her to Queen’s Hall, where he gave without difficulty the impression of one who might have been a Great Conductor if he had thought of it. ‘I won’t say I should have taken that movement differently, Maggie, not the actual movement,’ he explained on the way home, ‘but I should have Built it Up more, if you see what I mean. As it was, it just lacked that something. Technically perfect, of course, I should be the last to deny that. My complaint is that he didn’t Go About it in the Right Way. The first thing I should say to myself would be, Now how am I Going About This? Once you have decided on that point, the rest is easy. You see what I mean?’
‘Yes, Papa,’ said his daughter quickly.
‘We have been attending a concert, my little girl and I,’ Mr. Fondeveril explained to the driver.
‘Ah!’ said the driver. ‘That so?’
‘I suppose I oughtn’t to say it,’ said Mr. Fondeveril in a carefully lowered voice to the driver, ‘but that little girl of mine—there’s really no saying where she mightn’t get to. Right to the top of the tree. So they all tell me.’
‘Ah!’ said the driver. ‘Pianner?’
‘That, too, of course, but I was thinking rather of the human voice. There’s a purity about it, they tell me, an unforced purity——’ He sighed and added, ‘A pity that her mother couldn’t have lived to see the day.’
‘Mother dead?’ said the driver. ‘Ah, that’s the way it is.’
‘A Stokes of Leicestershire,’ explained Mr. Fondeveril. ‘The great hunting country.’ And added, almost unconsciously, ‘Wonderful seat.’
Which brought them, it might be, to the latest little frontier war, and gave Mr. Fondeveril a chance of explaining that War was not just a matter of Pushing Forward Pickets, but of Large Vision. ‘Now if I had been in command, I should have sent for my—er—my chief-of-staff, and I should have said “Now, look here”. Hallo, this is where we get down. Come on, Maggie. Good afternoon to you, driver.’
It was in this atmosphere that Lady Ormsby was brought up. She knew all about Great Men; she had listened to them all her life. She was twenty-five when Bob Ormsby fell in love with her; her father was still the Great Man that he had ever been, her lover was a Great Man in the making. She had grown to be tolerant of Greatness, whether Greatness in retrospect, or Greatness in prospect. Mr. Fondeveril spoke mostly of the days when he had been, or might have been (he made it sound much the same thing), Prime Minister; Mr. Ormsby spoke of the days when undoubtedly he would be. In either case one said, ‘Yes, dear.’
For what were Great Men? Children, to be humoured.
So, for twenty-five years, Maggie Ormsby had humoured her Bob. For twenty-four of these years he had been unfaithful to her. So, too, had been Mr. Fondeveril. Her father (how often!) had promised her this or that, and in the greatness of his thoughts had forgotten about it. Was that being faithful? But you forgave him b
ecause he was a great man, and great men cannot be bothered with the silly little things which seem important to the ordinary. So, too, you forgave Bob. You had to. What was the good of divorcing him? Would he be happier for it? Would you? If she had been his mistress, and he had dared (as he so often did) to take another mistress, he would have deserved her indignation. But she was his wife, a very different thing. As his wife she had no rival. The Great Man’s wife—and nursemaid. A very remarkable woman.
II
Supper at the Ormsbys was, to Reginald, something that had taken place, or was about to take place, rather than something that was ever actually happening. For a week he had wondered what it would be like; for another week he was trying to remember what it had been like. The supper itself had never seemed quite real. It had that lack of continuity so noticeable in one’s dreams.