but they say they administrate an order and cannot do more. Or if you could get my husband some work where he will be in open air–the doctor say that is what he want. We have nowhere to go in Germany or in Austria, our well-loved families being no more alive. I think we are like many, but I cannot help asking you, Sir, because we want to keep living if we can, and now we are hardly having any food. Please to forgive me my writing, and to believe your very anxious and humble
“ANNA BERGFELD.”
‘God help them!’ thought Michael, under a plane-tree close to Cleopatra’s Needle, but without conviction. For in his view God was not so much interested in the fate of individual aliens as the Governor of the Bank of England in the fate of a pound of sugar bought with the fraction of a Bradbury; He would not arbitrarily interfere with a ripple of the tides set loose by His arrangement of the Spheres. God, to Michael, was a monarch strictly limited by His own Constitution. He restored the letter to his pocket. Poor creatures! But really, with 1 200 000 and more English unemployed, mostly due to that confounded Kaiser and his Navy stunt–! If that fellow and his gang had not started their Naval rivalry in 1899, England would have been out of the whole mess, or, perhaps, there never would have been a mess!
He turned up from the Temple station towards the offices of The Outpost. He had ‘taken’ that Weekly for some years now. It knew everything, and managed to convey a slight impression that nobody else knew anything; so that it seemed more weighty than any other Weekly. Having no particular Party to patronise, it could patronise the lot. Without Imperial bias, it professed a special knowledge of the Empire. Not literary, it made a point of reducing the heads of literary men–Michael, in his publishing days, had enjoyed every opportunity of noticing that. Professing respect for Church and the Law, it was an adept at giving them ‘what-for.’ It fancied itself on Drama, striking a somewhat Irish attitude towards it. But, perhaps above all, it excelled in neat detraction from political reputations, keeping them in their place, and that place a little lower than The Outpost’s. Moreover, from its editorials emanated that ‘holy ghost’ of inspired knowledge in periods just a little beyond average comprehension, without which no such periodical had real importance.
Michael went up the stairs two at a time, and entered a large square room, where Mr. Blythe, back to the door, was pointing with a ruler to a circle drawn on a map.
“This is a bee map,” said Mr. Blythe to himself. “Quite the bee-est map I ever saw.”
Michael could not contain a gurgle, and the eyes of Mr. Blythe came round, prominent, epileptic, richly encircled by pouches.
“Hallo!” he said defiantly: “You? The Colonial Office prepared this map specially to show the best spots for Settlement schemes. And they’ve left out Baggersfontein–the very hub.”
Michael seated himself on the table.
“I’ve come in to ask what you think of the situation? My wife says Labour will be out in no time.”
“Our charming little lady!” said Mr. Blythe; “Labour will survive Ireland; they will survive Russia; they will linger on in their precarious way. One hesitates to predict their decease. Fear of their Budget may bring them down in February. After the smell of Russian fat has died away–say in November, Mont–one may make a start.”
“This first speech,” said Michael, “is a nightmare to me. How, exactly, am I to start Foggartism?”
“One will have achieved the impression of a body of opinion before then.”
“But will there be one?”
“No,” said Mr. Blythe.
“Oh!” said Michael. “And, by the way, what about Free Trade?”
“One will profess Free Trade, and put on duties.”
“God and Mammon.”
“Necessary in England, before any new departure, Mont. Witness Liberal–Unionism, Tory–Socialism, and–”
“Other ramps,” said Michael, gently.
“One will glide, deprecate Protection till there is more Protection than Free Trade, then deprecate Free Trade. Foggartism is an end, not a means; Free Trade and Protection are means, not the ends politicians have made them.”
Roused by the word politician, Michael got off the table; he was coming to have a certain sympathy with those poor devils. They were supposed to have no feeling for the country, and to be wise only after the event. But, really, who could tell what was good for the country, among the mists of talk? Not even old Foggart, Michael sometimes thought.
“You know, Blythe,” he said, “that we politicians don’t think ahead, simply because we know it’s no earthly. Every elector thinks his own immediate good is the good of the country. Only their own shoes pinching will change electors’ views. If Foggartism means adding to the price of living now, and taking wage-earning children away from workmen’s families for the sake of benefit–ten or twenty years hence–who’s going to stand for it?”
“My dear young man,” said Mr. Blythe, “conversion is our job. At present our trade-unionists despise the outside world. They’ve never seen it. Their philosophy is bounded by their smoky little streets. But five million pounds spent on the organised travel of a hundred thousand working men would do the trick in five years. It would infect the working class with a feverish desire for a place in the sun. The world is their children’s for the taking. But who can blame them, when they know nothing of it?”
“Some thought!” said Michael: “Only–what Government will think it? Can I take those maps?… By the way,” he said at the door, “there are Societies, you know, for sending out children.”
Mr. Blythe grunted. “Yes. Excellent little affairs! A few hundred children doing well–concrete example of what might be. Multiply it a hundredfold, and you’ve got a beginning. You can’t fill pails with a teaspoon. Good-bye!”
Out on the Embankment Michael wondered if one could love one’s country with a passion for getting people to leave it. But this over-bloated town condition, with its blight and smoky ugliness; the children without a chance from birth; these swarms of poor devils without work, who dragged about and hadn’t an earthly, and never would, on present lines; this unbalanced, hand-to-mouth, dependent state of things–surely that wasn’t to be for ever the state of the country one loved! He stared at the towers of Westminster, with the setting sun behind them. And there started up before him the thousand familiars of his past–trees, fields and streams, towers, churches, bridges; the English breeds of beasts, the singing birds, the owls, the jays and rooks at Lippinghall, the little differences from foreign sorts in shrub, flower, lichen, and winged life; the English scents, the English haze, the English grass; the eggs and bacon; the slow good humour, the moderation and the pluck; the smell of rain; the apple-blossom, the heather, and the sea. His country, and his breed–unspoilable at heart! He passed the Clock Tower. The House looked lacy and imposing, more beautiful than fashion granted. Did they spin the web of England’s future in that House? Or were they painting camouflage–a screen, over old England?
A familiar voice said: “This is a monstrous great thing!”
And Michael saw his father-inlaw staring up at the Lincoln statue. “What did they want to put it here for?” said Soames. “It’s not English.” He walked along at Michael’s side. “Fleur well?”
“Splendid. Italy suited her like everything.”
Soames sniffed. “They’re a theatrical lot,” he said. “Did you see Milan cathedral!”
“Yes, sir. It’s about the only thing we didn’t take to.”
“H’m! Their cooking gave me the collywobbles in ‘79. I dare say it’s better now. How’s the boy?”
“A1, sir.”
Soames made a sound of gratification, and they turned the corner into South Square.
“What’s this?” said Soames.
Outside the front door were two battered-looking trunks, a young man, grasping a bag, and ringing the bell, and a taxicab turning away.
“I can’t tell you, sir,” murmured Michael. “Unless it’s the angel Gabriel.”
“He’s got the wrong house,” said Soames, moving forward.
But just then the young man disappeared within.
Soames walked up to the trunks. “Francis Wilmot,” he read out. “‘S. S. Amphibian.’ There’s some mistake!”
Chapter IV.
MERE CONVERSATION
When they came in, Fleur was returning down-stairs from showing the young man to his room. Already fully dressed for the evening, she had but little on, and her hair was shingled…
“My dear girl,” Michael had said, when shingling came in, “to please me, don’t! Your nuque will be too bristly for kisses.”
“My dear boy,” she had answered, “as if one could help it! You’re always the same with any new fashion!”
She had been one of the first twelve to shingle, and was just feeling that without care she would miss being one of the first twelve to grow some hair again. Marjorie Ferrar, ‘the Pet of the Panjoys,’ as Michael called her, already had more than an inch. Somehow, one hated being distanced by Marjorie Ferrar…
Advancing to her father, she said:
“I’ve asked a young American to stay, Dad; Jon Forsyte has married his sister, out there. You’re quite brown, darling. How’s mother?”
Soames only gazed at her.
And Fleur passed through one of those shamed moments, when the dumb quality of his love for her seemed accusing the glib quality of her love for him. It was not fair–she felt–that he should look at her like that; as if she had not suffered in that old business with Jon more than he; if she could take it lightly now, surely he could! As for Michael–not a word! – not even a joke! She bit her lips, shook her shingled head, and passed into the ‘bimetallic parlour.’
Dinner began with soup and Soames deprecating his own cows for not being Herefords. He supposed that in America they had plenty of Herefords?
Francis Wilmot believed that they were going in for Holsteins now.
“Holsteins!” repeated Soames. “They’re new since my young days. What’s their colour?”
“Parti-coloured,” said Francis Wilmot. “The English grass is just wonderful.”
“Too damp, with us,” said Soames. “We’re on the river.”
“The river Thames? What size will that be, where it hasn’t a tide?”
“Just there–not more than a hundred yards.”
“Will it have fish?”
“Plenty.”
“And it’ll run clear–not red; our Southern rivers have a red colour. And your trees will be willows, and poplars, and elms.”
Soames was a good deal puzzled. He had never been in America. The inhabitants were human, of course, but peculiar and all alike, with more face than feature, heads fastened upright on their backs, and shoulders too square to be real. Their voices clanged in their mouths; they pronounced the words ‘very’ and ‘America’ in a way that he had tried to imitate without success; their dollar was too high, and they all had motor-cars; they despised Europe, came over in great quantities, and took back all they could; they talked all the time, and were not allowed to drink. This young man cut across all these preconceptions. He drank sherry and only spoke when he was spoken to. His shoulders looked natural; he had more feature than face; and his voice was soft. Perhaps, at least, he despised Europe.
“I suppose,” he said, “you find England very small.”
“No, sir. I find London very large; and you certainly have the loveliest kind of a countryside.”
Soames looked down one side of his nose. “Pretty enough!” he said.
Then came turbot and a silence, broken, low down, behind his chair.
“That dog!” said Soames, impaling a morsel of fish he had set aside as uneatable.
“No, no, Dad! He just wants to know you’ve seen him!”
Soames stretched down a finger, and the Dandie fell on his side.
“He never eats,” said Fleur; “but he has to be noticed.”
A small covey of partridges came in, cooked.
“Is there any particular thing you want to see over here, Mr. Wilmot?” said Michael. “There’s nothing very unAmerican left. You’re just too late for Regent Street.”
“I want to see the Beefeaters; and Cruft’s Dog Show; and your blood horses; and the Derby.”
“Darby!” Soames corrected. “You can’t stay for that–it’s not till next June.”
“My cousin Val will show you race-horses,” said Fleur. “He married Jon’s sister, you know.”
A ‘bombe’ appeared. “You have more of this in America, I believe,” said Soames.
“We don’t have much ice-cream in the South, sir; but we have special cooking–very tasty.”
“I’ve heard of terrapin.”
“Well, I don’t get frills like that. I live away back, and have to work pretty hard. My place is kind of homey; but I’ve got some mighty nice darkies that can cook fine–old folk that knew my grannies. The old-time darky is getting scarce, but he’s the real thing.”
A Southerner!
Soames had been told that the Southerner was a gentleman. He remembered the ‘Alabama,’ too; and his father, James, saying: “I told you so” when the Government ate humble pie over that business.
In the savoury silence that accompanied soft roes on toast, the patter of the Dandie’s feet on the parquet floor could be plainly heard.
“This is the only thing he likes,” said Fleur, “Dan! go to your master. Give him a little bit, Michael.” And she stole a look at Michael, but he did not answer it.
On their Italian holiday, with Fleur in the throes of novelty, sun and wine warmed, disposed to junketing, amenable to his caresses, he had been having his real honeymoon, enjoying, for the first time since his marriage, a sense of being the chosen companion of his adored. And now had come this stranger, bringing reminder that one played but second fiddle to that young second cousin and first lover; and he couldn’t help feeling the cup withdrawn again from his lips. She had invited this young man because he came from that past of hers whose tune one could not play. And, without looking up, he fed the Dandie with tid-bits of his favourite edible.
Soames broke the silence.
“Take some nutmeg, Mr. Wilmot. Melon without nutmeg–beats ginger hollow.”
When Fleur rose, Soames followed her to the drawing-room; while Michael led the young American to his study.
“You knew Jon?” said Francis Wilmot.
“No; I never met him.”
“He’s a great little fellow; and some poet. He’s growing dandy peaches.”
“Is he going on with that, now he’s married?”
“Surely.”
“Not coming to England?”
“Not this year. They have a nice home–horses and dogs. They have some hunting there, too. Perhaps he’ll bring my sister over for a trip, next fall.”
“Oh!” said Michael. “And are you staying long, yourself?”
“Why! I’ll go back for Christmas. I’d like to see Rome and Seville; and I want to visit the old home of my people, down in Worcestershire.”
“When did they go over?”
“William and Mary. Catholics–they were. Is it a nice part, Worcestershire?”
“Very; especially in the Spring. It grows a lot of fruit.”
“Oh! You still grow things in this country?”
“Not many.”
“I thought that was so, coming on the cars, from Liverpool. I saw a lot of grass and one or two sheep, but I didn’t see anybody working. The people all live in the towns, then?”
“Except a few unconsidered trifles. You must come down to my father’s; they still grow a turnip or two thereabouts.”
“It’s sad,” said Francis Wilmot.
“It is. We began to grow wheat again in the war; but they’ve let it all slip back–and worse.”
“Why was that?”
Michael shrugged his shoulders: “No accounting for statesmanship. It lets the Land go to blazes when in office; and beats the drum of it when in opposition. At the end of the war we had the best air force in the world, and agriculture was well on its way to recovery. And what did they do? Dropped them both like hot potatoes. It was tragic. What do you grow in Carolina?”
“Just cotton, on my place. But it’s mighty hard to make cotton pay nowadays. Labour’s high.”
“High with you, too?”
“Yes, sir. Do they let strangers into your Parliament?”
“Rather. Would you like to hear the Irish debate? I can get you a seat in the Distinguished Strangers’ gallery.”
“I thought the English were stiff; but it’s wonderful the way you make me feel at home. Is that your father-inlaw–the old gentleman?”
“Yes.”
“He seems kind of rarefied. Is he a banker?”
“No. But now you mention it–he ought to be.”
Francis Wilmot’s eyes roved round the room and came to rest on “The White Monkey.”
“Well, now,” he said, softly, “that, surely, is a wonderful picture. Could I get a picture painted by that man, for Jon and my sister?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Michael. “You see, he was a Chink–not quite of the best period; but he must have gone West five hundred years ago at least.”
“Ah! Well, he had a great sense of animals.”
“We think he had a great sense of human beings.”
Francis Wilmot stared.
There was something, Michael decided, in this young man unresponsive to satire.
“So you want to see Cruft’s Dog Show?” he said. “You’re keen on dogs, then?”
“I’ll be taking a bloodhound back for Jon, and two for myself. I want to raise bloodhounds.”
Michael leaned back, and blew out smoke. To Francis Wilmot, he felt, the world was young, and life running on good tires to some desirable destination. In England–!
“What is it you Americans want out of life?” he said abruptly.
“Well, I suppose you might say we want success–in the North at all events.”
“WE wanted that in 1824,” said Michael.
“Oh! And nowadays?”
“We’ve had success, and now we’re wondering whether it hasn’t cooked our goose.”
“Well,” said Francis Wilmot, “we’re sort of thinly populated, compared with you.”
“That’s it,” said Michael. “Every seat here is booked in advance; and a good many sit on their own knees. Will you have another cigar, or shall we join the lady?”
Chapter V.
SIDE-SLIPS
If Providence was completely satisfied with Sapper’s Row, Camden Town, Michael was not. What could justify those twin dismal rows of three-storied houses, so begrimed that they might have been collars washed in Italy? What possible attention to business could make these little ground-floor shops do anything but lose money? From the thronged and tram-lined thoroughfare so pregnantly scented with fried fish, petrol and old clothes, who would turn into this small back water for sweetness or for profit? Even the children, made with heroic constancy on its second and third floors, sought the sweets of life outside its precincts; for in Sapper’s Row they could neither be run over nor stare at the outside of Cinemas. Hand-carts, bicycles, light vans which had lost their nerve and taxicabs which had lost their way, provided all the traffic; potted geraniums and spotted cats supplied all the beauty. Sapper’s Row drooped and dithered.
Michael entered from its west end, and against his principles. Here was overcrowded England, at its most dismal, and here was he, who advocated a reduction of its population, about to visit some broken-down aliens with the view of keeping them alive. He looked into three of the little shops. Not a soul! Which was worst? Such little shops frequented, or–deserted? He came to No. 12, and, looking up, saw a face looking down. It was wax white, movingly listless, above a pair of hands sewing at a garment. ‘That,’ he thought, ‘is my “obedient humble” and her needle.’ He entered the shop below, a hair-dresser’s, containing a dirty basin below a dusty mirror, suspicious towels, bottles, and two dingy chairs. In his shirt-sleeves, astride one of them, reading The Daily Mail, sat a shadowy fellow with pale hollow cheeks, twisted moustache, lank hair, and the eyes, at once knowing and tragic, of a philosopher.
“Hair cut, sir?”
Michael shook his head.
“Do Mr. and Mrs. Bergfeld live here?”
“Up-stairs, top floor.”
“How do I get up?”
“Through there.”
Passing through a curtained aperture, Michael found a stairway, and at its top, stood, hesitating. His conscience was echoing Fleur’s comment on Anna Bergfeld’s letter: “Yes, I dare say; but what’s the good?” when the door was opened, and it seemed to him almost as if a corpse were standing there, with a face as though some one had come knocking on its grave, so eager and so white.
“Mrs. Bergfeld? My name’s Mont. You wrote to me.”
The woman trembled so, that Michael thought she was going to faint.
“Will you excuse me, sir, that I sit down?” And she dropped on to the end of the bed. The room was spotless, but, besides the bed, held only a small deal wash-stand, a pot of geranium, a tin trunk with a pair of trousers folded on it, a woman’s hat on a peg, and a chair in the window covered with her sewing.
The woman stood up again. She seemed not more than thirty, thin but prettily formed; and her oval face, without colour except in her dark eyes, suggested Rafael rather than Sapper’s Row.
“It is like seeing an angel,” she said. “Excuse me, sir.”
“Queer angel, Mrs. Bergfeld. Your husband not in?”
“No, sir. Fritz has gone to walk.”
“Tell me, Mrs. Bergfeld. If I pay your passages to Germany, will you go?”
“We cannot hope from that now, Fritz has been here twenty years, and never back; he has lost his German nationality, sir; they do not want people like us, you know.”
Michael stivered up his hair.
“Where are you from yourself?”
“From Salzburg.”
“What about going back there?”
“I would like to, but what would we do? In Austria every one is poor now, and I have no relative left. Here at least we have my sewing.”
“How much is that a week?”
“Sometimes a pound; sometimes fifteen shillings. It is bread and the rent.”
“Don’t you get the dole?”
“No, sir. We are not registered.”
Michael took out a five-pound note and laid it with his card on the wash-stand. “I’ve got to think this over, Mrs. Bergfeld. Perhaps your husband will come and see me.” He went out quickly, for the ghostly woman had flushed pink.
Repassing through the curtained aperture, he caught the hair-dresser wiping out the basin.
“Find em in, sir?”
“The lady.”
“Ah! Seen better days, I should say. The ‘usband’s a queer customer; ‘alf off his nut. Wanted to come in here with me, but I’ve got to give this job up.”
“Oh! How’s that?”
“I’ve got to have fresh air–only got one lung, and that’s not very gaudy. I’ll have to find something else.”
“That’s bad, in these days.”
The hair-dresser shrugged his bony shoulders. “Ah!” he said. “I’ve been a hair-dresser from a boy, except for the war. Funny place this, to fetch up in after where I’ve been. The war knocked me out.” He twisted his little thin moustache.
“No pension?” said Michael.
“Not a bob. What I want to keep me alive is something in the open.”
Michael took him in from head to foot. Shadowy, narrow-headed, with one lung.
“But do you know anything about country life?”
“Not a blessed thing. Still, I’ve got to find something, or peg out.”
His tragic and knowing eyes searched Michael’s face.
“I’m awfully sorry,” said Michael. “Good-bye!”
The hair-dresser made a queer jerky little movement.
Emerging from Sapper’s Row into the crowded, roaring thoroughfare, Michael thought of a speech in a play he had seen a year or two before. “The condition of the people leaves much to be desired. I shall make a point of taking up the cudgels in the House. I shall move–!” The condition of the people! What a remote thing! The sportive nightmare of a few dreaming nights, the skeleton in a well-locked cupboard, the discomforting rare howl of a hungry dog! And probably no folk in England less disturbed by it than the gallant six hundred odd who sat with him in ‘that House.’ For to improve the condition of the people was their job, and that relieved them of a sense of nightmare. Since Oliver Cromwell some sixteen thousand, perhaps, had sat there before them, to the same end. And was the trick done–not bee likely! Still THEY were really working for it, and other people were only looking on and telling them how to do it!
Thus was he thinking when a voice said:
“Not got a job about you, sir?”
Michael quickened his steps, then stood still. He saw that the man who had spoken, having cast his eyes down again, had missed this sign of weakness; and he went back to him. They were black eyes in a face round and pasty like a mince pie. Decent and shabby, quiet and forlorn, he wore an ex-Service-man’s badge.
“You spoke to me?” said Michael.
“I’m sure I don’t know why, sir; it just hopped out of me.”
“No work?”
“No; and pretty low.”
“Married?”
“Widower, sir; two children.”
“Dole?”
“Yes; and fair sick of it.”
“In the war, I see?”
“Yes, Mespot.”
“What sort of job do you want?”
“Any mortal thing.”
“Give me your name and address.”
“Henry Boddick, 94 Waltham Buildings, Gunnersbury.”
Michael took it down.
“Can’t promise anything,” he said.
“No, sir.”
“Good luck, anyway. Have a cigar?”
“Thank you, and good luck to you, sir.”
Michael saluted, and resumed his progress; once out of sight of Henry Boddick, he took a taxi. A little more of this, and he would lose the sweet reasonableness without which one could not sit in ‘that House’!
‘For Sale or to Let’ recorded recurrently in Portland Place, somewhat restored his sense of balance.
That same afternoon he took Francis Wilmot with him to the House, and leaving him at the foot of the Distinguished Strangers’ stairway, made his way on to the floor.
He had never been in Ireland, so that the debate had for him little relation to reality. It seemed to illustrate, however, the obstacles in the way of agreement on any mortal subject. Almost every speech emphasized the paramount need for a settlement, but declared the impossibility of ‘going back’ on this, that, or the other factor which precluded such settlement. Still, for a debate on Ireland it seemed good-tempered; and presently they would all go out and record the votes they had determined on before it all began. He remembered the thrill with which he had listened to the first debates after his election; the impression each speech had given him that somebody must certainly be converted to something; and the reluctance with which he had discovered that nobody ever was. Some force was at work far stronger than any eloquence, however striking or sincere. The clothes were washed elsewhere; in here they were but aired before being put on. Still, until people put thoughts into words, they didn’t know what they thought, and sometimes they didn’t know afterwards. And for the hundredth time Michael was seized by a weak feeling in his legs. In a few weeks he himself must rise on them. Would the House accord him its ‘customary indulgence’; or would it say: ‘Young fellow–teaching your grandmother to suck eggs–shut up!’
He looked around him.
His fellow members were sitting in all shapes. Chosen of the people, they confirmed the doctrine that human nature did not change, or so slowly that one could not see the process–he had seen their prototypes in Roman statues, in mediaeval pictures… ‘Plain but pleasant,’ he thought, unconsciously reproducing George Forsyte’s description of himself in his palmy days. But did they take themselves seriously, as under Burke, as under Gladstone even?
The words ‘customary indulgence’ roused him from reverie; for they meant a maiden speech. Ha! yes! The member for Cornmarket. He composed himself to listen. Delivering himself with restraint and clarity, the speaker seemed suggesting that the doctrine ‘Do unto others as you would they should do unto you’ need not be entirely neglected, even in Ireland; but it was long–too long–Michael watched the House grow restive. ‘Alas! poor brother!’ he thought, as the speaker somewhat hastily sat down. A very handsome man rose in his place. He congratulated his honourable friend on his able and well-delivered effort, he only regretted that it had nothing to do with the business in hand. Exactly! Michael slipped out. Recovering his ‘distinguished stranger,’ he walked away with him to South Square.
Francis Wilmot was in a state of some enthusiasm.
“That was fine,” he said. “Who was the gentleman under the curtains?”
“The Speaker?”
“No; I mean the one who didn’t speak.”
“Exactly; he’s the dignity of the House.”
“They ought to feed him oxygen; it must be sleepy under there. I liked the delegate who spoke last but one. He would ‘go’ in America; he had big ideas.”
“The idealism which keeps you out of the League of Nations, eh?” said Michael with a grin.
Francis Wilmot turned his head rather sharply.
“Well,” he said, “we’re like any other people when it comes down to bed-rock.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
“ANNA BERGFELD.”
‘God help them!’ thought Michael, under a plane-tree close to Cleopatra’s Needle, but without conviction. For in his view God was not so much interested in the fate of individual aliens as the Governor of the Bank of England in the fate of a pound of sugar bought with the fraction of a Bradbury; He would not arbitrarily interfere with a ripple of the tides set loose by His arrangement of the Spheres. God, to Michael, was a monarch strictly limited by His own Constitution. He restored the letter to his pocket. Poor creatures! But really, with 1 200 000 and more English unemployed, mostly due to that confounded Kaiser and his Navy stunt–! If that fellow and his gang had not started their Naval rivalry in 1899, England would have been out of the whole mess, or, perhaps, there never would have been a mess!
He turned up from the Temple station towards the offices of The Outpost. He had ‘taken’ that Weekly for some years now. It knew everything, and managed to convey a slight impression that nobody else knew anything; so that it seemed more weighty than any other Weekly. Having no particular Party to patronise, it could patronise the lot. Without Imperial bias, it professed a special knowledge of the Empire. Not literary, it made a point of reducing the heads of literary men–Michael, in his publishing days, had enjoyed every opportunity of noticing that. Professing respect for Church and the Law, it was an adept at giving them ‘what-for.’ It fancied itself on Drama, striking a somewhat Irish attitude towards it. But, perhaps above all, it excelled in neat detraction from political reputations, keeping them in their place, and that place a little lower than The Outpost’s. Moreover, from its editorials emanated that ‘holy ghost’ of inspired knowledge in periods just a little beyond average comprehension, without which no such periodical had real importance.
Michael went up the stairs two at a time, and entered a large square room, where Mr. Blythe, back to the door, was pointing with a ruler to a circle drawn on a map.
“This is a bee map,” said Mr. Blythe to himself. “Quite the bee-est map I ever saw.”
Michael could not contain a gurgle, and the eyes of Mr. Blythe came round, prominent, epileptic, richly encircled by pouches.
“Hallo!” he said defiantly: “You? The Colonial Office prepared this map specially to show the best spots for Settlement schemes. And they’ve left out Baggersfontein–the very hub.”
Michael seated himself on the table.
“I’ve come in to ask what you think of the situation? My wife says Labour will be out in no time.”
“Our charming little lady!” said Mr. Blythe; “Labour will survive Ireland; they will survive Russia; they will linger on in their precarious way. One hesitates to predict their decease. Fear of their Budget may bring them down in February. After the smell of Russian fat has died away–say in November, Mont–one may make a start.”
“This first speech,” said Michael, “is a nightmare to me. How, exactly, am I to start Foggartism?”
“One will have achieved the impression of a body of opinion before then.”
“But will there be one?”
“No,” said Mr. Blythe.
“Oh!” said Michael. “And, by the way, what about Free Trade?”
“One will profess Free Trade, and put on duties.”
“God and Mammon.”
“Necessary in England, before any new departure, Mont. Witness Liberal–Unionism, Tory–Socialism, and–”
“Other ramps,” said Michael, gently.
“One will glide, deprecate Protection till there is more Protection than Free Trade, then deprecate Free Trade. Foggartism is an end, not a means; Free Trade and Protection are means, not the ends politicians have made them.”
Roused by the word politician, Michael got off the table; he was coming to have a certain sympathy with those poor devils. They were supposed to have no feeling for the country, and to be wise only after the event. But, really, who could tell what was good for the country, among the mists of talk? Not even old Foggart, Michael sometimes thought.
“You know, Blythe,” he said, “that we politicians don’t think ahead, simply because we know it’s no earthly. Every elector thinks his own immediate good is the good of the country. Only their own shoes pinching will change electors’ views. If Foggartism means adding to the price of living now, and taking wage-earning children away from workmen’s families for the sake of benefit–ten or twenty years hence–who’s going to stand for it?”
“My dear young man,” said Mr. Blythe, “conversion is our job. At present our trade-unionists despise the outside world. They’ve never seen it. Their philosophy is bounded by their smoky little streets. But five million pounds spent on the organised travel of a hundred thousand working men would do the trick in five years. It would infect the working class with a feverish desire for a place in the sun. The world is their children’s for the taking. But who can blame them, when they know nothing of it?”
“Some thought!” said Michael: “Only–what Government will think it? Can I take those maps?… By the way,” he said at the door, “there are Societies, you know, for sending out children.”
Mr. Blythe grunted. “Yes. Excellent little affairs! A few hundred children doing well–concrete example of what might be. Multiply it a hundredfold, and you’ve got a beginning. You can’t fill pails with a teaspoon. Good-bye!”
Out on the Embankment Michael wondered if one could love one’s country with a passion for getting people to leave it. But this over-bloated town condition, with its blight and smoky ugliness; the children without a chance from birth; these swarms of poor devils without work, who dragged about and hadn’t an earthly, and never would, on present lines; this unbalanced, hand-to-mouth, dependent state of things–surely that wasn’t to be for ever the state of the country one loved! He stared at the towers of Westminster, with the setting sun behind them. And there started up before him the thousand familiars of his past–trees, fields and streams, towers, churches, bridges; the English breeds of beasts, the singing birds, the owls, the jays and rooks at Lippinghall, the little differences from foreign sorts in shrub, flower, lichen, and winged life; the English scents, the English haze, the English grass; the eggs and bacon; the slow good humour, the moderation and the pluck; the smell of rain; the apple-blossom, the heather, and the sea. His country, and his breed–unspoilable at heart! He passed the Clock Tower. The House looked lacy and imposing, more beautiful than fashion granted. Did they spin the web of England’s future in that House? Or were they painting camouflage–a screen, over old England?
A familiar voice said: “This is a monstrous great thing!”
And Michael saw his father-inlaw staring up at the Lincoln statue. “What did they want to put it here for?” said Soames. “It’s not English.” He walked along at Michael’s side. “Fleur well?”
“Splendid. Italy suited her like everything.”
Soames sniffed. “They’re a theatrical lot,” he said. “Did you see Milan cathedral!”
“Yes, sir. It’s about the only thing we didn’t take to.”
“H’m! Their cooking gave me the collywobbles in ‘79. I dare say it’s better now. How’s the boy?”
“A1, sir.”
Soames made a sound of gratification, and they turned the corner into South Square.
“What’s this?” said Soames.
Outside the front door were two battered-looking trunks, a young man, grasping a bag, and ringing the bell, and a taxicab turning away.
“I can’t tell you, sir,” murmured Michael. “Unless it’s the angel Gabriel.”
“He’s got the wrong house,” said Soames, moving forward.
But just then the young man disappeared within.
Soames walked up to the trunks. “Francis Wilmot,” he read out. “‘S. S. Amphibian.’ There’s some mistake!”
Chapter IV.
MERE CONVERSATION
When they came in, Fleur was returning down-stairs from showing the young man to his room. Already fully dressed for the evening, she had but little on, and her hair was shingled…
“My dear girl,” Michael had said, when shingling came in, “to please me, don’t! Your nuque will be too bristly for kisses.”
“My dear boy,” she had answered, “as if one could help it! You’re always the same with any new fashion!”
She had been one of the first twelve to shingle, and was just feeling that without care she would miss being one of the first twelve to grow some hair again. Marjorie Ferrar, ‘the Pet of the Panjoys,’ as Michael called her, already had more than an inch. Somehow, one hated being distanced by Marjorie Ferrar…
Advancing to her father, she said:
“I’ve asked a young American to stay, Dad; Jon Forsyte has married his sister, out there. You’re quite brown, darling. How’s mother?”
Soames only gazed at her.
And Fleur passed through one of those shamed moments, when the dumb quality of his love for her seemed accusing the glib quality of her love for him. It was not fair–she felt–that he should look at her like that; as if she had not suffered in that old business with Jon more than he; if she could take it lightly now, surely he could! As for Michael–not a word! – not even a joke! She bit her lips, shook her shingled head, and passed into the ‘bimetallic parlour.’
Dinner began with soup and Soames deprecating his own cows for not being Herefords. He supposed that in America they had plenty of Herefords?
Francis Wilmot believed that they were going in for Holsteins now.
“Holsteins!” repeated Soames. “They’re new since my young days. What’s their colour?”
“Parti-coloured,” said Francis Wilmot. “The English grass is just wonderful.”
“Too damp, with us,” said Soames. “We’re on the river.”
“The river Thames? What size will that be, where it hasn’t a tide?”
“Just there–not more than a hundred yards.”
“Will it have fish?”
“Plenty.”
“And it’ll run clear–not red; our Southern rivers have a red colour. And your trees will be willows, and poplars, and elms.”
Soames was a good deal puzzled. He had never been in America. The inhabitants were human, of course, but peculiar and all alike, with more face than feature, heads fastened upright on their backs, and shoulders too square to be real. Their voices clanged in their mouths; they pronounced the words ‘very’ and ‘America’ in a way that he had tried to imitate without success; their dollar was too high, and they all had motor-cars; they despised Europe, came over in great quantities, and took back all they could; they talked all the time, and were not allowed to drink. This young man cut across all these preconceptions. He drank sherry and only spoke when he was spoken to. His shoulders looked natural; he had more feature than face; and his voice was soft. Perhaps, at least, he despised Europe.
“I suppose,” he said, “you find England very small.”
“No, sir. I find London very large; and you certainly have the loveliest kind of a countryside.”
Soames looked down one side of his nose. “Pretty enough!” he said.
Then came turbot and a silence, broken, low down, behind his chair.
“That dog!” said Soames, impaling a morsel of fish he had set aside as uneatable.
“No, no, Dad! He just wants to know you’ve seen him!”
Soames stretched down a finger, and the Dandie fell on his side.
“He never eats,” said Fleur; “but he has to be noticed.”
A small covey of partridges came in, cooked.
“Is there any particular thing you want to see over here, Mr. Wilmot?” said Michael. “There’s nothing very unAmerican left. You’re just too late for Regent Street.”
“I want to see the Beefeaters; and Cruft’s Dog Show; and your blood horses; and the Derby.”
“Darby!” Soames corrected. “You can’t stay for that–it’s not till next June.”
“My cousin Val will show you race-horses,” said Fleur. “He married Jon’s sister, you know.”
A ‘bombe’ appeared. “You have more of this in America, I believe,” said Soames.
“We don’t have much ice-cream in the South, sir; but we have special cooking–very tasty.”
“I’ve heard of terrapin.”
“Well, I don’t get frills like that. I live away back, and have to work pretty hard. My place is kind of homey; but I’ve got some mighty nice darkies that can cook fine–old folk that knew my grannies. The old-time darky is getting scarce, but he’s the real thing.”
A Southerner!
Soames had been told that the Southerner was a gentleman. He remembered the ‘Alabama,’ too; and his father, James, saying: “I told you so” when the Government ate humble pie over that business.
In the savoury silence that accompanied soft roes on toast, the patter of the Dandie’s feet on the parquet floor could be plainly heard.
“This is the only thing he likes,” said Fleur, “Dan! go to your master. Give him a little bit, Michael.” And she stole a look at Michael, but he did not answer it.
On their Italian holiday, with Fleur in the throes of novelty, sun and wine warmed, disposed to junketing, amenable to his caresses, he had been having his real honeymoon, enjoying, for the first time since his marriage, a sense of being the chosen companion of his adored. And now had come this stranger, bringing reminder that one played but second fiddle to that young second cousin and first lover; and he couldn’t help feeling the cup withdrawn again from his lips. She had invited this young man because he came from that past of hers whose tune one could not play. And, without looking up, he fed the Dandie with tid-bits of his favourite edible.
Soames broke the silence.
“Take some nutmeg, Mr. Wilmot. Melon without nutmeg–beats ginger hollow.”
When Fleur rose, Soames followed her to the drawing-room; while Michael led the young American to his study.
“You knew Jon?” said Francis Wilmot.
“No; I never met him.”
“He’s a great little fellow; and some poet. He’s growing dandy peaches.”
“Is he going on with that, now he’s married?”
“Surely.”
“Not coming to England?”
“Not this year. They have a nice home–horses and dogs. They have some hunting there, too. Perhaps he’ll bring my sister over for a trip, next fall.”
“Oh!” said Michael. “And are you staying long, yourself?”
“Why! I’ll go back for Christmas. I’d like to see Rome and Seville; and I want to visit the old home of my people, down in Worcestershire.”
“When did they go over?”
“William and Mary. Catholics–they were. Is it a nice part, Worcestershire?”
“Very; especially in the Spring. It grows a lot of fruit.”
“Oh! You still grow things in this country?”
“Not many.”
“I thought that was so, coming on the cars, from Liverpool. I saw a lot of grass and one or two sheep, but I didn’t see anybody working. The people all live in the towns, then?”
“Except a few unconsidered trifles. You must come down to my father’s; they still grow a turnip or two thereabouts.”
“It’s sad,” said Francis Wilmot.
“It is. We began to grow wheat again in the war; but they’ve let it all slip back–and worse.”
“Why was that?”
Michael shrugged his shoulders: “No accounting for statesmanship. It lets the Land go to blazes when in office; and beats the drum of it when in opposition. At the end of the war we had the best air force in the world, and agriculture was well on its way to recovery. And what did they do? Dropped them both like hot potatoes. It was tragic. What do you grow in Carolina?”
“Just cotton, on my place. But it’s mighty hard to make cotton pay nowadays. Labour’s high.”
“High with you, too?”
“Yes, sir. Do they let strangers into your Parliament?”
“Rather. Would you like to hear the Irish debate? I can get you a seat in the Distinguished Strangers’ gallery.”
“I thought the English were stiff; but it’s wonderful the way you make me feel at home. Is that your father-inlaw–the old gentleman?”
“Yes.”
“He seems kind of rarefied. Is he a banker?”
“No. But now you mention it–he ought to be.”
Francis Wilmot’s eyes roved round the room and came to rest on “The White Monkey.”
“Well, now,” he said, softly, “that, surely, is a wonderful picture. Could I get a picture painted by that man, for Jon and my sister?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Michael. “You see, he was a Chink–not quite of the best period; but he must have gone West five hundred years ago at least.”
“Ah! Well, he had a great sense of animals.”
“We think he had a great sense of human beings.”
Francis Wilmot stared.
There was something, Michael decided, in this young man unresponsive to satire.
“So you want to see Cruft’s Dog Show?” he said. “You’re keen on dogs, then?”
“I’ll be taking a bloodhound back for Jon, and two for myself. I want to raise bloodhounds.”
Michael leaned back, and blew out smoke. To Francis Wilmot, he felt, the world was young, and life running on good tires to some desirable destination. In England–!
“What is it you Americans want out of life?” he said abruptly.
“Well, I suppose you might say we want success–in the North at all events.”
“WE wanted that in 1824,” said Michael.
“Oh! And nowadays?”
“We’ve had success, and now we’re wondering whether it hasn’t cooked our goose.”
“Well,” said Francis Wilmot, “we’re sort of thinly populated, compared with you.”
“That’s it,” said Michael. “Every seat here is booked in advance; and a good many sit on their own knees. Will you have another cigar, or shall we join the lady?”
Chapter V.
SIDE-SLIPS
If Providence was completely satisfied with Sapper’s Row, Camden Town, Michael was not. What could justify those twin dismal rows of three-storied houses, so begrimed that they might have been collars washed in Italy? What possible attention to business could make these little ground-floor shops do anything but lose money? From the thronged and tram-lined thoroughfare so pregnantly scented with fried fish, petrol and old clothes, who would turn into this small back water for sweetness or for profit? Even the children, made with heroic constancy on its second and third floors, sought the sweets of life outside its precincts; for in Sapper’s Row they could neither be run over nor stare at the outside of Cinemas. Hand-carts, bicycles, light vans which had lost their nerve and taxicabs which had lost their way, provided all the traffic; potted geraniums and spotted cats supplied all the beauty. Sapper’s Row drooped and dithered.
Michael entered from its west end, and against his principles. Here was overcrowded England, at its most dismal, and here was he, who advocated a reduction of its population, about to visit some broken-down aliens with the view of keeping them alive. He looked into three of the little shops. Not a soul! Which was worst? Such little shops frequented, or–deserted? He came to No. 12, and, looking up, saw a face looking down. It was wax white, movingly listless, above a pair of hands sewing at a garment. ‘That,’ he thought, ‘is my “obedient humble” and her needle.’ He entered the shop below, a hair-dresser’s, containing a dirty basin below a dusty mirror, suspicious towels, bottles, and two dingy chairs. In his shirt-sleeves, astride one of them, reading The Daily Mail, sat a shadowy fellow with pale hollow cheeks, twisted moustache, lank hair, and the eyes, at once knowing and tragic, of a philosopher.
“Hair cut, sir?”
Michael shook his head.
“Do Mr. and Mrs. Bergfeld live here?”
“Up-stairs, top floor.”
“How do I get up?”
“Through there.”
Passing through a curtained aperture, Michael found a stairway, and at its top, stood, hesitating. His conscience was echoing Fleur’s comment on Anna Bergfeld’s letter: “Yes, I dare say; but what’s the good?” when the door was opened, and it seemed to him almost as if a corpse were standing there, with a face as though some one had come knocking on its grave, so eager and so white.
“Mrs. Bergfeld? My name’s Mont. You wrote to me.”
The woman trembled so, that Michael thought she was going to faint.
“Will you excuse me, sir, that I sit down?” And she dropped on to the end of the bed. The room was spotless, but, besides the bed, held only a small deal wash-stand, a pot of geranium, a tin trunk with a pair of trousers folded on it, a woman’s hat on a peg, and a chair in the window covered with her sewing.
The woman stood up again. She seemed not more than thirty, thin but prettily formed; and her oval face, without colour except in her dark eyes, suggested Rafael rather than Sapper’s Row.
“It is like seeing an angel,” she said. “Excuse me, sir.”
“Queer angel, Mrs. Bergfeld. Your husband not in?”
“No, sir. Fritz has gone to walk.”
“Tell me, Mrs. Bergfeld. If I pay your passages to Germany, will you go?”
“We cannot hope from that now, Fritz has been here twenty years, and never back; he has lost his German nationality, sir; they do not want people like us, you know.”
Michael stivered up his hair.
“Where are you from yourself?”
“From Salzburg.”
“What about going back there?”
“I would like to, but what would we do? In Austria every one is poor now, and I have no relative left. Here at least we have my sewing.”
“How much is that a week?”
“Sometimes a pound; sometimes fifteen shillings. It is bread and the rent.”
“Don’t you get the dole?”
“No, sir. We are not registered.”
Michael took out a five-pound note and laid it with his card on the wash-stand. “I’ve got to think this over, Mrs. Bergfeld. Perhaps your husband will come and see me.” He went out quickly, for the ghostly woman had flushed pink.
Repassing through the curtained aperture, he caught the hair-dresser wiping out the basin.
“Find em in, sir?”
“The lady.”
“Ah! Seen better days, I should say. The ‘usband’s a queer customer; ‘alf off his nut. Wanted to come in here with me, but I’ve got to give this job up.”
“Oh! How’s that?”
“I’ve got to have fresh air–only got one lung, and that’s not very gaudy. I’ll have to find something else.”
“That’s bad, in these days.”
The hair-dresser shrugged his bony shoulders. “Ah!” he said. “I’ve been a hair-dresser from a boy, except for the war. Funny place this, to fetch up in after where I’ve been. The war knocked me out.” He twisted his little thin moustache.
“No pension?” said Michael.
“Not a bob. What I want to keep me alive is something in the open.”
Michael took him in from head to foot. Shadowy, narrow-headed, with one lung.
“But do you know anything about country life?”
“Not a blessed thing. Still, I’ve got to find something, or peg out.”
His tragic and knowing eyes searched Michael’s face.
“I’m awfully sorry,” said Michael. “Good-bye!”
The hair-dresser made a queer jerky little movement.
Emerging from Sapper’s Row into the crowded, roaring thoroughfare, Michael thought of a speech in a play he had seen a year or two before. “The condition of the people leaves much to be desired. I shall make a point of taking up the cudgels in the House. I shall move–!” The condition of the people! What a remote thing! The sportive nightmare of a few dreaming nights, the skeleton in a well-locked cupboard, the discomforting rare howl of a hungry dog! And probably no folk in England less disturbed by it than the gallant six hundred odd who sat with him in ‘that House.’ For to improve the condition of the people was their job, and that relieved them of a sense of nightmare. Since Oliver Cromwell some sixteen thousand, perhaps, had sat there before them, to the same end. And was the trick done–not bee likely! Still THEY were really working for it, and other people were only looking on and telling them how to do it!
Thus was he thinking when a voice said:
“Not got a job about you, sir?”
Michael quickened his steps, then stood still. He saw that the man who had spoken, having cast his eyes down again, had missed this sign of weakness; and he went back to him. They were black eyes in a face round and pasty like a mince pie. Decent and shabby, quiet and forlorn, he wore an ex-Service-man’s badge.
“You spoke to me?” said Michael.
“I’m sure I don’t know why, sir; it just hopped out of me.”
“No work?”
“No; and pretty low.”
“Married?”
“Widower, sir; two children.”
“Dole?”
“Yes; and fair sick of it.”
“In the war, I see?”
“Yes, Mespot.”
“What sort of job do you want?”
“Any mortal thing.”
“Give me your name and address.”
“Henry Boddick, 94 Waltham Buildings, Gunnersbury.”
Michael took it down.
“Can’t promise anything,” he said.
“No, sir.”
“Good luck, anyway. Have a cigar?”
“Thank you, and good luck to you, sir.”
Michael saluted, and resumed his progress; once out of sight of Henry Boddick, he took a taxi. A little more of this, and he would lose the sweet reasonableness without which one could not sit in ‘that House’!
‘For Sale or to Let’ recorded recurrently in Portland Place, somewhat restored his sense of balance.
That same afternoon he took Francis Wilmot with him to the House, and leaving him at the foot of the Distinguished Strangers’ stairway, made his way on to the floor.
He had never been in Ireland, so that the debate had for him little relation to reality. It seemed to illustrate, however, the obstacles in the way of agreement on any mortal subject. Almost every speech emphasized the paramount need for a settlement, but declared the impossibility of ‘going back’ on this, that, or the other factor which precluded such settlement. Still, for a debate on Ireland it seemed good-tempered; and presently they would all go out and record the votes they had determined on before it all began. He remembered the thrill with which he had listened to the first debates after his election; the impression each speech had given him that somebody must certainly be converted to something; and the reluctance with which he had discovered that nobody ever was. Some force was at work far stronger than any eloquence, however striking or sincere. The clothes were washed elsewhere; in here they were but aired before being put on. Still, until people put thoughts into words, they didn’t know what they thought, and sometimes they didn’t know afterwards. And for the hundredth time Michael was seized by a weak feeling in his legs. In a few weeks he himself must rise on them. Would the House accord him its ‘customary indulgence’; or would it say: ‘Young fellow–teaching your grandmother to suck eggs–shut up!’
He looked around him.
His fellow members were sitting in all shapes. Chosen of the people, they confirmed the doctrine that human nature did not change, or so slowly that one could not see the process–he had seen their prototypes in Roman statues, in mediaeval pictures… ‘Plain but pleasant,’ he thought, unconsciously reproducing George Forsyte’s description of himself in his palmy days. But did they take themselves seriously, as under Burke, as under Gladstone even?
The words ‘customary indulgence’ roused him from reverie; for they meant a maiden speech. Ha! yes! The member for Cornmarket. He composed himself to listen. Delivering himself with restraint and clarity, the speaker seemed suggesting that the doctrine ‘Do unto others as you would they should do unto you’ need not be entirely neglected, even in Ireland; but it was long–too long–Michael watched the House grow restive. ‘Alas! poor brother!’ he thought, as the speaker somewhat hastily sat down. A very handsome man rose in his place. He congratulated his honourable friend on his able and well-delivered effort, he only regretted that it had nothing to do with the business in hand. Exactly! Michael slipped out. Recovering his ‘distinguished stranger,’ he walked away with him to South Square.
Francis Wilmot was in a state of some enthusiasm.
“That was fine,” he said. “Who was the gentleman under the curtains?”
“The Speaker?”
“No; I mean the one who didn’t speak.”
“Exactly; he’s the dignity of the House.”
“They ought to feed him oxygen; it must be sleepy under there. I liked the delegate who spoke last but one. He would ‘go’ in America; he had big ideas.”
“The idealism which keeps you out of the League of Nations, eh?” said Michael with a grin.
Francis Wilmot turned his head rather sharply.
“Well,” he said, “we’re like any other people when it comes down to bed-rock.
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