XXII
Christy’s criticism of Bertram’s book was not devastating. He suggested merely the elimination of certain passages which seemed to him libellous against a certain General, and said simply, “You can’t afford a law suit,” when Bertram protested violently that he intended to libel the old scoundrel, but hadn’t been half strong enough in his character study of a blood-thirsty Junker, ruthless of men’s lives. His praise was limited to a few words, but magnificent to a man who knew him as Bertram did.
“You can write. You know the right words.”
That was good enough from Christy, hard critic, and honest as death. He asked Bertram to let him send the book to Heatherdew, the literary agent, and his friend. He would find a publisher, if any man could, and take a personal interest in it, as a hater of war.
Bertram wanted to know how many weeks he would have to wait before the book appeared, and what payment he was likely to get, an impatience which amused Christy, who had more experience.
“It can’t be out till the autumn, at earliest.”
“Not till the autumn! Good Heavens!”
“It’s not accepted yet, old man. Hang on to patience.”
He conveyed a suggestion to Bertram from Bernard Hall ofThe New World. Why not write an article, dealing generally with the threatened strike? Hall suggested a title: “The Mind of the Men,” on the lines of Bertram’s talk about the Comrades of the Great War and their point of view. What Bill Huggett had told him, and so on. It would be a valuable contribution, with knowledge at first hand, not easy to get.
“I’ll have a shot,” said Bertram. “Do you think the strike is likely?”
“Inevitable, I’m told. Nat Verney knows.”
For some time Christy discussed the possibilities of trouble. The Government seemed to be asking for it. It was true about calling out the Army Reserves. They also proposed to recruit the Middle Classes for self-defence. That would divide England into the Haves and the Have-nots. A short-sighted policy at such a time, when all such clear-cut distinctions ought to be avoided. Big Business, with the Government in league with it, was out to smash organised Labour. The plan was to defeat it in sections, first the miners, then the railway men, then the engineers, then the other great trades. It was to be a general campaign to bring down wages to pre-war rates. A sound policy, if prices came down to the same level, but there was about as much chance of that as of friendship between France and Germany!
“Low wages and sweated labour! That’s the watch-word now. No ‘Homes for Heroes,’ and other fine cries which went very well in war-time.”
Bertram thought it was unfair to the men.
“It’s a damned outrage!” said Christy.
For some time the two friends were silent. They knew each other well enough for long silences. Christy’s cheap clock on the mantelpiece ticked with a little staccato tattoo. They did not trouble to switch on the light, but sat smoking in low chairs on each side of the fire-grate in which a few coals burned in a heap of white ash. Christy drew hard at his pipe now and then, and a little red glow lit up his long, lean face with its deep sunken eyes and bulging forehead. Down below, in Adelphi Terrace, or its neighbourhood, some ex-soldier was playing a one-string fiddle, not badly, but with long-drawn melancholy. Cavalleria Rusticana—they all played that. Down the Thames, beyond the Tower Bridge, no doubt, a steamer was sounding its siren. The Batavia boat, off to Holland, or a river tug moving. The murmur of London, the voice of its enormous life and traffic, made the windows throb, and above its low-toned rhythm, the horns of motor-taxis bleated incessantly.
Christy stirred, and poked the dying fire with his boot.
“I’d like to see how this strike works out. I want to be in England if there’s any real trouble. But I’m off again.”
“Already!”
Bertram was distressed. He hung on to Christy’s comradeship. Here, in these rooms, was a sanctuary into which he could take refuge from the worries of life, or at least could ease them, by unloading his pack awhile, and sorting it out with old Christy. It was not so much Christy’s words which helped him, but his presence. They’d been together in dirty places during the war. They had sat in the same mud-holes, listening to shells overhead, and expecting death together. They knew each other’s courage and fears. Christy had wept once, when hismoralhad broken for a while. He had just cried like a child when the sergeant was blown to bits, not because of any love for the sergeant, but because of the beastliness and unending misery of it all. Bertram had been on the verge of shell-shock once. He was afraid of being afraid. Supposing he let down the men, played the coward, or something? Christy had strengthened him then. They knew each other—in weakness as well as in strength. He hated to think of Christy going away again so soon.
“Where now?” he asked.
“Berlin for a start. Then—perhaps Moscow. I’ve asked for permits.”
“Moscow!”
Christy grinned, and confessed it sounded like asking for the tiger’s cage to be opened. But he wanted to get into Russia, andThe New Worldhad asked him to go. It was impossible to find out the truth of what was happening there. Everything one read was a manufactured lie. He wanted to know the truth. He would be restless until he found out. Was there anything at all to be said for the Russian experiment—Communism? It was no good talking about Bolshevik atrocities. They weren’t Communism. He wasn’t sure of them, anyhow, but if they’d happened, they belonged to the realm of that murder mania which overtakes people in times of war and revolution. He wanted to see how the system worked, whether it was any solution of Capitalist civilisation. It was absurd to pretend that Western civilisation was the last word in human wisdom and scientific organisation. The profiteer was in himself a denial of that! Perhaps, with all their blunderings and cruelties, Lenin and his crowd had caught hold of some sound idea. Perhaps it was the beginning of a new era in social history. He wanted to see for himself, to know. He had no preconceived ideas. He was out for the truth, whatever it might be.
“I’m afraid you’ll go Bolshevik!” said Bertram. “If you do, our friendship ends.”
He spoke the last words lightly, but not without sincerity and fear.
“I’ll let you know,” said Christy. “A post card will do. ‘I’ve gone Bolshy.’ ”
He laughed at the thought of the postcard travelling from Moscow with its awful message to the outer world. Probably the censor would seize it. It would be burnt at the end of a pair of tongs, lest it should spread sedition. Bertram’s world would never know. At some future date he might hear of his former friend leading a Red Army against Poland, or sitting with a long white beard, like Karl Marx, in the Kremlin, ruling Russia.
It was some minutes later when Bertram asked a question sharply:
“Have you told Janet Welford?”
Christy poked the fire, and put it out, with great deliberation.
“No.”
“Christy, old man,” said Bertram presently, “is there anything between you and Janet—I mean in the way of love and that sort of thing?”
Christy laughed, and rose to look at himself in the glass, and laughed again.
“With this ugly mug? Does the Neanderthal Man indulge in amorous dalliance with beautiful women of the Georgian era? What a horrible thought!”
“She loves you this side idolatry,” said Bertram.
Christy suddenly flamed out in anger, and it was the first time Bertram had ever seen him lose control.
“Damn you, Pollard! Why can’t you leave that subject alone? What right have you to talk of Janet at all? She used to come here often before you spent all your evenings in her rooms.”
Bertram was astounded and overwhelmed by this sudden outburst. So Christywasjealous of him! Christy—of all men in the world!—whom he would no more hurt than cut off his own right hand!
He went over to him, and grabbed his shoulder.
“Why, you silly old ass! Do you think I wanted to barge in between you and Janet? What about Joyce, and my loyalty to her?”
Christy’s gust of rage died down as quickly as it had risen, and he was pale and ashamed.
“Sorry, Pollard! Fact is, you touched the wrong nerve. I love that girl Janet like an infatuated Romeo. She sets my frog’s blood on fire. That’s one reason I’m off to Moscow. Running away!”
“Why run?” asked Bertram. “Why not tell her?”
Christy gave another whimsical look at his face in the mirror over the mantelpiece.
“Not in that mug, laddie! Besides—now we’re talking—I’ve got a wife, too, don’t you see, although I don’t live with her? And anyhow, this damned old world of ours don’t lend itself to love-making just now. It’s falling into ruin, and I’m busy watching it. The human equation doesn’t seem to matter, and the ghosts of dead boys, who were robbed of life before their time, mock at my senile passion. I ought to know better at my time of life. I’ll be forty-five in Moscow!”
He made only one other reference to the subject. It was when Bertram left his rooms that night.
“Referring back,” he said, “I might say a parting word, laddie. If you’re not cut out for disloyalty—and it needs a special temperament—cut and run when loyalty’s over-strained. It’s the safest way. . . . And Moscow is an interesting place.”
They gripped hands and wished each other luck. Luck to the book. Luck to the adventure.
“Dashed funny thing—life,” said Christy, leaning over the staircase as Bertram went down.
“It’s all very difficult!”
They both laughed. They had spoken the same words a thousand times in France.
All very difficult! Yes. Bertram, going home, wondered whether Janet Welford had more than a whimsical affection for Christy. How old Christy had fired up! He never suspected him of passion—and at forty-five! Time for the fires to burn out. . . . He also wondered whether Joyce understood the meaning of love. Something would have to be done to make her understand, or his life, and hers, would be utterly spoilt.
XXIII
Bertram had just read his first newspaper article, entitled “The Mind of the Men”—Bernard Hall’s title—in that week’s issue ofThe New World, when he heard his name called from the next room by Joyce. There was a note of emotion in the sound of that call, and he went to her quickly, wondering if she had hurt herself.
She was standing by the side of her writing desk, holding an illustrated paper—Country Life—with a look of amazement and alarm.
“What’s the matter, Joyce?”
She pointed to a photograph, and said, “It can’t be true!” He saw at a glance that it was a view of Holme Ottery from the west wing, with its stone, ivy-covered terraces, and broad flight of steps leading down to the tennis lawn and rose-garden. It was just there, coming up from the tennis court, that he had heard of Rudy’s death, when Ottery had handed the telegram to his wife, fingering his red beard and staring across the grounds with watery eyes. There was the Venus with her broken nose, and the copy of the Goose Boy of Pompeii.
“Holme Ottery,” said Bertram. “Why not?”
It was always being photographed for the magazines.
Joyce pointed to some words above the picture, and said, “Can’t you see?”
The words were—“Historic House for Sale.”
Holme Ottery for sale? No, impossible! It had been in the Bellairs family for four hundred years or more. It was a part of English history. Its beauty, its tradition, its ghosts, its very soil, belonged to the spirit of the family that had played some part, not insignificant, in the making of England—as soldiers, courtiers, statesmen. It was Alban Bellairs, Earl of Ottery, who had been one of Elizabeth’s favourites before he died with Essex on the scaffold. Rupert Bellairs, fifth Earl, had been an exile in Holland with Charles II., and afterwards Master of the Horse at Whitehall. Joyce Bellairs, the great-great-grandmother of this Joyce, was the famous beauty to whom Steele wrote some of his sonnets. Holme Ottery was in the history books. It meant all that and more to this girl, his wife. Every fibre of her body belonged to that heritage. The tradition of her house was the corner-stone of her own spirit. In pride and faith she was a Bellairs of Ottery, this girl whom he—a young officer “without a bean”—had married when War had broken down for a time the strongest thing in English life, which was caste.
“Some mistake—” he said.
Joyce was weeping passionately. He had never seen her weep before, and it hurt him poignantly. He put his arms about her, trying to say words of comfort, but she shook herself away from him, and paced up and down the room like an angry boy. It was anger which dried her tears.
“Father’s done this without saying a word to me! Even Mother hasn’t written! It’s treachery to the whole family. I won’t allow it.”
Bertram was silent. He remembered what his father-in-law had said to him outside the House of Lords—something about Holme Ottery bleeding him to death.
“Do you think Alban knows?” he asked.
As the eldest son, Bellairs must have been consulted, must have given his consent to sell.
“Alban is weak as water! Father may have talked him over. I’ll go down this very day, and let ’em know whatIhave to say on the subject!”
Later she rang the bell, and told Edith to pack her bag.
“I’ll come with you,” said Bertram.
Joyce didn’t seem to think there was any need for him to come.
“It’s a family affair,” she said, coldly.
A family affair? Oh, yes, he was outside the family. Merely the insignificant husband of a Bellairs. His voice would have no weight in the family councils. He was just a damned outsider, tolerated as an unfortunatemésalliance—Joyce’s mistake. Perhaps Joyce guessed a little at those thoughts of his, as he stood silent, with flushed face, raging inwardly at the humiliation which her words made him feel.
“I didn’t want to drag you into a family row,” she said. “But you’d better come, after all.”
It was in his mind to say that he would be damned if he went, that he had no intention of being patronised by the supercilious Alban, his detestable brother-in-law, or bullied by Lady Ottery, his exalted Mother-in-law. But the sight of Joyce’s tear-stained face restrained him. The news that Holme Ottery was up for sale was a blow at her heart, as he could see by her unusual pallor. He would be a cad to quarrel with her now, and thrust his own personality forward in the family tragedy.
When she went upstairs, he turned over the pages ofCountry Life. Holme Ottery was not the only house for sale, as well he knew. Page after page was filled with the usual announcements of “Noble Estates,” “Fine Old Country Mansions,” “Historic Residences.” Some of them belonged to people he knew, as he had seen many times before.
He remembered other words spoken by Lord Ottery. “Our day is done,” he’d said. “The War and its costs have finished us.”
These advertisements were only one more proof of the change that was happening in England, where the Old Order was gassing, giving place to—what?
It was no new revelation to him. He’d seen the boards up outside many old houses. Some of his own friends had abandoned their old places and come to live in the Albany, Belgravia, Knightsbridge, the Kensingtons, and other districts not immensely far from Mayfair, but outside its former sanctuary, now delivered over to the New Rich. They were not distressingly poor. They were carrying on rather well! But they’d lost the family roof-trees, the quiet parklands, something of their state in England. Profiteers, American millionaires, Jews, were taking over some of the old houses, though many remained unsold. . . . This news about Holme Ottery for sale brought sharply home to Bertram that silent, social, bloodless revolution which was happening in England. Well, it didn’t matter very much to him. It mattered very much to Joyce.
She was silent going down in the train to Sussex, and seemed to have a chill. He wrapped his overcoat about her in the corner of the first-class carriage where she sat smoking cigarettes through a long amber tube. She wore her country clothes of rough tweed, and looked, he thought, “patrician” to her polished finger-tips. But amazingly young, and child-like, in a white Tam-o’-shanter, with a gleam of gold where her bobbed hair curled above her neck. He would have liked to kiss her neck, so delicate and white, so inviting, as she bent her head over the morning paper. He sat close to her for a while, and put his arm about her waist, which she suffered impatiently, until she asked him to give her elbow room and not to get into one of his “soppy moods.”
That sent him to the other side of the carriage, moodily, and he sat staring out of the train at the passing meadows, all silver and gold and green, on this day of Eastertide. The sunlight of an April sky chased across the thatched roofs of little old cottages, touched their tall twisted chimneys, gleamed on church spires, chased the shadows in feathery woods. Little old England! So snug, and ancient, and sheltered, and peaceful. He’d only learnt to love England properly when he was out of it, fighting for it,—with only a thin chance of getting back to it. Ireland was his father’s country, his own birthplace. England was his mother’s land, and it was England, not Ireland to which his soul gave allegiance.
Lying in the earth of France, he had thought back to England, yearned for it. Not only and always for London, its mighty heart, which he’d loved, but for the smell of fields like this, for the sight again—once again—of an old village like one of those, with a square church tower, and walled gardens, and orchards white, as now, with blossom. He had tried to get something of that into his book—the inarticulate, half-conscious love of England which had come to country boys, Cockneys, young louts in khaki, so that some instinct in them, some strain of blood, some heritage of spirit, had steeled them to stand fast in the dirty ditches of death, whatever their fear.
Perhaps in a few days the safety of England would be threatened again by social conflict. As the train crawled slowly through Robertsbridge, he saw the newspaper placards, “Strike Certain. Notices Issued.” Bad, that. Perhaps the railways might close down. They’d have to motor back from Holme Ottery. Christy had just got away in time. He wondered if his article on “The Mind of the Men” would attract any kind of notice. It might do some good. He’d been fair to the men, tried to make people understand their point of view, their reasonable claim for a living wage.
Joyce spoke for the first time from her corner.
“I’m going to give father hell. He ought to have consulted me.”
Bertram suggested that perhaps his father-in-law had wanted to save her from the worry of it, while she was unwell.
“Nonsense!” she said, impatiently. “It was just cowardice. He hadn’t the pluck to tell me.”
Probably Joyce was right. So Bertram thought when they met Lord Ottery, beyond the lodge gates, strolling towards them, with a little white dog at his heels. He’d come to meet his daughter in answer to a telegram she had sent from Victoria station.
“Well, Joyce!” he said, holding out his hairy cheek for her to kiss. “Glad to see you looking so strong again.”
He was obviously ill at ease. He pretended not to be aware that Joyce had failed to kiss him, and that her answer of “Well, father!” to his “Well, Joyce,” was decidedly hostile and challenging.
“Your Mother’s not very bobbish this morning,” he said. “Sick headache, or something of the sort.”
“I’m not surprised,” answered Joyce, with a little sarcastic laugh which plainly suggested that Lord Ottery was the cause of her mother’s ill-health. She walked with a long, swinging stride up the avenue of elms which led towards the old house, so that her father lagged a little behind her.
He remarked that the crops were coming along well, in spite of the dry weather. He also expressed annoyance because the villagers had been breaking down some of the fences on the south side of the park.
“The spirit of Bolshevism,” he said. “All those young fellows back from the war are socialists and lawbreakers. I can’t understand it. They weren’t like that after the South African War.”
Joyce continued walking in silence. Bertram, stealing a glance at her, saw that there was a bright spot of colour on each cheek—danger signals. It was when she reached the lawns outside the house, and saw its old grey walls and mullion windows close to the terrace, and the sloping banks with their clipped hedges, that she turned on her father and revealed her anger and her anguish.
“Father! I can’t believe it’s true! You couldn’t bring yourself to do it!”
“Do what, my dear?”
Lord Ottery put on his vacant look, and opened his mouth a little, like a stupid rustic.
“Put the house up for sale!”
“Oh, the house! Oh, Lord! Who told you that?Havethey put it up for sale? I’ve seen nothing about it in the Press.”
Joyce clutched her father’s arm, and shook him a little.
“Father! Tell me the truth. You’re not going to sell Holme Ottery?”
“Sell it, my dear? Who would buy it? It’s most unlikely that any one in the world would buy it. It costs a fearful lot of money to keep up. Look at it now—going to rack and ruin. A white elephant, Joyce. What with income tax, land tax, death duties, price of labour—”
“Have you put it up for sale?”
Joyce stamped her foot, and her blue eyes looked piercingly into her father’s grey ones. His were less courageous. He looked sheepishly at Bertram, of whose presence he had previously taken no notice at all.
“My dear Joyce,” he said, “I wish you wouldn’t be so imperious! I’m an old man now. I’m getting devilish hard-pressed in my old age, and I have the right to a little domestic peace.”
“Father, have you put it up for sale?”
He hesitated, shifted a little from one foot to the other, and poked up a stone in the path with his thick cudgel.
“Well, my dear, I suggested to those damn fellows, Huxted and Wells, that they might get an offer some time.”
It was the confession that Holme Ottery had been put up for sale. Joyce accepted it as such.
“It’s a treachery!” she cried; “a treachery to Alban and all of us. We won’t allow it. We ought to starve rather than let the house go. All our history is there. It’s what we mean and are. Without that we’re nothing.”
“It will be a great sacrifice, my dear,” said the tenth Earl of Ottery. He, too, looked up at the old house which his forefathers had built, in which they had lived and died and played their part in English history. There was a little mist before his eyes.
“A great sacrifice!” he said in a broken way.
“I’ll talk to Mother about this!” said Joyce, savagely.
Lord Ottery smiled at her, and patted her hand.
“Yes, go and talk it out with your Mother. She’s in her room readingThe Times.”
Joyce ran up the terrace steps, without waiting for Bertram, and the two men watched her slim, boyish figure disappear through the doorway of the west turret.
“Women like talking,” said Ottery. “It doesn’t alter things, though. Talking never did.”
He thrust his fingers through his red beard, and then put his hand through Bertram’s arm, leaning on him a little heavily. It was the first time he had ever done so, and Bertram thought it was a sign of weakness.
“No amount of talk will bring back England to its old state,” said Lord Ottery, gravely. “Only hard work and good will, and honest government, and wise leadership, can help towards that. The war has robbed us of our old prosperity. We’re going to be poor. We must steel ourselves to poverty.”
He whistled to his little white dog.
“Hi, Clincher!”
Then he asked Bertram whether he was an authority on the Black Death. He found that subject wonderfully interesting. It threw a great deal of light on the wage-system in the Middle Ages.
XXIV
Joyce spent the rest of the morning in her Mother’s room, and Bertram was left to amuse himself alone. It was not very amusing. He was aware of a sense of isolation, not for the first time, in this distinguished household. Lord Ottery, after some minutes of almost intimate conversation, and that episode of holding on to Bertram’s arm, became absent-minded, and then, as though dismissing a footman, gave Bertram to understand that he wished to be left alone in the library, while he pursued his studies on The Black Death.
Bertram strolled round the stables, where most of the stalls were empty, though Ottery still kept a few hacks, and Alban had his hunter, “Lightning.”
He passed a few words with the grooms, and found himself reminiscing on the war. One of them had been with “his lordship,” meaning Alban, Viscount Bellairs, in the Grenadier Guards, and had been hit on the same day of July ’16 in the attack on Morval and Lesbœufs. Afterwards, for the second time, at Fontaine Notre Dame, below Bourlon Wood, in November of ’17. Remembered the great Tank attack in November ’20? Lord, yes! Major Pollard was there with his machine guns? Fancy that! . . . Well, it seemed a long time ago, and like a dream.
“Care to go through it all again?” asked Bertram.
The two men laughed, appreciating some hidden joke, not to be put into words.
Something was said about the strike.
“Them Labour chaps ought to be mowed down by machine guns,” said one of the men. “Dirty tykes!”
He was amazed when Bertram said he thought they had some justice on their side. It struck him “all of a heap.” They were all bloody Bolsheviks, begging his pardon.
Bertram himself was astonished at this point of view of men who had fought in the War and were of the same class as those in the world of “labour” they denounced. As he sauntered away, after a few light remarks, he supposed they were survivals of English feudalism. Their outlook was limited to the horizon of this old house. They belonged to the Family. They were for the maintenance of the Old Order which paid their wages, gave them perquisites, belonged to their tradition of service. The War hadn’t changed their mentality much. Strange!
He strolled round to the lake, and found Alban sitting on the end of the punt, smoking a cigarette and reading theSporting Times, with his back to the wind. He was in an old heather-green jacket and grey, moss-stained trousers, with a cap at the back of his head, and looked better like that, to Bertram’s yes, than in his town clothes, with white spats and all.
“Good morning!” said Bertram, with more geniality than he quite felt, not having much affection for his brother-in-law.
Alban glanced over the top of theSporting Times, and allowed himself to show a faint surprise.
“Hullo! Come down with Joyce?”
Assured on this point, he became absorbed again in his pink paper.
Bertram waited a little while for the condescension of another remark. Not obtaining that favour, he strolled away again, cursing inwardly at the incivility of his brother-in-law.
“A damned cad!” he said to himself. “An insufferable snob!”
And yet, as he had to admit to his sense of fairness, there was no reason why Alban should have engaged in chatty conversation. He himself resented fellows who were always “yapping.” Alban wanted to read theSporting Times. There was heaps of room in the park for Bertram.
“It’s the Irish strain in me,” thought Bertram. “I’m always suspecting uncivil treatment when none is meant. It’s the ‘persecution’ mania. I’ll have to check it.”
Yet, in spite of all these arguments, his moodiness was increased at the luncheon table because of the almost complete ignoring of his presence by Joyce and her family. Not a word was said about the sale of the house—servants being present—and there was some general gossip, mostly by Alban and Lady Ottery, of a social and political kind. The Prime Minister had gone to Chequers Court for Easter, with his usual gang. The War Office had drawn up a complete programme in case the strike led to any rioting. General Bellasis was organising a Home Defence Corps. All ex-officers would be asked to join.
“Doesn’t it seem unnecessary?” asked Bertram.
Alban looked at him coldly, as he might have stared at a junior subaltern of the Guards Mess, after an impertinent remark.
“Extremely necessary,” he answered.
Lord Ottery put in a remark.
“Bellasis is coming down for the week-end, he tells me. We shall hear all about it.”
Bertram glanced at Joyce, and wondered whether she had suggested this visit. He detested Bellasis. Joyce seemed to be aware of his look, for she flushed, ever so slightly, though she did not meet his eyes. She had been crying again, he thought. Most unusual for Joyce. He felt very sorry for her. Sitting there at the old dining-table, under the portrait of Rupert Bellairs, fifth Earl, by Lely, it was impossible to believe that Holme Ottery was up for sale.
How like Joyce was to that fellow! He hadn’t noticed it before. Although Charles II’s favourite had a plump pink face, softened by long ringlets, he had the same kind of eyes and nose as Joyce’s, with the same glint of steel in the eyes. She sat next to her Mother, crumbling her bread and looking thoroughly “vexed.” He had seen her in such moods of late, at his own breakfast table, when she came down to breakfast.
Lady Ottery had given Bertram a wintery smile, and permitted him to kiss her cheek. He felt as though he had kissed one of the marble pillars in St. Paul’s Cathedral.
“A sharp frost last night,” she said, and as this statement didn’t call for much of an answer, she seemed to forget his presence, and engaged Alban in an argument on the subject of Mrs. Asquith’s Memoirs, newly published, of which she disapproved strongly.
“An outrage!” was her opinion, and she also believed they would be used as propaganda by radicals who desired to destroy society, and delighted in all such revelations of corruption in high places.
“It seems to me an extremely witty, harmless, and entertaining book, Mother,” said Alban. “My only regret is that it contains such little scandal. Think of all the things she might have written!”
“If we must have scandals, let us keep them to ourselves, my dear,” said Lady Ottery, firmly. “In my young days we hushed up anything that might prejudice our position in the public mind.”
“Most dishonest!” said Alban lightly.
“What do you think, Ottery?” asked Bertram’s mother-in-law.
“Entirely as you do, my dear,” said Lord Ottery, somewhat vaguely, having been thinking, perhaps, of The Black Death.
Bertram expressed an opinion upon Mrs. Asquith’s portraits of “The Souls.” He thought it would be quoted centuries hence as a picture of English life in the ’eighties. His opinion did not seem to impress his wife’s family or Joyce. There was no reply to his remark, and Alban switched off the conversation to the character of his new terrier—a cunning little devil with a hell of a lot of pluck.
“Doing anything special this afternoon, Joyce?” asked Bertram, towards the end of this meal which had been a silent one for him.
“I’m talking business with Alban,” said Joyce, in a most determined voice, as though announcing an ultimatum to Alban himself.
He took it as such, and groaned a little.
“Certainly, old girl, much as I hate such palavers.”
Talking business with Alban. Not for Bertram to intervene. He had no right to “barge in” upon such discussions, though Joyce happened to be his wife. Well, he might do a slope down into the village, and buy an afternoon paper, or perhaps tramp over the Common, and watch the village boys starting the season’s cricket. Holme Ottery was not very sociable to-day to an outsider like himself.
That was what he did, and he recovered his sense of humour a little as he watched the game of cricket between the youngsters of Ottery. He even laughed aloud at the argumentative interruptions of the game, with wild and angry shouts of “How’s that?” “That ain’t fair!” . . . “Who’s umpire?” . . . “Umpire be blowed!” Youth didn’t change, in spite of social upheavals, the passing of the Old Order, houses to let, falling Empires, ruin in Europe, threatened strikes, any damn thing. Boyhood survived, with its laughter, its quarrels, its passionate excitement, its game of life. Survived, in spite of war’s massacre! Many of those kids must have lost fathers and brothers. The shadow of the War had been over their childhood. They’d seen women weeping at the news of death. But it had not spoilt the spirit of youth. They’d forgotten the shadow. Bertram wondered if any of them would live to see another Great War, would live to die, as fathers and brothers had died, in the same old battlefields, blown to bits, sliced by flying steel, gassed, plugged with machine-gun bullets. Not if he could do anything to save them. Not if his book had any luck.
How wonderful was the fruit blossom this year! The little orchards round the Common were snowed under with white and pink petals. The April wind was laden with scent of apple-blossom, cherry-blossom, pear-blossom, and drenched with the stronger perfume of lilac, splendid in the cottage gardens. It stole into his senses like an opiate. Why worry? This beauty of England endured through the centuries, through civil strife, foreign wars, all kind of trouble, soon forgotten. Spring had come again, with its English loveliness, calling to his heart, putting its spell upon the senses. Romance and love should go hand in hand in little old villages like this. So they had gone hand in hand, a year ago, when he and Joyce had wandered through Ottery village, not caring because the village folk smiled to see their love, glad of their friendly, smiling glances. A year ago! They didn’t go hand in hand just now. Something had come between them, some coldness. Perhaps with the coming back of spring again, their love would come back. He would woo Joyce again, as a humble lover, as a passionate but patient lover. This very night he would sue for her kisses, as once she had kissed him with sweet lips. He would entice her down to the little wood beyond the lake where one night they’d stood listening to a nightingale, with their arms about each other, like children, like Adam and Eve, like any man and any woman in the spring-time of life, with pulses thrilling to the tune of love, freshly heard.
Sentiment! Romantic stuff! Well, why not?
XXV
He stood outside a quaint kind of shop on the edge of Ottery Common, and wondered if he could get an evening newspaper with late news from London.
It was an old thatched cottage converted into a shop by the simple plan of using the front garden as a show place for antique furniture, brass warming pans, old china on old tables, wooden toys—“made by Blinded Soldiers”—queer odds and ends from attics and lumber rooms—a violin without a bridge, silver spurs, a spinning wheel, a portrait of the Prince Consort by Winterhalter, an oak cradle.
In one of the cottage windows, with its little panes of knobby green glass, was the notice, “Tobacco, Eggs, and Ferrets.” In another window were the words, “London Papers; Lending Library; Home-made Jams.” A useful kind of shop! Anyhow, here was a chance of getting an evening paper.
Other people thought so too. A pretty girl, whom Bertram dimly remembered as one of Joyce’s friends—the Vicar’s daughter, perhaps,—rode up on a bicycle, left it against the garden wall, and stepping over the oak cradle, cried out in a merry voice:
“Papers in yet, Mr. Izzard?”
A voice from the cottage answered as cheerily:
“Not a damn one, Miss Heathcote!”
“Well, I’ll wait. I want the latest news about the strike. Is there going to be Civil War, do you think?”
The girl—itwasthe Vicar’s daughter, as Bertram remembered—asked the question as lightly as she might have enquired about the chance of a shower. As lightly it was answered through the open doorway of the cottage.
“Not as far as I’m concerned. Having been a little hero once, I’ve turned Pacifist. No more naughty strife for me! Live and let live is my philosophy.”
“No good hedging like that!” said Miss Heathcote, who was sitting on an iron-bound chest, turning over some old engravings. “ ‘He who is not with me is against me.’ Our wicked Bolshevists will demand allegiance or hang you up to one of your own oak beams.”
“Oh, I’ll sacrifice to the false gods!” said the voice inside. “No martyr stuff for me. Thrice was I wounded in Flanders. . . . Peace! Peace!”
“Caitiff!” cried Miss Heathcote.
Bertram went into the shop, and said “Hullo, Izzard! What on earth are you doing here?”
He’d remembered in a flash—that name and that voice. Major Arthur Izzard, D.S.O., and a double bar to his M.C., the most reckless fellow he had ever met in a front line trench, and one of the most comical. They’d spent some merry and memorable evenings in old Amiens, down from the line, between one “show” and another. Izzard had been a great lad for the eggnogs in Charlie’s Bar, and proclaimed his passion for Marguérite in the restaurant of “La Cathédrale.” Now he seemed to be proprietor, serving-man, and shop-boy in this village storehouse.
When Bertram hailed him, he was sitting on the counter with his legs dangling, arranging some eggs in a basket. Deliberately he let one of the eggs fall and smash, as a sign of his astonishment and delight at seeing Bertram.
“Great Scott! My old college chum!” (This had no foundation in fact.) “My trusty comrade-in-arms! My fellow-consumer of cocktails behind the lines of Armageddon!”
He gripped Bertram’s hand, and pump-handled vigorously, and called in the Vicar’s daughter to be introduced to another “little hero.”
“What’s the game with this shop?” asked Bertram.
Captain Arthur Izzard, D.S.O., said it was no game, but the real business. Like thousands of other officers of the Great War, he had worn out many boots, seeking a job in London. Vainly. England was surfeited with home-coming heroes. She’d nothing to offer them, after they’d won the dear old war. She wanted to forget them. They were a damned nuisance. So in a moment of brilliant inspiration, he had set up this business for himself. It amused him vastly. It also provided him with something to eat. It also enabled him to do good to his fellow beings, by spreading spiritual and intellectual light. He was the centre of village culture. Mothers came to him for advice upon the feeding of babies, maidens desired information on the comparative merits of Ethel M. Dell and Zane Grey. Farmers consulted him on insecticides. Miss Heathcote discussed with him auto-suggestion and the Freudian theory. He bought old furniture from Sussex cottages and sold it, at outrageous profits, to the New Rich, and occasionally Americans. He was a beneficent influence in Sussex, and all the ladies loved him.
“Some of the foolish ones,” said Miss Heathcote, laughing and blushing in a way that suggested affectionate familiarity with this good-looking fellow and his whimsical ways.
“What about social caste?” asked Bertram, and his question amused young Izzard vastly.
“Caste? The damn thing has broken up like a jig-saw puzzle! Not even the Countess of Ottery, poor old darling—your mother-in-law, by the way!—can keep it going nowadays, when Younger Sons are drifting into trade. Why, Billy Wantage—Lord William of that ilk—is keeping a pub at Wadcombe, and doing very well.”
The conversation was interrupted by a red-haired boy who rode up on a bicycle with a bag slung round his shoulders, which he dumped into the cottage.
“You infernal young scoundrel!” said Arthur Izzard, “I believe you’ve been watching the cricket-match.”
“Train late,” said the boy, grinning.
Izzard seized the papers, and disregarding his customers, read the news for himself.
“Hell!” he murmured to the company, which had increased by two ladies, and an old gentleman of Mid-Victorian aspect, with white whiskers.
“What’s the latest?” asked Miss Heathcote.
“Strike officially begun. Two million men ‘out’ already. The Triple Alliance will probably join.”
“What will that mean?” asked Bertram.
Arthur Izzard gave him a queer look.
“It may mean something like social revolution in little old England. No trains, no supplies, no industry anywhere. General paralysis until something smashes.”
“Abominable!” said the old gentleman with white whiskers. “We must smash the Trade Unions. They’re the curse of the country. I’d flog every man who comes out on strike.”
“Five million, maybe,” said Arthur Izzard, and he winked at Bertram, as though with secret understanding. He said something else, under his breath.
“The Comrades of the Great War.”
“I’d turn the machine-guns on to them,” said Miss Heathcote. It was the opinion of Lord Ottery’s groom.
Arthur Izzard smiled at her as he sat on the counter and swung his legs.
“I wonder if that would be wise—or kind—or safe?”
He waved his hand, as Bertram left the shop.
“Come in again, old man! I’ve excellent tobacco, new-laid eggs, home-made jam, young ferrets, old instruments, any old thing! And a private room for pals!”
“I certainly will!” said Bertram.
He walked back to Holme Ottery, thinking a little about the Strike, but, strangely enough, not very much. He was thinking more about Joyce. Something had stirred his senses, this breath of spring, this countryside, this scent of lilac and apple-blossom and wet earth. The memory of his love-making, here, a year ago, recalled to his mind and heart the joy of it, and his boyish ardour. London had put his nerves on edge, and made him impatient, irritable, moody. Perhaps Joyce had suffered too, in the same way, from the artificial life, the depressing and lowering atmosphere of London after war. It was better here. They might put themselves straight again, recapture their former gladness in each other, thrill again to the touch of each other’s hands, and lips, to the warmth of body and soul. He would talk to Joyce and woo her here back again.
Holme Ottery was wonderful in the dusk of this April day, with a silver streak, through a pile of dark clouds, above its many gables and high chimneys, and shadows closing about its grey walls. Through some of the windows in the west wing, lights were gleaming, in a homely way. Joyce was in one of those rooms, with her gold-spun hair, and slim body, and all the beauty of the Bellairs women—like that Joyce whom Steele had loved—and all their pride and quality.
A pity the old house was up for sale, but Joyce’s beauty belonged to him.