Part 10

There was an expression Rupert Henderson was very fond of using. “If you want my _honest_ opinion....” He had an honest opinion on every subject under the sun, and nothing short of a passion for delivering it. But Archie Cullen’s pet phrase was “I cannot _honestly_ say....” Which meant that he had not really made up his mind. He had not really made up his mind on any subject whatsoever. Why? Because he could not. He was unlike other men. He was minus something—or was it plus? No matter. He was not in the least proud of the fact. It depressed him—one might go so far as to say—terribly at times.

Rupert and Archie lived together. That is to say, Archie lived in Rupert’s rooms. Oh, he paid his share, his half in everything; the arrangement was a purely, strictly business arrangement. But perhaps it was because Rupert had invited Archie that Archie remained always—his guest. They each had a bedroom, there was a common sitting-room, and a largeish bath-room which Rupert used as a dressing-room as well. The first morning after his arrival Archie had left his sponge in the bath-room, and a moment after there was a knock at his door and Rupert said, kindly but firmly, “Your sponge, I fancy.” The first evening Archie had brought his tobacco jar into the sitting room and placed it on a corner of the mantelpiece. Rupert was reading the newspaper. It was a round china jar, the surface painted and roughened to represent a sea-urchin. On the lid was a spray of china seaweed with two berries for a knob. Archie was excessively fond of it. But after dinner, when Rupert took out his pipe and pouch, he suddenly fixed his eyes on this object, blew through his moustaches, gasped, and said in a wondering, astonished voice, “I say! Is that yours or Mrs. Head’s?” Mrs. Head was their landlady.

“It’s mine,” said Archie, and he blushed and smiled just a trifle timidly.

“I _say_!” said Rupert again—this time very meaningly.

“Would you rather I....” said Archie, and he moved in his chair to get up.

“No, no! Certainly not! On no account!” answered Rupert, and he actually raised his hand. “But perhaps”—and here he smiled at Archie and gazed about him—“perhaps we might find some spot for it that was a trifle less conspicuous.”

The spot was not decided on, however, and Archie nipped his sole personal possession into his bedroom as soon as Rupert was out of the way.

But it was chiefly at meals that the attitude of host and guest was most marked. For instance, on each separate occasion, even before they sat down Rupert said, “Would you mind cutting the bread, Archie?” Had he not made such a point of it, it is possible that Archie in a moment of abstractedness might have grasped the bread knife.... An unpleasant thought! Again, Archie was never allowed to serve. Even at breakfast, the hot dishes and the tea, both were dispensed by Rupert. True, he half apologized about the tea; he seemed to feel the necessity of some slight explanation, there.

“I’m rather a fad about my tea,” said he. “Some people, females especially, pour in the milk first. Fatal habit, for more reasons than one. In my opinion, the cup should be filled just _so_ and the tea then coloured. Sugar, Archie?”

“Oh, please,” said Archie, almost bowing over the table. Rupert was so very impressive.

“But I suppose,” said his friend, “you don’t notice any of these little things.”

And Archie answered vaguely, stirring, “No, I don’t suppose I do.”

Rupert sat down and unfolded his napkin.

“It would be very inconsistent with your character and disposition,” said he genially, “if you did! Kidneys and bacon? Scrambled eggs? Either? Both? Which?”

Poor Archie hated scrambled eggs, but, alas! he was practically certain that scrambled eggs were expected of him too. This ‘psychological awareness,’ as Rupert called it, which existed between them, might after a time make things a trifle difficult. He felt a little abject as he murmured, “Eggs, please.” And he saw by Rupert’s expression that he had chosen right. Rupert helped him to eggs largely.

§

Psychological awareness ... perhaps it was that which explained their intimacy. One might have been tempted to say it was a case of mutual fascination. But whereas Archie’s reply to the suggestion would have been a slow “Possibly!” Rupert would have flouted it at once.

“Fascination! The word’s preposterous in this connection. What on earth would there be in Cullen to fascinate me even if I was in the habit of being fascinated by my fellow-creatures; which I certainly am not. No, I’ll own I am deeply interested. I confess my belief is, I understand him better than anybody else. And if you want my honest opinion, I am certain that my—my—h’m—influence over—sympathy for—him—call it what you like, is all to the good. There is a psychological awareness.... Moreover, as a companion, instinctively I find him extremely agreeable. He stimulates some part of my mind which is less active without him. But fascination—wide of the mark, my dear—wide!”

But supposing one remained unconvinced? Supposing one still played with the idea. Wasn’t it possible to see Rupert and Archie as the python and the rabbit keeping house together? Rupert that handsome, well-fed python with his moustaches, his glare, his habit of uncoiling before the fire and swaying against the mantelpiece, pipe and pouch in hand. And Archie, soft, hunched, timid, sitting in the lesser armchair, there and not there, flicking back into the darkness at a word but emerging again at a look—with sudden wholly unexpected starts of playfulness (instantly suppressed by the python). Of course, there was no question of anything so crude and dreadful as the rabbit being eaten by his housemate. Nevertheless, it was a strange fact,—after a typical evening the one looked immensely swelled, benign and refreshed and the other, pale, small and exhausted.... And more often than not, Rupert’s final comment was—ominous this—as he doused his whisky with soda:

“This has been very absorbing, Archie.” And Archie gasped out, “Oh, _very_!”

§

Archie Cullen was a journalist and the son of a journalist. He had no private money, no influential connections, scarcely any friends. His father had been one of those weak, disappointed, unsuccessful men who see in their sons a weapon for themselves. He would get his own back on life through Archie. Archie would show them the stuff he—his father was made of. Just you wait till my son comes along! This, though highly consoling to Mr. Cullen _père_, was terribly poor fun for Archie. At two and a half his infant nose was put to the grindstone and even on Sundays it was not taken off. Then his father took him out walking and improved the occasion by making him spell the shop signs, count the yachts racing in the harbour, divide them by four and multiply the result by three.

But the experiment was an amazing success. Archie turned away from the distractions of life, shut his ears, folded his feet, sat over the table with his book and when the holidays came he didn’t like them; they made him uneasy; so he went on reading for himself. He was a model boy. On prize-giving days his father accompanied him to school, carried the great wad of stiff books home for him and, flinging them on the dining-room table, he surveyed them with an exultant smile. My prizes! The little sacrifice stared at them, too, through his spectacles, as other little boys stared at puddings. He ought, of course, at this juncture to have been rescued by a doting mother who, though cowed herself, rose on the....

SUSANNAH

Of course there would have been no question of their going to the exhibition if Father had not had the tickets given to him. Little girls cannot expect to be given treats that cost extra money when only to feed them, buy them clothes, pay for their lessons and the house they live in takes their kind generous Father all day and every day working hard from morning till night—“except Saturday afternoons and Sundays,” said Susannah.

“Susannah!” Mother was very shocked. “But do you know what would happen to your poor Father if he didn’t have a holiday on Saturday afternoons and Sundays?”

“No,” said Susannah. She looked interested. “What?”

“He would die,” said their mother impressively.

“Would he?” said Susannah, opening her eyes. She seemed astounded, and Sylvia and Phyllis, who were four and five years older than she, chimed in with, “Of course,” in a very superior tone. What a little silly-billy she was not to know that! They sounded so convinced and cheerful that their mother felt a little shaken and hastened to change the subject....

“So that is why,” she said a little vaguely, “you must each thank Father separately before you go.”

“And then he will give us the money?” asked Phyllis.

“And then I shall ask him for whatever is necessary,” said their mother firmly. She sighed suddenly and got up. “Run along, children, and ask Miss Wade to dress you and get ready herself and then come down to the dining-room. And now, Susannah, you are not to let go Miss Wade’s hand from the moment you are through the gates until you are out again.”

“Well—what if I go on a horse?” inquired Susannah.

“Go on a horse—nonsense, child! You’re much too young for horses! Only big girls and boys can ride.”

“There’s roosters for small children,” said Susannah undaunted. “I know, because Irene Heywood went on one and when she got off she fell over.”

“All the more reason why you shouldn’t go on,” said her mother.

But Susannah looked as though falling over had no terrors for her. On the contrary.

About the exhibition, however, Sylvia and Phyllis knew as little as Susannah. It was the first that had ever come to their town. One morning, as Miss Wade, their lady help, rushed them along to the Heywoods’, whose governess they shared, they had seen carts piled with great long planks of wood, sacks, what looked like whole doors, and white flagstaffs, passing through the wide gate of the Recreation Ground. And by the time they were bowled home to their dinners, there were the beginnings of a high thin fence, dotted with flagstaffs, built all round the railings. From inside, came a tremendous noise of hammering, shouting, clanging; a little engine, hidden away, went _Chuff-chuff-chuff_. _Chuff!_ And round, woolly balls of smoke were tossed over the palings.

First it was the day after the day after tomorrow, then plain day after tomorrow, then tomorrow, and at last, the day itself. When Susannah woke up in the morning, there was a little gold spot of sunlight watching her from the wall; it looked as though it had been there for a long time, waiting to remind her: “It’s today—you’re going today—this afternoon. Here she is!”

(_Second Version_)

That afternoon they were allowed to cut jugs and basins out of a draper’s catalogue, and at tea-time they had real tea in the doll’s tea set on the table. This was a very nice treat, indeed, except that the doll’s tea-pot wouldn’t pour out even after you’d poked a pin down the spout and blown into it.

But the next afternoon, which was Saturday, Father came home in high feather. The front door banged so hard that the whole house shook, and he shouted to Mother from the hall.

“Oh, how more than good of you, darling!” cried Mother, “but how unnecessary too. Of course, they’ll simply love it. But to have spent all that money! You shouldn’t have done it, Daddy dear! They’ve totally forgotten all about it. And what is this! Half-a-crown?” cried Mother. “No! Two shillings, I see,” she corrected quickly, “to spend as well. Children! Children! Come down, downstairs!”

Down they came, Phyllis and Sylvia leading, Susannah holding on. “Do you know what Father’s done?” And Mother held up her hand. What was she holding? Three cherry tickets and a green one. “He’s bought you tickets. You’re to go to the circus, this very afternoon, all of you, with Miss Wade. What do you say to that?”

“Oh, Mummy! Lovely! Lovely!” cried Phyllis and Sylvia.

“Isn’t it?” said Mother. “Run upstairs. Run and ask Miss Wade to get you ready. Don’t dawdle. Up you go! All of you.”

Away flew Phyllis and Sylvia, but still Susannah stayed where she was at the bottom of the stairs, hanging her head.

“Go along,” said Mother. And Father said sharply, “What the devil’s the matter with the child?”

Susannah’s face quivered. “I don’t want to go,” she whispered.

“What! Don’t want to go to the Exhibition! After Father’s—— You naughty, ungrateful child! Either you go to the Exhibition, Susannah, or you will be packed off to bed at once.”

Susannah’s head bent low, lower still. All her little body bent forward. She looked as though she was going to bow down, to bow down to the ground, before her kind generous Father and beg for his forgiveness....

SECOND VIOLIN

A February morning, windy, cold, with chill-looking clouds hurrying over a pale sky and chill snowdrops for sale in the grey streets. People look small and shrunken as they flit by; they look scared as if they were trying to hide inside their coats from something big and brutal. The shop doors are closed, the awnings are furled, and the policemen at the crossings are lead policemen. Huge empty vans shake past with a hollow sound; and there is a smell of soot and wet stone staircases, a raw, grimy smell....

Flinging her small scarf over her shoulder again, clasping her violin, Miss Bray darts along to orchestra practice. She is conscious of her cold hands, her cold nose and her colder feet. She can’t feel her toes at all. Her feet are just little slabs of cold, all of a piece, like the feet of china dolls. Winter is a terrible time for thin people—terrible! Why should it hound them down, fasten on them, worry them so? Why not, for a change, take a nip, take a snap at the fat ones who wouldn’t notice? But no! It is sleek, warm, cat-like summer that makes the fat one’s life a misery. Winter is all for bones....

Threading her way, like a needle, in and out and along, went Miss Bray, and she thought of nothing but the cold. She had just come out of her kitchen, which was pleasantly snug in the morning, with her gas-fire going for her breakfast and the window closed. She had just drunk three large cups of really boiling tea. Surely, they ought to have warmed her. One always read in books of people going on their way warmed and invigorated by even one cup. And she had had three! How she loved her tea! She was getting fonder and fonder of it. Stirring the cup, Miss Bray looked down. A little fond smile parted her lips, and she breathed tenderly, “I love my tea.”

But all the same, in spite of the books, it didn’t keep her warm. Cold! Cold! And now as she turned the corner she took such a gulp of damp, cold air that her eyes filled. _Yi-yi-yi_, a little dog yelped; he looked as though he’d been hurt. She hadn’t time to look round, but that high, sharp yelping soothed her, was a comfort even. She could have made just that sound herself.

And here was the Academy. Miss Bray pressed with all her might against the stiff, sulky door, squeezed through into the vestibule hung with pallid notices and concert programmes, and stumbled up the dusty stairs and along the passage to the dressing-room. Through the open door there came such shrill loud laughter, such high, indifferent voices that it sounded like a play going on in there. It was hard to believe people were not laughing and talking like that ... on purpose. “Excuse me—pardon—sorry,” said Miss Bray, nudging her way in and looking quickly round the dingy little room. Her two friends had not yet come.

The First Violins were there; a dreamy, broad-faced girl leaned against her ’cello; two Violas sat on a bench, bent over a music book, and the Harp, a small grey little person, who only came occasionally, leaned against a bench and looked for her pocket in her underskirt....

* * * * *

“I’ve a run of three twice, ducky,” said Ma, “a pair of queens make eight, and one for his nob makes nine.”

With an awful hollow groan Alexander, curling his little finger high, pegged nine for Ma. And “Wait now, wait now,” said she, and her quick short little hands snatched at the other cards. “My crib, young man!” She spread them out, leaned back, twitched her shawl, put her head on one side. “H’m, not so bad! A flush of four and a pair!”

“Betrayed! Betrayed!” moaned Alexander, bowing his dark head over the cribbage board, “and by a woo-man.” He sighed deeply, shuffled the cards and said to Ma, “Cut for me, my love!”

Although of course he was only having his joke like all professional young gentlemen, something in the tone in which he said “my love!” gave Ma quite a turn. Her lips trembled as she cut the cards, she felt a sudden pang as she watched those long slim fingers dealing.

Ma and Alexander were playing cribbage in the basement kitchen of number 9 Bolton Street. It was late, it was on eleven, and Sunday night, too—shocking! They sat at the kitchen table that was covered with a worn art serge cloth spotted with candle grease. On one corner of it stood three glasses, three spoons, a saucer of sugar lumps and a bottle of gin. The stove was still alight, and the lid of the kettle had just begun to lift, cautiously, stealthily, as though there was someone inside who wanted to have a peep and pop back again. On the horse-hair sofa against the wall by the door, the owner of the third glass lay asleep, gently snoring. Perhaps because he had his back to them, perhaps because his feet poked out from the short overcoat covering him, he looked forlorn, pathetic, and the long fair hair covering his collar looked forlorn and pathetic, too.

“Well, well,” said Ma, sighing as she put out two cards and arranged the others in a fan, “such is life. I little thought when I saw the last of you this morning that we’d be playing a game together tonight.”

“The caprice of destiny,” murmured Alexander. But, as a matter of fact, it was no joking matter. By some infernal mischance that morning he and Rinaldo had missed the train that all the company travelled by. That was bad enough. But being Sunday, there was no other train until midnight, and as they had a full rehearsal at 10 o’clock on Monday it meant going by that, or getting what the company called the beetroot. But God! what a day it had been. They had left the luggage at the station and come back to Ma’s, back to Alexander’s frowsy bedroom with the bed unmade and water standing about. Rinaldo had spent the whole day sitting on the side of the bed swinging his leg, dropping ash on the floor and saying, “I wonder what made us lose that train. Strange we should have lost it. I bet the others are wondering what made us lose it, too.” And Alexander had stayed by the window gazing into the small garden that was so black with grime even the old lean cat who came and scraped seemed revolted by it, too. It was only after Ma had seen the last of her Sunday visitors....

MR. AND MRS. WILLIAMS

That winter Mr. and Mrs. Williams of The Rowans, Wickenham, Surrey, astonished their friends by announcing that they were going for a three weeks’ holiday to Switzerland. Switzerland! How very enterprising and exciting! There was quite a flutter in Wickenham households at the news. Husbands coming home from the city in the evening were greeted immediately with:

“My dear, have you heard the news about the Williams?”

“No! What’s up now?”

“They’re off to Switzerland.”

“Switzerland! What the dickens are they going there for?”

That, of course, was only the extravagance of the moment. One knew perfectly well why people went. But nobody in Wickenham ever plunged so far away from home at that time of year. It was not considered “necessary”—as golf, bridge, a summer holiday at the sea, an account at Harrods’ and a small car as soon as one could afford it, were considered necessary....

“Won’t you find the initial expenditure very heavy?” asked stout old Mrs. Prean, meeting Mrs. Williams quite by chance at their nice obliging grocer’s. And she brushed the crumbs of a sample cheese biscuit off her broad bosom.

“Oh, we shall get our kit over there,” said Mrs. Williams.

“Kit” was a word in high favour among the Wickenham ladies. It was left over from the war, of course, with “cheery,” “wash-out,” “Hun,” “Boche,” and “Bolshy.” As a matter of fact, Bolshy was post-war. But it belonged to the same mood. (“My dear, my housemaid is an absolute little Hun, and I’m afraid the cook is turning Bolshy....”) There was a fascination in those words. To use them was like opening one’s Red Cross cupboard again, and gazing at the remains of the bandages, body-belts, tins of anti-insectide and so on. One was stirred, one got a far-away thrill, like the thrill of hearing a distant band. It reminded you of those exciting, busy, of course anxious, but tremendous days when the whole of Wickenham was one united family. And, although one’s husband was away, one had for a substitute three large photographs of him in uniform. One in a silver frame on the table by the bed, one in the regimental colours on the piano, and one in leather to match the dining-room chairs.

“Cook strongly advised us to buy nothing here,” went on Mrs. Williams.

“_Cook!_” cried Mrs. Prean, greatly astounded. “What can——”

“Oh—_Thomas_ Cook, of course I mean,” said Mrs. Williams, smiling brightly. Mrs. Prean subsided.

“But you will surely not depend upon the resources of a little Swiss village for clothes?” she persisted, deeply interested, as usual, in other people’s affairs.

“Oh, no, certainly not.” Mrs. Williams was quite shocked. “We shall get all we need in the way of clothes from Harrods’.”

That was what Mrs. Prean had wished to hear. That was as it should be.

“The great secret my dear” (she always knew the great secret), “the great secret,”—and she put her hand on Mrs. Williams’ arm and spoke very distinctly—“is plenty of long-sleeved woven combies!”

“Thank you, m’m.”

Both ladies started. There at their side was Mr. Wick, the nice grocer, holding Mrs. Prean’s parcel by a loop of pink string. Dear me—how very awkward! He must have ... he couldn’t possibly not have.... In the emotion of the moment Mrs. Prean, thinking to gloss it over tactfully, nodded significantly at Mrs. Williams and said, accepting the parcel, “And that is what I always tell my dear son!” But this was too swift for Mrs. Williams to follow.

Her embarrassment continued, and ordering the sardines, she just stopped herself from saying “Three large pairs, Mr. Wick, please,” instead of “Three large tins.”

2

As a matter of fact it was Mrs. Williams’ Aunt Aggie’s happy release which had made their scheme possible. Happy release it was! After fifteen years in a wheel-chair passing in and out of the little house at Ealing she had, to use the nurse’s expression, “just glided away at the last.” Glided away ... it sounded as though Aunt Aggie had taken the wheel-chair with her. One saw her, in her absurd purple velvet, steering carefully among the stars and whimpering faintly, as was her terrestrial wont, when the wheel jolted over a particularly large one.

Aunt Aggie had left her dear niece Gwendolen two hundred and fifty pounds. Not a vast sum by any means, but quite a nice little windfall. Gwendolen, in that dashing mood that only women know, decided immediately to spend it—part of it on the house and the rest on a treat for Gerald. And the lawyer’s letter happening to come at tea-time together with a copy of the _Sphere_ full of the most fascinating, thrilling photographs of holiday-makers at Mürren and St. Moritz and Montana, the question of the treat was settled.

“You would like to go to Switzerland, wouldn’t you, Gerald?”

“Very much.”

“You’re—awfully good at skating and all that kind of thing—aren’t you?”

“Fairly.”

“You do feel it’s a thing to be done—don’t you?”

“How do you mean?”