Part 17

England had escaped calamities like that, but unemployment was creeping up like a dark wave—millions were idle because of the Strike—and trade was at a standstill. What was the future? “Europe is dying!” said Anatole France, according to the papers, and Christy thought so too, in his blacker moods. Did it matter much? What was life, anyhow, to the individual soul? Not much of a game, except for a little laughter, some moments of love, some years of illusion! Here he was, sitting by the bedside of this mother whose children had gone from her—all but himself—and whose heart was broken by the death of her last-born in a foul kind of civil war. Susan’s husband had been hanged. Bertram’s wife had left him. A cheerful kind of family record! Not worse than in millions of other families in civilised Europe. Not so bad as in Russia, or Austria, or Poland, according to reports.

His mother wakened, and spoke to him in a feeble voice.

“Are you there, my dear?”

“Yes, mother.”

She was no longer wandering back to the early years, but remembered what had happened.

“It’s terrible about Digby.”

“Yes, mother.”

She was silent for a little while, and then spoke again.

“Bertram! Work for Peace. The world is so very cruel, and the future so dark! Work for peace, my dear. Peace is so beautiful. Promise me.”

“Promise you what, mother?”

She drew his head down with her weak hands, and as he kissed her, he heard her whisper the word “Peace.”

That was the last word he heard his mother speak. The nurse came, and the doctor, and his father was sent for from the House of Commons, where there was a debate on the Coal Strike, as Bertram saw by the next day’s papers. It was at some time past midnight that his father came downstairs and entered his study, where Bertram was sitting, waiting for the doctor’s latest word about his mother’s health.

“Is she better?” he asked.

“She’s dead,” said his father.

He lurched a little as he walked across the room, and then sat heavily in his chair and put his arms down on his desk, and his head on his arms, and wept with a passion of grief.

It was the first time Bertram had seen him give way to any emotion, except that of anger, and at the sight of that grief all hostility to his father, because of so much hardness and intolerance, was thrust aside by pity. He had loved young Digby best of all his children, and the boy’s death had struck him a frightful blow, which only his pride and his freshly-inflamed hatred of Sinn Fein enabled him to bear with self-control. But his wife’s death, so sudden and so utterly unexpected, smote him beyond all endurance.

He had been hard with her sometimes, he had made her afraid of his temper, and many a time she had wept because of his stern way with “the children,” but she’d never had cause to doubt his love for her. He had loved her, in spite of all tempers, perhaps because of it, with what he believed to be never-failing devotion. To him she was the perfect wife and perfect mother, and perhaps his intense egotism, his old-fashioned belief in the “mastery” of the husband, and the submission of the wife, were never shocked by the knowledge that his wife sometimes described him to her children as “very trying,” and—regarding Dorothy’s marriage—as “most unjust.”

He had depended on her for his comfort, for his sense of security in home life, for the thousand little duties which she had done for him as a daily routine. Now that she had been taken away from him like this, after Digby had been killed—the boy he had loved best in the world—he felt fearfully alone, and was broken-hearted.

Bertram put his hand on his father’s shoulder and said: “Courage, father!”

He remembered the better side of his father’s nature now, the old days, before politics—the madness in Ireland—had so embittered their relations. Michael Pollard had not been always harsh. He had been playful when his children were young; humorous and comradely at times. Perhaps his children were partly to blame for the irascibility which had overtaken him in later years. They had been self-willed, deliberately rebellious of his authority, sarcastic when he had laid down the law, regarding obedience and discipline, stubbornly intolerant of his intolerance.

So Bertram thought now, in the presence of this stricken man, forgetful for a while of his own tremendous loss, his loneliness of soul, while he watched his father’s agony, and tried to comfort him, and could not.

XXXV

It was after his mother’s funeral that Bertram’s courage failed him. He had a letter from Joyce which put all but the finishing touch to his sense of abandonment by any kindliness of fate. She wrote to him from Paris—the Hotel Meurice—where she had gone with Lady Ottery. She still called him “My dear Bertram,” but her letter did not warm his soul.

She had been horrified to hear about Digby—that ought to kill his sympathy with Irish rebels, if anything would. She was also deeply sorry to hear about Mrs. Pollard’s death, though not surprised, after so much worry and so much tragedy.

She wished to let him know that Holme Ottery was being bought by an American, and that, to avoid the unhappiness of seeing the old house pass into new hands, she and her Mother had gone to Paris, on the way to Italy—while arrangements were being made by Alban to warehouse some of the old furniture and family treasures.

Her father had taken a new house in town, rather bigger than the little old house in John Street.

They had sold the Lely portrait of Rupert Bellairs, and she had wept to see it go. It was the symbol of the great smash in the family fortune. England was doomed by a prodigal Government, playing into the hands of Bolshevism.

One passage in the letter stabbed him.

. . . Kenneth Murless has shown me your articles in _The New World_. That one—the first?—called “The Mind of the Men” made me want to use bad language. No wonder you refused that offer from General Bellasis! Your words might have been spouted by a Hyde Park orator on an orange box to a mob of shifty-eyed hooligans. How can you, Bertram? How _can_ you? To me it’s incredible, after your war-service! It’s nothing but rank treason. . . .

There was something in the letter about the beauty of Paris in May. Then another line or two about the hatred of France for Germany, and for the English Liberals who were playing into the hands of Germany.

. . . The French won’t tolerate any breach of the Treaty.

They will force Germany to pay, or march across the Rhine and seize her industrial cities. I quite agree with them. After all, we _did_ win the war, though some people behave as though it were a shame to do so. . . .

Well, well, Joyce’s views on foreign politics didn’t matter very much. Some other words in her letter mattered more to him.

Kenneth Murless has come over to Paris in the Embassy—as First Secretary. I see a good deal of him and he keeps me amused. When are you going to be sensible and make a career for yourself? I’m a little tired of being a grass widow, though as a rest-cure it has done me good! I’m ready to forget and forgive, if you care to join me here. Besides, _it must be one thing or the other_. . . .

Those words were underlined.

At the end of her letter she signed herself “Yours affectionately,” and Bertram laughed aloud at the words, but not with any merriment of soul. She had wept when the Lely had gone, not much when he had gone! . . . Kenneth Murless amused her. She saw a lot of him. . . . She was ready to forget and forgive!

He wrote a raging letter to her, and then tore it up. He accused her of damned heartlessness, told her that he would never play her lap-dog again, reminded her of the things she had said to him at Holme Ottery, and ended by saying that if Kenneth Murless amused her so much, she had better make it one thing or the other, as far as he was concerned. He would be glad to know her decision.

Having written all that, he heard, almost with physical audibility, the words his mother had spoken to him on her death-bed. “Work for Peace, Bertram!” She meant peace in Europe, between peoples, with Ireland, but the spirit of peace must begin in the heart of the individual, between one and another—even between husband and wife. He wrote another letter, less violent.

DEAR JOYCE:

I’m still trying to earn a living. I’m sorry you don’t like my articles, because they’re the way to that possibility. You say you’re ready to forget and forgive. That seems to me hardly good enough. When you tell me you love me again and want my love, I’ll come to you. I thought that was understood between us. . . .

He referred to her sympathy with his family afflictions:

. . . Yes, it’s sad about Digby, and mother’s death leaves me very much alone. . . .

That correspondence with Joyce didn’t seem to alter much in their relations to each other. It left him in exactly the same situation spiritually, and physically—a husband “on probation,” with a verdict of disloyalty against him, but an offer of pardon on recantation of faith.

No, not good enough! Hopelessly impossible on any basis of self-respect or decent comradeship, to say nothing of love. Yet tempting to a man who hated loneliness, and was alone; who, at the very sight of Joyce’s handwriting, felt the same thrill of passion for her which had come to him always at the touch of her finger-tips, or the quick toss of her head, or the whiteness of her neck. It was a temptation to his weakness, but he was stubborn as well as weak, and wouldn’t yield to such a miserable compact as this surrender would mean to his manhood.

He was in a wretched state of mind, which Joyce’s last letter intensified in wretchedness. Susan’s agony, Digby’s murder, his mother’s death, his father’s grief and rage—for he was raging now with more personal passion against the Irish rebels—had smitten him at a time when Joyce’s desertion would have been enough to cast him into the blackest depths. It seemed as though God, or fate, had a special grudge against him, and kicked him when he was down.

The last blow—a feeble tap, perhaps, yet overpowering for a while to his moral strength—befell him in a letter from a man named Heatherdew, into whose hands, as literary agent, Christy had placed the war-book.

MY DEAR MAJOR POLLARD [he wrote]:

For our friend Christy’s sake, as well as in the usual way of business, I have spared no trouble in trying to find a publisher for your book, “The Machine Gun Company,” which I may say I have read with the greatest interest and admiration. It has now been to eight publishers and all of them, without exception, express the opinion that, at the present time, there is no market for war books. The public, they say (I think incorrectly) wish to forget the war. My own opinion is that they are tired of war books which do not go to the heart of the business which you and I know. However, I consider it useless to make further effort, and I therefore return the manuscript, advising you to hold it for a year or two, when it may have a better chance.

It was a vital disappointment. Bertram had always clung to the hope of this book as a compensation for his failure to get “a job,” as a justification, even, of his life. He had put everything that was in him into this book, his secret agonies and fears, his quality of courage, his love of England, his understanding of the men, the ardour that was his in the beginning of war, the joy in comradeship, the later disillusion, the final disgust.

This was the war as it had passed through his own soul, and through the souls of all the men he knew. It was the Absolute Truth, as he had seen it and known it. It was, above all, his defence against Joyce’s accusations, and the general suspicion of her family and friends that he was a “slacker,” unpatriotic, and careless of his country’s honour. Janet Welford had spoken well of it. “It’s good!” she had said, and had praised it as “almost great.” Well, here it was back again, soiled by publishers’ readers, scrumpled through the post, condemned.

Bertram flung it into a drawer of the little old desk where, as a boy in his father’s house, he had written secret verses, youthful essays about London life, and, later, love-letters to Joyce Bellairs.

An immense gloom closed down upon his spirit. What was the use of anything? He had tried hard, and failed utterly, in every way. He had made a frightful mucker of life. His luck was out. Why kick against it? Why not face up to the futility of life—for him, anyhow? He hadn’t even had the decent luck of going out with the men who had met a bullet or a bit of shell. Those things had passed him by, though he hadn’t dodged them. That was a decent way of death, and honourable, the easiest way out of all difficulties. Even now, a bullet would solve a lot of problems, and answer that alternative which Joyce had put: “It must be one thing or the other.” He wondered if she would weep as much for him as for the Lely portrait of Rupert Bellairs. She might like the sentiment of being a widow for a little while. She would look beautiful in her weeds, with a little bit of white lace under the black round her gold-spun hair, almost as beautiful as Lady Martock. Kenneth Murless would say all kinds of consoling things in his gentlemanly way. All her friends would write, wire, send messages, flowers. The two Russian girls would utter extravagances in broken English, and the Countess Lydia would enquire whether Joyce’s husband had died a Bolshevik, or suggest that he had killed himself at the bidding of Lenin and Trotsky, “who have agents everywhere, _ma chérie_!” Well, he would provide a lot of pleasure to all kinds of people, and end his own misery at the same time.

He had left his old service revolver in the study at Holland Street. Quite easy to get, if Edith were still there, as parlour-maid.

Chatty Edith! She would be glad to see him again. He would have to invent all kinds of lies to explain his absence and his visit, unless he told her straight out that Joyce had deserted him and he’d come to find his revolver to blow his brains out. He could hardly do that! She would scream, or send for the police, or swoon away. Then he would have to fetch the doctor, or throw water at her, or some nuisance of that kind.

Anyhow, he could get his revolver. He had killed a German with it once. That was in a raid near Bullecourt. He remembered the jump into the German trench, after the long crawl across No-Man’s Land and the long wait every time a Verrey light went up and he had to lie doggo trying to look like a sand-bag. The German sentry tried to stick him with his bayonet, and he shoved the revolver into the fellow’s face and fired it. It was the only thing to do, but he was sorry afterwards. He had searched the man’s pockets for letters and post cards—the Intelligence wanted them for identifying a German division. They were all letters from a girl named Lisa. She was dying to see Karl again. She pined for his dear kisses. She was a lonely little Lisa in Magdeburg. If only the cruel war would end! So, in a dozen letters, and a score of closely scribbled postcards. He was sorry he’d killed the fellow stone dead, with that revolver in Holland Street. Now Karl would be revenged by the same weapon that had killed him. Ironical that! A sort of Greek fate business.

Bertram took the ’bus from the top of Sloane Street to High Street, Kensington, and walked up the narrow passage to Holland Street by the west side of St. Mary Abbot’s. That was where he had married Joyce. “Isn’t she beautiful?” said the women outside, and he agreed and thought her the most beautiful thing on earth, and marvelled at his luck. A little more than a year ago!

Newspaper placards were filled with Strike news.

“Drastic Train Cuts.” “Sensational Scene in House of Commons.” “Nat Verney States the Miners’ Case.” “No General Strike.”

How trivial was all that nonsense. What would it matter in a thousand years, or eternity, or to-morrow as far as he was concerned?

The little house in Holland Street had its blinds pulled down. No answer came when he rang the bell. No answer when he had pressed the knob six times. The chatty Edith had gone away, and the house was abandoned.

Within a yard and a half of where he stood, at the corner of the little front room which had been his study, in the desk by the window where he had written the book which no one would publish, was that revolver he wanted. Damn silly to think it was so close and he couldn’t get it! He could hardly commit a burglary in Joyce’s house, in broad daylight! His luck was out again. God, or Fate, refused him even this little bit of luck!

A young policeman sauntered up Holland Street, stood on the opposite side of the road, and then crossed over.

“Do you want anything?” he asked, suspiciously.

“No,” said Bertram. “I suppose the people have gone away.”

“Looks like it, with the blinds down,” said the policeman.

“Yes.”

Bertram sauntered slowly away from his wife’s house. . . . Not even that bit of luck!

XXXVI

He walked through Kensington Gardens, where the trees were in their first glory of green, through Hyde Park, where the flower-beds were filled with tulips, down Piccadilly, with its tide of gleaming cars, until in the centre of Trafalgar Square he met Janet Welford. The chances of meeting her were about seven million to one, but he knew that he was going to do so. Or perhaps, when he met her, it seemed by some trick of his subconscious mind, the realising of expectation.

“Hullo!” she said, dodging a motor-omnibus and jumping onto a “save-my-life.” “What’s the matter?”

“What makes you think there’s anything the matter?”

She tucked her hand through his arm and told him his face looked like a haunted man’s. She commanded him to take her to tea somewhere. She had a craving for a chocolate éclair, or even two.

It was at table in a tea-shop imitating a Tudor house that Bertram told her of all the tragedy that had befallen him since his visit to Ireland, ending in the rejection of his book, which seemed a small thing to put with the death of his mother, but was a death also—of hope and courage.

“I’m down and out,” he said.

“Watch me eat éclairs!” was her unsympathetic answer.

He knew that it wasn’t heartlessness, but only her way of dealing with trouble. A touch on his hand, an “I’m sorry!” a silence, with understanding eyes, had been her comment to his narrative about Digby and his mother, and it was sympathy enough. But to his “down and out” she put up a refusal, by way of mockery. It wasn’t in her philosophy to accept any cry of “down and out,” not even from a man blinded in both eyes, with his hands up to his face, and pitch blackness in his soul. Not once but many times she had heard such a cry from one of “her men,” as she called them, and had refused to recognise even his misery, and in a week or two, by some spell she had, heard him laughing now and then. She put this to Bertram now.

“I’m not going to say Fortune hasn’t dealt you a bad hand lately. You’ve been handed some of the worst cards in the pack, I’ll admit, but there’s no need to sit down and grizzle. Empires have fallen, crowns have toppled to the dust, whole nations are starving, little old England is at the crisis of her fate, and I’m in debt to my dressmaker, so where do _you_ come in? Don’t think you’re the only pebble on the beach. Don’t imagine that fate is persecuting you with a special grudge” (he had thought that!)—“when there are millions of hearts bleeding with greater agony than yours, and millions are carrying on mighty plucky, in spite of odds against them. Look at that girl with the fluffy hair and the red eyelids. She’s playing rag-time in a tea-shop for all she’s worth, though she’s having hell from a mother-in-law, and keeping a shell-shocked husband and two children.”

“How d’you know?” asked Bertram.

“I don’t know,” said Janet, calmly. “I’m only making a supposition. If it isn’t that, it’s something else. You can see she’s been crying all right.”

Her eyes roved round the room, with its panelled walls and sham oak beams, and “antique” furniture, made at Maples. There were several “couples,” and two parties of four. Ruthlessly Janet diagnosed their secret troubles. The thin-faced man, sitting opposite a sad-looking woman, with untidy hair, was suffering from a fear-complex. He was “something in the City,” and afraid of losing the job which kept a little home at Streatham, the wife with untidy hair, and five children. He was in debt to his butcher. He had a hard struggle to pay the last instalment on his furniture, bought on the hire system. He was dodging his income tax, and the chief clerk had told him that the firm was on the rocks, owing to the slump in foreign trade.

“How on earth do you know all those things?” asked Bertram again.

“I’ve studied life,” she answered. “There’s nothing I don’t know about it. See that elderly man with the flabby face, weak mouth, and puffed eyes? Next to the painted flapper?”

Bertram turned slightly in his chair, and said “Yes.”

“That’s a frightful case. He’s the manager of a picture palace. That little girl plays the piano for eight hours a day for two pounds a week, at Croydon, except one day a week—to-day—She keeps a drunken father on that, and pays the rent of eighteen shillings, and ten shillings a week for her little sister’s schooling. The manager is a wicked old devil, and hates his poor drudge of a wife. Of course it wouldn’t do to refuse his invitations to tea, and other things. It’s not easy to get a job in another picture palace, even if one does play the piano blindfold—right notes or wrong—and use the rouge-pot ruthlessly. Plucky kid, I think! Look how she pretends to be merry and bright, poor child!”

“Ever seen her before?” asked Bertram.

“Never. But it’s something like that.”

She said Bertram had no idea of the amount of human courage in a city like London. The heroism of fighting men in war was nothing to the grim, enduring heroism of husbands nagged by their wives, wives bullied by their husbands, men struggling to keep on this side of destitution, women fighting with all the strength of their souls to keep “respectable” in underpaid jobs, young girls starving themselves on milk and buns in order to dress well enough for a chance in the marriage market, and all looking on the best side of things, refusing to surrender, holding on gamely.

“Doesn’t it prove that the game’s not worth the candle?” asked Bertram.

“The game of life?”

He nodded.

She caught hold of his hand, and said, “That’s blasphemy! That’s cowardice! Play the game, whether you lose or win. Stick it out to the end. And forget yourself by helping the other fellow. It’s only selfishness that despairs. It’s damned egotism that makes a man sit down and whine. There’s so much to do, so many to help.”

Bertram drew a deep breath. He’d been sitting down and whining. He’d wanted to quit before he’d played out the game. He’d been within a yard and a half of the coward’s white flag—the worst surrender.

Janet went on talking, wise things, foolish things, fantastic things, and ate not two éclairs, but four (just to make him marvel) and made him laugh heartily at her description of the last meeting of the “Left Wing,” which had broken up in wrath and violence because of a vote against the General Strike. One of the girls had slapped the face of one of the young men, and called him “a crawling Pacifist.” He had responded by calling her a “Blood-stained Bolshevik.” It had all been great fun.

At the sound of his laughter, Janet smiled with a whimsical look.

“You see life’s not so black, if one keeps a sense of humour!”

She proposed an evening at the theatre, after a little dinner in Soho. It was a good dinner, and a merry piece. Bertram laughed most because of Janet’s laughter.