Part 5

It was Susan, his sister, and she had a man with her, standing back a little behind her in the darkness of the porch. She came into the hall with a “Hullo, Bertram!” and the man followed her and shut the door.

She leant against the wall, breathing in a hard way, as though she had been running. The man by her side was Dennis O’Brien whom Bertram had known in France. He kept his felt hat on his head, and his hands in his pockets, and stood looking at Bertram in a careless, quizzing way. But he was pale.

“Rather late for an evening call,” said Bertram.

Susan asked whether the servants had gone to bed, and when Bertram nodded, led the way into his study with her friend.

“Shut the door, Bertram, old boy.”

Bertram obeyed her. He had a sense of apprehension. There was something strange in his sister’s look and manner.

“What’s the game?” he asked.

Susan took one of his cigarettes and lit it by a spill from the fire before answering. O’Brien sat down in Bertram’s desk chair, and held his hat between his knees. He was wearing a trench coat, and looked shabby.

“It’s like this, Bertram. Dennis, who, by the way, is my man—we married a week ago—is ‘on the run,’ as they call it. He’s very much wanted by the English police, and I’m going to ask you to be sport enough to put him up for a day or two. He’ll stay close and give no trouble.”

She looked over at Dennis, and laughed in a low voice. Bertram noticed that one lock of her dark hair had come loose beneath her hat. Her brown eyes had a kind of liquid light in them, or some leaping flame, and her cheeks were flushed. She looked more Irish than he had ever seen her. Perhaps it was excitement that had set that part of her blood on fire, or the marriage she mentioned “by the way.” Susan married! To a fellow who was “wanted” by the English police! And the crisis in the family.

Bertram laughed, but mirthlessly.

“So O’Brien is ‘wanted,’ is he? And you’ve married him, Susan? Any more announcements?”

“That’s all for the present,” said Susan. She watched her brother anxiously, saw his face harden a little, and then went to him and clasped his arm with both hands.

“Bertram! You and I were always pals. You’ve helped me out of many a scrape, and never said a word. This affair is my worst scrape, and Dennis’s. It’s a question of life and death. Play up to the old tradition!”

“I want to know more,” said Bertram. He spoke sharply, and looked over at O’Brien, who was silent, with a nervous smile about his lips. “What game have you been up to in England? That arson business?” He remembered that several timber yards had been set on fire at the London docks, with Sinn Fein warnings of further damage.

Dennis O’Brien shifted his felt hat round, and stared at the brim.

“I’m not answering questions,” he said.

“Perhaps it’s worse than arson,” said Bertram. “Were you in Dublin last Monday?”

There had been an attack outside the Castle. Two British officers in a motor car, and three Sinn Feiners lying in ambush had been killed. Others had escaped.

Dennis O’Brien became more pale, and Susan drew in her breath sharply.

“I was in Dublin,” said Dennis O’Brien. “The point is whether you’re a friend or an enemy.”

“I’m a friend of Ireland,” said Bertram, “but an enemy of those who drench her with blood, and drag her into anarchy.”

“The English,” said O’Brien.

“Irish too, by God!” said Bertram.

O’Brien shrugged his shoulders, and said something in a low voice about the right to liberty.

Susan threw her cigarette in the fire and put her arm round Bertram’s neck.

“Brother o’ mine! It’s no time for argument about Irish liberty or English tyranny. Don’t you understand? Dennis is my husband and his life’s in danger. You must hide him here, for my sake!”

Bertram thought hard and rapidly. Susan’s words called to his chivalry. She was this man’s wife. And it was not easy to turn a hunted man from his door, anyway. But what about Joyce? In hiding O’Brien he might drag her name in, and her father’s name.—‘The Earl of Ottery’s daughter shelters an Irish rebel.’ The newspapers would make a fuss of that! And his own father’s name? Michael Pollard, K.C., who defended the policy of reprisals! A family scandal all round, and damnably dangerous!

“Can’t you find another place?” he asked Susan, weakly.

Susan laughed.

“The police were pretty close. We dodged ’em by the length of a street.”

She held his arm again, and said: “Big brother! Sportsman and gentleman! For the Irish blood that’s in you!”

“With English loyalty,” said Bertram, sharply.

“In that case,” said Dennis O’Brien, in a sullen way, “I’ll just slope out into the streets again. I take no favour from English loyalty. To hell with all its loyalties!”

He stood up and went towards the door, but Susan ran round the table to him and caught hold of his coat.

“Dennis, my dear! Bertram is all for Irish liberty. And don’t forget I’m half English too!”

“All Irish now!” said Dennis, in a low, passionate voice.

Bertram watched them. His face was flushed, and he had thrust his hair back so that it was all tousled.

“This is a devilish affair,” he said, “but if O’Brien cares to stay here, he can have that sofa!”

“Well played!” cried Susan softly, and with those words she kissed her brother, and her eyes were wet and shining.

“It’s not a very cordial invitation,” said O’Brien, with sarcasm, “but if your brother gives his word—”

“Do you doubt me?” asked Bertram. His voice had a savage note.

“I’m in your hands,” said O’Brien, more humbly.

Presently Joyce came in. They had not heard the front door open, so that her appearance in the room was unexpected. She stood for a moment in the doorway, her fur cloak half slipping from her shoulders. Then she spoke to Susan, not hiding her surprise.

“Hulloa! Anything wrong?”

Perhaps it was their silence, some look in their eyes which suggested to her that something was “wrong.”

“You’re looking splendid again, Joyce,” said Susan, in her best “society” manner. There was always a sense of armed truce between the two girls. Bertram’s sister resented what she called the “haughty condescension” of Bertram’s wife. Joyce had not disguised from Bertram that in her opinion Susan was “a dangerous little spit-fire—with atrocious manners.”

“I’m quite well, thanks.”

Joyce glanced at O’Brien, who had risen from his chair as she had come in.

“Won’t you introduce me?” she asked Susan.

Susan said, “This is Dennis O’Brien, my husband.” It was very calmly said.

“A surprise!” said Joyce. “Congratulations to both of you, and all that, I suppose. Rather sudden, wasn’t it?”

She failed to shake hands with Dennis O’Brien. As she had told Bertram many times, sometimes amusing times, and sometimes not, she hated all the Irish except half an Irishman.

She sat in Bertram’s low arm chair, yawning a little, with her long white arms behind her bobbed hair.

“A cigarette, Bertram!”

Bertram gave her the cigarette, lit it for her, and mumbled something about the late hour, and bedtime. He had a foreboding that Joyce didn’t intend to go to bed until Susan and Dennis had gone. And Dennis was not going. There would have to be an explanation. There would probably be a row.

It came half an hour later, after strained and unnatural efforts at bright conversation by Bertram and Susan, while O’Brien sat gloomily silent, and Joyce yawned with increasing carelessness, and asked occasional questions without listening to the answer. The crisis happened when she sprang up and stretched her arms above her head.

“Haven’t you people got any home? I hate being inhospitable, Susan, but you and your new-found husband had better go. Bertram and I sometimes sleep o’ nights.”

There was a moment’s silence before Bertram answered:

“O’Brien is staying. He’s going to use the sofa to-night.”

There was another silence.

“Sorry,” said Joyce, “but I can’t allow that.”

“Why not?”

Bertram knew the “row” was coming.

“It’s not in my contract with the maids,” said Joyce very calmly. Then she spoke another sentence which seemed to reveal a knowledge, or at least a guess of the inner meaning of this visit from Susan and Dennis.

“Besides, my house is not going to be made a hiding place for Irish rebels. I’m English, and play the game accordingly.”

Yes, undoubtedly, there was going to be a row!

Bertram decided upon a frank explanation. Joyce had the right to know.

“Look here, Joyce, O’Brien is Susan’s husband, and the police are after him. You know how I stand about Sinn Fein. . . . Anyhow—I’ve given my word. O’Brien stays here to-night.”

“He does _not_ stay,” said Joyce. “This is my house. If that man is not out of it in two minutes, I’ll telephone to the police.”

She walked quickly to Bertram’s desk and caught hold of the receiver.

Bertram followed her, still explaining, rather desperately. He had given his word. He quite understood Joyce’s point of view. He sympathised to some extent. This Sinn Fein business was criminal folly. But O’Brien had been a friend of his in the War. And he was Susan’s husband. Did she understand? His own brother-in-law! He was in real danger, and it was not in the code of their crowd—was it?—to hand over a hunted man.—A criminal? Well, he didn’t know. O’Brien had told him nothing. He asked no questions. Besides—that was all beside the argument.

“I’ve given my word, Joyce—my honour’s pledged.”

“What about my honour?” asked Joyce. Her voice was very cold and hard. “My father’s name? Our honour to England?”

She turned to Dennis O’Brien, still holding the telephone.

“Are you going? Time’s up.”

Dennis O’Brien smiled at her, and his Irish eyes paid homage to this girl’s beauty as she stood facing him, so hostile. He had been smiling all through Bertram’s monologue. It seemed to amuse him, this altercation between the English girl and his wife’s brother.

“I’m going,” he said. “Don’t worry at all. It’s what one expects of English women! They would turn a starving dog out of doors.”

“Mad dogs,” said Joyce. “With a whip.”

It was Susan now who intervened, ragingly.

“Joyce! You’re a damned cat! No wonder Bertram has a hellish time with you. I’d like to see the Bolsheviks playing with your bobbed hair, and your lovely white neck.”

Joyce picked up the telephone receiver, and said, “Police station, please.”

“No!” said Bertram.

He took hold of Joyce’s wrist and wrenched it from the instrument, conscious of his own violence.

“Joyce, I forbid you. I gave my word. Surely you respect that? By God, you _must_ respect it. If you touch that telephone again, I’ll—I’ll carry you upstairs.”

Joyce looked at him squarely, and their eyes met and searched each other. She saw more anger in his eyes than ever before. She saw that he meant to use his strength.

“I surrender to force. Three to one, and all enemies.”

She laughed on a high note, picked up her fur coat, and went out of the room. They listened to her light steps up the polished stairs, and to the sharp slam of her bedroom door.

“Poor old Bertram!” said Susan, dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief.

He turned on her fiercely.

“How dare you speak of Joyce like that? She was perfectly right, apart from my pledged word. If O’Brien plays the rebel, let him take the risk of rebels, without crawling into English houses for a hiding place!”

Susan paled.

“_Et tu, Brute!_” she said in a low voice.

She spoke a whispered word to Dennis O’Brien. He nodded, and buttoned up his trench coat.

“Yes, let’s be going.—Good-night, Pollard.”

Bertram did not answer.

He made no move, as he stood planted on the hearth-rug by the fire, staring moodily at a cigarette holder which Joyce had dropped, while his sister and her Irish husband went out of the room, and a moment later left the house, as he heard by the quiet click of the front door lock. He stood there for half an hour after they had left, and then summed up his thoughts in his usual sentence:

“It’s all very difficult!”

After that he went up to Joyce’s room, which was locked. There was no answer to his tap on the door, and he crept miserably to his own bed.

XII

Joyce was perplexing to Bertram after that midnight scene with Susan and Dennis. He had expected a painful quarrel on the subject, a denunciation by Joyce of his behaviour, a defence on his part, an argument beginning with generalities and ending with personalities, always dangerous between a young husband and wife, both inclined to passionate temper. But Joyce declined to discuss the matter. She had stayed late in bed next day, and had come down to luncheon with her wrist bound up. He did not understand the cause of that bandage until he enquired and received the answer:

“You nearly broke my wrist over the telephone last night. Perhaps you’re not aware of the violence you used.”

No, he was unaware of it, and made abject apology, horribly ashamed that he should have used physical force to his wife. It was a coster’s way of argument.

“Joyce! I’m immensely sorry and ashamed. But you see my difficulty last night. I had given my word—”

“I refuse to discuss the affair,” said Joyce. “You know my views. If you say another word about it I’ll leave the house.”

That was that. She was not even curious to know whether O’Brien had spent the night in Bertram’s study. Perhaps she had enquired from the maids and had satisfied herself on that point. Yet Bertram was certain that the incident was not regarded as trivial in her mind, and that it had caused something like estrangement between them. She went her own way, deliberately shutting him out of her plans, or, at least, not consulting him, nor giving him a chance of joining her. She was rarely at home to luncheon during the few weeks that followed Susan’s visit, and generally returned only in time to dress for dinner. Even then he had no chance of private conversation, for she invited friends to dine night after night—was it with the deliberate intention of avoiding intimate contact with him?—and afterwards filled her drawing-room with a miscellaneous crowd, or went out with a party to the theatre or the dancing clubs.

Bertram was lonely whether she stayed at home or not. He was beginning to feel lonely in body and soul. Joyce answered him when he spoke to her, but no more than that. She was quite gay at times—nearly always—but it was not into his eyes that she laughed.

Kenneth Murless used the house as his own, “dropped in” for dinner, or after dinner, always civil to Bertram, never disconcerted by Bertram’s sulky manner, always bright and paradoxical, and entertaining to everybody but Joyce’s husband, who hated him—for no reason but that Joyce liked him.

There were other men whom Joyce liked, and who liked to be liked by Joyce. The Reverend Peter Fynde, who came from the church round the corner, was what Bertram called a “parlour cat,” and came purring round to tea, or at nine-thirty, after “Evensong,” with gossipy anecdotes about Lady This and Lady That, and soulful sayings about the “Healing Power of Faith,” the “Beauty of the Unattainable,” and communication with the “Dear Remembered Dead.” At dinner, when the ladies had left the table, he was inclined to tell somewhat Rabelaisian stories, drawn from his experience as an army chaplain. “A human fellow,” was the general verdict about him, “a perfect dear” by the women. Bertram thought him a perfect ass, but did not tell them so.

He had nothing in common with the people who gathered round Joyce. They irritated him. Listening to their conversation, he found their point of view “poisonous,” if not idiotic. It was at least—and he wanted to be fair—hopelessly reactionary. They still had a habit of talking about the people of England as “the mob” or “the masses,” and they spoke about “Labour” as if it were a sinister, evil, destructive monster, and not a class of men, quite human, for the most part rather decent, many of them the real heroes of the war—keen to earn a living wage, desperately anxious not to be forced back to the edge of the poverty line, or over the edge. Millions of Bill Huggetts, and better men than Bill—rather neurotic, always a “grouser”—but not out for blood and terror, or anything beyond food and shelter for a family left on his hands by a poor mad wife.

Labour? Bertram had been going about London getting into touch with some of the men of his old company—“Comrades of the Great War,” as they called themselves, in barely furnished clubs where they gathered at night, because of their craving for the comradeship which had been the best thing in war. They were still restless and unsettled. Some of them were still hardly better than “shell-shocks.” Their minds were groping towards some solution of their present distress—unemployment, high prices, a sense of broken faith with them by the nation they had served. Some of them talked glibly, as Huggett had said, about Bolshevism and Communism. The frightful experiment in Russia—what was the truth of it?—held some lure for them. There were some who believed “it would do London a bit o’ good.”

Bertram didn’t believe there was much of a real revolutionary spirit among them. They were sick of war and bloodshed, and the “crime wave,” as the newspapers called it, was only the work of a small minority of young men unhinged by the cheapness of life in war, and by war’s brutality. Bertram marvelled rather at the patience, the essential patriotism, the commonsense of the majority of men he met about. Any hankering after the Russian way of revolution was but a vague vision of some system of society which would give men greater equality of luck, and a sense of security.

That was not the opinion of the people in Joyce’s drawing-room. They confessed to fear about the future. It was, perhaps, the presence of two Russian girls of the old régime, and some of the men they brought with them of their own caste and country, which suggested the possibility of revolution in England. They were never tired of telling tales of Bolshevik atrocities, none of them from first-hand evidence, but likely enough, and dreadful in detail. The elder of them, the Countess Gradiva—Lydia, as Joyce called her—had set up a hat shop in Mount Street, Mayfair, where Joyce had met her and made friends. The younger—Paula—played the violin, wonderfully, at recitals and concerts. They were both tall, ugly, elegant girls, speaking half a dozen languages with equal facility and passionate gesture.

“Why doesn’t England send an army and rescue my poor country from its tyrants?” asked Lydia one night of Bertram. “I cannot understand your English policy, your dreadful inactivity.”

Bertram had heard many remarks of the same kind by the Russian girls. They enraged him.

“Why don’t your Russian men do a bit of their own fighting? Why do they lounge about the capitals of Europe, and expect other people to liberate Russia and restore Czardom, and get back their wealth?”

“You’re a Bolshevik, then?” asked Countess Gradiva, staring at him with black, challenging eyes.

“Not in the least,” said Bertram. “But I’m dead against these fatal expeditions in which England has poured out gold she can ill afford—with what result? More bloodshed in Russia. Another disastrous retreat of incompetent generals, more suffering and horror, and harryings of poor Russian peasants. That’s how it seems to me. I may be wrong.”

The Countess Gradiva called out across the drawing-room, which was crowded with Joyce’s friends. She had a high, harsh way of speaking, and a shrill laugh.

“My dear Lady Joyce! Your husband is a naughty bad Bolshevik! He’s saying the most dreadful things, _ma chérie_!”

“He makes a habit of it,” answered Joyce.

Bertram flushed angrily at her retort, though Joyce had spoken with a smile. He knew by the tone of her voice that she intended to hurt him, and it hurt.

“I tell the truth, occasionally, and that’s dreadful, I admit,” he said to Lydia Gradiva.

“Not the truth about Russia, you wicked man. You do not know our poor Russia!”

“I would go even as far as Russia, to get the truth,” said Bertram. “Does anybody know?”

“You mean I lie to you?”

“There are many lies about,” said Bertram, “but I’m not referring to you, especially.”

She whipped his hand with the end of a long necklace of amber beads, so that they stung him. Then she called him a revolutionary monster, a Jacobin.

“I can see you leading the English mob and hoisting the Red Flag over the House of Commons!”

The English “mob!” There it was again. Always the talk came round to the chance of an English revolution. Those people were afraid—even of England!

It was General Bellasis who revealed a new cause of fear which took hold of the imagination of London society at this time. Bellasis was one of the men who liked to be liked by Joyce. He was still on active service—in Ireland—but seemed to spend his time travelling between Dublin and Whitehall, and always came to Holland Street with flowers for Joyce, theatre tickets for Joyce, and homage in his eyes. He looked more gallant than any hero could be—at all times—in his uniform with many decorations—a tall, lean fellow, with a hard, clean cut face, blue, sailor-looking eyes, and an empty sleeve where his left arm used to be. But he confessed that he was suffering from blue funk (he exaggerated his symptoms) because of an incident that had happened to him in St. James’s Street, outside the club, that very afternoon. A wretched-looking fellow had come up to him, offering to sell some bootlaces. “Thanks, no,” said Bellasis. The man had followed him, whining something about a wife and children, and thrusting the bootlaces under his nose. “I’ve said I don’t want ’em,” said Bellasis, as he related. “Get off with you, my man.” He had not spoken roughly, though he disapproved of begging, especially when every out-of-work was getting a Government dole. But then the man had pulled something out of his pocket and given it to Bellasis, saying, “Well, take that for luck!” Bellasis supposed the company could guess what it was.

Kenneth Murless guessed right, first time.

“The silver slipper!”

“Yes,” said General Bellasis, “the silver slipper! And I can tell you, I don’t like it!”

The Reverend Peter Fynde claimed that he had been given one at Ranelagh, three weeks before. Exactly in the same way. He had refused an importunate beggar and received the slipper “for luck.”

Kenneth Murless took precedence of Fynde, in point of time. It was two months at least since he had been given the slipper. That was outside the Carlton. A typical incident. A paper boy had tried to make him buy his last copy of _The Pall Mall Gazette_. Murless had seen it already, read every line of it. The boy had persisted until Murless had told him to run away or he would get a box on the ears. “Take this for luck!” said the boy. So he had the sign of the slipper.

“Has everybody gone mad?” asked Bertram. “The silver slipper! The sign of the slipper! What on earth are you all talking about?”

It was Murless who explained, in his best diplomatic style, after expressing surprise that Bertram should not have heard of the sinister thing. It appeared that in the time of the French Revolution, secret agents of the Free masons and Jacobin clubs presented silver slippers to people whom they particularly disliked. It was not a good thing to get one. Most of those who did perished on the guillotine. “_C’est l’histoire qui se répète, mon vieux!_” Kenneth Murless spoke lightly, with a smile, but there was a hint of fear in his voice, and in the room silence for a moment, after he had spoken.

Bertram laughed loudly and harshly.

“Of all the old wives’ tales! And you highly educated and extremely modern people believe such stuff as that!”

Joyce lit a cigarette, and puffed out a little wreath of smoke, daintily.

“I hate to tell you I’ve had the silver slipper! But if the worst comes to the worst, I hope I’ll go scornfully to death!”