James Hilton: Collected Novels (71 page)

Suddenly he heard the general say
“Hein.”
It electrified him, like a word spoken inside his own head; he felt his feet as items of luggage that didn’t belong to him as he marshaled them for the forward rush. His first impression was of a dazzling brilliance and of the curious fact that there was no audience at all; then, as he stared to verify this, faces swam out of the darkness towards him: row upon row, stalls, boxes, circle, balcony, all were returning his stare from tens of thousands of eyes—quizzically, he thought at first, as if they were aware that this was the supreme moment of all drama and were anxious to compare his performance with previous ones by Irving, Coquelin, and Forbes-Robertson … but then, with a flash of uneasiness, he saw malevolence too, as if they hated him for not being Irving, even for not being Ponderby. He knew he had to conquer this uneasiness or it would conquer him, just as he knew he had to rush up to the general’s desk and say “The enemy are attacking—give the order to advance!” He saw Tommy eyeing him watchfully—that was part of the play, but Tommy’s eye held an extra watchfulness, as if he were hating him too—for not being somebody else.

And then a very dreadful thing happened; he began to stammer. It was the old, the tragic stammer—the one that made his face twist and twitch as if he were in a dentist’s chair; he stood there, facing the general, facing the audience, facing God, it almost seemed, and all he could do was wrestle with the words until they came, one after the other, each one fighting to the last.

The audience began to titter, and when he crossed the stage to struggle with the rest of the words they were already yelling with laughter. “Or if y-y-you d-d-don’t, sir, then, b-b-by G-g-god, I w-w-will m-m-myself!” The laughter rose to a shriek as he still stood there, waiting, trembling, with lips curving grotesquely and hand fumbling at the door; and when he finally rattled at the knob till it broke off and rolled across the stage into the footlights, the whole house burst into hilarious shouting while the lads in the gallery stamped their feet and whistled through two fingers for over a minute.

He got his “round” all right.

He left the stage in a daze, somehow finding himself in the wings, passing faces he knew without a word, yet noting for agonized recollection later that some looked anxious, others puzzled, a few were actually convulsed with laughter. Alone at last in the dressing room he closed the door, locked it, and for several minutes fought down an ancient resurrected hell of fear, mental darkness, and humiliation. Several knocks came at the door, but he did not answer them. Later, when the wave had passed over and he knew he was not drowned but merely swimming exhausted in an angry sea, he summoned enough energy to change his clothes. By that time the play had reached the final scene in which all the company would later be on the stage—he waited for the cue, “You cannot fire on helpless womankind,” followed by the cheers and rough-and-tumble of the rescue party. Backstage would be deserted now; he unlocked his way into the corridor and escaped through the stage door into an alley by the side of the fire staircase. As he turned the corner he could see a long queue already forming for the second performance, which reminded him that Ponderby’s part must be played by someone else in that; Margesson would have to arrange it; anyhow, that was a trifle to worry about, a mere pinhole of trouble compared with the abyss of despair that he himself was facing.

Of course he must leave; they would not wish him to stay; he could offer no explanation, because there was none that would not repeat his humiliation a hundredfold.

Hurrying across Fulverton that night, across the brightly lit Market Street full of shoppers, through the side roads where happy people lived, it seemed to him that someone was always following, footsteps that hastened under dark trees and dodged to avoid street lamps; an illusion, perhaps, but one that stirred the nag and throb of countless remembered symptoms, till it was not so much the ignominy of what had happened that weighed him down as the awareness of how thinly the skin had grown across the scar, of how near his mind still was to the chaos from which it had barely emerged. He hurried on—eager to pack his bag and be off, away from Fulverton and the troubled self he hoped to leave by the same act of movement; for surely place and self had some deep association, so that he could not now think of Melbury without… and then the renascent fear in his soul took shape; they were
still
trying to get him back to Melbury—they had been trying all the time, while he, falsely confident during those few weeks of respite, had gone about with an increasing boldness until that very night of self-betrayal. And such stupid, unnecessary self-betrayal before a thousand onlookers, among whom was one, perhaps, who did not laugh, but rose from his seat and quietly left the theater, taking his stand on the pavement where he could watch every exit. … Suddenly Smith began to run. They should not get him—never again. He stopped abruptly in the next patch of darkness, and surely enough the footsteps that had been following at a scamper then also stopped abruptly. He ran on again, dodging traffic at a corner and almost colliding with several passers-by. It was man to man, as yet—the enemy were attacking, give the order to advance! He turned into the short cut that led directly to his lodgings—a paved passageway under a railway viaduct. Then he saw there was a rope stretched across the entrance and a man standing in front of it.

“Sorry, sir—can’t get by this way tonight.”

“But—I—what’s the idea? Why not?”

“Can’t be helped, sir—it’s the law—one day a year we have to keep it closed, otherwise the railway company loses title.”

“But I must go—I’m in a hurry!”

“Now come on, sir, I’m only doing my duty—don’t give me no trouble—”

Suddenly he realized that there was more than one enemy; this man was another; there were thousands of them, everywhere; they probably had the district surrounded already. …

“Come along, sir, act peaceable—”

“Peaceable?
Then why are you carrying that gun?”

“Gun?
Why, you’re off your chump—I’ve got no gun! D’you mean this pipe?”

But he wasn’t taken in by that, any more than by the nonsense about the railway company and its tide; he jumped the rope, hurling the fellow aside, and ran along the passageway; in a couple of minutes he had reached the lodginghouse, whereas it would have taken ten by the road.

He had hoped to have the place to himself, knowing that on Saturday nights most landladies did their week-end shopping. But he had forgotten Ponderby, who shouted a slurred greeting from the sitting room as he passed by to climb the stairs. “Hello, Smithy—get along all right? Knew you would—nothing to it—damn nice of you, though, to help me out …”

He heard Ponderby staggering into the lobby and beginning to follow him upstairs, but the youth was very drunk and made long pauses at each step, continuing to shout meanwhile: “Was Margie wild? I’ll bet he would have been but for you. Why don’t you come down and have a drink with me—you deserve it. … Friend indeed and a friend in need—that’s what you are—no,
I’m
the friend in need and
you’re
the … oh well, never could understand the thing properly. What’re you doing up there? Not going to bed yet surely? What time is it? Maybe
I’d
better go to bed, then they’ll all know I’ve been ill. … What’s that? Can’t hear what you say. …”

Smith repeated: “No, don’t come up, I’m coming down.”

“All right, Smithy—I’ll go down too and get you a little drink. Must have a little drink—you deserve it.”

By this time Smith had packed; he was naturally a tidy person, and having to do so regularly had made him expert and the job almost automatic. As he descended the stairs he felt calmer, readier to do battle with the forces arrayed against him; and that made him feel a little warm towards the weak healthy boy who never did battle at all, but just drank and debauched himself in a bored, zestless way. He turned into the sitting room, where Ponderby lay sprawled again on the sofa, head buried in the cushions.

“Hello, old boy—was just mixing you a drink when this awful headache came on again. Don’t mind me—sit down and give me all the news.”

Smith did not sit down, but he took the tumbler, which was almost half full of neat whiskey, poured most of it back into the bottle, and sipped the remainder. He did not usually drink, but he hoped now it might help to steady his nerves, might give him greater calmness for the journey, wherever that was to be.

“Tell me all the news, Smithy. Don’t mind me—I’ve got an awful head, but I’m listening.”

Smith said there was no particular news to tell.

“Oh, I don’t mean the theater—damn the theater—I mean
news.
Heard the paper boy in the street an hour ago—shouting something—went out and bought one—there it is—couldn’t read it, though—my eyes gave out on me. What’s been happening in the world?”

Smith stooped to pick up the paper with momentary excitement; was it possible that already … no, of course not—an hour ago was actually before the thing happened, apart from the time it would take to make a report and get it printed. He glanced at the headlines. “Seems those two fellows have flown across the Atlantic—Alcock and Brown.”

“Flown across the Atlantic? That’s a damn silly thing to do—but I’ll tell you what, it’s better than being an actor. Well, drink a toast to ’em, old boy—what d’you say their names are?”

“Alock and Brown.”

“Alock, Brown, Smith, and Ponderby—drink to the lot of us. Sounds like a lawyer’s office—that’s the job I used to have—in a lawyer’s’ office. Damn good lawyers, too—wouldn’t touch anything dirty. That’s why they got so they wouldn’t touch me. Rude health like mine in a lawyer’s office—out of place, old boy—sheer bad taste—frightens the clients. So one fine day I did a skedaddle from all that messuage. Know what a messuage is? Lawyer’s word. …”

Smith said he must go, if Ponderby would excuse him.

“Go?
Not yet, surely—wait till the others come—don’t like to be left alone, Smithy.”

“I’m sorry, but I really must go now.”

Then Ponderby raised his head and stared.

“Right you are, then … but good God, what’s the matter? Been in a fight or something?”

“I’ve got to go. Good night, Ponderby.”

“Nighty night, Smithy. And don’t think I’ll ever forget what you’ve done.”

You won’t and neither will anyone else, Smith reflected, picking up his bag and hat in the lobby and walking out of the house. Nobody saw him. The night was warm and dark. He wondered why Ponderby had asked if he had been in a fight, and at the first shop window he stopped and tried to catch his reflection in the glass. He smiled—he had forgotten to comb his hair; it showed even under his hat, rumpled as if—well, yes, as if he had been in a fight. That was easy to repair, since he carried a pocket comb, and at the same time he took out his handkerchief to wipe the perspiration from his forehead. Then he did more than smile, he actually laughed, because of the color of the handkerchief afterwards. He had forgotten to clean off the make-up. All the way across Fulverton, then, he must have been looking like that—if anyone had seen him, but nobody had—until Ponderby. Oh yes, there was the man with the gun—but it had been very dark just there, under the viaduct. He wiped off the make-up and threw the handkerchief over a fence.

He knew they would go to Fulverton Station first of all, especially for the night train to London; but he was not such a fool as to do anything so obvious. There was a station about twelve miles away, on a different line—Crosby Magna it was called; if he walked throughout the night he would be near the place by dawn and could take the first train wherever it went. He did not feel particularly tired; the whiskey had fortified him, and a certain rising exultation as he left the outskirts of Fulverton kept him tramping at a steady three miles an hour. It must be just about the close of the second performance by now; they would be taking curtain calls, then chattering in the dressing rooms, looking forward to the usual Saturday supper at the lodginghouse. A decent crowd; he had been happy with them. He began to look back upon that life with a certain historic detachment; it was all over, and it would have had to be over soon, anyway, for a reason that now, for the first time, he admitted to himself. He had been growing too fond of that girl; gradually but insidiously the feeling had been growing in him, so that soon the only freedom he could have found would have been either away from her or with her altogether; it would soon have become impossible to keep on seeing her continually and meaninglessly in trains, dining rooms, theater backstages: impossible much longer to have suppressed the anxieties he had already begun to feel about all the chance contacts of their daily lives—whether she would be in or out at a certain hour, or would happen to sit next to him here or there, or who the man was who met and talked with her so long after the show. Such things had not mattered to him at first, partly because he had been so humble about himself—why should she bother about him at all, what had he to offer? She loved life, she loved people—be honest about it, she loved men. He had even, at first, experienced a sardonic pleasure in seeing her warm to the chance encounters that fill the spare moments of stage life—his look, as he said good-night to her when he was going home to bed and she to a party somewhere, had often contained the message—Have a good time, you’ve done all you can for me, the rest I must do myself; so thank you again and good luck.

That was his message to her now, as he walked from Fulverton to Crosby Magna and heard the chime of midnight from a distant clock. But he knew that it could not have been so had he stayed with the company, so that actually his leaving was well-timed, an escape from bondage that would soon have become intolerable.

He reached Crosby Magna towards dawn—a small deserted country station on a single line. There was a time-table pasted up from which he discovered that the first train was a local to Fellingham at ten minutes past five. He had over an hour to wait, and spent it leaning against his bag on the station platform. He felt rather drowsy; it was pleasant to rest there, with the sunrise on his face. Presently he realized that a man was staring down at him.