The Penguin Book of First World War Stories (33 page)

He even felt tired and exhausted, as though he had but now passed through a great emotional experience.

And all these sensations were clear and precious to him. He treasured them, standing there, breathing deeply, as though he were in new air of some high altitude. The boom of Big Ben came suddenly across the silence like a summoning voice across waste, deserted country, and he went home…

When he awoke next morning he was aware that something had happened to him, and he did not know what it was. He lay there definitely beating back an impulse to spring out of bed, hurry through his bath, dress, and have breakfast, and then – what? He had not felt such an impulse since his return from France, and it could not be that he felt it now simply because he had, last night, met two dirty, bedraggled old people and helped them home.

He laughed. Sheraton, hanging his shirt on the back of a chair, turned.

‘Well, you're feeling better this morning, sir,' he said.

‘Yes, I am,' said Tom, ‘and I'm damned if I know why.' Nevertheless, although he did not know why, before the morning was out he found himself once more behind Victoria Street and climbing the stairs of Porker's Buildings. He had strange experiences that morning. To many they would have been disappointing. The old man was silent: not a word would he say. His attitude was one of haughty, autocratic superiority. Maria disgusted Tom. She was polite, cringing even, and as poisonous as a snake. She stated her wants quite modestly: had it not been for her age you would have thought her a typical image of the down-trodden, subjected poor. Her eyes glittered.

‘Well, you
are
a nasty old creature.' Tom turned from her and shook Andrew by the shoulder.

‘Well?' said Andrew.

‘There's nothing now I can do?' asked Tom.

‘Except get out,' said Andrew.

Another old woman came in – then a young man. A fine specimen this last – a local prize-fighter, it appeared – chest like a wall, thick, stumpy thighs, face of a beetroot colour, nose twisted, ears like saucers. The old woman, Maria's friend, was voluble. She explained a great deal to Tom. She was used, it seemed, to speaking in public. They could afford, she explained, to be indifferent to the ‘Quality' now, because a time was very shortly coming when they would have everything, and the Quality nothing. It had happened far away in Russia, and it was about to happen here. A good thing too… At last the poor people could appear as they really were, hold their heads up. Only a month or two…

‘You're a Bolshevist,' said Tom.

Long words did not distress the old lady. ‘A fine time's coming,' she said.

Maria did not refuse the food and the finery and the money. ‘You think,' said Tom, as a final word to her old lady friend, ‘that I'm doing this because I'm charitable, because I love you, or some nonsense of that kind. Not at all. I'm doing it because I'm interested, and I haven't been interested in anything for months.'

He arranged with the pugilist to be present at his next encounter, somewhere in Blackfriars,
⁴
next Monday night.

‘It's against the Bermondsey Chick,' Battling Bill explained huskily. ‘I've got one on him. Your money's safe enough…'

Tom gave Maria a parting smile.

‘I don't like you,' he said, ‘and I can see that you positively hate me, but we're getting along very nicely…'

Claribel was interested as anyone, and she had, of course, her own theories. These theories changed from day to day, but the fact, potent to the world and beyond argument, was that
Tom was ‘Nobody' no longer. Life had come back to him; he was eagerly, passionately ‘out' upon some secret quest.

It amused Claribel to watch her friends and relations as they set forth, determined to lay bare Tom's mystery. Mrs Matcham, who had her own very definite reasons for not allowing Tom to escape, declared that of course it was a ‘woman'. But this did not elucidate the puzzle. Had it been some married woman, Tom would not have been so perfectly ‘open' about his disappearances. He never denied for a moment that he disappeared; he rather liked them to know that he did. It was plainly nothing of which he was ashamed. He had been seen at no restaurants with anyone – no chorus-girl, no girl at all, in fact. Dollie Pym-Dorset, who was a little sharper than the others, simply because she was more determinedly predatory, declared that Tom was learning a trade.

‘He will turn up suddenly one day,' she said, ‘as a chauffeur, or an engineer, or a bootblack. He's trying to find something to fill up his day.'

‘He's found it,' Lucile cried with her shrill laugh. ‘Whatever it is, it keeps him going. He's never in; Sheraton declares he doesn't know where he goes. It's disgusting…'

Old Lord Ferris, who took an indulgent interest in all the Duddon developments because of his paternal regard for Mrs Matcham, declared that it was one of these new religions. ‘They're simply all over the place; a feller catches 'em as he would the measles. Why, I know a chap…'

But no. Tom didn't look as though he had found a new religion. He had made no new resolutions, dropped no profanities, lost in no way his sense of humour. No, it didn't look like a religion.

Claribel's convictions about it were not very positive. She was simply so glad that he had become ‘Somebody' again, and she had perhaps a malicious pleasure in the disappointment of ‘the set'. It amused her to see the golden purse slipping out of their eager fingers, and they so determined to stay it.

The pursuit continued for weeks. Everyone was drawn into it. Even old Lord John Beaminster, who was beset with debts and gout, stirred up his sister Adela to see whether she couldn't ‘discover' something…

It was Henry Matcham who finally achieved the revelation. He came bursting in upon them all. The secret was out. Tom had turned ‘pi –'
⁵
He was working down in the East End
⁶
to save souls.

The news was greeted with incredulity. ‘Tom soul-saving? Impossible! Tom the cynic, the irreligious, the despiser of dogma, the arbitrator of indifference – Incredible.'

But Matcham knew. There could be no doubt. A man he knew in Brooks's had a brother a parson in an East-End Settlement.
⁷
The parson knew Tom well, said he was always down there, in the men's clubs and about the streets.

They looked at one another in dismay. Claribel laughed to see them. What was to be done? Tom must be saved, of course; but how? No plan could be evoked. ‘Well, the first thing we must do,' said Mrs Matcham, ‘is to get a plain statement from himself about it.'

They sent Claribel as their ambassador, realizing, apparently suddenly, that ‘she had some sense', and that Tom liked her.

She told him, with a twinkle in her eye, what they wanted.

‘They're all very much upset by what you're doing, Tom. They don't want to lose you, you see. They're fond of you. And they don't think it
can
be good for you being all the time with Bolsheviks and dirty foreigners. You'll only be taken in by them, they think, and robbed; and that they can't bear. Especially they think that now after the war everyone ought to stand together, shoulder to shoulder, you know, class by class. That's the way Henry Matcham puts it.

‘Of course, they admire you very much, what you're doing – they think it very noble. But all this slumming seems to them… what did Dollie call it?… Oh, yes,
vieux jeu
⁸
… the sort of thing young men did in the nineties, centuries ago. Oxford House,
⁹
and all that. It seems rather stupid to them to go back to it now, especially when the war's shown the danger of Bolshevism.'

Tom laughed. ‘Why, Carrie,' he said, ‘how well you know them!'

She laughed too. ‘Anyway,' she said, ‘I know you better than they do.'

Tom agreed that it would be a very good thing for them all to meet.

‘They've got what's happened just a trifle wrong,' he said. ‘It's only fair to clear things up.'

They all appeared on the appointed day – Mrs Matcham, as president, in a lovely rose-coloured tulle for which she was just a little too old, Hattie, Dollie, Harwood Dorset, Henry Matcham, Pelham Duddon, Morgraunt and Lucile, Dora, and of course Claribel. The event had the appearance of one of the dear old parties.

The flat was just as beautiful, the tea as sumptuous, Sheraton as perfect. They hung around the same chairs, the same table, in all their finery and beauty and expense. They were as sure of conquest as they had ever been.

Tom sat on the red leather top of the fire-guard and faced them.

Mrs Matcham led the attack.

‘Now, dear old Tom,' she said, in that cooing and persuasive voice of hers, so well known and so well liked; ‘you know that we all love you.'

‘Yes, I know you do,' said Tom, grinning.

‘We do. All of us. You've just been a hero, and we're all proud to death of you. It's only our pride and our love for you that allows us to interfere. We don't
want
to interfere, but we do want to know what's happening. Henry has heard that you're working down in the East End, doing splendidly, and it's just like your dear old noble self, but is it wise? Are you taking advice? Won't those people down there do you in, so to speak? I know that this is a time, of course, when we've all got to study social conditions. No thinking man or woman can possibly look round and
not
see that there is a great deal… a whole lot… well, anyway, you know what I mean, Tom. But is it right, without consulting any of us, to go down to all those queer people? They can't like you really, you know. It's only for what they can get out of you, and all that. After all, your
own
people
are your own people
, aren't they, Tom dear?'

‘I don't know.' Tom looked up at her smiling. ‘But I don't think that's exactly the point. They may be or they may not… Look here. You've got one or two wrong ideas about this.
I want you to have the truth, and then we won't have to bother one another any more. You talk about my working and being noble, and so on. That's the most awful Tommy-rot. I'll tell you exactly what happened. I came back from France. At least, no, I didn't come back; but my body came back, if you know what I mean. I stayed over there. At least, I suppose that is what happened. I didn't know myself what it was. I just know that I didn't exist. You all used to come to tea here and be awfully nice and so on, but I didn't hear a word any of you said. I hope that doesn't sound rude, but I'm trying to tell exactly what occurred. I didn't know what was the matter with me – I wasn't anybody at all. I was Nobody. I didn't exist; and I asked Sheraton, and he didn't know either. And then, one night –'

Tom paused. The dramatic moment had come. He knew the kind of thing that they were expecting, and when he thought of the reality he laughed.

‘One night – well, you won't believe me, I suppose, if I tell you I was very unhappy – no, unhappy is too strong – I was just nothing at all. You'd all been here to tea, and I went out for a walk down Bond Street to clear my head. It was raining and I found two old things taking shelter under a wooden standing. The old lady fainted while I was talking to them, and I saw them home – and – well, that's all!'

‘That's all!'cried Millie Matcham. ‘Do you mean, Tom, that you fell in love with the old woman?'

Her laugh was shrill and anxious.

He laughed back. ‘Fell in love! That's just like you, Millie. You think that love must be in it every time. There isn't any love in this – and there isn't any devotion, or religion, or high-mindedness, or trying to improve them, or any of the things you imagine. On the contrary,
they
hate
me
, and I don't think that I'm very fond of
them
–except that I suppose one has a sort of affection for anybody who's brought one back to life again – when one didn't want to die!'

Henry Matcham broke in: ‘Tom, look here –upon my word, I don't believe that one of us has the least idea
what
you're talking about.'

Tom looked around at them all and, in spite of himself, he was surprised at the change in their faces. The surprise was a shock. They were no longer regarding him with a gaze of tender, almost proprietary interest. The eyes that stared at his were almost hostile, at any rate suspicious, alarmed. Alarmed about what? Possibly his sanity – possibly the misgiving that in a moment he was going to do or say something that would shock them all.

He realized as he looked at them that he had come, quite unexpectedly, upon the crisis of his life. They could understand it, were he philanthropic, religious, sentimental. They were prepared for those things; they had read novels, they knew that such moods did occur. What they were not prepared for, what they most certainly would not stand, was exactly the explanation that he was about to give them. That would insult them, assault the very temple of their most sacred assurances. As he looked he knew that if he now spoke the truth he would for ever cut himself off from them. They would regard his case as hopeless. It would be in the future ‘Poor Tom'.

He hated that – and for what was he giving them up? For the world that distrusted him, disbelieved in him, and would kill him if it could…

The Rubicon
¹⁰
was before him. He looked at its swirling waters, then, without any further hesitation, he crossed it. He was never to return again…

‘I'm sorry to disappoint you all,' he said. ‘There's no sentimental motive behind my action – no desire to make any people better, nothing fine at all. It simply is, as I've said already, that those two people brought me back to life again. I don't know what, except that I was suddenly interested in them. I didn't like them, and they
hated
me. Now I've become interested in their friends and relations. I don't want to
improve
them. They wouldn't let me if I did. I came back from France nobody at all. What happened there had simply killed all my interest in life. And – I'm awfully sorry to say it – but none of you brought my interest back. I think the centre of interests changed. It's as though there were some animal under the floor, and the part of the room that he's under is the part that you look at, because
he's restless and it quivers. Well, he's shifted his position, that's all. You aren't on the interesting part of the floor any longer. I do hate to be rude and personal – but you have driven me to it. All of you are getting back to exactly what you were before the war: there's almost no change at all! And you're none of you interesting. I'm just as bad – but I want to go where the interesting human beings are, and there are more in the dirty streets than the clean ones. In books like
Marcella
,
¹¹
years ago people went out of their own class because they wanted to do “good”. I don't want to do good to anyone, but I do want to keep alive now that I've come back to life again. And – that's all there is to it,' he ended lamely.

He had done as he had expected. He had offended them all mortally. He was arrogant, proud, supercilious, and a little mad. And they saw, finally, that they had lost him. No more money for any of them.

‘Well,' said Henry Matcham at last, ‘if you want to know, Tom, I think that's about the rottenest explanation I've ever heard. Of course, you're covering something up. But I'm sure we don't want to penetrate your secret if you don't like us to.'

‘There
isn't
any secret.' Tom was beginning to be angry. ‘I tell you for the hundredth time I'm not going to start soup kitchens, or found mission rooms, or anything like that, but I don't want any more of these silly tea-parties or perpetual revues, or – or–'

‘Or any of us,' Dollie, her cheeks flushed with angry colour, broke in. ‘All Tom's been trying to explain to us is that he thinks we're a dull lot, and the Bolsheviks in the slums are more lively –'

‘No,' Tom broke in; ‘Dollie, that isn't fair. I don't want to pick and choose according to class any more. I don't want to be anything ever again with a name to it – like a Patriot, or a Democrat, or a Bolshevik, or an Anti-Bolshevik, or a Capitalist. I'm going by Individuals wherever they are. I – Oh, forgive me,' he broke off, ‘I'm preaching; I didn't mean to. It's a thing I hate. But it's so strange – you none of you know how strange it is – being dead, so that you felt nothing, and minded nothing, and thought nothing, and then suddenly waking –'

But they had had enough. Tommy was trying to teach them. Teach
them
! And
Tommy
!…

They ‘must be going'–sadly, angrily, indignantly they melted away. Tom was very sorry: there was nothing to be done.

Only Claribel, taking his hand for a moment, whispered:

‘It's all right. They'll all come back later. They'll be wanting things.'

They were gone –all of them. He was alone in his room. He drew back the curtains and looked down over the grey misty stream of Duke Street scattered with the marigolds of the evening lights.

He threw open a window, and the roar of London came up to him like the rattle-rattle-rattle of a weaver's shuttle.