Pandemonium.’
In old days when they were living in the Hayman house on Campden Hill and reading for examinations which, by some curious fatality not unconnected with brains, they never passed, so that they had been compelled to remain without professions, there had been few evenings when they could not be observed leaning over the balustrade of the Promenade at that establishment. Thence had they watched the acrobats, ventriloquists, conjurers, ballad singers, comedians, and ballet dancers of the period, never manifesting approbation, but not infrequently with a sort of smile bitten in on their faces. Generally they left as much with each other as they arrived, occasionally they left without each other, but with somebody else. It was not known even to each other whether they ever spoke to those others with whom they left.
Having been out of London since the Boer war broke out they had not yet heard ‘Tommy Atkins’ sung; and when this inevitable item was reached the effect on Giles was observed by Jesse to be as noticeable as the effect on Jesse observed by Giles. After a certain resistance to words and tune due to the need for maintaining ‘form’ their heads began almost imperceptibly to move in time to the refrain, and, a line or so behind the rest of the audience, their mouths began in a muffled manner to take up the chorus. The effect on them, in fact, was distinctly emotional, which to some extent explains what happened afterwards. The song was scarcely over and a ventriloquist had taken his seat on the stage with a midshipman on his knee when Jesse’s attention was diverted by smothered voices behind him. His hearing, trained by listening in coverts for the music of hounds or the flushing of birds, was sharp, and he distinctly heard the following conversation:
“If you don’t get me ten pounds to-night it’ll be the worse for you.”
“Ten pounds? How can I?”
“Well, don’t you come home without it.”
“Oh! You are a brute!”
“All right, my girl!”
Jesse turned round. He saw, moving away, a hulking fellow of an unpleasant type, and a young woman, rouged but rather pretty, under a big hat, looking after him.
“Hear that, Giles?”
Giles nodded. “Swine!”
Having thus registered their disapproval, they re-concentrated their attention on the stage. It was during the song of a gentleman in a kilt that Jesse felt his arm pressed, and heard a voice in his ear say:
“Oh! Beg pardon! He IS funny, isn’t he?”
The same rouged young woman in the big hat was leaning over the balustrade beside him.
She was really young; her mouth was pretty if somewhat artificial, and her eyes, which were dark, looked scared.
“Are you having a night out?” she whispered.
Jesse shrugged his shoulders. Then the strains of ‘Tommy Atkins’ moving within him, he said:
“I heard what that swine said to you just now.”
The professional smile died off the young woman’s lips. She crossed her arms on her breast, and air escaped her in a long: “Oh!” Jesse edged his arm away from hers. A minute passed; then her arm pressed his again, and out of the corner of his eye, accustomed to the observation of woodcock, he could see her glancing furtively round. The ‘swine’ in question was just behind again with two male friends; he was bending on the girl such a look that Jesse said with surprising suddenness:
“Send the swine to hell!”
“What?” said Giles.
“That swine behind us. Swine who live on girls!”
“Steady, old man!” said Giles.
The man and his companions moved on, muttering.
“Oh!” said the girl under her breath: “whatever made you? I’ll never dare to go ‘ome to-night. What shall I do?”
Jesse did not answer, having no idea. An objection to scenes, rooted in his type, caused him to resume his stare at the stage, now occupied by a male dancer with brisk and glancing legs; but he was conscious of a tear slowly trickling down the girl’s cheek, making a narrow track in her rouge and powder.
“You wouldn’t take me on, I suppose?” he heard her say.
Jesse shook his head.
“Only up for the night. Going to the war.”
“Oh!” said the girl, blankly. “HE WILL wallop me.”
Jesse stared.
“D’you mean to say–”
The girl nodded violently.
“Hear that, Giles?”
Giles grunted.
The girl stealthily removed the traces of emotion.
Jesse turned, and, leaning back against the balustrade, surveyed the promenaders. Giles, with mechanical conformity, had done the same. The girl continued to stare at the stage. If she had been ‘kidding’ him–Jesse thought–she would have turned too; besides, her face had gone a queer colour.
“I believe she’s going to cat,” he murmured to Giles.
They both looked at her, but she seemed to have recovered from the impulse, and was sniffing at a bottle of salts. Deciding to move away from her, Jesse had raised his hand to his hat, when he caught sight of the ‘swine’ among a group of men, all of whom were gazing in his direction.
“See those swine?” he said.
Giles nodded.
The group, seeing the brothers staring at them, moved on. Jesse turned to the girl.
“Look here,” he said, “you go to an hotel for the night. We’ll see you there. Better come now.”
The girl, who still looked very queer, turned from the balustrade.
“Thank you very much,” she said, “but I ‘aven’t any money.”
“That’s all right,” said Jesse. “Come on!”
They crossed the promenade and went down the steps with the girl between them.
“D’you know an hotel?” said Jesse, in the Square. “They won’t take you at ours–men only.”
“There’s Robin’s Hotel, off Covent Garden.”
“All right; that’s on our way. Here’s a fiver for you. You’re looking queer.”
“I feel queer,” said the girl, simply. They walked a little in silence, and then she said:
“I couldn’t have stood being walloped to-night–I just couldn’t.”
“Swine!” said Jesse. Giles growled.
Turning into Bedford Street, the girl touched Jesse’s arm.
“Oh!” she said in a scared voice; “they’re after us!”
About fifty yards behind, five men were strolling, keeping their distance, but quite clearly following. Instinctively the Dromios increased their pace, turning into Henrietta Street.
“If they turn down here too, we’ll know,” said Giles.
“I think I’m going to faint,” said the girl.
“Bosh!” said Jesse. “If they follow, we’ll stop them at the bottom here. You can slip on to the hotel sharp. They won’t know where you are. Take her other arm, Giles.”
At the Covent Garden end, he looked back; the men were just turning into Henrietta Street. He gave the girl a shove.
“Now run for it! Don’t be a little fool! They shan’t see where you go; we’ll stop ’em here. Cut on!”
The girl caught her breath, and stammered out:
“Oh! Thank you!” Then, helped by a push from Giles, she vanished round the corner. The Dromios began walking with extreme slowness back towards the men. Giles hummed out of tune, the air of ‘Tommy Atkins.’ The five pursuers, who had been hurrying, slowed up, and came to a halt. Indeed, without going off the pavement, the two parties could not pass each other. ‘That swine’ who was the biggest of the lot, took a step forward, and raising his fist, thus addressed the Dromios.
“We want you two – . What the – did you mean by what you said just now? Swine indeed? Swine yourselves!”
The Dromios did not answer.
“You – have got to learn manners, and you’re – well going to.”
Giles turned to Jesse, “These sportsmen,” he said, “are rather a bore.”
“Give ’em socks, boys!” said the ‘swine.’
The proceedings which followed had elements so unsporting as to offend every instinct of the Dromios. From the point of view of ‘form’ the whole thing was deplorable; the only feature in good taste being the first blow, a lefthander from Giles which tapped the ‘swine’s claret.’ He was instantly thereafter involved with three of the ‘sportsmen’ and Jesse with the other two. The Dromios were expert boxers, but their opponents butted, kicked, and collared below the belt, so that the brothers were unable to assume any attitude other than those in which circumstances placed them. They were, however, lean and in hard condition, their winds were good, and they fought like tiger cats. The sight of Giles, overborne by weight, being dragged horizontally, so stimulated Jesse that, contrary to all the canons of sportsmanship, he brought his knee up against the chin of one of his opponents; springing at the other, he seized him by the throat in a manner totally unorthodox, and rammed his head against the lintel of a door, then, dashing to Giles’s rescue he so socked one of the ‘sportsmen’ behind the ear that he fell prone. The other two let go of Giles, and the two Dromios were able to place themselves in proper postures of defence. Thereon the combat ceased as instantly as it had begun, the ‘sportsmen’ vanished and the Dromios were left in an empty Covent Garden. Giles had a cut on his cheekbone, a broken knee, a rent in the tail of his overcoat; Jesse a bruised jaw. Both their ties had come untied, both their Opera hats were in the gutter. In silence they retied their ties, pinned up the rent, brushed each other, recovered their hats, and walked on towards their hotel.
Going up to their bedrooms, they washed, plastered Giles’s cheek, bound a handkerchief round his knee, put on smoking jackets, and went down to the billiard-room. There in a corner they sat down, ordered themselves whiskies and sodas, and lit their pipes.
“Those sportsmen!” said Giles. “They got what for, all right!” said Jesse. Both grinned, and for a long time, in silence, gazed before them with the same hungry expression in their thrusting grey eyes.
“Hang that Judy!” said Jesse suddenly. Giles nodded. Soon after, they retired to bed, and completed their night out.
The next day they enlisted, and a month later ‘went out’ on horses.
A FORSYTE ENCOUNTERS THE PEOPLE, 1917
In October 1917, when the air raids on London were acutely monotonous, there was a marked tendency on the part of Eustace Forsyte to take Turkish baths. The most fastidious of his family, who had carried imperturbability of demeanour to the pitch of defiance, he had perceived in the Turkish bath a gesture, as of a finger to a nose, in the face of a boring peril. As soon then as the maroons of alarm went off, he would issue from his rooms or Club and head straight for Northumberland Avenue. With his springy and slightly arched walk, as of a man spurning a pavement, he would move deliberately among the hurrying throng; and, undressing without haste, would lay his form, remarkably trim and slim for a man well over fifty, on a couch in the hottest room at about the moment when less self-contained citizens were merely sweating in their shoes. Confirmed in the tastes of a widower of somewhat self-centred character, he gave but few damns to what happened to anything–he it was who used to set his study on fire at school in order to practise being cool in moments of danger, and at college, on being dared, had jumped through a first-floor window and been picked up sensible. On his back, with his pale clean-shaven face composed to a slight superciliousness and his dark grey eyes, below the banding towel, fixed on those golden stars that tick the domed ceilings of any room with aspirations to be oriental, he would think of Maidenhead, or of Chelsea china, and now and then glance at his skin to see if it was glistening. Not a good mixer, as the saying was, he seldom spoke to his bathing fellows, and they mostly fat. Thus would he pass the hours of menace, and when the ‘all clear’ had sounded, return to his club or to his rooms with the slight smile of one who has perspired well. There he would partake of a repast feeling that he had cheated the Boche.
On a certain occasion, however, towards the end of that invasive period, events did not run true to type. The alarm had sounded, and Eustace had pursued his usual course, but the raid had not matured. Cool and hungry, he emerged from the Baths about eight o’clock and set his face towards the Strand. He had arrived opposite Charing Cross when a number of explosions attracted his attention; people began to run past him and a special constable cried loudly: “Take cover, take cover!” Eustace frowned. A second Turkish bath was out of the question, and he stood still wondering what he should do, the only person in the street not in somewhat violent motion. Before he could make up his mind whether to walk back to his club or on to the restaurant where he had meant to dine, a large and burly ‘special’ had seized him by the shoulders and pushed him into the entrance of the Tube Station.
“Take cover, can’t you!” he said, rudely.
Eustace freed his sleeve. “I don’t wish to.”
“Then you–well will,” replied the ‘special.’
Perceiving that he could only proceed over the considerable body of this intrusive being, Eustace shrugged his shoulders and endeavoured to stand still again, but an inflowing tide of his fellow-beings forced him down the slope into the hallway and on towards the stairs. Here he made a resolute effort to squeeze his way back towards the air. It was totally unavailing, and he was swept on till he was standing about halfway down the stairs among a solid mass of men, women and children of types that seemed to him in no way attractive. He had frequently noticed that mankind in the bulk is unpleasing to the eye, the ear, and the nose; but this deduction had, as it were, been formed by his brain. It was now reinforced by his senses in a manner, to one purified by a Turkish bath, intensely vivid and unpleasing. The air in this rat-run, normally distasteful to Eustace, who never took the Tube, was rapidly becoming fetid, and he at once decided that he would rather brave all the shrapnel of all the anti-aircraft guns defending him than stay where he was. Unfortunately the decision was rendered nugatory by the close pressure of a stout woman with splotches on her face, who kept saying: “We’re all right in ’ere, ‘Enry”; by ‘Enry, a white-faced mechanician with a rat-gnawed moustache; by their spindle-legged child, who muttered at intervals: “I’ll kill that Kaiser”; and by two Jewish-looking youths, on whom Eustace had at once passed the verdict ‘better dead’! His back, moreover, was wedged partly against the front of a young woman smelling of stale powder who panted in one of his ears, and partly against the bow window of her partner, who, judging from the breeze that came from him, was a whisky-taster. On the slopes to right and left, and further to the front were dozens and dozens of other beings, none of whom had for Eustace any fascination. It was as if Fate had designed at one stroke to remove every vestige of the hedge which had hitherto divided him from ‘the general.’
Placing his handkerchief, well tinctured by eau-de-Cologne, to his nose, he tried to calculate: It would probably be a couple of hours before the ‘all clear’ sounded. Could he not squeeze his way very gradually to the entrance? His neighbours seemed to think that by being where they were they had ‘struck it lucky’ and scored off the by-our-lady Huns. Since they evidently had no intention of departing, it seemed to Eustace that they would prefer his room to his company. He was startled, therefore, when his attempt to escape was greeted by growling admonitions not to ‘go shovin’,’ ‘to keep still, couldn’t he,’ and other displeased comments. It was his first lesson in mob psychology: what was good enough for them was good enough for him. If he persisted, he would be considered a traitor to the body politic, and would meet with strenuous resistance! So he abandoned his design and endeavoured to make himself slimmer, that the bodies round him might be in contact with his shell rather than with his essence. Behind his fast evaporating eau-de-Cologne he developed a kind of preservative disdain of people who clearly preferred this stinking ant-heap to the shrapnel and bombs of the open. Had they no sense of smell; were they totally indifferent to heat, had they no pride that they let the Huns inflict on them this exquisite discomfort? Did none of them feel, with him, that the only becoming way to treat danger was to look down your nose at it?
On the contrary, all these people seemed to think that by taking refuge in the bowels of the earth they had triumphed over the enemy. Their mental pictures of being blown into little bits, or stunned by the shrapnel, must be more vivid than anything he could conjure up. And Eustace had a stab of vision. Good form discouraged the imagination till it had lost the power of painting. Like the French aristocrats who went unruffled to the guillotine, he felt that he would rather be blown up, or shot down, than share this ‘rat-run’ triumph of his neighbours. The more he looked at them, the more his nose twitched. Even the cheeriness with which they were accepting their rancid situation annoyed him. The sentiment of the spindly child: “I’ll kill that Kaiser,” awakened in him, for the first time since the war began, a fellow-feeling for the German Emperor; the simplification of responsibility adopted by his countrymen stood out so grotesquely in the saying of this cockney infant.
“He ought to be ‘ung,” said a voice to his right.
“My! Ain’t it hot here!” said a voice to his left. “I shall faint if it goes on much longer.”
‘It’ll stop her panting,’ thought Eustace, rubbing his ear.
“Am I standing on your foot, Sir?” asked the stout and splotchy woman.
“Thanks, not particularly.”
“Shift a bit, ‘Enry.”
“Shift a bit?” repeated the white-faced mechanician cheerfully: “That’s good, ain’t it? There’s not too much room, is there, Sir?”
The word ‘Sir’ thus repeated, or perhaps the first stirrings of a common humanity, moved Eustace to reply:
“The black hole of Calcutta’s not in it.”
“I’ll kill that Kaiser.”
“She don’t like these air-raids, and that’s a fact,” said the stout woman: “Do yer, Milly? But don’t you worry, dearie, we’re all right down ’ere.”
“Oh! You think so?” said Eustace.
“Ow! Yes! Everyone says the Tubes are safe.”
“What a comfort!”
As if with each opening of his lips some gas of rancour had escaped, Eustace felt almost well disposed to the little family which oppressed his front.
“Wish I ‘ad my girl ’ere,” said one of the Jewish youths, suddenly; “this is your cuddlin’ done for you, this is.”
“Strike me!” said the other.
‘Better dead!’ thought Eustace, even more emphatically.
“‘Ow long d’you give it, Sir?” said the mechanician, turning his white face a little.
“Another hour and a half, I suppose.”
“I’ll kill that Kaiser.”
“Stow it, Milly, you’ve said that before. One can ‘ave too much of a good thing, can’t one, Sir?”
“I was beginning to think so,” murmured Eustace.
“Well, she’s young to be knocked about like this. It gets on their nerves, ye know. I’ll be glad to get ‘er and the missis ‘ome, and that’s a fact.”
Something in the paper whiteness of his face, something in the tone of his hollow-chested voice, and the simple altruism of his remark, affected Eustace. He smelled of sweat and sawdust, but he was jolly decent!
And time went by, the heat and odour thickening; there was almost silence now. A voice said: “They’re a – long time abaht it!” and was greeted with a sighing clamour of acquiescence. All that crowded mass of beings had become preoccupied with the shifting of their limbs, the straining of their lungs towards any faint draught of air. Eustace had given up all speculation, his mind was concentrated blankly on the words: ‘Stand straight–stand straight!’ The spindly child, discouraged by the fleeting nature of success, had fallen into a sort of coma against his knee; he wondered whether she had ringworm; he wondered why everybody didn’t faint. The white-faced mechanician had encircled his wife’s waist. His face, ghostly patient, was the one thing Eustace noticed from time to time; it emerged as if supported by no body. Suddenly with a whispering sigh the young woman, behind, fell against his shoulder, and by a sort of miracle found space to crumple down. The mechanician’s white face came round:
“Poor lidy, she’s gone off!”
“Ah!” boomed the whisky-taster, “and no wonder, with this ‘eat.” He waggled his bowler hat above her head.
“Shove ‘er ‘ead between her knees,” said the mechanician.
Eustace pushed the head downwards, the whisky-taster applied a bunch of keys to her back. She came to with a loud sigh.
“Better for her dahn there,” said the mechanician, “the ‘ot air rises.”
And again time went on, with a ground bass of oaths and cheerios. Then the lights went out to a sound as if souls in an underworld had expressed their feelings. Eustace felt a shuddering upheaval pass through the huddled mass. A Cockney voice cried: “Are we dahn-‘earted?” And the movement subsided in a sort of dreadful calm.
Down below a woman shrieked; another and another took it up.
“‘Igh-strikes,” muttered the mechanician; “cover ‘er ears, Polly.” The child against Eustace’s knee had begun to whimper. “Milly, where was Moses when the light went out?”
Eustace greeted the sublime fatuity with a wry and wasted smile. He could feel the Jewish youths trying to elbow themselves out. “Stand still,” he said, sharply.
“That’s right, Sir,” said the mechanician; “no good makin’ ‘eavy weather of it.”
“Sing, you blighters–sing!” cried a voice: “‘When the fields were white wiv disies.’” And all around they howled a song which Eustace did not know; and then, abruptly as it had gone out, the light went up again. The song died in a prolonged “Aoh!” Eustace gazed around him. Tears were running down the splotchy woman’s cheeks. A smile of relief was twitching at the mechanician’s mouth. “The all clear’s gone! The all clear’s gone!… ‘Ip, ‘ip, ‘ooraay!” The cheering swelled past Eustace, and a swinging movement half lifted him from his feet.
“Catch hold of the child,” he said to the mechanician, “I’ve got her other hand.” Step by step they lifted her, under incredible pressure, with maddening slowness, into the hall. Eustace took a great breath, expanding his lungs while the crowd debouched into the street like an exploding shell. The white-faced mechanician had begun to cough, in a strangled manner alarming to hear. He stopped at last and said:
“That’s cleared the pipes. I’m greatly obliged to you, Sir; I dunno’ ow we’d ‘a got Milly up. She looks queer, that child.”
The child’s face, indeed, was whiter than her father’s, and her eyes were vacant.
“Do you live far?”
“Nao, just rahnd the corner, Sir.”
“Come on, then.”
They swung the child, whose legs continued to move mechanically, into the open. The street was buzzing with people emerging from shelter and making their way home. Eustace saw a clock’s face. Ten o’clock!
‘Damn these people,’ he thought. ‘The restaurants will be closed.’
The splotchy woman spoke as if answering his thought.
“We oughtn’t to keep the gentleman, ‘Enry, ‘e must be properly tired. I can ketch ‘old of Milly. Don’t you bother with us, Sir, and thank you kindly.”
“Not a bit,” said Eustace: “it’s nothing.”
“‘Ere we are, Sir,” said the mechanician, stopping at the side door of some business premises; “we live in the basement. If it’s not presuming, would you take a cup o’ tea with us?” And at this moment the child’s legs ceased to function altogether.
“‘Ere, Milly, ‘old up, dearie, we’re just ‘ome.”
But the child’s head sagged.
“She’s gone off–paw little thing!”
“Lift her!” said Eustace.
“Open the door, Mother, the key’s in my pocket; you go on and light the gas.”
They supported the spindly child, who now seemed to weigh a ton, down stone stairs into a basement, and laid her on a small bed in a room where all three evidently slept. The mechanician pressed her head down towards her feet.
“She’s comin’ to. Why, Milly, you’re in your bed, see! And now you’ll ‘ave a nice ‘ot cup o’ tea! There!”
“I’ll kill that Kaiser,” murmured the spindly child, her china-blue eyes fixed wonderingly on Eustace, her face waxy in the gaslight.
“Stir yer stumps, Mother, and get this gentleman a cup. A cup’ll do you good, Sir, you must be famished. Will you come in the kitchen and have a smoke, while she’s gettin’ it?”
A strange fellow-feeling pattered within Eustace looking at that white-faced altruist. He stretched out his cigarette case, shining, curved, and filled with gold-tipped cigarettes. The mechanician took one, held it for a second politely as who should imply: ‘Hardly my smoke, but since you are so kind.’
“Thank’ee, Sir. A smoke’ll do us both a bit o’ good, after that Tube. It was close in there.”
Eustace greeted the miracle of understatement with a smile.
“Not exactly fresh.”
“I’d ‘a come and ‘ad the raid comfortable at ‘ome, but the child was scared and the Tube just opposite. Well, it’s all in the day’s work, I suppose; but it comes ‘ard on children and elderly people, to say nothing of the women. ‘Ope you’re feelin’ better, Sir. You looked very white when you come out.”
“Thanks,” said Eustace, thinking: ‘Not so white as you, my friend!’
“The tea won’t be a minute. We got the gas ’ere, it boils a kettle a treat. You sit down, old girl, I’ll get it for yer.”
Eustace went to the window. The kitchen was hermetically sealed.
“Do you mind if I open the window,” he said, “I’m still half suffocated from that Tube.”
On the window-sill, in company with potted geraniums, he breathed the dark damp air of a London basement, and his eyes roved listlessly over walls decorated with coloured cuts from Christmas supplements, and china ornaments perched wherever was a spare flat inch. These presents from seaside municipalities aroused in him a sort of fearful sympathy.
“I see you collect china,” he said, at last.
“Ah! The missis likes a bit of china,” said the mechanician, turning his white face illumined by the gas ring; “reminds ‘er of ‘olidays. It’s a cheerful thing, I think meself, though it takes a bit o’ dustin’.”
“You’re right there,” said Eustace, his soul fluttering suddenly with a feather brush above his own precious Ming. Ming and the present from Margate! The mechanician was stirring the teapot.
“Weak for me, if you don’t mind,” said Eustace, hastily.
The mechanician poured into three cups, one of which he brought to Eustace with a jug of milk and a basin of damp white sugar.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
In old days when they were living in the Hayman house on Campden Hill and reading for examinations which, by some curious fatality not unconnected with brains, they never passed, so that they had been compelled to remain without professions, there had been few evenings when they could not be observed leaning over the balustrade of the Promenade at that establishment. Thence had they watched the acrobats, ventriloquists, conjurers, ballad singers, comedians, and ballet dancers of the period, never manifesting approbation, but not infrequently with a sort of smile bitten in on their faces. Generally they left as much with each other as they arrived, occasionally they left without each other, but with somebody else. It was not known even to each other whether they ever spoke to those others with whom they left.
Having been out of London since the Boer war broke out they had not yet heard ‘Tommy Atkins’ sung; and when this inevitable item was reached the effect on Giles was observed by Jesse to be as noticeable as the effect on Jesse observed by Giles. After a certain resistance to words and tune due to the need for maintaining ‘form’ their heads began almost imperceptibly to move in time to the refrain, and, a line or so behind the rest of the audience, their mouths began in a muffled manner to take up the chorus. The effect on them, in fact, was distinctly emotional, which to some extent explains what happened afterwards. The song was scarcely over and a ventriloquist had taken his seat on the stage with a midshipman on his knee when Jesse’s attention was diverted by smothered voices behind him. His hearing, trained by listening in coverts for the music of hounds or the flushing of birds, was sharp, and he distinctly heard the following conversation:
“If you don’t get me ten pounds to-night it’ll be the worse for you.”
“Ten pounds? How can I?”
“Well, don’t you come home without it.”
“Oh! You are a brute!”
“All right, my girl!”
Jesse turned round. He saw, moving away, a hulking fellow of an unpleasant type, and a young woman, rouged but rather pretty, under a big hat, looking after him.
“Hear that, Giles?”
Giles nodded. “Swine!”
Having thus registered their disapproval, they re-concentrated their attention on the stage. It was during the song of a gentleman in a kilt that Jesse felt his arm pressed, and heard a voice in his ear say:
“Oh! Beg pardon! He IS funny, isn’t he?”
The same rouged young woman in the big hat was leaning over the balustrade beside him.
She was really young; her mouth was pretty if somewhat artificial, and her eyes, which were dark, looked scared.
“Are you having a night out?” she whispered.
Jesse shrugged his shoulders. Then the strains of ‘Tommy Atkins’ moving within him, he said:
“I heard what that swine said to you just now.”
The professional smile died off the young woman’s lips. She crossed her arms on her breast, and air escaped her in a long: “Oh!” Jesse edged his arm away from hers. A minute passed; then her arm pressed his again, and out of the corner of his eye, accustomed to the observation of woodcock, he could see her glancing furtively round. The ‘swine’ in question was just behind again with two male friends; he was bending on the girl such a look that Jesse said with surprising suddenness:
“Send the swine to hell!”
“What?” said Giles.
“That swine behind us. Swine who live on girls!”
“Steady, old man!” said Giles.
The man and his companions moved on, muttering.
“Oh!” said the girl under her breath: “whatever made you? I’ll never dare to go ‘ome to-night. What shall I do?”
Jesse did not answer, having no idea. An objection to scenes, rooted in his type, caused him to resume his stare at the stage, now occupied by a male dancer with brisk and glancing legs; but he was conscious of a tear slowly trickling down the girl’s cheek, making a narrow track in her rouge and powder.
“You wouldn’t take me on, I suppose?” he heard her say.
Jesse shook his head.
“Only up for the night. Going to the war.”
“Oh!” said the girl, blankly. “HE WILL wallop me.”
Jesse stared.
“D’you mean to say–”
The girl nodded violently.
“Hear that, Giles?”
Giles grunted.
The girl stealthily removed the traces of emotion.
Jesse turned, and, leaning back against the balustrade, surveyed the promenaders. Giles, with mechanical conformity, had done the same. The girl continued to stare at the stage. If she had been ‘kidding’ him–Jesse thought–she would have turned too; besides, her face had gone a queer colour.
“I believe she’s going to cat,” he murmured to Giles.
They both looked at her, but she seemed to have recovered from the impulse, and was sniffing at a bottle of salts. Deciding to move away from her, Jesse had raised his hand to his hat, when he caught sight of the ‘swine’ among a group of men, all of whom were gazing in his direction.
“See those swine?” he said.
Giles nodded.
The group, seeing the brothers staring at them, moved on. Jesse turned to the girl.
“Look here,” he said, “you go to an hotel for the night. We’ll see you there. Better come now.”
The girl, who still looked very queer, turned from the balustrade.
“Thank you very much,” she said, “but I ‘aven’t any money.”
“That’s all right,” said Jesse. “Come on!”
They crossed the promenade and went down the steps with the girl between them.
“D’you know an hotel?” said Jesse, in the Square. “They won’t take you at ours–men only.”
“There’s Robin’s Hotel, off Covent Garden.”
“All right; that’s on our way. Here’s a fiver for you. You’re looking queer.”
“I feel queer,” said the girl, simply. They walked a little in silence, and then she said:
“I couldn’t have stood being walloped to-night–I just couldn’t.”
“Swine!” said Jesse. Giles growled.
Turning into Bedford Street, the girl touched Jesse’s arm.
“Oh!” she said in a scared voice; “they’re after us!”
About fifty yards behind, five men were strolling, keeping their distance, but quite clearly following. Instinctively the Dromios increased their pace, turning into Henrietta Street.
“If they turn down here too, we’ll know,” said Giles.
“I think I’m going to faint,” said the girl.
“Bosh!” said Jesse. “If they follow, we’ll stop them at the bottom here. You can slip on to the hotel sharp. They won’t know where you are. Take her other arm, Giles.”
At the Covent Garden end, he looked back; the men were just turning into Henrietta Street. He gave the girl a shove.
“Now run for it! Don’t be a little fool! They shan’t see where you go; we’ll stop ’em here. Cut on!”
The girl caught her breath, and stammered out:
“Oh! Thank you!” Then, helped by a push from Giles, she vanished round the corner. The Dromios began walking with extreme slowness back towards the men. Giles hummed out of tune, the air of ‘Tommy Atkins.’ The five pursuers, who had been hurrying, slowed up, and came to a halt. Indeed, without going off the pavement, the two parties could not pass each other. ‘That swine’ who was the biggest of the lot, took a step forward, and raising his fist, thus addressed the Dromios.
“We want you two – . What the – did you mean by what you said just now? Swine indeed? Swine yourselves!”
The Dromios did not answer.
“You – have got to learn manners, and you’re – well going to.”
Giles turned to Jesse, “These sportsmen,” he said, “are rather a bore.”
“Give ’em socks, boys!” said the ‘swine.’
The proceedings which followed had elements so unsporting as to offend every instinct of the Dromios. From the point of view of ‘form’ the whole thing was deplorable; the only feature in good taste being the first blow, a lefthander from Giles which tapped the ‘swine’s claret.’ He was instantly thereafter involved with three of the ‘sportsmen’ and Jesse with the other two. The Dromios were expert boxers, but their opponents butted, kicked, and collared below the belt, so that the brothers were unable to assume any attitude other than those in which circumstances placed them. They were, however, lean and in hard condition, their winds were good, and they fought like tiger cats. The sight of Giles, overborne by weight, being dragged horizontally, so stimulated Jesse that, contrary to all the canons of sportsmanship, he brought his knee up against the chin of one of his opponents; springing at the other, he seized him by the throat in a manner totally unorthodox, and rammed his head against the lintel of a door, then, dashing to Giles’s rescue he so socked one of the ‘sportsmen’ behind the ear that he fell prone. The other two let go of Giles, and the two Dromios were able to place themselves in proper postures of defence. Thereon the combat ceased as instantly as it had begun, the ‘sportsmen’ vanished and the Dromios were left in an empty Covent Garden. Giles had a cut on his cheekbone, a broken knee, a rent in the tail of his overcoat; Jesse a bruised jaw. Both their ties had come untied, both their Opera hats were in the gutter. In silence they retied their ties, pinned up the rent, brushed each other, recovered their hats, and walked on towards their hotel.
Going up to their bedrooms, they washed, plastered Giles’s cheek, bound a handkerchief round his knee, put on smoking jackets, and went down to the billiard-room. There in a corner they sat down, ordered themselves whiskies and sodas, and lit their pipes.
“Those sportsmen!” said Giles. “They got what for, all right!” said Jesse. Both grinned, and for a long time, in silence, gazed before them with the same hungry expression in their thrusting grey eyes.
“Hang that Judy!” said Jesse suddenly. Giles nodded. Soon after, they retired to bed, and completed their night out.
The next day they enlisted, and a month later ‘went out’ on horses.
A FORSYTE ENCOUNTERS THE PEOPLE, 1917
In October 1917, when the air raids on London were acutely monotonous, there was a marked tendency on the part of Eustace Forsyte to take Turkish baths. The most fastidious of his family, who had carried imperturbability of demeanour to the pitch of defiance, he had perceived in the Turkish bath a gesture, as of a finger to a nose, in the face of a boring peril. As soon then as the maroons of alarm went off, he would issue from his rooms or Club and head straight for Northumberland Avenue. With his springy and slightly arched walk, as of a man spurning a pavement, he would move deliberately among the hurrying throng; and, undressing without haste, would lay his form, remarkably trim and slim for a man well over fifty, on a couch in the hottest room at about the moment when less self-contained citizens were merely sweating in their shoes. Confirmed in the tastes of a widower of somewhat self-centred character, he gave but few damns to what happened to anything–he it was who used to set his study on fire at school in order to practise being cool in moments of danger, and at college, on being dared, had jumped through a first-floor window and been picked up sensible. On his back, with his pale clean-shaven face composed to a slight superciliousness and his dark grey eyes, below the banding towel, fixed on those golden stars that tick the domed ceilings of any room with aspirations to be oriental, he would think of Maidenhead, or of Chelsea china, and now and then glance at his skin to see if it was glistening. Not a good mixer, as the saying was, he seldom spoke to his bathing fellows, and they mostly fat. Thus would he pass the hours of menace, and when the ‘all clear’ had sounded, return to his club or to his rooms with the slight smile of one who has perspired well. There he would partake of a repast feeling that he had cheated the Boche.
On a certain occasion, however, towards the end of that invasive period, events did not run true to type. The alarm had sounded, and Eustace had pursued his usual course, but the raid had not matured. Cool and hungry, he emerged from the Baths about eight o’clock and set his face towards the Strand. He had arrived opposite Charing Cross when a number of explosions attracted his attention; people began to run past him and a special constable cried loudly: “Take cover, take cover!” Eustace frowned. A second Turkish bath was out of the question, and he stood still wondering what he should do, the only person in the street not in somewhat violent motion. Before he could make up his mind whether to walk back to his club or on to the restaurant where he had meant to dine, a large and burly ‘special’ had seized him by the shoulders and pushed him into the entrance of the Tube Station.
“Take cover, can’t you!” he said, rudely.
Eustace freed his sleeve. “I don’t wish to.”
“Then you–well will,” replied the ‘special.’
Perceiving that he could only proceed over the considerable body of this intrusive being, Eustace shrugged his shoulders and endeavoured to stand still again, but an inflowing tide of his fellow-beings forced him down the slope into the hallway and on towards the stairs. Here he made a resolute effort to squeeze his way back towards the air. It was totally unavailing, and he was swept on till he was standing about halfway down the stairs among a solid mass of men, women and children of types that seemed to him in no way attractive. He had frequently noticed that mankind in the bulk is unpleasing to the eye, the ear, and the nose; but this deduction had, as it were, been formed by his brain. It was now reinforced by his senses in a manner, to one purified by a Turkish bath, intensely vivid and unpleasing. The air in this rat-run, normally distasteful to Eustace, who never took the Tube, was rapidly becoming fetid, and he at once decided that he would rather brave all the shrapnel of all the anti-aircraft guns defending him than stay where he was. Unfortunately the decision was rendered nugatory by the close pressure of a stout woman with splotches on her face, who kept saying: “We’re all right in ’ere, ‘Enry”; by ‘Enry, a white-faced mechanician with a rat-gnawed moustache; by their spindle-legged child, who muttered at intervals: “I’ll kill that Kaiser”; and by two Jewish-looking youths, on whom Eustace had at once passed the verdict ‘better dead’! His back, moreover, was wedged partly against the front of a young woman smelling of stale powder who panted in one of his ears, and partly against the bow window of her partner, who, judging from the breeze that came from him, was a whisky-taster. On the slopes to right and left, and further to the front were dozens and dozens of other beings, none of whom had for Eustace any fascination. It was as if Fate had designed at one stroke to remove every vestige of the hedge which had hitherto divided him from ‘the general.’
Placing his handkerchief, well tinctured by eau-de-Cologne, to his nose, he tried to calculate: It would probably be a couple of hours before the ‘all clear’ sounded. Could he not squeeze his way very gradually to the entrance? His neighbours seemed to think that by being where they were they had ‘struck it lucky’ and scored off the by-our-lady Huns. Since they evidently had no intention of departing, it seemed to Eustace that they would prefer his room to his company. He was startled, therefore, when his attempt to escape was greeted by growling admonitions not to ‘go shovin’,’ ‘to keep still, couldn’t he,’ and other displeased comments. It was his first lesson in mob psychology: what was good enough for them was good enough for him. If he persisted, he would be considered a traitor to the body politic, and would meet with strenuous resistance! So he abandoned his design and endeavoured to make himself slimmer, that the bodies round him might be in contact with his shell rather than with his essence. Behind his fast evaporating eau-de-Cologne he developed a kind of preservative disdain of people who clearly preferred this stinking ant-heap to the shrapnel and bombs of the open. Had they no sense of smell; were they totally indifferent to heat, had they no pride that they let the Huns inflict on them this exquisite discomfort? Did none of them feel, with him, that the only becoming way to treat danger was to look down your nose at it?
On the contrary, all these people seemed to think that by taking refuge in the bowels of the earth they had triumphed over the enemy. Their mental pictures of being blown into little bits, or stunned by the shrapnel, must be more vivid than anything he could conjure up. And Eustace had a stab of vision. Good form discouraged the imagination till it had lost the power of painting. Like the French aristocrats who went unruffled to the guillotine, he felt that he would rather be blown up, or shot down, than share this ‘rat-run’ triumph of his neighbours. The more he looked at them, the more his nose twitched. Even the cheeriness with which they were accepting their rancid situation annoyed him. The sentiment of the spindly child: “I’ll kill that Kaiser,” awakened in him, for the first time since the war began, a fellow-feeling for the German Emperor; the simplification of responsibility adopted by his countrymen stood out so grotesquely in the saying of this cockney infant.
“He ought to be ‘ung,” said a voice to his right.
“My! Ain’t it hot here!” said a voice to his left. “I shall faint if it goes on much longer.”
‘It’ll stop her panting,’ thought Eustace, rubbing his ear.
“Am I standing on your foot, Sir?” asked the stout and splotchy woman.
“Thanks, not particularly.”
“Shift a bit, ‘Enry.”
“Shift a bit?” repeated the white-faced mechanician cheerfully: “That’s good, ain’t it? There’s not too much room, is there, Sir?”
The word ‘Sir’ thus repeated, or perhaps the first stirrings of a common humanity, moved Eustace to reply:
“The black hole of Calcutta’s not in it.”
“I’ll kill that Kaiser.”
“She don’t like these air-raids, and that’s a fact,” said the stout woman: “Do yer, Milly? But don’t you worry, dearie, we’re all right down ’ere.”
“Oh! You think so?” said Eustace.
“Ow! Yes! Everyone says the Tubes are safe.”
“What a comfort!”
As if with each opening of his lips some gas of rancour had escaped, Eustace felt almost well disposed to the little family which oppressed his front.
“Wish I ‘ad my girl ’ere,” said one of the Jewish youths, suddenly; “this is your cuddlin’ done for you, this is.”
“Strike me!” said the other.
‘Better dead!’ thought Eustace, even more emphatically.
“‘Ow long d’you give it, Sir?” said the mechanician, turning his white face a little.
“Another hour and a half, I suppose.”
“I’ll kill that Kaiser.”
“Stow it, Milly, you’ve said that before. One can ‘ave too much of a good thing, can’t one, Sir?”
“I was beginning to think so,” murmured Eustace.
“Well, she’s young to be knocked about like this. It gets on their nerves, ye know. I’ll be glad to get ‘er and the missis ‘ome, and that’s a fact.”
Something in the paper whiteness of his face, something in the tone of his hollow-chested voice, and the simple altruism of his remark, affected Eustace. He smelled of sweat and sawdust, but he was jolly decent!
And time went by, the heat and odour thickening; there was almost silence now. A voice said: “They’re a – long time abaht it!” and was greeted with a sighing clamour of acquiescence. All that crowded mass of beings had become preoccupied with the shifting of their limbs, the straining of their lungs towards any faint draught of air. Eustace had given up all speculation, his mind was concentrated blankly on the words: ‘Stand straight–stand straight!’ The spindly child, discouraged by the fleeting nature of success, had fallen into a sort of coma against his knee; he wondered whether she had ringworm; he wondered why everybody didn’t faint. The white-faced mechanician had encircled his wife’s waist. His face, ghostly patient, was the one thing Eustace noticed from time to time; it emerged as if supported by no body. Suddenly with a whispering sigh the young woman, behind, fell against his shoulder, and by a sort of miracle found space to crumple down. The mechanician’s white face came round:
“Poor lidy, she’s gone off!”
“Ah!” boomed the whisky-taster, “and no wonder, with this ‘eat.” He waggled his bowler hat above her head.
“Shove ‘er ‘ead between her knees,” said the mechanician.
Eustace pushed the head downwards, the whisky-taster applied a bunch of keys to her back. She came to with a loud sigh.
“Better for her dahn there,” said the mechanician, “the ‘ot air rises.”
And again time went on, with a ground bass of oaths and cheerios. Then the lights went out to a sound as if souls in an underworld had expressed their feelings. Eustace felt a shuddering upheaval pass through the huddled mass. A Cockney voice cried: “Are we dahn-‘earted?” And the movement subsided in a sort of dreadful calm.
Down below a woman shrieked; another and another took it up.
“‘Igh-strikes,” muttered the mechanician; “cover ‘er ears, Polly.” The child against Eustace’s knee had begun to whimper. “Milly, where was Moses when the light went out?”
Eustace greeted the sublime fatuity with a wry and wasted smile. He could feel the Jewish youths trying to elbow themselves out. “Stand still,” he said, sharply.
“That’s right, Sir,” said the mechanician; “no good makin’ ‘eavy weather of it.”
“Sing, you blighters–sing!” cried a voice: “‘When the fields were white wiv disies.’” And all around they howled a song which Eustace did not know; and then, abruptly as it had gone out, the light went up again. The song died in a prolonged “Aoh!” Eustace gazed around him. Tears were running down the splotchy woman’s cheeks. A smile of relief was twitching at the mechanician’s mouth. “The all clear’s gone! The all clear’s gone!… ‘Ip, ‘ip, ‘ooraay!” The cheering swelled past Eustace, and a swinging movement half lifted him from his feet.
“Catch hold of the child,” he said to the mechanician, “I’ve got her other hand.” Step by step they lifted her, under incredible pressure, with maddening slowness, into the hall. Eustace took a great breath, expanding his lungs while the crowd debouched into the street like an exploding shell. The white-faced mechanician had begun to cough, in a strangled manner alarming to hear. He stopped at last and said:
“That’s cleared the pipes. I’m greatly obliged to you, Sir; I dunno’ ow we’d ‘a got Milly up. She looks queer, that child.”
The child’s face, indeed, was whiter than her father’s, and her eyes were vacant.
“Do you live far?”
“Nao, just rahnd the corner, Sir.”
“Come on, then.”
They swung the child, whose legs continued to move mechanically, into the open. The street was buzzing with people emerging from shelter and making their way home. Eustace saw a clock’s face. Ten o’clock!
‘Damn these people,’ he thought. ‘The restaurants will be closed.’
The splotchy woman spoke as if answering his thought.
“We oughtn’t to keep the gentleman, ‘Enry, ‘e must be properly tired. I can ketch ‘old of Milly. Don’t you bother with us, Sir, and thank you kindly.”
“Not a bit,” said Eustace: “it’s nothing.”
“‘Ere we are, Sir,” said the mechanician, stopping at the side door of some business premises; “we live in the basement. If it’s not presuming, would you take a cup o’ tea with us?” And at this moment the child’s legs ceased to function altogether.
“‘Ere, Milly, ‘old up, dearie, we’re just ‘ome.”
But the child’s head sagged.
“She’s gone off–paw little thing!”
“Lift her!” said Eustace.
“Open the door, Mother, the key’s in my pocket; you go on and light the gas.”
They supported the spindly child, who now seemed to weigh a ton, down stone stairs into a basement, and laid her on a small bed in a room where all three evidently slept. The mechanician pressed her head down towards her feet.
“She’s comin’ to. Why, Milly, you’re in your bed, see! And now you’ll ‘ave a nice ‘ot cup o’ tea! There!”
“I’ll kill that Kaiser,” murmured the spindly child, her china-blue eyes fixed wonderingly on Eustace, her face waxy in the gaslight.
“Stir yer stumps, Mother, and get this gentleman a cup. A cup’ll do you good, Sir, you must be famished. Will you come in the kitchen and have a smoke, while she’s gettin’ it?”
A strange fellow-feeling pattered within Eustace looking at that white-faced altruist. He stretched out his cigarette case, shining, curved, and filled with gold-tipped cigarettes. The mechanician took one, held it for a second politely as who should imply: ‘Hardly my smoke, but since you are so kind.’
“Thank’ee, Sir. A smoke’ll do us both a bit o’ good, after that Tube. It was close in there.”
Eustace greeted the miracle of understatement with a smile.
“Not exactly fresh.”
“I’d ‘a come and ‘ad the raid comfortable at ‘ome, but the child was scared and the Tube just opposite. Well, it’s all in the day’s work, I suppose; but it comes ‘ard on children and elderly people, to say nothing of the women. ‘Ope you’re feelin’ better, Sir. You looked very white when you come out.”
“Thanks,” said Eustace, thinking: ‘Not so white as you, my friend!’
“The tea won’t be a minute. We got the gas ’ere, it boils a kettle a treat. You sit down, old girl, I’ll get it for yer.”
Eustace went to the window. The kitchen was hermetically sealed.
“Do you mind if I open the window,” he said, “I’m still half suffocated from that Tube.”
On the window-sill, in company with potted geraniums, he breathed the dark damp air of a London basement, and his eyes roved listlessly over walls decorated with coloured cuts from Christmas supplements, and china ornaments perched wherever was a spare flat inch. These presents from seaside municipalities aroused in him a sort of fearful sympathy.
“I see you collect china,” he said, at last.
“Ah! The missis likes a bit of china,” said the mechanician, turning his white face illumined by the gas ring; “reminds ‘er of ‘olidays. It’s a cheerful thing, I think meself, though it takes a bit o’ dustin’.”
“You’re right there,” said Eustace, his soul fluttering suddenly with a feather brush above his own precious Ming. Ming and the present from Margate! The mechanician was stirring the teapot.
“Weak for me, if you don’t mind,” said Eustace, hastily.
The mechanician poured into three cups, one of which he brought to Eustace with a jug of milk and a basin of damp white sugar.
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