So Disdained (19 page)
Her voice died away into a silence. "You'll tell him about this, won't you?" she said. "You're a great friend of his?"
I cleared my throat. "I'll tell him that. I think it's a good idea. It's just what would work with him. You want to leave him pretty free."
She was pursuing her own train of thought. "I don't want you to persuade him, or anything." She gazed at me steadily. "You won't, will you? Because it wouldn't be fair, and it's awfully easy to persuade him into anything. You must just tell
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him what you've seen here, and tell him what I've been doing and why I've done it. And tell him that if he'd like to have a go at being married to me again, I think it might work this time."
I nodded. "I'll tell him that."
She dropped her eyes from my face with a little sigh, and handed me the note. "Then that's all, I think."
She had a great presence with her, that girl. I paused for a minute before going downstairs.
"You'd better have my address," I said.
She sat down at the little desk and took it down in her neat, round hand. Then she accompanied me down through the shop, and came out with me into the street to where my car was parked. I got in and started up the engine.
"You'll tell him what I said, won't you?" she said wistfully. "I know he'll be most awfully busy, and I expect he's got to get back to Russia. But I'd love just to see him before he goes. . ."
"I'll tell him that, Mrs. Lenden," I replied. And then she stepped back from the car, and I slipped in the gear, and she was gone.
Lenden didn't return till half an hour after I come in. He had been out all day with the dog; from what he said I gathered that he must have been pretty well as far as South Harting along the down, because he described passing a big white house in the middle of the hills. I put that down as Beacon House, where Sir John Worth lives and breeds his bloodhounds. He must have been twenty miles. Kitter's dog returned in a state of prostration—and a good job too. It doesn't get enough exercise, that beast.
I let him have his dinner before I started. There's no sense in expecting a hungry man to listen to reason, and Lenden was very healthily weary. He spoke very little during the meal, but he mentioned Keumer once, and it was clear that he was as far from a decision on that affair as he had been in the morning. After dinner he left the table and flung himself down in a long chair before the fire, and with his first words he gave me the opportunity that I wanted.
"D'you hear anything more about Russia in Town?" he inquired.
I shook my head. "Not a word. I left soon after lunch. But I saw your pal Robertson this morning."
He took the cigarette from his lips and stared at me. "Sam Robertson? Where did you see him?"
"In Knightsbridge," I replied. "At his club."
"What d'you go there for?"
I crossed the room, switched on the reading-lamp, and sat down on the music-stool before the piano. "Bit of officiousness, I suppose," I said quietly. "Can't think of any other reason."
He didn't speak.
"You may as well know what I think about this thing," I said. "For myself, I don't care a damn what you do. It doesn't
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affect me. You can walk out of this place when you like—tonight or next month—and I don't suppose we'll meet again for some time. I'll get rid of that aeroplane for you. But when you do go, I honestly think you'll be a ruddy fool if you go back to Russia. There's going to be bad trouble there, and there'll be hell to pay if you're caught out there then. You can see that for yourself."
He brushed that aside. "I know all that. But what did you want to go and see Robertson for? Was it about me?"
"I went to Robertson because I knew damn well you wouldn't go yourself," I said. "Not my business, I know. But that's what I did."
He thought about it for a minute. "What happened?" he inquired.
I filled a pipe, and lit it before replying. "He ended by offering you a job on his survey," I said at length, and glanced towards him through the smoke. "At four hundred and fifty—to start with. Plus a share of the profits."
He stared at me incredulously. "Did he offer that—on his own?"
"He did."
"Without wanting any capital put into the business?"
"Not a bean."
He laughed. "He must have changed his mind since last I saw him, then."
"You've got to remember that his business has expanded since you saw him last," I said.
It upset the whole apple-cart of his decisions once again. He didn't say very much, but he sat there conning it over for a long time.
"I'd like to go with Sam again," he said at last, a little uncertainly. "It was good of you to go and look him up for me. I wouldn't have thought of it, myself. It's a better show than going back to Russia. But I don't know that I can cut off and leave the job like this. . . ."
I might have told him there and then that his plates were spoilt, I suppose. But I didn't.
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"And then there's Keumer and his wife," he said. "I couldn't go shooting off to the Argentine without getting that squared up somehow." He turned to me. "D'you know, I thought of something to-day. Keumer's got an uncle who keeps a retail grocery shop in Mannheim, in a pretty big way of business. I believe we might be able to trace his wife that way." As a matter of fact, it was through that uncle that I found her in the end. But that was much later.
He sat there dithering over his decisions. I saw then very clearly that there was only person in the world who could resolve his mind for him. I suppose I had known it all along, in a way.
"There was one other thing happened up in Town," I said nervously, and went fishing in the breast pocket of my coat.
"What's that?"
I passed his wife's letter to Robertson over to him to read. "Robertson gave me this after we'd done talking business," I remarked. "You've turned up at last, you see."
I didn't watch him while he read that letter, but swung round on the music-stool and began polishing the white keys and the dark rosewood of the piano with my handkerchief. That piano stands beside me as I write, and presently, when I am tired of recalling those bad times, I shall get up and I shall play a little to Sheila before going up to bed. With my three stiff fingers my playing will never be a patch on what it was in the days of which I am writing—and that, I think, is the least price that I have had to pay for interference.
"I've read that letter," I remarked, without looking at Lenden. "Robertson showed it to me."
He didn't make any comment.
"And then," I said, "I went on down there this afternoon, and had tea."
He stared at me darkly. "Oh. You went to Winchester?"
I nodded.
He was about to say something, but stopped. "Did you see Mollie?" he inquired.
"She gave me tea. And then I said I'd seen Robertson, and
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she gave me a note for you."
He blinked at me. "She all right?"
I got up from the piano. "She looked pretty fit," I said casually. "She was very anxious to see you before you go back," and I dropped her letter on the table by his side. "I've got to go down to Under this evening for a bit. There's her note."
He took it in his hands and sat there fingering it, and looking up at me. "How long'll you be?" he inquired.
"About an hour or so, I suppose," I said, and left him to it.
I walked down to Under. I had to go down there some time, and this was as good a time as any, because I knew that I should catch the crowd I wanted all together. There was an amateur dramatic show brewing, Gilbert and Sullivan, and because it was for charity they wanted the use of the hall without paying any rent.
I found them hard at it in the hall itself, rehearsing and quarrelling, and having a fine time generally. I might have seen eye to eye with them in the matter of the rent if they'd been red-hot in the cause of charity. But their chief trouble lay in the allocation of their mythical profits between the costumier and the charity; if they were to run to wigs by Parkinson, would there be anything left for Barnardo? I didn't see why Parkinson should pouch the lot, and so I told their secretary that they could hold their show in the street for all I cared, but if they had the hall they'd pay for it.
Having made myself quite clear on that point, I stayed on for a bit and watched the progress of their rehearsal. They were doing
Patience
, and young Saven, whose father kept the Red Bear in the market, was playing some small part in the thing. I liked young Saven. He had recently come out of the Air Force; I think he had been one of the first batch of peace-trained recruits. He had attained the dignity of two stripes before he came out, and now he was opening a little garage at the back of his father's inn.
We sat there smoking and gossiping for a bit. Then Nitter, the hairdresser, joined us, and with him came his brother.
Now, I've mentioned Nitter before—John Nitter, that is, who
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keeps the hairdressing establishment in the Leventer Road, and talks Communism in the market on Saturdays. He's a nice little man, and when he isn't talking Communism he's breeding Irish terriers, or children. There's no harm in John Nitter, and for a long time I was puzzled to see where he got his Communist ideas from. And then one day I met his brother, and I knew.
They came from Bradford originally, I think. John was older than Stephen, and left Bradford some years before the war with a lung that required the comparative warmth of the south. In that way the hairdresser's shop came into being. Stephen, on the other hand, was clever, and won scholarships. Eventually he passed on to Oxford and, as befitted the son of a fitter in those less tolerant days, he went to Ruskin.
I don't know what happened to him in the war. He never got into the Army—I know that much. And he never married. He was industrial to the backbone; a little short tubby man in a bowler hat and a shiny black suit. He had very light blue eyes, and he wore his hair rather longer than one would have expected. I saw him on a platform once. It was in Hyde Park and he spoke without a hat, and his hair fell down over his eyes and he kept shaking it back as he put the whole impact of his nature into his tirade. And when I heard him then, I forgot that he was a tubby little man.
There was the inspiration that brought John Nitter to the market every Saturday afternoon. But I can vouch for this, that John wasn't in the same street with Stephen, whatever he might have been ten years before. Living in the south had done it, I suppose. That, and the Lotus.
Stephen used to come down to Under about once in six months to stay with John—partly for a holiday and partly, I think, to ginger up his brother. I expect John needed a bit of gingering up from time to time. The Revolution wasn't getting on very fast in our part of Sussex.
"Evening, Nitter," I said to John. "You acting in this thing?"
He shook his head. "No, sir," he said, and got a scowl from
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Stephen for his deference. "Ah could have had a part in t' chorus, if Ah'd a mind. But it's a game for t'youngsters." He sucked his pipe. "D'you know my brother Stephen, Mr. Moran?"
I shook hands. "We've met before," I said. "You down here for a holiday, Mr. Nitter?"
He stared at me uneasily. He was shy and difficult to get on with, was Stephen—all edges and rough corners. "Ay," he said morosely. "For a holiday. Just the three days, and I'm for the north again. I wouldn't stay longer than that."
I took him up. "Why not?"
The south, he said, was a playground. I must condense his ideas into a practicable space, for they dragged out in little short, dark sentences, interminably. The south was where rich men came to live, capitalists who had made their money by the sweat of the workers in the north. A capitalist only needed to work in the north for ten or fifteen years and then, having made a fortune from the labour of the workers, he came down into the south to get away from the reminder of his own misdoings, and to spend his money.
I'm no good at arguing with those chaps. I couldn't refute this slander, because, in cold hard fact, a certain amount of it was true. A lot of industrialists retire to the south when they've finished their life's work in the north, because it's the best part of England to retire to.
"It's like a garden, this place," he said sullenly. "It all runs that smooth and soft and rich. An' up there, where Ah come from, there's the workers sweating in the factories. In the half-dark and the rain, and never to see the sun clear, for the sky's that mucky." He eyed me dourly. "Conditions what you've never dreamed of. You come up north, and Ah'll show you something."
I grinned at him. "You'd better go to Russia if you want to see what sweating is," I said. I suppose he had stung me up a bit, or I wouldn't have said that to provoke him. "You've never seen anything in the north to touch what you get out there. You don't want a revolution to put that right."
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I had annoyed him very much. I knew that it was his dearest ambition to visit Russia; to be able to say that he had been there would give him a
cachet
in the counsels of his union, and raise him from the ruck.
"That's not true," he said hotly. "You don't know nothing about it—you, living soft and easy as you do. Ah'm for Russia in two or three days from now, and Ah'll find a better and a more hopeful world for the worker in that country. A better and more hopeful world." He repeated the words as if they were a quotation. "And the time will come—the time will come when we'll see that better time in England. And Ah pray to God that Ah'll be spared to see it."
I eyed him for a minute. "You won't expect me to agree with you about that," I said. "But apart from politics, this is a damn bad time to go to Russia, you know. There may quite well be a break. You want to be careful what you're letting yourself in for." I had a vague recollection of having said that before, quite recently.
"Ye're wrong!" he cried passionately. "Ye're all wrong. This is the time when every thinking man among us ought to go to Russia. Your Capitalist Government—they're slighting and insulting Russia every way they know. And for why? Because Russia sticks up for the worker. That's what it is. Well, the workers must unite. It's us that counts. We've got no quarrel with the Russians; they stuck to us like brothers in the strike. Like brothers. This is the time when every worker in England and in Scotland and in Wales has got to stick to Russia—and Ah'm away to tell them so."