The Thirteen Travellers. Hugh Walpole
he called "the general Hell." No one was more amusing and amiable during his stay out there, and, to be Ouidaesque again for a moment, he was adored by his men.
Nevertheless it was perhaps the happiest moment of his life when he knew he was to lose his arm. "No more going back to jolly old France for me, old bean," he wrote to a friend. "Now I'm going to enjoy myself."
That was his rooted determination. He had not gone through all that and been maimed for life for nothing. He was going to enjoy himself. Yes, after the war he would show them. …
He showed them mainly at present by dancing all hours of the day and night. He had danced before the war like any other human being, and had faithfully attended at Murray's and the Four Hundred and the other places. But he did not know that he had very greatly enjoyed it; he had gone in the main because Miss Poppy Darling, who had just then caught his attention, commanded him to do so. Now it was quite another matter—he went simply for the dance itself. He was not by nature a very introspective young man, and he did not think of himself as strange or odd or indeed as anything definite at all; but it was perhaps a little strange that he, who had been so carefully brought up by his fond mother, should surrender to a passion for tom-toms and tin kettles more completely than he had ever surrendered to any woman. He did not care with whom it was that he danced; a man would have done as well. The point was that, when those harsh and jarring noises began to beat and battle through the air, his body should move and gyrate in sympathy just as at that very moment perhaps, somewhere in Central Africa, a grim and glistening savage was turning monotonously beneath the glories of a full moon. He danced all night and most of the day, with the result that he had very little time for anything else. Lady Dronda complained that he never wrote to her. "Dear Mother," he replied on a postcard, "jolly busy. Ever so much to do. See you soon."
Young men and young women came to luncheon and dinner. He was happy and merry with them all. Even Fanny, the portress downstairs, adored him. His smile was irresistible.
The strangest fact of all, perhaps, was that the war had really taught him nothing. He had for three years been face to face with Reality, stared into her eyes, studied her features, seeing her for quite the first time.
And his vision of her had made no difference to him at all. He came back into this false world to find it just exactly as he had left it. Reality slipped away from him, and it was as though she had never been. He was as sure as he had been four years before that the world was made only for him and his—and not so much for his as for him. Had you asked he would not have told you, because he was an Englishman and didn't think it decent to boast—but you would have seen it in his eyes that he really did believe that he was vastly superior to more than three-quarters of the rest of humanity—and this although he had gone to Eton and had received therefore no education, although he knew no foreign language, knew nothing about the literature of his own or any other country, was trained for no business and no profession, and could only spell with a good deal of hit-and-miss result.
Moreover, when you faced him and thought of these things, you yourself were not sure whether, after all, he were not right. He was so handsome, so self-confident, so fearless, so touching with his youth and his armless sleeve, that you could not but wonder whether the world, after all, was not made for such as he. The old world perhaps—but the new one? …
Meanwhile Clive danced.
He flung himself into such an atmosphere of dancing that he seemed to dance all his relations and acquaintances into it with him. He could not believe that everyone was not spending the time in dancing. Albert Edward, whose official name was Banks, assured him that he had no time for dancing.
"No time!" said Clive, greatly concerned. "Poor devil! I don't know how you get along."
Albert Edward, who approved of the Hon. Clive because of his pluck, his birth, his good looks, and his generosity, only smiled.
"Got to earn my living, sir," he said.
"Really, must you?" Clive was concerned. "Well, it's a damned shame after all you've done over there."
"Someone's got to work still, I suppose, sir," said Albert Edward; "and it's my belief that it's them that works hardest now will reap the 'arvest soonest—that's my belief."
"Really!" said Clive in politely interested tone. "Well, Banks, if you want to know my idea, it is that it's about time that some of us enjoyed ourselves—after all we've been through. Let the old un's who've stayed at home do the work."
"Yes, sir," said Albert Edward.
It did indeed seem a shame to Clive that anyone should have to work at all—that nice girl Fanny, for instance, who was portress downstairs, or that poor old decrepit-looking thing who was night-porter and opened the door for Clive at four in the morning.
He told Fanny what he thought. Fanny laughed. "I love my work, sir," she said; "I wouldn't be without it for anything."
"Wouldn't you really, now?" said Clive, staring at her.
Dimly he perceived that these months after the Armistice and during the early months of 1919 were a queer time—no one seemed to know what was going to happen. The state of the world was very uncomfortable did one look into it too closely; even into the chaste and decorous quarter of St. James's rumours of impending revolution penetrated. People were unhappy—had not enough to eat, had no roof over their heads, always one thing or another. The papers were beastly, so Clive gave up looking at them, save only the Sporting Times, and devoted his hours that were saved from dancing to a little gentle betting, to wondering whether Joe Beckett would beat Goddard, and when he had beaten him to wondering whether he would beat Georges Carpentier, and to playing a rubber or two of auction bridge at White's, and to entertaining the ladies and gentlemen already mentioned.
He was not, during this period, worrying at all about money. He very seldom saw his old father, who never came up to town and never wrote letters. Old Lord Dronda, who was now nearly seventy, stayed at the place in Hertfordshire—he loved cows and pigs and horses, and Clive imagined him perfectly happy in the midst of these animals.
He had an ample allowance, but was compelled to reinforce it by writing cheques on his mother's account. She had, when he lost his arm, given him an open cheque-book on her bank. There was nothing too good for such a hero. He did not naturally think about money, he did not like to be bothered about it, but he was vaguely rather proud of himself for keeping out of the money-lenders' hands and not gambling more deeply at bridge. Luckily, dancing left one little time for that—"Keeps me out of mischief, jazzing does," he told his friends. He had, in his room, a photograph of his father—an old photograph, but like the old man still. Lord Dronda was squarely built and had side-whiskers and pepper-and-salt trousers. He looked like a prosperous farmer. His thighs were thick, his nose square, and he wore a billycock a little on one side of his head. Clive had not seen his father for so long a time that it gave him quite a shock to come in one afternoon and find the old man sitting under his photograph, a thick stick in his hand and large gaiters above his enormous boots. He was looking about him with a lost and bewildered air and sitting on the very edge of the sofa. His grey bowler was on the back of his head.
"Hullo, Guv'nor!" Clive cried. Clive was a little bewildered at the sight of the old man. His plan had been a nap before dressing for dinner. He had been dancing until six that morning, and was naturally tired, but he was a kindly man, and therefore nice to his father.
"I'm delighted to see you!" he said. "But whatever are you doing up here?"
The old man was not apparently greatly delighted to see Clive. He was lost and bewildered, and seemed to have trouble in finding his words. He stammered and looked helplessly about him.
His son asked him whether he'd have any tea. No, he wouldn't have any tea—no, nothing at all.
"The fact is," he brought out at last, "that Dronda's to be sold, and I thought you ought to know."
Dronda to be sold! The words switched back before Clive's eyes that figure of Reality that recently he had forgotten. Dronda to be sold! He saw his own youth coloured with the green of the lawns, the silver of the lake, the deep red brick of the old house. Dronda to be sold!