The Thirteen Travellers. Hugh Walpole
that's impossible, father!" he cried.
He found, however, that a great deal more than that was possible. He had never possessed, as he had been used sometimes proudly to boast, a very good head for figures, and the old man had not a great talent for making things clear, but the final point was that the Income Tax and the general increased expenses of living had made Dronda impossible.
"Also, my boy," Lord Dronda added, "all the money you've been spending lately—your mother only confessed to me last week. You'll have to get some work and settle down at it. I'm sorry, but the old days are gone."
I'm quite aware that this is not a very original story. On how many occasions in how many novels has the young heir to the entails been suddenly faced with poverty and been compelled to sit down and work? Nine times out of ten most nobly has he done it, and ten times out of ten he has won the girl of his heart by so doing.
The only novelty here is the moment of the catastrophe. Here was the very period towards which, through years and years of discomfort and horror in France, young Clive had been looking. "After the war he would have the time of his life"; "after the war" had arrived and Dronda was to be sold! His first impulse was to abuse fate generally and his father in particular. One glance at the old man checked that. How funny he looked, sitting there on the edge of the sofa, his thick stick between his knees, his hat tilted back, and that air of bewildered perplexity on his round face as of a baby confronted with his first thunder-storm. His thick-set, rather stout body, his side-whiskers, his rough red hands—all seemed to remove him completely from the smart, slim, dark young man who sat opposite him. Nevertheless Clive felt the bond. He was suddenly in unison with his father as he had never been, in all his life, with his mother. His father and he had never had what one would call a "heart-to-heart" conversation in their lives—they did not have one now. They would have been bitterly distressed at such an idea. All Clive said was:
"What a bore! I didn't know things were like that. You ought to have told me."
To which Dronda replied, his eyes wistfully on his son's empty sleeve:
"I didn't think it would get so bad. You'll have to find some work. No need for us to bother your mother about it."
The old man got up to go. His eyes moved uncomfortably from one photograph to another. He pulled at his high collar as though he felt the room close.
"Sure you won't have anything?" said Clive.
"No, thanks," said his father.
"Well, don't you worry. I'll get some work all right. I'll have to pull my horns in a bit, though."
And that was positively all that was said. Dronda went away, that puzzled, bewildered look still hovering between his mouth and his eyes, his grey bowler still a little to one side.
After he was gone Clive considered the matter. Once the first shock was over things were really not so bad. The loss of Dronda was horrible, of course, and Clive thought of that as little as might be, but even there the war had made a difference, having shaken everything, in its tempestuous course, to the ground, so that one looked on nothing now as permanent. As to work, Clive would not mind that at all. There was quite a number of things that he would like to do. There were all these new Ministries, for instance; he thought of various friends that he had. He wrote down the names of one or two. Or there was the City. He had often fancied that he would like to go into the City. You made money there, he understood, in simply no time at all. And you needed no education. … He thought of one or two City men whom he knew and wrote down their names.
One or two other things occurred to him. Before he went out to dine he had written a dozen notes. He liked to think that he could be prompt and business-like when there was need.
During the next day or two he had quite a merry time with his friends about the affair. He laughingly depicted himself as a serious man of business, one of those men whom you see in the cinemas, men who sit at enormous desks and have big fists and Rolls-Royces. He spent one especially jolly evening, first at Claridge's, then "As you Were" at the Pavilion (Sir Billion de Boost was what he would shortly be, he told his laughing companion), then dancing. Oh, a delightful evening! "My last kick!" he called it; and looking back afterwards, he found that he had spoken more truly than he knew.
His friends answered his notes and asked him to go and see them. He went. There then began a very strange period of discovery. First he went to the Labour Ministry and saw his old friend Reggie Burr.
Reggie looked most official in his room with his telephone and things. Clive told him so. Reggie smiled, but said that he was pressed for time and would Clive just mind telling him what it was he wanted. Clive found it harder to tell him than he had expected. He was modest and uneloquent about his time in France, and after that there really was not very much to say. What had he done? What could he do? … Well, not very much. He laughed. "I'm sure I'd fit into something," he said.
"I'll let you know if there is anything," said Reggie Burr.
And so it went on. It was too strange how definite these men wanted him to be! As the days passed Clive had the impression that the world was getting larger and larger and emptier and emptier. It seemed as though he could not touch boundaries nor horizons. … It was a new world, and he had no place in it. …
The dancing suddenly receded, or rather was pushed and huddled back, as the nurse in old days took one's toys and crammed them into a corner. Clive found it no longer amusing. He was puzzled, and dancing did not help him to any discovery. He found that he had nothing to say to his friends on these occasions. He was aware that they were saying behind his back: "What's come to Clive Toby? … Dull as ditchwater."
He went about with a bemused, blinded expression. He was seeing himself for the first time. Hortons and everything in it had quite a new life for him: Mr. Nix, Fanny, Albert Edward—all these people were earning their living and earning it much more efficiently than he seemed to be able to do. All the time behind them seemed to stand that wistful figure of his father. "I'd like to do something for the old man," he thought.
Down in the City his experiences were very strange. The first three men whom he saw were very polite and jolly, and said "they'd let him know if anything turned up." They asked him what business experience he had had, and then how much money he was prepared to put into a "concern"; and when he had answered them with a jolly laugh and said that he had had no experience, but had no doubt that he "would shake down all right," and that he had no money, but "really would take his coat off and work," they smiled, and said that "things were bad in the City just now, but they would let him know."
They all liked him, he felt, and he liked them, and that was as far as it went. But his experience with his fourth friend was different. Sir James Maradick, Bart., could scarcely be called a friend of his. He had met him once at someone's house; Reggie Burr had given him a note to him. He was a big broad man somewhere near sixty, and he was as nice to Clive as possible, but he didn't mince matters.
He had been given his Baronetcy for some fine organising work that he had done in the war. Clive, who did not think much about men as a rule, liked him better than any man he'd ever met. "This fellow would do for me," he thought.
The question, however, was whether Clive would do for Maradick.
"What have you done?" Maradick asked.
"H'm. Eton and Oxford. … And what kind of job are you looking for?"
Clive modestly explained—somewhere about six hundred a year. He wanted to help the governor through a stiff time.
Maradick smiled. That was very nice. Would Clive mind Maradick speaking quite plainly? Not at all. That was what Clive wanted.
Maradick then said that it was like a fairy-tale. He had had, during the last fortnight, four fellows who wanted jobs at anything from five hundred to a thousand a year. All of them very modest. Hadn't had any experience, but thought they could drop into it. All of them done well in the war. All of them wanted to keep their parents … very creditable.
But there was another side to the question. Did Clive know that there were hundreds of