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In Hollywood there are many Englishmen. However long they may have resided there, they are always very easy to recognise. When I look back and trace through my memory that row of good, honest, slightly staring, faintly unhumorous faces, the one most vivid to me is certainly Hector Montgomery Cathie’s. I should like to attempt here a portrait of him, because, simple though his little story is, he stands for something very generally felt by most human beings, very seldom expressed. When I think of him many nostalgias in my own life are explained to me.

I first saw him working as an extra in an historical picture entitled, I think, Lucrezia Borgia. Pictures come and go so quickly that I can’t be sure that that was the name of it. It was, in any case, one of those pictures elaborately and expensively produced just before the invasion of colour. And I remember very vividly that when I walked on to the set searching for a friend of mine, Willie Adams, who was directing this masterpiece, after making sure that the light was not shining and the little bell not ringing, I pushed back the heavy door and nearly stumbled over a brace of large white dogs held in leash by their rough-looking protector. I was quite blinded by the brilliance of the scene I beheld, and at once thought to myself, ‘What a pity this can’t be in colour.’

It was one of those scenes of Renaissance Feasting, where, under brilliant lights, crowds of revellers were supposed to be eating and drinking with heady enthusiasm from gilt goblets and heaped bowls of coloured wooden fruits. On a raised dais, the aristocratic Borgias were revelling brightly, with eyes alert for possible poisonings. There were monkeys and dwarfs and parti-coloured Fools and trumpeters in a row chewing gum. There were cameras to the right of one and cameras to the left. And just as I arrived there, some perspiring gentleman in shirt-sleeves bellowed: ‘Camera!’ The trumpeters ceased their gum-chewing and a movement, as of sleepers suddenly awakened, rhythmically began—everyone eating and drinking, a Fool turning somersaults, the dogs moving across the vast shining floor, and Lucrezia herself holding up her goblet for more wine.

It was then that I noticed one of the handsomest old men conceivable move with tremendous dignity across the floor, mount the steps and pour wine from a goblet into Lucrezia’s cup. He is, I thought to myself, seventy if he’s a day. But his carriage was superb. He looked in his Renaissance clothes as though he’d been born in them. He was by far the most aristocratic person present. Afterwards, when I reached Adams, I questioned him.

‘That’s a grand old man,’ I said, pointing.

Adams, who unlike many directors was imperturbable and nonchalant whatever the crisis, remarked, ‘Oh, yes, that’s Hector.’

‘Hector?’ I enquired.

‘You should meet him. He is a grand old man. He ought to be King of Scotland. Maybe he is.’ Adams looked up, called across the floor, ‘Say, Hector, come here a minute.’

The Scottish gentleman drew himself together and then walked towards us with a serene dignity that made him seem royal indeed. When he reached us, Adams said: ‘Here’s an Englishman who wants to meet you. Now don’t stick him with a dagger or anything. You English and Scotch are deadly enemies, aren’t you?’

With a deep and rich majesty Hector replied quietly, ‘I’m not a Scotchman, you know.’

‘Good Lord! aren’t you?’ said Adams. ‘The name’s Scotch, anyway.’

Hector smiled charmingly and, looking at me, said: ‘I was born of English parents, Penrith, Cumberland.’

Now I knew Penrith, Cumberland, extremely well and I said to him: ‘Wouldn’t it be fine if we had Lord Lonsdale’s yellow coach rolling through the studio? That would make them sit up.’

He answered in that same rich but melancholy tone: ‘It is forty years since I last saw Penrith.’

It was time for things to move on again, and once more the same little movement, like a recurring motif in an elaborate piece of music, took place. The Fool turned somersaults, the dogs crossed the floor, and Hector advanced up the steps and filled Lucrezia’s cup. Afterwards, while the cameras were being shifted, I asked Adams some more.

‘He’s the finest-looking old man I ever saw in my life,’ I remarked.

‘Yes, he is, isn’t he? He’s been an extra ever since the earliest days.’

‘I should have thought,’ I said, ‘that, with that magnificent carriage and that rich voice, he should be a proper star by this time.’

‘Unfortunately,’ Adams said, ‘he can’t act. He never loses his dignity. But he’s quite contented, I believe.’ Then Adams corrected himself. ‘I don’t know about contented though. His one desire is to take a holiday and see his own country again. He’s always talking about England. He even gives lectures about it.’

‘What prevents him taking a holiday?’ I asked. ‘If he’s constantly in work, he ought to be able to save.’

‘They don’t get such a hell of a lot, extras,’ Adams answered. ‘For some reason or other he can’t afford to go home.’

‘He’s certainly a good-looker though.’

‘He is. The girls are crazy about him.’

So much for that. I forgot him. And then by an odd chance I talked with him. Alone in Hollywood one evening, going to a picture and wanting to eat something first, I stumbled into a small restaurant near Grauman’s where my picture was to be, sat down in the first empty booth that offered itself, and found beside me Hector himself. He didn’t recognise me, of course, and I was about to get up with a word of apology when he said, rather like a king welcoming a favourite subject,’ Plenty of room here, sir. I’ve no objection if you haven’t.’

His smile was magnificent. The aristocratic head with its fine broad forehead, high cheekbones, dark colouring (he was sunburned and looked amazingly fit) reminded me of the other finest old man I’d ever seen in my life, Robert Cunninghame-Graham.

‘You don’t remember me,’ I said.

‘No,’ he answered, looking me straight in the eyes, ‘I don’t.’

I reminded him of where we had met.

‘I apologise,’ he answered, ‘but the fact is, when I’m working I can think of nothing else. I take my work very seriously,’ he added.

I could see at once that he took everything very seriously. Humour would not, in all probability, be his most remarkable quality.

‘You’ve been here a long time,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he answered, gravely. ‘Every year I think I’m going home, but I never do.’

The waiter was standing there. I ordered one of those strange beers in tins, very cold and refreshing (by the way, why don’t countries copy the best things from one another?), a New York cut and a large baked potato.

‘Medium or rare?’ asked the waiter.

‘Medium,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you go home if you want to?’ I asked Hector. Then, as he hesitated, I added, ‘I hope I’m not being rude.’

‘Certainly not.’ I fancied a little sketch of a bow, ‘I don’t go home because I can’t afford to.’

‘It doesn’t cost so much these days.’

He looked at me with a mournful kindliness. ‘I might never get back into work here again.’

‘Why don’t you stay at home? The pictures are forging ahead in London, they say. There should be plenty to do for anyone as handsome as you are.’ This time there was a real bow.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Good-looking old men who can’t act are not greatly in demand. I have continuous work here because so many people know me.’

‘And trust you,’ I said.

‘Yes, they like me. The Americans are the kindest people in the world.’

‘I should have thought,’ I said, looking rather mournfully at my tomato-juice cocktail, which I always drink in America although I dislike it exceedingly, ‘that there is a good deal of cruelty in the picture business.’

‘Not cruelty—indifference. Indifference, I mean, to anyone’s personal fate. There’s too much money risked to leave much time for individuals. The star here has a very anxious time; only obscure persons like myself are comparatively safe.’

You should have heard the way he said ‘obscure persons.’ We were becoming a little intimate. We liked one another, I knew. ‘Tell me,’ I asked, ‘are you married? Have you children?’

He smiled. ‘I could never support a wife properly on what I earn. And children—who would be selfish enough to bring them into this horrible world?’

‘Oh, you feel it horrible then?’

‘No, I don’t personally. I enjoy each minute of it. I’m seventy-two years of age, and I hope I live to be a hundred. I should like to spend my last twenty years in England.’

‘What part of England do you think of most?’ I asked.

Something crept into his eyes with that question. Something very beautiful, very tender, very romantic. That sounds sentimental, but it is a true and harsh fact that there are tender and beautiful moments, places and persons in the world. It is sentimental not to recognise that this is so.

‘Oh, Cumberland, the Lake District,’ he said. ‘I was born in Penrith.’

‘But you’ve not been back for forty years.’

‘No, but I see Cumberland exactly as though I had lived there all my life. The hills are very small, you know, and very often the rocks run right down into the fields. The sky changes so often and so quickly that no place looks the same five minutes together. There are fifty different kinds of rain and you can climb for five minutes and see six lakes, the sea and twenty valleys.’

‘Yes,’ I answered, smiling. ‘That’s the way the novelists write. They make one suspicious.’

He looked at me reprovingly. ‘Don’t you like to read about places you love, then? I have quite a library of books about England and I have my lantern slides.’

‘Your lantern slides?’

‘Yes, it sounds old-fashioned, doesn’t it? But I give lectures about England. Oh, in very small places, you know. Schools, little groups, anywhere that wants to fill in an evening for nothing. I show the slides and they’re really quite charming. More restful than the film, and you can look at something for quite a long time without its moving.’

‘What do you tell them in your lectures?’ I enquired.

‘Oh, little things. That’s the whole point—tiny details. One of my lectures is a walk from Keswick to Ambleside.’

‘Forgive me,’ I said, ‘but do they really listen? I’m sure your lectures are charming, but Wordsworth——’

‘Yes, Wordsworth,’ he answered very solemnly, as though he were speaking the name of God Himself. ‘I read his poetry. A piece out of Dorothy’s Journal. They listen most attentively.’

His voice dropped into half a whisper. ‘The only thing is that I get so homesick myself when I lecture. I come back to my room sometimes and can’t sleep. I think that I’ll take the next train and risk it.’ He shook his head. ‘But I never do, never do.’ Then, looking out over my head into space, he murmured, ‘Oh, to go home ... to go home only once.’

There was a little, rather embarrassing silence. I said, ‘I must come and hear you lecture one day.’

And I did. I had a very agreeable evening. He asked me to dine with him before the lecture. I went to his rooms somewhere off Vine Street. Two rooms on the second floor of one of those old wooden houses, now swiftly disappearing, with a verandah, two rocking-chairs and a neat little garden at the back. His sitting-room was small and spare. On the walls was a photograph of Buttermere, the view of the little beach and the amphitheatre of hills behind it. There was a bookcase filled with books, a radio and an old lady who was introduced to me as Miss Mullins. Miss Mullins was a strange old thing, lame of one leg, one shoulder higher than the other and the suspicion of a beard. She had a vibrating nasal voice and looked discontented with everyone and everything. She reminded me strongly of Dickens’ Mr. F.’s Aunt. We sat down to a very bare and simple meal and I understood Mr. F.’s Aunt had cooked the meal herself. But once again Hector Cathie was so serenely regal that I might have been dining with His Majesty the King in Buckingham Palace. He was regal with a good deal of self-abstraction, like a monarch with subjects who are giving him a little trouble on some distant problems. The old lady, Miss Mullins, sat at the table snorting every once and again, making little pellets of bread which she absent-mindedly flipped with her finger. Then suddenly, like her Dickens prototype, coming out with sentences like, ‘It’s just too shameful, the way the girls go naked on the beach.’ Or, ‘If they’re going to give me curry, let them give me curry that is curry, that’s what I say.’ Remarks that had nothing to do whatever with the general conversation. After our meal we hurried off to the lecture, which was to be delivered to a school somewhere in Glendale. I took them in my car and we found the rather obscure little place with some difficulty. But there we were, Miss Mullins and I, sitting in the large and draughty schoolroom, with waves of icy cold blowing down our backs one moment and blasts of infernal heat in our faces another. There was a number of children gathered together and a few older persons. A thin, very dyspeptic-looking man introduced Hector, and then Hector began.

It was strange, indeed, to see magic-lantern slides once again. And my youth came back to me with such overpowering nostalgia that I felt the mountain breeze caressing my naked knees and a small paper packet of sweets sticky in my trouser pocket.

The slides moved me very deeply. Their ancient technique and rather shrill colouring seemed to belong so exactly to those early years that I’d spent in the English Lake District, climbing Great Gable by moonlight, having picnics on summer days on Stye Head, picking primroses in the lanes behind Buttermere village. But more moving than the slides was the deeply passionate emotion of Hector Cathie. He was not on the surface sentimental nor unduly patriotic. He did not pretend, as some do, that the little Lake District was the greatest landscape of lakes and mountains in the world. He did not say that there was no place so beautiful. On the contrary, he made a gospel of its smallness and his talk was all in glorification of tiny detail. It was hard indeed to believe that he had not been there for forty years, for he knew about all the gates that you must open going from Braithwaite over the fells to Crummock. He knew how enchanting were the little waterfalls in Stonethwaite. He knew of the queer ancient silences of Skiddaw Forest. He had these things, I suppose, from books, but gave them so personal and concrete a character that we heard the little becks tumbling through the room, saw with our own eyes the first fresh green of the bracken and the rain falling like twirling silver sixpenny pieces while the rainbow broke over Derwentwater.

It was this minuteness, this freshness, this constant change of colour and storm that penetrated the imaginations of those in this American classroom. I felt it all around me. They realised, those boys and girls, that there was something very small and very precious six thousand miles away. Something in which they themselves had strangely a hereditary right. It was old—very, very old. It was green—very, very green. And it was cosy, comfortable, kindly, in spite of the storms and the falling rain and the bare horizons of the fells. They felt, also, Hector’s own emotion. At the end he said:

‘Don’t imagine, boys and girls, that I don’t love America. I do. But you will understand how one longs for one’s own country. How nothing else can supply the want of it. If I could go back for only a little while, I would remain satisfied, I think, for the rest of my life.’

They applauded. The clergyman made a speech of thanks, saying that what the world really wanted was that England and America should stand together. Upon which Miss Mullins shook her head and one had a dreadful feeling that she was going to rise to her feet and speak. But she didn’t. She only cracked her fingers and muttered, ‘Poisonous doctrine. Let America keep out of things. That’s what I say.’

When, however, later on Miss Mullins had gone to bed, and Hector and I were alone for a moment, he burst out with:

‘What I said isn’t true! I don’t love America—I hate it! It’s a beastly country, with its tin cans, and its advertisements, and its celery and olives, and its showers, hot and cold, and filthy newspapers and——’

I interrupted. ‘I thought you were very happy here.’

‘I’m not! I’m not! I’m not! I want to go home....’ I thought he was going to cry. He seemed crumpled up. A poor, desolate old man, mad with home-sickness, scarcely knowing what he was saying. There was nothing at all regal about him now. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I always go on like this after a lecture. It isn’t good for me. I oughtn’t to give them. I’ve seen those slides hundreds and hundreds of times, yet it’s always the same. I shan’t sleep to-night. If I could only go back for a month——’ He broke off.

‘Let me,’ I suggested, ‘lend you something. I’ll be delighted.’

He drew himself up. He was the head of all the clans that had ever figured in Scottish history. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. He flashed a look of almost contempt into my eyes.

‘Forgive me,’ I murmured. And that was all we ever said about money.

I had him after that constantly in my mind. When all is said and done, the great and eternal point about Hollywood is not the pictures, the stars, the fantastic salaries, the grand parties, the ridiculous scandals—but only this—that on no other piece of ground in the whole world, equal in size, are so many interesting, touching, admirable, unusual figures to be found. It is not, on the whole, a happy place. It is often vulgar, evil and sterilising. It is a tremendous place, easy for you to lose your soul there. But for the incongruous juxtaposition of almost incredible human beings, it is unique. And you think about them. After you’ve left them, you continue to think about them. They are so odd, so unexpected, are in many cases meeting such peculiar and unusual problems that you wonder constantly what their next step is going to be. So it was with Hector. On the surface it was a simple case. Here was an old man with very little money, who, because he was continually thinking of it, was eaten up with a desire for home. His problem could be solved in only two ways. Either by death or by return. I thought of means whereby I could, unknown to him, supply him with money enough for his adventure. But it was difficult. His pride was terrific. And I had a superstitious sense, too, that if he didn’t go home in the right way it was better for him not to go home at all. I was still considering the matter when Fate stepped in and provided, as she always does, her own solution.

Oddly enough, I encountered him again in a very personal manner. I found that he was to work in a picture of my own. When I say a picture of my own, I’m exaggerating, because all I had done in the matter was to write the script. And everyone in Hollywood knows how important the writer of a script is. But it happened in this case that both director and producer were great personal friends of mine and I looked forward to a happy time. This was a rather rough-and-ready adaptation of Walter Scott’s Heart of Midlothian, an admirable subject for the cinema. I had wondered why they had not used it before. Joe Bennick, the producer, said to me, ‘We got a wonderful old Scotchman running right through the story. He doesn’t say anything because, unfortunately, he can’t act. But he will look superb in kilts.’

‘Hector Montgomery Cathie,’ I said.

‘Yes, how did you know? Although Hector’s been in so many films and he’s no stranger to anyone. A pity he can’t act.’

‘Let’s write a little scene in for him,’ I said, ‘and see what he can do.’

‘All right, but I warn you. You’ll find him hopeless.’

And so I wrote in a little scene. Hector came to me and begged to be excused. ‘I can’t do it. I’m too self-conscious.’

‘Nonsense, man. And you’ll get $25.00 instead of $5.00.’

He shook his head, as by this time he was greatly attached to me. Looked on me rather as his son, I think. He had exactly the attitude just then of an indulgent father who doesn’t want to disappoint his growing boy.

‘Miss Mullins will be furious,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘She’s always afraid I’ll make a fool of myself.’ Then he added, in a kind of parenthesis, ‘I hate that woman. I’d do anything in the world to be free of her.’

‘But surely that’s not difficult.’

‘She’s old,’ he answered, speaking as though he himself were not a day more than thirty. ‘You can’t throw her out into the street.’

He did his best. His scene came quite early in the picture, where outside the old Edinburgh jail he harangued the mob and had a touching scene with his young daughter before he was killed by one of the rioters. It was quite true. He couldn’t act at all. What I suffered that day watching Burrows, the director, go patiently over the scene again and again, take the old man kindly aside showing him exactly how it ought to be done, seeing Hector’s whole soul nakedly agonised in the effort he was making, till I had to turn my eyes away from his self-consciousness, and at last heard Burrows saying to me: It’s no good, he can’t do it.’

Afterwards, when I was alone with Hector, I was surprised to discover him quite cheerful. ‘I knew I couldn’t,’ he said, in a very lordly way, as though he was implying that acting was the lowest thing a human being could do. ‘It was nice of you. I’m very grateful. I can lecture, but I can’t act.’ Then, with a sigh, he added, ‘But I think I shall have to give up the lecturing.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘It’s making me so dreadfully homesick.’

He drew nearer to me and whispered in my ear, ‘This country offends every instinct I possess. America is the——’ He was interrupted by the miracle. One of the most dramatic things that have ever occurred in my presence.

An old boy, who was also an extra and lived below Hector in the same dwelling, appeared around a corner and handed Hector three letters. ‘I found them in the letter-box,’ he said, his eyes rolling in his head as he spoke. (He was always looking for somebody to play poker with.) ‘I thought I’d bring them along.’

Hector thanked him most majestically, looked at the letters, and his whole body quivered. ‘One of them is from England,’ he said to me. We were seated on some boxes behind part of the papier-mâché Edinburgh jail, hidden on the whole from general view. His hand was trembling so that he could scarcely open the envelope.

‘Do you mind reading it for me? I left my glasses in my clothes.’

‘It may be something very secret,’ I said.

‘Oh, no, it couldn’t be. It’s the first letter I’ve had from England for a year and a half. And that one all that time ago was from a wine merchant in London. All the same I kept it for months.’

I was reading his letter. It was from a London firm of solicitors and quite firmly and clearly informed Mr. Cathie that his brother, Mr. James Cathie, had died in South Africa and left him a thousand pounds. I looked at the letter and considered the matter. After all, Hector was old. This would be a shock.

‘Have you got a brother called James?’ I asked him.

‘Why, yes. I haven’t heard from him for twenty years. He went to South Africa, mining.’

‘He’s left you a thousand pounds,’ I said.

At that moment there were irate calls for Hector, who, now that he was deprived of his acting, was happily restored to the position of walking silently in front of the mob, shaking his fist at them and falling from a blow very shortly afterwards. He stood up, erect and magnificent. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said, his voice shaking a little.

‘He’s left you a thousand pounds,’ I repeated. Then I added—why, I don’t know—‘You’ll be able to go to England now.’

He looked at me. He didn’t know what he was saying. He took the letter mechanically. ‘So I shall,’ he said, and marched on to the scene to do his bit.

Well, that’s that, I thought. Life is sometimes melodramatic. We modern writers translate our world into whispers. Sometimes, in spite of us, Nature insists on a shout. I felt that that was such an occasion. I dislike to make a fool of myself, but it was all that I could do to restrain myself from rushing into the middle of the scene and crying out, ‘Hector Cathie’s got a thousand pounds! He can go to England!’ I discovered in that moment that it had become almost my own affair. I sat there waiting, determining in myself that I would see to it that Hector’s thousand pounds should be spent in the best possible way. Three hundred pounds would give him all that he needed in the way of a holiday, and perhaps when he was back there he would like to settle down. I might find some little job for him. We might buy him an annuity. He could not, after all, have many more years to live. And so happy was I, sitting there seeing Hector move down the path beside the lake, sniffing at the air as he went and seating himself on the spur of rock above the Manesty woods, entering his room in the evening with the country sounds all about him—so happy was I that I was for the moment myself translated, enjoying one of those so rare selfless experiences when life seems richer and more fortunate than one had ever expected it to be.

Hector was at my side. He said, ‘I understand that my brother has died and left me a thousand pounds. Is that correct?’

‘Perfectly,’ I answered.

His eyes filled with tears. His voice quivered. ‘The poor lad. I stole his bicycle from him once for one whole afternoon, and punctured one of the tyres. He married unfortunately.’ And then he walked off, his head in the air, looking, I supposed, at Cumberland. Looking at Cumberland! What must have been his strange experiences during those next weeks! For one thing he was old, and the venture of breaking away from everything that has surrounded you for so long—that kind of uprooting after you’re seventy—is a shock. For one reason or another, I was not able before a fortnight or so to be free to watch the development of my picture. And when I did plunge back on to the set again, there was no Hector to be seen.

‘Where has Hector gone?’ I asked Burrows.

‘I don’t know,’ he answered, and looked vaguely about him. ‘He isn’t in this part of the picture, you know.’ He was looking rather crossly at the stumpy and untidy figure of Willie Beresford’s stand-in. Willie was the great boy-actor of the moment and he’d been put into the Heart of Midlothian by force, to give the picture box-office value. He was not there to-day, but his stand-in was, a stupid, ugly little boy, who was now to take his place in a Scotch cap and a kilt on the top of a rock while the cameras fixed their positions.

‘What you ought to do,’ Burrows said crossly, ‘is to watch the other actors. See how they walk and so on. That is if you want to be an actor yourself.’

‘I guess I don’t,’ the little stand-in muttered. ‘My aunt says it’s a disgrace being an actor.’

I realised that this was one of Hector’s protégés. Hector was always very kind to him. One of Hector’s subjects.

Burrows suddenly said, ‘They say Hector’s going to England at last. He’s been left some money.’ And at that the little stand-in suddenly looked at us with the strangest expression in his eyes. A glance of bewilderment, distress, almost horror.

Then, looking in one morning at Stanley Rose’s bookshop, there was Hector buying a book. It must have been a long while since he had done such a thing.

‘A parting gift for a friend,’ he said, staring at me in a distressed way.

You don’t look well, I thought to myself. You look neither well nor happy. ‘When are you going?’ I asked him, in that especially cheerful way I have with those who I think need comforting. The result is often different from my intention. He frowned at me anxiously. He’d lost a lot of his regal splendour. He drew me into a corner of the bookshop.

‘I haven’t been sleeping,’ he said. ‘And that reminds me. It’s a good deal to ask, but I’d take it as a great honour.’

‘Take what?’ I enquired.

‘Come to the station to see me off with a few of my intimate friends, Tuesday week. We’re having a little meal in my rooms first. Any time from eight onwards.’

‘Why, of course. I’d be delighted,’ I said. ‘But look here,’ I went on, ‘you don’t seem very happy about it. This ought to be the greatest thing in your life.’

‘So it is. So it is,’ he muttered. Then he caught my arm and drew me to the door. ‘Do you see those cars?’ he asked. ‘Rows and rows of Fords and Chevrolets?’

‘Of course.’

‘And that sign hanging across the road from Grauman’s—Garbo’s new picture?’

‘Why, yes, certainly.’

‘And all the little eating-places? The shops with the cheap crockery? And do you hear them shouting the evening paper? Do you hear that siren blowing?’ He was growing more and more excited. His hand trembled on my arm. ‘You see the fogs creeping up from Santa Monica?’

‘Yes, what about it?’

‘I’ve hated this street for years and years now. Of course, it hasn’t always been like this. It’s always changing. But it has the same atmosphere of not really being anything. Something dumped down for the night—ugly and shifty. I’ve hated it! It’s meant poverty and struggle and frustrated ambition and always trying to seem something grander than you are, and now I can’t leave it.’

‘What do you mean, you can’t leave it?’

‘Just what I say. I’ve thought that I hated it and everything here. The desert and the fog and the dirty sea and the studios and the lights and American voices. But perhaps I don’t. Perhaps I’ve got fond of it.’

‘Everyone feels like that,’ I said, ‘just before leaving a place.’

‘And how does one know,’ he went on, ‘that that other is going to be like I imagine it is ... the waterfalls and the clouds and the little green fields and the rocky hills? Perhaps it won’t be. Perhaps I’ll be longing for this.’

‘Well, then you can come back,’ I said comfortably. ‘You can always come back.’

‘Perhaps I can’t. Perhaps if I go over I won’t belong to either country. This has got into my blood. It means more to me than I thought.’

‘Here’s your book,’ said the nice young shopkeeper.

‘Thank you.’ Hector turned a bewildering gaze about him.

‘Now don’t you worry,’ I said. ‘Once you’re in the train starting for England, you’ll be mad with joy. I’ll see you on Tuesday week.’

And so I did. I let myself in for one of the oddest things. I arrived about eight-thirty to find at least a dozen people in the little room, but no Hector. Miss Mullins was there, of course, busy about the supper. And the little stand-in and two or three old English actors, some elderly American ladies and two girls who had that desperate air of brightness and enthusiasm, calculated, they hoped, to pick up a gentleman from somewhere in the speediest manner possible. The table in the middle of the room was laden with food. And I couldn’t help thinking that that room had probably never seen so much food before. From the very beginning, the whole business was bizarre. Miss Mullins was in tears. She wept into all the dishes and went about muttering to herself, looking furiously at anyone whom she encountered. I saw, indeed, that they were all very unhappy. One of the ancient English actors explained it to me.

‘You see, old boy’ (I’d never met him before), ‘Hector means a damn lot to all of us. Of course, we’ve chaffed him a bit sometimes about his talking so much of the old country. He’s been a bit dotty in that direction, if you ask me, but, after all, he’s a good old stick. A jolly old boy, what?’

I agreed. But I told them all that he would soon be back again.

‘I don’t know,’ said the English actor. ‘That’s the devil of it.’ He became very confidential, putting his hand on my shoulder. ‘That’s the damnedest thing about Hollywood, if it gets into your blood you’re never free of it again. You may hate it like hell, but it’s part of you, like a game leg or hare-lip. I don’t know what it is. Either it’s the sun or the people or something crazy. You know, it bewitches you. Like they used to do in the old fairy stories.’

Then Hector came in. He apologised very quietly for being late. He seemed to me considerably aged in the last few weeks. We sat down to supper and very melancholy it was. People tried to make conversation, I amongst others, but everything fell to the ground. Drink was circulated, but even that didn’t cheer anyone very much. Then the little stand-in had been deputed to make a speech. He stood up, his ugly little face not very far above the tablecloth, and really did his duty very well. He said that Hector was a swell guy and that they’d sure miss him. And then he began to choke and snuffle, but he pulled himself together and said that he wished he could go to England too. On that Miss Mullins broke quite frankly into howls and sobs and rushed from the room. Everyone cried, ‘Speech! Speech!’

Hector got up very quietly and in a depressed voice said this was the moment for which he had always been waiting. That it would be very wonderful to see England again and that he’d send everybody postcards. After that we all sat about waiting anxiously for the time to go to the station. An appalling kind of silence fell upon everybody. And I don’t know how it was, but I myself felt as though Hector was committing some awful crime. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps the happiness of his life had for years now been built up on this picture of England—the North of England with its little stone walls and bare fells and running streams. Maybe when he saw it all in reality it would in truth be a disappointment that might almost kill him. And perhaps behind that he’d grown to love this strange untidy place where we were all living. Anyhow, that was his affair. I remember that all I wanted was for the thing to be quickly over. For all of us to hasten to the station, bid him farewell and go home.

‘I say, old boy, you’d better be going,’ one of the English actors suddenly remarked.

Hector nodded his head. Nobody spoke. We hurried downstairs, got into cars and dashed away to the Santa Fé Station. Those parts of Los Angeles where that station lies have no beauty at this time of the evening. They are sinister, bizarre, dangerous. They are empty of all but abandoned life. At last we were there, standing rather huddled together, some dozen of us in the middle of the tracks. There was the big, dirty train, and there was Hector laying his bag with his night things behind the shabby green curtain. He stood looking at us as we crowded the corridor.

He tried to speak.

I thought he was going to say what I always said on such occasions, ‘Now go away like good children. I hate to be seen off. Leave me to myself.’ But instead of that, quite suddenly he seemed to go mad. He drove through the lot of us, actually knocking Miss Mullins back on to one of the beds. He waved his arms like a crazy man and shouted as he stumbled down the steps of the train, ‘I’m not going! I’m not going! Where are my bags? I can’t go!’ He began to run down the track. All we could do, of course, was to follow after him, and very foolish we looked. One of the English actors was desperately concerned. He caught up to Hector at last, got him by the arm, and as I came up I heard him say, ‘Look here, old man, you can’t do this. You really can’t. You must have been drinking. What I mean is, the train will be going in a minute or two.’

‘I don’t care!’ Hector cried. ‘Don’t you understand? I don’t want to go to England! It won’t be what I think it is. I’m safer here.’

The English actor turned to me. ‘Dotty,’ he said, ‘he’s gone dotty. All the excitement has been too much for him.’

‘I don’t know,’ I answered, ‘perhaps he’s right.’

We had all gathered together by that time. The porter by the train was shouting, ‘All aboard!’ and Hector was laughing like a schoolboy.

‘That’s settled!’ he cried. ‘Now come on, we’ll all go home and really enjoy ourselves.’

It happened that I myself returned to England a week or two later. I was not in Hollywood again for over a year. And then one afternoon, looking for some friend, I pushed back the heavy door and walked on to the set. There, seated very regally in a gondola on a piece of artificial water, dressed in a brilliant seventeenth-century silver costume and smoking a pipe, was Hector, talking to some friends. I came up intending to greet him and overheard some of his conversation:

‘No place in the world like it,’ he was saying. ‘God, if I could only get a month off and see it again. For forty years I haven’t been there. You can’t imagine it. The sky changes every second and the rocks run right down into the little green fields, and there’s a hill that only takes you a half-hour to climb and you can see six lakes. But it doesn’t do talking about it. It makes me so homesick I could choke. You know how it is. You’d be the same way if you hadn’t seen your home all those years.’ He looked magnificently in front of him, seeing the mountains and the lakes and little running streams. I left him to his reverie.