Читать книгу The Wasted Generation - Owen Johnson - Страница 11

Table of Contents

November

To-day I saw my brother, Alan, after six years. Through a chance meeting, I found him living in the Luxemburg quarter. A girl answered my knock. We stood confronting each other, mutually surprised. I remembered her among the restless habitués of the Abbé de Thelême and the Café de Paris, in the old days. The paint and artifice were gone. She stood there, dark-eyed, frail, olive-tinted, considering me suspiciously, her woman’s instinct warned of possible danger to the thing she sheltered from the world.

“Tiens; it’s you, Toinon!”

She started forward and looked at me intently, but in her multitudinous conception of man, my face was but a blur in the panorama.

“It’s me you want to see—what’s your business?”

“Does Mr. Alan Littledale live here?”

“And if he does?”

“I am his brother.”

Instantly her manner changed.

“Ah, you’ve come to take him away, then?”

Before I could answer, a voice from within cried querulously: “Qui est là?”

The next moment a big frame, topped by a shaggy head, came into the anteroom.

“Hello, Alan!” I said, extending my hand.

He drew back, scowling and undecided.

“What the devil brings you here?”

“My dear fellow,” I said, smiling. “You do happen to be my own flesh and blood and, no matter how we’ve fought in the past, we’re both Littledales, to the end.”

Now, Alan had scoffed and stormed against all our traditions but, despite all, there still remained a lingering pride in the name. He relented a little bit,—though with ill grace.

“If you’re coming in to lecture me—”

“Don’t be an ass, Alan,” I broke in good-naturedly. “I’m no more saint than you are. Well, am I to come in or not?”

“You can come in.”

I had expected a shoddy, disordered interior. The little apartment was immaculate; flower-boxes, red and white geraniums at the balcony which gave on a garden; neatness, order, charm. I sat, asking no questions,—puzzled. Was it from love of the man, or from the denied natural instinct towards home-building? Toinon served the dinner, which she had cooked herself; hesitated and then, at a sign from Alan, sat down with us. When Alan left the room she turned to me and said, in a warning voice: “He is very ill.”

Down the hall I heard him coughing.

“How ill?”

She shook her head.

“Does he realize—?”

“No, no.”

Dinner over, she cleared the table deftly and converted the room into a salon, brought the tisane to her invalid, lit our cigars and, drawing up her chair before the fire, began to crochet. But, all at once, looking up, she said:

“If you’d rather be alone?”

“Stay, of course.”

I, studying the end of my cigar, waited, feeling his defiant glance on me.

“Shocked?”

“Why?”

“You always were sanctimonious when it was a question of doing things openly.”

“I haven’t come here to quarrel,” I said, smiling. His characterization at the moment struck me as grotesque. So far, we had barely skimmed the surface of things, and I felt the underlying hostility of his attitude. Resolving to take the bull by the horns, I said:

“Alan, before we bury the past, as I hope we’ll do, I want to tell you that I blame myself. I was unjust; we were all unjust to you. I regret it with all my heart.”

He stared at me, as a man grudging to relinquish his advantage.

“What good will that do—now?”

“You are right. It can do no good—now. But we can’t talk as man to man until we’ve had it out. So now you know how I feel. As for the rest—I’ve done a lot of things, been a bigger fool than you’ve ever been, so, your adjective doesn’t apply.”

He looked at me quizzically.

“You’ve changed; changed a lot! You talk like a two-fisted man. How long have you been away from that precious family of ours?”

“About five years.” I drew a letter from my pocket. “It was through Molly I heard of you.”

His face softened. “The one human being in the family.”

“And Rossie, Alan.”

“Yes, yes,—Rossie,” he said hastily. “Had he lived—but he didn’t. Great God! What a family! As much human affection as you can squeeze out of the hind foot of a horsefly! You—you were one of them, but I—God knows why—I was different. I was stifling in that atmosphere of smug egotism.” His voice rose as his face set in anger. The girl looked up from her knitting and then at me, anxiously, but I knew that it was better for him to give play to the pent-up grievances of years. “I was stifling. I tell you—starved! A home? A mockery! A gallery of granite statues. I can’t remember one single time having known what it was to have a father or mother. I never knew a word of sympathy, a look of love. You made me believe I was a lost soul—a gallows bird—you made me believe it myself! Why? Because I had warm blood in my veins, because I was human, had imagination, ambition, wild animal force. I, who was worth the whole lot of you, you crushed out with your cold, damned superiority, your conventionality and your pride in yourselves. And now, you come here and acknowledge you were wrong! Sublime!”

“We were wrong.”

“Wrong? Can you give me back these ten years? Can you make me what I should have been? Great heavens, this decent little devil here has got more of a woman’s heart to her when she brings me my medicine than the whole blooming lot of you ever dreamed of!”

Toinon, who only half understood, looked up.

“What are you saying about me, mon ami?”

“Only good things, and only half of what you deserve,” he said, laying his hand on her shoulder. He sat down, exhausted, and leaning over, buried his head in his hands.

“Now, you know what I think, what I shall always think. At that, though I hate it all—your narrowness and priggishness and holier-than-thou attitude—you’ve left your confounded Littledale pride in me. I am one of you, under my skin, or else I’d marry the only human being—” He stopped, looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t worry. I won’t. Give me Molly’s letter.”

When he came to a part that told of my father’s ill health, he frowned and looked up. “That’s why you’ve come round, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“To take me back with you—grand reconciliation—prodigal son—and all that sort of stuff?”

“I had no such thought,” I answered warmly. “As a matter of fact, I am not going myself.”

“You’re not?” He looked at me, too sharply for comfort. “Why not? Easiest thing in the world for you to get leave in your condition.”

“I want to get back to the Legion,” I said, looking away.

He saw there was more than I wished to say and probably he ascribed it to a different reason for, the letter read, his manner changed, and he said:

“Looks bad for the Governor. Well, I’ve nothing against him. A good sort, in his way, and as he saw; a civilization that passes away with the rising flood. Good sort—but utterly without significance. No—I won’t go back. What a farce—to play the prodigal son! Why, Davy, I’ve lived! You haven’t, none of you has. I’ve lived—I’ve seen—I’ve been down in the depths and seen! And you’ve gone on playing at being eighteenth century Littledales, and never realizing that you don’t count! You don’t even realize what America—the new America—is!”

“I think I suspect it,” I said, surprised at the turn of the conversation. I had come, I think, rather patronizingly, and I found myself yielding to a mental supremacy.

“Your kind still believes in government by individuals; you can’t even see what’s coming. It’s mass that counts, to-day. I don’t say ‘majorities’: the world has always been governed by organized minorities, and it always will be. You don’t know your generation; I do; I’ve been one of them. I know what’s coming!”

“You don’t think much of our generation, I gather,” said I, startled at the way his thought had run with mine.

“Of the generation of our kind? Precious little!”

“Well, Alan—that’s about my way of thinking.”

“Honest?”

“Why not?” I said, amused.

“What’s happened to you?” he said, pulling at his chin. “Aren’t you satisfied with being a Littledale, with a Harvard accent, and a number of good clubs, and parading up and down this private preserve God made for you? You haven’t lost faith in your Divine right of being a Littledale? Good God—he has!”

We broke out laughing and, leaning over, struck hands with a resounding clap.

“Davy, damned if I expected this!”

“Well, Alan, you’ve been knocking round one way. I’ve knocked round another: between us we must have gone up and down the scale,” I said, settling back. “Well, what have you gotten out of it, and what do you think of this funny old world of ours?”

He looked at me a long moment, still a little suspicious of me.

“I enjoy it,” he said, to my surprise.

“Really? As for me, I’ve had about everything I started with knocked into a cocked hat.”

“Then there’s hope—so long as you cling to some sort of code.”

“Wonder if I do.”

“Aren’t there some things that you wouldn’t do, no matter what happened? You wouldn’t forge—or cheat—”

“Well, hardly.”

“Well, David, that’s moral. Suppose my ideas shock you. They do most persons. You asked just now what I’ve picked up these ten years. That’s about the most important,—judging men by their codes. A man who’s got a code of morals is moral, whether he’s a libertine, a horse thief or—a minister. We start with about a hundred and fifty inhibitions that are poured into our ears; we end with about five or six fences which, no matter what happens, we won’t cross.”

“Don’t get you.”

“Take your man of the world, who considers every woman fair game; go further down; take one who’ll think nothing of taking a woman to pay his debts, use one woman to pay what he gives another; yet there are certain things he won’t do. He won’t cheat at cards. That’s a code. Take your criminal type. If there is something stops him somewhere—say that it’s only going to the gallows without ‘peaching’ on a friend—that’s a code,—his code of morals, and, by that, he’s moral!”

“You’re not serious,” I said, laughing.

“Never more so. Think me crazy—wild—eccentric—anything you want. I’m looking from the bottom up towards your top-heavy society and your morality, and I tell you that it’s only the man who won’t stop at anything, who’ll cheat, lie, steal, seduce a young girl, traffic in women—a man incapable of a code—that is absolutely, hopelessly immoral. Look here; you’re still looking at things from a moral point of view; you can’t help it. I’m just looking on—recognizing things as they are—interested in the human game. You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

“Frankly—yes.”

“You think I’m bitter—a rebel—my head against everything. Perhaps so; once, very much so. Not now. Fact, I’m rather more of an optimist than you. If we got down to it, you’d find I had a better opinion of mankind than you.”

The excitement into which his defence of himself had worked him started a coughing fit. Toinon came in and looked at me in warning. I rose immediately, holding out my hand.

“Well, Alan, I don’t have to agree with you, do I, to say that I’m honestly glad to talk to you?”

“No, no, of course not. I’m a queer dick, probably, but I’ve got reasons for what I think. Don’t ask questions, if you don’t want my answers.” He touched the decorations I wore and said, “I’m human enough, though, to be glad you’re wearing those. Picked up a couple myself, with the Canadians.”

“We never heard—”

“I was under an assumed name. Tell them at home about it when you write.”

“Alan, there’s one thing,” I said, voicing a thought that had been uppermost in my mind, “one thing I have a right to know—”

“Oh, go along with you. Of course, you’d have to say the obvious thing,” he said, slapping me on the shoulder. “I’m well fixed. Thanks just the same. And don’t worry about me; I’m picking up amazingly. Come again. Come again, soon.”

He went off into the back room, that I might not hear his coughing.

“Is he any better?” I asked of Toinon, who had followed me to the door.

She shook her head.

“Gas—at Neuve Chapelle.”

“No hope?”

“He is condemned.”

I stood, moodily incredulous, unable to believe that beneath the vital activity of the brain the inevitable, relentless contagion was working in the body. Then I tried to thank her but made a sad botch of it.

“Whatever happens, Toinon,” I said, giving her my address, “remember that I shan’t forget what you’ve done. I shall see that—” She looked at me, so suddenly and so straight that I floundered and stopped. “I meant if ever you were in need—” Still she kept her eyes directly on mine, disdaining a reply and, under that look I stammered: “Forgive me. I’m an ass—but it was kindly meant.”

Then, not knowing what to do, I took off my hat and made her an absurdly exaggerated bow. She shrugged her shoulders and closed the door. Which was no more than I deserved.

* * * * *

At the hotel I found a card from Stephen Brinsmade, offering me a rendezvous for the next day. I wonder if he is behind this transfer to Paris, and what it means?

* * * * *

I have set down as nearly as I can remember the circumstances of my first meeting with my brother after the lapse of years. I do not pretend to judge him for I am not in the mood to formulate judgments. I only know that a great new current of thought flowed into my mind and that I felt an eagerness to encounter again the opposition of his strangely antagonistic and dispassionate mind. As for Toinon, I don’t pretend to sentimentalize her kind. In my experience nothing is further from the truth than the Marguerite Gauthiers of fiction.

The war, after a brief period of the hysterical emotionalism of mob psychology, has shaken down society into much the same order as before. The rear has its pagan side, a revulsion to life, a frantic determination to eat, drink and be merry under the shadow of to-morrow’s realism. There is an outward sobriety and a decent respect for the black democracy of sorrow. Below the surface, revelry is as macabre as ever, for it must compress the passions of a lifetime into a span of hours, and laughter is the hunger for unrealities. A few of Toinon’s class—a very few—have turned Magdalene, some genuinely impelled to service, most of them swayed by a new dramatic loyalty to some man who brings them the new sensations of heroic love.

There is nothing sentimental about Toinon. She is a realist who looks life steadily in the face. Yet she, too, has her code, as Alan would have said.