Читать книгу The Anxious Days - Philip Gibbs - Страница 10

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While he paid off the taxi, she opened the front door of an old house in Church Street with a latchkey, which she took from her rose-coloured vanity bag.

“Mind the stairs, Father,” she warned him. “There’s no light unless you strike a match.”

He struck a match, but it went out on the next landing, to the amusement of his daughter, who suppressed her laughter and whispered to him:

“There are some queer people in these rooms, Father! They get a bit fractious sometimes when my friends stay late and indulge in Bacchanalian orgies.”

Compton hoped she might be exaggerating about those orgies, and wondered what kind of friends she knew.

“Great Jupiter!” he said, burning his fingers with another match.

Madge laughed, and caught hold of him.

“Here, take my hand, Father. Only six more stairs. There’s a Russian dancer behind that door. Don’t wake her up, poor dear. She might think the Bolshies had broken in!”

She opened her own door, and as she did so an enormous voice roared into the passage:

“Battersea. Labour. Saklatvala. Majority ...”

“Mercy!” cried Madge. “They’re still listening-in to those Election results! Jean is entertaining some of her friends or—worse still—some of mine.”

“Perhaps I’d better go,” said Compton nervously.

“They’re quite harmless, Father. They won’t bite an elderly gentleman.”

An elderly gentleman? Yes, he supposed so. That was how he appeared to his daughter, though he felt so preposterously young sometimes.

She led him by the hand into a room with panelled walls, under a ceiling that had not been whitewashed for a long period of history. A gas-fire was burning in an old-fashioned grate, and in front of it was a sofa on which a girl with red hair and freckles sat in a blue silk dressing-gown, which showed her bare feet in slippers. Deep in a low chair, turned sideways to the sofa, sprawled a young man in a dinner-jacket with his trousers pulled up to reveal a bit of leg above each sock. A bottle of whisky, almost empty, a siphon of soda, and a glass stood on a threadbare carpet within reach of his left arm. On a little round table with one leg stood the instrument from which that voice was bellowing Election results.

“Hullo, children!” cried Madge. “Turn off that loud speaker, if you have any love for me.”

The girl in the blue silk dressing-gown turned her head and raised her eyebrows.

“Hullo, Madge! I didn’t expect you for hours and hours. Glad to see you so nice and early!”

Her eyes turned towards Compton, and she gave him a friendly nod, as though not at all surprised that Madge should bring a stranger home at half past one at night. Perhaps she guessed that it was the long-lost father.

The young man in the deep chair roused himself, stood up, walked towards the loud speaker, turned it off, and then looked at Madge with a kind of amused adoration.

“I will give you the keys of heaven,” he said, as though she reminded him of an old song.

“Accepted gladly,” said Madge. “This is my father. Jean, come and behave like a lady. My father from the Malay States. Father, this is Jean Macgregor from Edinburgh. One of her ancestors fought for Bonnie Prince Charlie—unless she lies to us.”

Jean Macgregor held out her hand and smiled at Compton.

“We’ve talked to each other before,” she said. “You’ll find Madge a bit of a handful.”

Madge brought forward the young man. He was a tall young man, with a square-cut face and a cleft in his chin, and very broad shoulders under his dinner-jacket.

“Father, this is Edward P. Feldmann, Junior, of New York City. Recently of Harvard and Oxford, and now at a loose end. He speaks perfectly good English when he tries. He rowed for Magdalen and was three lengths behind.”

“How do you do, sir?” inquired young Mr. Feldmann of New York City, in perfectly good English, carefully avoiding that “Pleased to meet you” which he had discarded under Oxford influence.

Madge gave a cry of dismay.

“Oh, Father, they’ve drunk to the very dregs of Haig and Haig. They’ve been having a drunken orgy while we’ve been watching the fate of England! Disgusting of you, Edward.”

“Sorry,” said Edward, smiling, without a trace of remorse. “You were such a long time coming.”

As she stood in front of him with mock indignation, he took hold of a rosebud on her frock and looked at her white arms and shoulders as though they pleased him.

“You’re very eighteenth-century to-night,” he told her.

Jean Macgregor went to a cupboard, thrust her hand behind some disorderly books, and produced a full bottle of whisky, which she placed on the table.

“Hidden reserves,” she remarked blandly.

“Oh, you’re wonderful, Jean!” exclaimed Madge, pulling herself free from that rosebud. “Father dear, do sit down and make yourself at home. Your first night in the old country—how strange you must feel!”

He felt very strange, and a kind of intruder in these rooms belonging to his daughter and this Scotch lassie with the red hair who had a humorous face which he liked. It was astonishing to find Madge as a bachelor girl, perfectly independent, wonderfully self-possessed, and radiant at half past one in the morning, after a long journey and that scene at Horridge’s. He followed her with his eyes as she moved about the room, picking up cards and letters to glance at them with interest or indifference.

“Anything from Mr. Keening?” she asked Jean.

She had made her own friends while he was away. He would have to get to know them. That boy Simon, son of Helen Lambert, was obviously “sweet” on her in a sulky way. He had wanted to know where in that “blasted shop” he could kiss her. Cheek! This young American seemed a nice fellow, and a good type. He had rowed for Magdalen. Well, that was in his favour. Feldmann. It sounded German, which was not so much in his favour perhaps, in the mind of a man who had lost an arm at Jutland. Not that Compton felt any grudge about that. The boy looked at Madge as though he adored her, which seemed very probable. She was adorably pretty, with her brown hair encircled by a plait, and big brown eyes which glinted with amusement, and a beautiful flush of colour like an apple-cheeked country wench, though her skin was delicate and her shoulders very white. She was almost distressingly like her mother as a young girl. It was as though Phyllis, poor darling, had come back to him, as when he had first seen her at a dance on a battleship off Gibraltar. No wonder some producer fellow thought she would be a success on the stage. But he would have to wean her away from that if possible. He might take her abroad for a bit, to the Riviera, Paris, Florence, Rome, before he bought a little place in the country and set up house with her—unless she would feel too bored with him!

She came and sat on the floor by him and put her head against his knees, which was very nice of her.

“Do you think I might have a teeny-weeny drop of that fire-water?” she asked. “And Edward Feldmann, Junior, give me a cigarette, please.”

He gave her a cigarette out of a case which looked almost too rich, being of gold with the arms of Magdalen thereon.

“My people are in town,” he told her. “They want to see you. Do you think you could bear the strain?”

“I’m a good little actress,” said Madge. “They’re wallowing in wealth, I suppose?”

The young American shrugged his shoulders.

“They’ve taken a flat in Grosvenor House. I dare say they can afford it. That doesn’t worry me at all.”

“No,” said Madge. “You won’t worry, will you, as long as Feldmann, Senior, pays the price of your wild oats—at five dollars an oat?”

“Oh, more than that!” cried young Mr. Feldmann.

“Father,” said Madge, “these Americans are disgustingly rich, aren’t they?—while the rest of the world is poverty-stricken. How do you think they do it? What’s their little secret?”

As a matter of fact, that was a question which Compton had often asked himself while reading The Times, five or six weeks old, among the rubber trees of Malaya. He was not ready with an answer.

It was answered by young Feldmann with a sense of irony.

“We do it on the hire purchase system and the philosophy of Henry Ford. Quite easy, dear lady.”

“Tell these children about Singapore and Penang and Borneo, Father,” said Madge. “Tell them about that pet toad; and about your Dyak servant who was killed by a snake; and the Chinese junks going down the river; and the melancholy music of the gamelan, played all night long by soulful Javanese.”

Compton was pleased that she had read his letters and remembered them.

“I’m afraid all that is rather boring,” he answered. “Besides, it’s time you young people went to bed, isn’t it?”

In his heart he hoped they didn’t want to go to bed. It was wonderful being with Madge again.

“I’d like to hear about the toad,” said Jean Macgregor.

“And it might be good for me if I knew more about a Dyak,” said young Feldmann.

They were being kind to an elderly gentleman, and he fell into the trap and told them something about Singapore and Penang and Borneo—a good deal about Borneo—until he noticed that Madge’s head was dropping against his knee and that she had fallen fast asleep. Young Feldmann, on a low stool with his back against the wall, was watching her with a faint smile about his lips. Jean Macgregor was curled up on the sofa with her bare feet turned to the gas-fire. Perhaps she was asleep too.

Compton was annoyed with himself, and distressed about Madge.

“She’s asleep,” he said to young Feldmann. “Hadn’t we better steal away? Do you live hereabouts?”

“Downstairs,” said Edward Feldmann, Junior. “But I should let her sleep. It’s quite nice for her.”

Madge stirred, conscious, perhaps, that her father’s voice had ceased its monologue.

“Don’t be silly, Simon!” she exclaimed, and then opened her eyes and looked puzzled. Then she became really awake and looked up at her father.

“Oh, I’m sorry! It was awfully nice hearing about Borneo, Father.”

“My dear child,” he exclaimed, “I talked you to sleep, and I can’t forgive myself. It’s terribly late, and you ought to be in bed. All of you.”

“Well, that’s an idea,” said Madge. She raised herself and stood up and held on to her father’s empty sleeve.

“Clear out, Edward P. Feldmann, Junior. Father says I’ve got to go to bed, and I’m an obedient daughter.”

Young Feldmann rose, and announced that he would see her father downstairs in case he broke his neck without a guide.

“Happy dreams,” said he. “Only I hope it won’t be Simon next time. Why Simon? A plague on Simon!”

“What is this American brat chattering about?” asked Madge, with an air of annoyance which was not all sham.

Compton put his arm round her.

“Good night, my dear. I’m sorry I talked too much. It’s the effect of being home again and finding a marvellous daughter.”

“It’s splendid having you again, Father. Oh, I’m as sleepy as an ooloo!”

She put her cheek against his and then kissed him.

Jean Macgregor came to life and lit another cigarette. Young Feldmann conducted Compton downstairs by the aid of a cigarette lighter, guarded from the draught with both his hands. He jerked his elbow towards a door on the right of the hall.

“That’s my wigwam,” he explained. “Good night, Mr. Compton.”