Читать книгу The Anxious Days - Philip Gibbs - Страница 16

Table of Contents

Compton turned up at the tick of eight for that appointment with his daughter the following evening. He had had an unfortunate day, failing to establish contact with relations and friends. He had rung up his sister Elizabeth in Kensington, only to find that she had gone by an early train to Eastbourne to visit a dying friend. He had rung up Henry Lambert at the Treasury, to invite him to lunch, but he was in conference with his chief and sent word through a clerk that he hoped Compton would dine with him at home on the following Thursday. Old Bartlett was busy in “the Market”, which meant the Stock Exchange, where shares were being pegged down in consequence of a Labour victory. Other friends were away or engaged, and Compton on his first day back felt like the schoolboy who plays truant in the old tale and says, “Horse, horse, play with me! Dog, dog, play with me!” but finds that they all have work to do.

He had a lonely lunch at a restaurant in South Kensington, to which he had walked merely for the sake of walking, and was tempted to enter into conversation with a bright-eyed young woman who sat at his little table. But she snubbed him when he offered her the salt with the remark that it was a charming day, and kept her eyes glued on a novel which he perceived, by reading the title upside down, was written by an author named D. H. Lawrence, with whose work he was unfamiliar. She satisfied her hunger by toasted cheese and jam-roll, and smoked three Gold Flake cigarettes over her cup of coffee.

Baulked of conversation with his fellow beings, Commander Compton walked again after lunch through Hyde Park, and sat for a time opposite a mass of spring flowers, tulips and narcissi, which made a wonderful show, very pleasing to his sense of beauty. In spite of his loneliness, it was with a deep sense of inner satisfaction that he found himself in this old pleasaunce of London life. Better than a jungle in Malay!

With a faint smile, of which he was unconscious, he watched the people passing; the nursemaids with bald-headed babies in perambulators, and small children like fairy-tale princes and princesses, chattering as they walked alongside with hoops and toys. Life went on. The English type continued. Non Angli sed Angeli. Most of these children were flaxen-haired. He was surprised what a lot of young men were sitting on these park chairs, or lying on the grass. They seemed to have nothing in the world to do, unless they worked at night. Perhaps they were out-of-works, living on the dole. Terribly demoralizing, that. Unless England began to wake up and get busy, it might be left behind. Why didn’t some of these men emigrate? Had they lost the old pioneering spirit?

Compton fell into a meditation on these subjects, and then was aware that a girl had taken a chair next to his. She asked him whether he could give her a light for a cigarette, and he was quite willing to oblige. She was a smart-looking little thing, but not quite a lady, he thought, in his old-fashioned way, forgetting that the word is not used much nowadays.

“Thanks awfully,” she said. “Sorry to have troubled you.”

“Not at all,” said Compton politely.

“Nice day, isn’t it?” she asked, with a sideway smile at him. “Makes one feel that life’s worth living after all.”

Compton thought over this way of putting it, and glanced at her again over his shoulder. She looked about twenty-two—the same age as Madge.

“Does it ever seem that it isn’t?” he inquired.

“My word, yes! It’s a silly game mostly, don’t you think? Unless you have luck, I mean. Some people have all the luck, of course. Would you like to take me to the Pictures this afternoon?”

Compton considered the idea for the tenth part of a second. Certainly he would like to talk to somebody. But perhaps it was hardly wise to get on friendly terms with this young woman.

“I’m afraid I haven’t time,” he answered insincerely, considering that he had to put in six hours or more before seeing Madge.

She took his refusal good-naturedly.

“No luck again! Well, sorry. How did you lose that arm?”

“Jutland,” said Compton. “It was a battle, you know.”

She laughed and seemed to have heard of it before, though it was hardly likely.

“It must have hurt. But it gives you a distinguished look. I don’t suppose your lady friends mind because you’ve only one arm.”

“I haven’t many lady friends,” said Compton.

“Oh, go on!” said the girl. “I don’t believe that, you know.”

Compton laughed at this absurd little creature.

“My dear child, I’m an old man. An elderly gentleman. I’m old enough to be your grandfather.”

“There’s nothing in age nowadays,” said the girl. “I’ve known men of fifty who dance the foxtrot wonderfully. Would you like to take me to the Palais de Danse to-night?”

“Impossible,” said Commander Compton. “I have an engagement.”

He rose and lifted his hat, and said, “Good afternoon.”

“Afraid of being pinched in the park by a policeman on the prowl,” said the girl with amazing alliteration. “Well, good afternoon. Nice to have seen you!”

He walked away.

Now what type did that girl belong to? Perhaps a little shop girl who had lost her job—or a poor little hussy who had lost her character. He was sorry for her, anyhow. She was just about the age of Madge. Very likely her father had been killed in the War, or was one of those fellows living on the dole or out of work without the dole. Beneath all the apparent wealth of London, there must be a lot of misery lurking in mean streets. He would have known more of English life if he had taken that girl to the Pictures. It might have been worth while from, that point of view, but indiscreet, all the same.

He went to the Pictures alone, at a great place near the Marble Arch. It was a week-day afternoon, but the house was crowded with men as well as women. Amazing that! How did all these people afford the time as well as the money? Hadn’t they anything to do on a week-day afternoon? He sat there through the long programme, watching a drama of love and passion, which was utterly unreal and not exactly uplifting. It was the sort of picture which, when shown out East, would drag down the prestige of the white races, as it was being done in every cinema in Singapore. The East was being taught to despise Western civilization, unless they were tempted to imitate its worst aspects. And apart from the exaggeration and unreality of these films, Western civilization did not seem in a healthy state.

Commander Compton, this lonely man, stared round at the audience in the darkness about him at four o’clock in the afternoon. They were like ghosts in the seats on either side of him, laughing a little now and then, or drawing an audible breath at some sensational moment. When the lights were turned up during the interval he saw that the majority of them were women, with a sprinkling of men among them. They had come here, he supposed, to enjoy a dream, satisfying for an hour or two their unfulfilled desires of love and romance, relieving them from the boredom of reality, killing time as, after all, he was trying to kill it. Not good, that, except as an occasional drug!

Most of these women hadn’t enough to do, perhaps, while their husbands were working for them in City offices. Probably they had a servant or two in their suburban houses or London flats. Very likely they had no children to keep them busy—last night’s papers had said that the birth-rate had fallen to its lowest recorded figures. They had no work, no duties, no drudgery, in a social class which had lifted them beyond such things as cooking or needlework. There were millions of women in England like that. Millions more in the United States and other countries. They were the product of an industrial civilization liberating them from the toil of primitive women mated to men who worked on the land. Were they any happier for this liberation from drudgery? Wasn’t industrial civilization as unreal as that picture of false passion on the screen? Wouldn’t it be better for human happiness if men and women were forced to return to more primitive conditions, getting back to Mother Earth, reviving old handicrafts, doing things with their hands and bodies? Perhaps that fellow Gandhi was right in denouncing the machine as the enemy of mankind. It had destroyed simplicity. It was giving people too much leisure, which left them bored and listless. Perhaps it was the cause of all this unemployment which was spreading in England and Germany and other countries. Only the United States was prosperous, by some secret of their own. The philosophy of Henry Ford....

Commander Compton forgot the thread of the plot on the screen while meditating on these mysteries.... Three and a half hours more before he would see Madge again. He took tea, after the performance, in a Lyons shop near the Marble Arch, and had an interesting conversation with a young man who spilt some of his tea down Compton’s trousers by jogging his cup with the edge of his overcoat.

“I say, I’m most frightfully sorry!”

“Not at all,” said Compton. “That’s nothing. Just a spot or two.”

The young man was upset even more than his tea.

“Extremely careless of me, sir.”

“Not at all, my dear fellow,” said Compton. “Pray don’t think about it. Look, that will dry in a couple of minutes.”

It was an introduction to conversation. The young man revealed that he was a commercial traveller from Manchester. He was waiting for his young lady. They were going to a cinema in the evening.

“How’s business?” asked Compton.

“Rotten,” said the young man. “Cotton is a lost cause. Artificial silk now, you know. Lancashire is poverty-stricken. What with a boycott in India and revolutions in China, and high tariffs everywhere against British goods, there’s absolutely nothing doing.”

“Still, you can afford to take your young lady to the cinema,” Compton reminded him cheerfully.

“Oh, well, while there’s life there’s hope!” He glanced at Compton’s empty sleeve.

“The War?”

“Jutland,” said Compton. “A long time ago now.”

The young man nodded.

“I missed it. Too young, you know. Can’t say I’m sorry. Damn silly business, wasn’t it? I haven’t found out yet what it was all about. An elder brother of mine was killed in Flanders. If there’s another you won’t catch me getting into it!”

“Not even if England is in danger?” asked Compton.

The young man absorbed his last bit of toasted bun before answering.

“Oh, that’s an old catch,” he answered. “Whenever politicians want to drive their people to war they say the country is in danger. Well, my answer is, remove the danger, my good asses. Isn’t there the League of Nations? Don’t we believe in Conciliation and Common Sense? Isn’t that what they’re paid for?”

“Yes,” said Compton, “perhaps you’re right. But it’s awkward if a big nation refuses to believe in conciliation and common sense, and prefers high explosives and national egotism. If Germany arms again——”

“The French are making all the trouble,” said the young man. “ ‘Security before disarmament’—with the biggest army in Europe. It’s because they insist on reparations from Germany that we’re all getting into this financial mess. I’ve no patience with them. I once spent a week-end in Paris——”

He broke off his sentence and called out to the waitress.

“Ticket, please, missy! My young lady will be waiting for me,” he explained. “Good evening, sir. Sorry about that cup of tea!”

Compton was sorry to lose him. He seemed an intelligent young fellow, though rather too cocksure about his own opinions.

So trade was still bad in Lancashire? And if other young men were like this one, they had set their mind against war—even if England were in danger....

It was queer that one could have a conversation like that in a Lyons tea-shop with a chance acquaintance who was a commercial traveller. World problems were bearing down upon all these City clerks and typist girls who were sitting at these little tables. They talked about them glibly. Because Gandhi had proclaimed a boycott in India, some of them would have to economize when they took their girls out in the evening. Because General Chiang Kai Shekh was advancing against General Fen in China, Lancashire was spending less money in London, and clerks were getting the sack in merchant offices. That young man had never been out East. Perhaps he didn’t realize that Western civilization depended ultimately upon guns and bayonets for its safety. If all nations disarmed, the East would walk West.... An unpleasant and disturbing thought in a Lyons tea-shop!

Commander Compton paid his bill at the desk—fourpence—and walked from the Marble Arch to Chelsea, to put in time before seeing his daughter Madge.