Читать книгу The Anxious Days - Philip Gibbs - Страница 8

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He felt a hand touch his arm, and a woman’s voice spoke to him.

“Good heavens! Is that Stephen—or his good-looking ghost?”

He turned to look into the eyes of a lady who stood smiling at him. She was a lady with grey hair in which there was a little sparkle of diamonds. She had bare arms and shoulders above a black gown which made her look thin and tall. She had the complexion of a young girl, which must have been costly; and her dark eyes had not changed since this man Compton had known her in days before she paid for her complexion in an old house beyond Horsham in Sussex.

“My dear Helen!” he exclaimed. “I never dreamed of meeting you here. How absolutely splendid!”

She was still holding his arm, and gave it a little squeeze.

“I thought you were still in the wilds of Borneo, among the head hunters and dark horrors. What are you doing here, Steenie, among all these celebrities?”

He told her that old Bartlett had brought him, that he was just back from the Malay States, and that he had not yet seen his daughter Madge, who was away on tour.

“Can’t we talk somewhere?” he said, as though he had been dumb until then. “I want you to tell me about everything.”

“Everything?” She laughed—a pleasant contralto laugh—at this exaggeration. “Where shall I begin? What does this one-armed hero want to know from an ignorant woman?”

“Tell me about yourself,” he suggested, “and about England. This Election, for instance. Is Labour going to win again? What are people thinking about over here? Are we going to scrape through? And about your husband, and your boy and girl, and old friends whom I haven’t seen for five years, which seem like five hundred.”

“God bless the dear man!” exclaimed the lady, much amused by all these questions. “What a lot he wants to know! Look, there are two chairs, Steenie. Grab them quickly before they’re seized by some of those draggle-tailed hussies.”

He strode over and took possession of the chairs, and placed one so that she could sit with her back to a gilded pillar.

“Now,” he said, taking the other chair and crossing his long legs, “tell me. I’ve only been in England a few hours.”

“Poor old England!” said the lady whom he had called Helen, and who was the wife of Henry Lambert, a Treasury official.

“As bad as that?” asked Compton, with a smile about his thin lips. He didn’t feel so lonely now. It was good to see friendly eyes looking into his. Helen, he thought, was still attractive. Once—was it a thousand years ago?—he had kissed her behind a chintz curtain in an old manor house. Five years ago, which seemed like five hundred, he had dined with her at his cousin’s house in Regent’s Park, before going off to that distressful exile. He had asked her to keep an eye on Madge when she came down from Somerville.

“Of course, we’re all on the way to ruin,” she told him, with a quiet laugh, as though amused by this dreadful prospect. “What else is there to expect when the politicians of every party bribe the people with promises of bread and circuses? More doles and less work. Votes for flappers who ought to be spanked. That’s Mr. Baldwin’s little contribution to the world’s intelligence. Now they’re going to hand away the Empire. India is as good as gone. We can’t say ‘Bo’ to a goose in any part of the world.... Anything more you want to know about, Steenie?” Her eyes were filled with ironical humour.

He sat with his one arm over the back of a gilt chair and looked at her thoughtfully.

“I hope we haven’t lost our old spirit,” he said.

His glance roved round the enormous room at the top of Horridge’s, where the crowd was getting denser. It was nearly midnight, when the theatrical profession was showing up. Wasn’t that Leslie Henson, looking a bit older? ... And surely that was Gladys Cooper?

“How’s your boy—Simon?” asked Compton.

Mrs. Lambert raised her hands and made a comical grimace.

“He worries Henry quite a lot. He’s gone into the City, and hates it, and he’s restless and nervy and in revolt against almost everything. I don’t know what to do about him.”

“Madge tells me she likes him,” said Compton. “She always mentions him in her letters. They seem to see each other a good deal.”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Lambert spoke that little word with a slight emphasis as though it conveyed a hidden meaning.

“Too much?” asked Compton. “Do you mean to say ... ?”

“Well, you’ll get to know all about Madge,” said Mrs. Lambert. “You asked me to keep an eye on her. My dear man, a thousand eyes couldn’t follow her wayward nights. I hate to think of her in those theatrical lodging-houses, and travelling about with musical comedy companies. I can’t think why you allowed it.”

Commander Compton shrugged his shoulders and laughed uneasily.

“What could I do? Three thousand miles away! Besides, she has her head on her shoulders, if one can judge from her letters. She writes seriously at times about life and all that. Quite amazing!”

“These young people!” laughed Mrs. Lambert. “Inexplicable, Steenie. You and I didn’t care to think about the things they discuss quite freely.”

“Perhaps it’s better,” said Compton, with his thin-lipped smile. “Perhaps we weren’t so honest with ourselves, Helen.”

The announcer of the Election results recorded another victory for Labour. Bermondsey, South, Mrs. Pomeroy. Majority 7,384.

“That’s Monica,” said Mrs. Lambert. “Do you remember? She used to be Monica Heathcote before she married that brilliant husband—poor fellow! Now she’s gone Bolshie and all that.”

She looked curiously at Commander Compton, as though trying to remember something.

“By the way, didn’t you number her once among your affairs of the heart? I seem to remember an episode at Brighton in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. Nineteen hundred and six, to be precise.”

Compton flushed slightly and gave a good-natured laugh.

“I’ve seen her since then. She’s rather a pal of mine. Before the war I had to rescue her from a hostile crowd in the Caxton Hall—in the Suffragette days—and got a black eye, which didn’t look well on the deck of my destroyer.”

Mrs. Lambert smiled, and touched his empty sleeve.

“Always the gallant hero, Steenie! First in the fight for England, home, and beauty!”

Then she gave his sleeve a tug, and cried out in surprise.

“Well, I never did! Look at those two gipsies! There’s your Meg Merrilees and my Simon called Peter. I thought Madge was away on tour. And Simon told me he was going to bed, not caring a tinker’s cuss who won the Election, having a complete contempt for the politicians of every party.”

Compton sprang up from his chair before Mrs. Lambert finished these words, the end of which he did not hear.

Three yards away from him, behind a barrier of chairs and people, was his daughter Madge; and he felt his heart give a lurch, as a lover who sees his mistress after many days.

She was standing with a tall boy, looking towards the lighted board on which the Election results were posted. He could see three quarters of her face, slightly raised and lengthening the line of her pretty neck. She was in a rose-coloured frock, with bare arms and shoulders. She looked astoundingly grown up. A woman!

The boy with her—Helen Lambert’s Simon—stood with his hands in his pockets, with his shoulders slightly hunched. He was a tall young man, with a delicate-looking face and a lock of hair falling over his forehead. He held a lighted cigarette, and nicked its ash on to the polished boards of Mr. Horridge’s dancing-floor.

“Labour is doing rather well. I’m glad,” said Madge Compton, and the words were heard by her father, who edged closer to her through the moving crowd. There was a large lady with a bare back who made an immovable barrier between them.

“Why?” asked Simon Lambert. “You surely don’t think that Labour is any more honest than the others?”

“That’s exactly what I do think, Simon,” said Madge. “Besides, they may do something about unemployment.”

These two young people were talking as though they were in a desert beyond the reach of human ears.

“They can’t do anything about unemployment,” said Simon Lambert. “It’s caused by world forces and the general imbecility of nations, and the utter absurdity of a democratic system. But what’s the good of talking politics? Isn’t there somewhere in this blasted shop where I can kiss you after all this time?”

“You don’t deserve a kiss,” said Madge very calmly. “I’ve written four letters to you since I’ve been on tour, and you haven’t answered by a postcard. Besides, didn’t we have a furious quarrel before I went away?”

Simon Lambert shrugged his shoulders.

“Let the dead past bury its dead and be damned to it,” he answered sulkily.

Madge laughed at this violence of speech, and then was startled by the touch of a hand on her bare arm.

“Hullo, Madge darling! When did you get back?”

Compton spoke quietly, trying to suppress the emotion in his voice. He had been trained in self-repression since he had first gone to Dartmouth as a small boy, but this sight of his daughter had given him a heart-beat.

She turned quickly, and stared at him for the tenth part of a second with raised eyebrows and an astonishment in her eyes, which changed suddenly to delight.

“Father!” she cried.

She was astounded to see him in Horridge’s. She hadn’t expected him back until to-morrow. She hadn’t even been to her rooms since she got back from the tour in time to come on here. She had changed into her evening frock in the lavatory of a train from Edinburgh!

“By Jove, it’s good to see you again!” said Compton.

He was absurdly shy of this young woman who happened to be his daughter. He hadn’t quite guessed that she had developed into such a beauty.

She presented her cheek to him and he kissed it lightly, a little embarrassed at this greeting in a crowd.

“Simon,” said Madge to the young man at her side, “you remember my father? He’s just back from the Malay.”

Simon Lambert wasn’t excited by the news. He looked a little bored about it.

“How do you do, sir?” he said, with fair civility.

“I saw you last time at Oxford,” said Compton. “Your mother is over there.”

Young Lambert nodded. “So I perceive. I was hoping she wouldn’t spot me in this disgusting crowd. Well, I suppose we’d better move in that direction.”

He moved in that direction, careless of the shoulder-blades of a thin old dame who looked like a duchess.

Madge Compton took her father’s arm and leaned against him.

“How jolly to have you back!”

“Home for good this time,” said Compton. “Thank God for that!”

“We’ll have some fun together,” said Madge. “When I’m not working. I’m really awfully glad to see you again, Father.”

“Thanks,” he said gratefully.

He led her in the direction of Helen Lambert, who was rebuking her son for having pretended that he wanted to go to bed when he was off to meet a pretty girl.

“It saved a lot of explanation,” said Simon carelessly. “Where’s the governor? Deploring the impending downfall of the British Empire, I suppose?”

“Wouldn’t Father make up well for a V.C. part?” said Madge, regarding him with a kind of professional admiration, as though casting a new play with Stephen Compton in the part of a naval officer with an empty sleeve and bronze-coloured grease-paint.

“Don’t be absurd, child!” said Mrs. Lambert, laughing at her. “And, Simon, as a punishment for sin, go and fetch me a cup of Mr. Horridge’s coffee. These rooms are as hot as—well, you know where!”