XXXV
It was after his mother’s funeral that Bertram’s courage failed him. He had a letter from Joyce which put all but the finishing touch to his sense of abandonment by any kindliness of fate. She wrote to him from Paris—the Hotel Meurice—where she had gone with Lady Ottery. She still called him “My dear Bertram,” but her letter did not warm his soul.
She had been horrified to hear about Digby—that ought to kill his sympathy with Irish rebels, if anything would. She was also deeply sorry to hear about Mrs. Pollard’s death, though not surprised, after so much worry and so much tragedy.
She wished to let him know that Holme Ottery was being bought by an American, and that, to avoid the unhappiness of seeing the old house pass into new hands, she and her Mother had gone to Paris, on the way to Italy—while arrangements were being made by Alban to warehouse some of the old furniture and family treasures.
Her father had taken a new house in town, rather bigger than the little old house in John Street.
They had sold the Lely portrait of Rupert Bellairs, and she had wept to see it go. It was the symbol of the great smash in the family fortune. England was doomed by a prodigal Government, playing into the hands of Bolshevism.
One passage in the letter stabbed him.
. . . Kenneth Murless has shown me your articles in The New World. That one—the first?—called “The Mind of the Men” made me want to use bad language. No wonder you refused that offer from General Bellasis! Your words might have been spouted by a Hyde Park orator on an orange box to a mob of shifty-eyed hooligans. How can you, Bertram? How can you? To me it’s incredible, after your war-service! It’s nothing but rank treason. . . .
There was something in the letter about the beauty of Paris in May. Then another line or two about the hatred of France for Germany, and for the English Liberals who were playing into the hands of Germany.
. . . The French won’t tolerate any breach of the Treaty.
They will force Germany to pay, or march across the Rhine and seize her industrial cities. I quite agree with them. After all, we did win the war, though some people behave as though it were a shame to do so. . . .
Well, well, Joyce’s views on foreign politics didn’t matter very much. Some other words in her letter mattered more to him.
Kenneth Murless has come over to Paris in the Embassy—as First Secretary. I see a good deal of him and he keeps me amused. When are you going to be sensible and make a career for yourself? I’m a little tired of being a grass widow, though as a rest-cure it has done me good! I’m ready to forget and forgive, if you care to join me here. Besides, it must be one thing or the other. . . .
Those words were underlined.
At the end of her letter she signed herself “Yours affectionately,” and Bertram laughed aloud at the words, but not with any merriment of soul. She had wept when the Lely had gone, not much when he had gone! . . . Kenneth Murless amused her. She saw a lot of him. . . . She was ready to forget and forgive!
He wrote a raging letter to her, and then tore it up. He accused her of damned heartlessness, told her that he would never play her lap-dog again, reminded her of the things she had said to him at Holme Ottery, and ended by saying that if Kenneth Murless amused her so much, she had better make it one thing or the other, as far as he was concerned. He would be glad to know her decision.
Having written all that, he heard, almost with physical audibility, the words his mother had spoken to him on her death-bed. “Work for Peace, Bertram!” She meant peace in Europe, between peoples, with Ireland, but the spirit of peace must begin in the heart of the individual, between one and another—even between husband and wife. He wrote another letter, less violent.
Dear Joyce:
I’m still trying to earn a living. I’m sorry you don’t like my articles, because they’re the way to that possibility. You say you’re ready to forget and forgive. That seems to me hardly good enough. When you tell me you love me again and want my love, I’ll come to you. I thought that was understood between us. . . .
He referred to her sympathy with his family afflictions:
. . . Yes, it’s sad about Digby, and mother’s death leaves me very much alone. . . .
That correspondence with Joyce didn’t seem to alter much in their relations to each other. It left him in exactly the same situation spiritually, and physically—a husband “on probation,” with a verdict of disloyalty against him, but an offer of pardon on recantation of faith.
No, not good enough! Hopelessly impossible on any basis of self-respect or decent comradeship, to say nothing of love. Yet tempting to a man who hated loneliness, and was alone; who, at the very sight of Joyce’s handwriting, felt the same thrill of passion for her which had come to him always at the touch of her finger-tips, or the quick toss of her head, or the whiteness of her neck. It was a temptation to his weakness, but he was stubborn as well as weak, and wouldn’t yield to such a miserable compact as this surrender would mean to his manhood.
He was in a wretched state of mind, which Joyce’s last letter intensified in wretchedness. Susan’s agony, Digby’s murder, his mother’s death, his father’s grief and rage—for he was raging now with more personal passion against the Irish rebels—had smitten him at a time when Joyce’s desertion would have been enough to cast him into the blackest depths. It seemed as though God, or fate, had a special grudge against him, and kicked him when he was down.
The last blow—a feeble tap, perhaps, yet overpowering for a while to his moral strength—befell him in a letter from a man named Heatherdew, into whose hands, as literary agent, Christy had placed the war-book.
My Dear Major Pollard [he wrote]:
For our friend Christy’s sake, as well as in the usual way of business, I have spared no trouble in trying to find a publisher for your book, “The Machine Gun Company,” which I may say I have read with the greatest interest and admiration. It has now been to eight publishers and all of them, without exception, express the opinion that, at the present time, there is no market for war books. The public, they say (I think incorrectly) wish to forget the war. My own opinion is that they are tired of war books which do not go to the heart of the business which you and I know. However, I consider it useless to make further effort, and I therefore return the manuscript, advising you to hold it for a year or two, when it may have a better chance.
It was a vital disappointment. Bertram had always clung to the hope of this book as a compensation for his failure to get “a job,” as a justification, even, of his life. He had put everything that was in him into this book, his secret agonies and fears, his quality of courage, his love of England, his understanding of the men, the ardour that was his in the beginning of war, the joy in comradeship, the later disillusion, the final disgust.
This was the war as it had passed through his own soul, and through the souls of all the men he knew. It was the Absolute Truth, as he had seen it and known it. It was, above all, his defence against Joyce’s accusations, and the general suspicion of her family and friends that he was a “slacker,” unpatriotic, and careless of his country’s honour. Janet Welford had spoken well of it. “It’s good!” she had said, and had praised it as “almost great.” Well, here it was back again, soiled by publishers’ readers, scrumpled through the post, condemned.
Bertram flung it into a drawer of the little old desk where, as a boy in his father’s house, he had written secret verses, youthful essays about London life, and, later, love-letters to Joyce Bellairs.
An immense gloom closed down upon his spirit. What was the use of anything? He had tried hard, and failed utterly, in every way. He had made a frightful mucker of life. His luck was out. Why kick against it? Why not face up to the futility of life—for him, anyhow? He hadn’t even had the decent luck of going out with the men who had met a bullet or a bit of shell. Those things had passed him by, though he hadn’t dodged them. That was a decent way of death, and honourable, the easiest way out of all difficulties. Even now, a bullet would solve a lot of problems, and answer that alternative which Joyce had put: “It must be one thing or the other.” He wondered if she would weep as much for him as for the Lely portrait of Rupert Bellairs. She might like the sentiment of being a widow for a little while. She would look beautiful in her weeds, with a little bit of white lace under the black round her gold-spun hair, almost as beautiful as Lady Martock. Kenneth Murless would say all kinds of consoling things in his gentlemanly way. All her friends would write, wire, send messages, flowers. The two Russian girls would utter extravagances in broken English, and the Countess Lydia would enquire whether Joyce’s husband had died a Bolshevik, or suggest that he had killed himself at the bidding of Lenin and Trotsky, “who have agents everywhere, ma chérie!” Well, he would provide a lot of pleasure to all kinds of people, and end his own misery at the same time.
He had left his old service revolver in the study at Holland Street. Quite easy to get, if Edith were still there, as parlour-maid.
Chatty Edith! She would be glad to see him again. He would have to invent all kinds of lies to explain his absence and his visit, unless he told her straight out that Joyce had deserted him and he’d come to find his revolver to blow his brains out. He could hardly do that! She would scream, or send for the police, or swoon away. Then he would have to fetch the doctor, or throw water at her, or some nuisance of that kind.
Anyhow, he could get his revolver. He had killed a German with it once. That was in a raid near Bullecourt. He remembered the jump into the German trench, after the long crawl across No-Man’s Land and the long wait every time a Verrey light went up and he had to lie doggo trying to look like a sand-bag. The German sentry tried to stick him with his bayonet, and he shoved the revolver into the fellow’s face and fired it. It was the only thing to do, but he was sorry afterwards. He had searched the man’s pockets for letters and post cards—the Intelligence wanted them for identifying a German division. They were all letters from a girl named Lisa. She was dying to see Karl again. She pined for his dear kisses. She was a lonely little Lisa in Magdeburg. If only the cruel war would end! So, in a dozen letters, and a score of closely scribbled postcards. He was sorry he’d killed the fellow stone dead, with that revolver in Holland Street. Now Karl would be revenged by the same weapon that had killed him. Ironical that! A sort of Greek fate business.
Bertram took the ’bus from the top of Sloane Street to High Street, Kensington, and walked up the narrow passage to Holland Street by the west side of St. Mary Abbot’s. That was where he had married Joyce. “Isn’t she beautiful?” said the women outside, and he agreed and thought her the most beautiful thing on earth, and marvelled at his luck. A little more than a year ago!
Newspaper placards were filled with Strike news.
“Drastic Train Cuts.” “Sensational Scene in House of Commons.” “Nat Verney States the Miners’ Case.” “No General Strike.”
How trivial was all that nonsense. What would it matter in a thousand years, or eternity, or to-morrow as far as he was concerned?
The little house in Holland Street had its blinds pulled down. No answer came when he rang the bell. No answer when he had pressed the knob six times. The chatty Edith had gone away, and the house was abandoned.
Within a yard and a half of where he stood, at the corner of the little front room which had been his study, in the desk by the window where he had written the book which no one would publish, was that revolver he wanted. Damn silly to think it was so close and he couldn’t get it! He could hardly commit a burglary in Joyce’s house, in broad daylight! His luck was out again. God, or Fate, refused him even this little bit of luck!
A young policeman sauntered up Holland Street, stood on the opposite side of the road, and then crossed over.
“Do you want anything?” he asked, suspiciously.
“No,” said Bertram. “I suppose the people have gone away.”
“Looks like it, with the blinds down,” said the policeman.
“Yes.”
Bertram sauntered slowly away from his wife’s house. . . . Not even that bit of luck!