The Thirteen Travellers

by Hugh Walpole

It was all the fault of our idiotic government; one regiment of British soldiers and that trouble would have been over.... No, he'd no patience....

November 11th came, and with it the Armistice; he actually rode all the way down Whitehall on a lorry and waved a flag. He was excited, it seemed as though the whole world were crying, "Hurray! Absalom Jay! You were right, after all. You shall have your reward."

He pictured to himself what was coming: 1919 would be the year; let those dirty ruffians try and imitate Russian methods. They would see what they would get. He resumed his old haughtiness of demeanour to dependents. It was necessary in these days to show them their place. Not that he was never kind. When they behaved properly he was very kind indeed. To Fanny, the portress at Hortons—a nice girl with a ready smile and an agreeable willingness to do anything, however tiresome—he was delightful, asking her about her relations and once telling her that he was grateful for what she did. He was compelled, however, to speak haughtily to Rose, the "valet." He was forced often to ring twice for her, and once when she came running and out of breath and he showed her that she had put some of his waistcoats into one drawer and some into another, thereby making it very difficult for him to find them, she actually tossed her head and muttered something. He spoke to her very kindly then, and showed her how things were done in the best houses, because, after all, poor child, she was straight up from the country. However, she did not take his kindliness in at all the right spirit, but burst out angrily that "times was different now, and one was as good as another"—a shocking thing to say, and savouring directly of Bolshevism.

He was getting into the habit of calling almost everything Bolshevism.

Then the first blow fell. He found a letter on his table at the Ministry; he opened it carelessly and read therein that as the war was in process of being "wound up," changes were taking place that would compel the Ministry, most reluctantly, to do without Mr. Jay's services. Would he mind taking a month's notice?...

He would mind very much indeed—Mind? It was as though a thunderbolt had struck him on the very top of his neat little head. He stood in front of the Ministerial fireplace, his little legs extended, the letter trembling in his hand, his eyes, if the truth must be spoken, flushed with tears. Dismissed! With a month's notice! He would speak ... he would protest ... he would abuse.... In the end, of course, he did nothing. Bryce-Drummond said he was so very sorry, "but really everythin' was tumblin' about one's ear's these days," and offered him a cigarette. Lord John, to whom he appealed, looked distressed and said it was "a damn shame; upon his word, he didn't know what we were all coming to...."

Absalom Jay was left; he realised that he could do nothing; he retired into Hortons.

There was in his soul a fund of optimism, or rather, to speak more accurately, it took him time to realise the shifting sands upon which his little house was built. He made now the very most of Hortons. It is true that time began to lie heavy upon his hands. He rose very late in the morning, having his cup of tea and boiled egg at nine, his bath at ten; he read the Morning Post for an hour; then the barber, Merritt, from next door, came in to shave him and give him the news of the day. Merritt was a most amusing dark and dapper little man. In him was the very spirit of St. James's, and the Lord only knows how many businesses he carried on beside his ostensible hair-dressing one. He could buy anything for you, and sell anything, too! And his gossip! Well, really, Absalom had thought himself a good gossip in his day, but he had never been anything to Merritt! Of course, half-a-crown was a good deal for a shave, and Absalom was not sure whether in these days he ought to afford it—"my only luxury" he called it.

He did not see many of his friends this Christmas time. They were all out of London he supposed. He was a little surprised that the Beaumonts hadn't asked him to spend Christmas at Hautoix. In the old days that invitation had been as regular as the Waits. However, they had lost their eldest son in the Cambrai fighting. They were having no parties this Christmas, of course.

He had thought that the Seddons might ask him. He got on so well with Roddy and Rachel. They sent him a card "from Rollo," their baby. Kind of them to remember him! So he busied himself about the flat. He was preparing for the future—for that wonderful time when the war would be really and truly over, and the world as it had been in the old days. His life was centred in Hortons and the streets that surrounded it. He could be seen every morning walking up Duke Street into Piccadilly. He knew every shop by heart, the picture shops that seemed to be little offspring of the great "Christie's" round the corner, with their coloured plates from Ackermann's "Microcosm," and Pierce Egan, and their oils of large, full-bosomed eighteenth century ladies; and the shops with the china and the cabinets and the lacquer (everything very expensive indeed); and Bottome's, the paper shop, with Mr. Bottome's humourous comments on the day's politics chalked on to a slate near the door, and the Vie Parisienne very large in the window; then there was the shop at the corner of Jermyn Street, with the silk dressing-gowns of dazzling colours, and the latest fashions with pink silk vests, pyjamas; and the great tobacconists and the wine-windows of Fortnum and Masons—at last the familiar broad splendours of Piccadilly itself. Up and down the little old streets that had known all the famous men of their day, that had lodged Thackeray and Swift and Dryden, and now lodged Mr. Bottomley and the author of Mutt and Jeff, the motors rolled and hooted and honked, and the messenger boys whistled, and the flower-man went up and down with his barrow, and everything was as expensive and pleasant and humourous as could be. All this Absalom Jay adopted. He was in his own mind, although he did not know it, King of St. James's, and he felt that they must all be very glad to have him there, and that rents must have gone up since it was known that he had taken his residence among them.