‘I am ready, Mrs. Waverton.’ How queer it was to hear him speak. It made it worse.
‘Hurry up, Margaret.’ This from Philip. She was being absurd. Anything would do. ‘Tell us,’ she heard herself saying, ‘why you chose to live here.’
Mr. Femm took a sip of his gin-and-water and replaced the glass very carefully, then he peered across the table, at the place his sister had vacated, and compressed his thin lips until his mouth seemed to vanish completely. ‘I came here,’ he said finally, ‘or rather I returned here, for I was born and brought up in this very house, for the same reason that brought you here. I did not want to live again in this house just as you did not want to spend a night in it. You came here for shelter, and so did I. When I decided to return, I had no money and no further prospects, if only because I was wanted by the police. That surprises you. It was nothing really criminal, nothing, that is, in bad taste, but the Law in this country happens to be as heavy and stupid and idiotic as the poor creatures it is supposed to benefit, and Chance for once was not on my side. This is the home of my family, it was my home too, once, so I returned to it, knocked at the door as you did to-night and demanded shelter. I have been here ever since.’ He lifted his glass again while they stared at him in silence. It was not that they were struck dumb by amazement but that there did not seem to be anything to say. Sir William made a noise in his throat that sounded like the preliminaries of speech, but he must have changed his mind for no words came.
‘So far, so good,’ said Penderel. ‘It’s your question now, Mr. Femm.’ But he couldn’t imagine that heavy-jowled magnate, whose turn it was, telling the truth. He was too rich, too successful, for the truth.
Mr. Femm glanced at his neighbour and then looked straight in front of him. ‘You must tell us,’ he said, slowly, ‘the worst thing you have done during these last twelve months.’
‘Here!’ cried Sir William, protesting.
‘That’s a stinger, isn’t it?’
‘The thing,’ Mr. Femm added calmly, ‘that you are most ashamed of doing.’
‘You don’t want much, do you?’ He blew out a cloud of cigar smoke as if to relieve his feelings. Then he considered. ‘Well, I don’t know.’ He frowned and looked doubtful, but then suddenly his face cleared. ‘All right. You shall have it. The worst thing I’ve done this year. It’s nothing startling. Don’t expect any Sunday paper stuff, amazing revelations, orgies in the West End, that sort of stuff. But I’ll be honest with you; this really is the thing I’m most ashamed of. No names, of course, and all in confidence. Well, a few months ago I had a quarrel with the manager of one of my concerns and got rid of him. That’s all. But there’s a devil of a lot behind it. I said he wasn’t good enough, didn’t suit me, but the fact is he was one of the best managers I’d got and a better man than the fellow that took his place. And I knew it. He was just the sort of man I wanted in the business, a real find, all over the work and keen as a razor. But I booted him out. Why? I’ll tell you.’ He stopped for a moment, set his jaw, then laughed shortly. ‘You’ll probably find it amusing. I got rid of him because I couldn’t stand his damned superiority. That’s what it amounts to. He was only a youngster, had only left Oxford or Cambridge a few years when he came to me. He got to be manager of this particular concern in no time. I believe in rapid promotion and this fellow was worth it. But every time I saw him he made me uneasy. Nothing in his manner, at least nothing you could put a finger on. But—well, I always wanted to ask him where he got his shirts and ties from; I could never find any like ’em. That’s nothing, you think, but it worried me, made me feel uneasy. Then one day he asked me to go to dinner, meet his wife, who’d be honoured and delighted and so on. I went, and that settled it. There were only the three of us. His wife was very charming, very pretty woman too, and talked well. Her father’d been the Professor of something-or-other at Edinburgh. She was obviously in love with her husband and he with her, really in love, and I know the difference. Well, that was all right, something I like to see, in fact, though you mightn’t think it, but I’m a bit of a sentimentalist. They talked and they let me talk, encouraged me, were almost deferential. But that superiority was there. It was the shirts and ties all over again, only much worse. I felt more and more uncomfortable, uneasy, dissatisfied somehow. I tried to talk the feeling down, told ’em some of the things I’d done, spread myself out, but I knew it was just missing all the time. I could hear my own voice going on and on, bragging to no purpose; I could see myself, hot and sweating and waving my arms; and yet I knew this wasn’t really myself, you know. There was something in the confounded atmosphere of these people that was making me publish a libel of myself just to make some sort of impression on them. And the harder I tried, the more I was convinced that what I was saying, what I did, what I looked like, didn’t amount to anything, that is, didn’t seem to amount to anything with these people. D’you see what I mean? Of course I knew well enough, nobody better, that it did amount to something; I don’t pretend to despise myself. But I couldn’t get it over, as the actors say. And while I was fuming and sweating and talking big, there they sat, absolutely easy and comfortable, so damned sure of themselves. Nothing to do with social experience, y’know, for I’d had as much of that as they had. I’d had more, been to places they hadn’t reached, not by a long chalk. It was that mysterious superiority. Well, when I couldn’t make any headway against it, it got on my nerves. I’d beat it somehow. So when I left them that night, I said to myself, going home, “All right. I’ll show you. You’re doing very well, aren’t you? Everything’s beautiful. Well, we’ll see. I’ve made you and I’ll unmake you.” Within a month I’d faked a lot of grievances against him, and very soon I had him out. I paid for it, of course, losing a good man. It was all dead against my own interests. But I couldn’t rest until I’d done it. But I knew what I’d done. A damned dirty trick, weak too. And that’s that. Gad, but I’m thirsty.’
He accepted some of Mr. Femm’s gin, the only drink on hand, hastily mixed it with water, and, without lifting his eyes, emptied the glass. ‘That’s better,’ he said, and looked round. If they didn’t like it, he thought, they could lump it. Anyhow, they had asked him and he had told them the truth. He had rather enjoyed it too; this was the time and place for telling these things, explaining yourself for once in a while. It was all right; they all looked just curious and friendly, except perhaps the one person he knew, Gladys. She was looking a bit scornful (as she always said herself), not so friendly as the other girl, Mrs. Waverton, who had seemed so cool and superior at first. But then Gladys was probably not judging the case but merely happened to be out of patience with him.