‘What?’ Hervey felt a shock of dismay. The blood rushed through her body, checked, dropped. She looked at T.S. He did not seem to be sharing her dismay, but only looked more sardonic than usual. Come, it can’t be so bad, she thought. Nevertheless she stood still, touching the wall with her hand. ‘Why is he in hospital? Is he worse?’
‘He has cancer, of course. I knew that a year ago, but the damned fools have been treating him for dyspepsia and then for an ulcer. I don’t suppose it would have made any difference.’
Hervey bit her lip. She did not want details. ‘Is it his wounds?’
‘Oh yes, I think so,’ T.S. said.
‘Will they cure him now?’
‘Almost certainly not.’ He added: ‘I went with him to-day to see him in. Visiting hours are between four and six, so you can come with me next Saturday.’
Hervey did not say anything. She had a singular horror of sickness in any form and wished Saturday would never come.
‘Do you remember?—you told him he was a doomed young man.’
‘One of my lighter efforts,’ T.S. grinned. ‘Come on, young Hervey. We’ll drink a cup of coffee together. To our good intentions.’
The café they went into was underground, one of those cellars disguised with hangings, carved screens, and cushions, which a single added layer of dust would obliterate. Hervey pulled a face at it. ‘Fancy if an earthquake buried us down here. I should turn in my bones at the things the archaeologists will say when they dig us up. “ The places they lived in! ” They’ll label us the Sordid Age.’
‘So we are,’ T.S. said swiftly. ‘Do you remember that place in Surrey we walked to, you and I and Philip, in 1913? Philip and I went there yesterday—his idea.’ He looked at her and said: ‘We didn’t take you because we were afraid you would have trouble with Penn. It was a mistake, too. The place was torn to pieces. The field of the chestnut tree is a street of new houses, ending nowhere, so ugly you never saw, the grey manor house is a tea-shop, the hedges have been cut down, houses everywhere, like a disease, and the air reeks of petrol. We couldn’t find our way and were as lost as ghosts. Philip said: “ I’m glad I didn’t go over to look at the battlefields. I shouldn’t be surprised if some brute has gone and built houses on them.” Rose at the pub is fat and minus a tooth or so.’
Hervey laughed out. ‘I should hate not knowing what the country was like before the War. We’ve known better times. Not much to boast of; but something to make do, in another age.
‘The War went on too long. Everything’s spoiled.’
‘You can’t see round the next corner,’ Hervey said. She made an incautious movement, and seized the table for support. ‘This couch isn’t safe!’
‘Once Philip and I were summoned to Corps Headquarters. It was a castle of sorts. We were waiting, alone in a room. Philip sat down on a sofa, which collapsed and he rolled across the floor bringing down with him a cloisonné vase as big as a man. You never saw such ruin, like a hurricane. I was paralysed with terror. I thought we should be shot for counter-military action. Philip rang the bell and when a servant came in he said in a cold furious voice : “ Clear away this mess. It’s disgraceful, unheard of.” The man ran about like a hare under Philip’s steely eye—the eye of a second lieutenant!—I think it hypnotised him—and the last fragment disappeared through one door as the G.S.O.2 came in at the other.’
‘Don’t you remember?—no, you missed the evening Philip read a paper to the Literary Society at King’s on the life and work of a Polish philosopher called Csychewinski. It was just after we’d been forbidden to debate Socialism and this Csychewinski was a socialist, an atheist, and held astonishing views on sex. Hardly a soul in the hall realised that our Philip had invented him until that theological lecturer, the camel-faced one, got up and asked where the eighty-six volumes of the Life and Works could be seen. Philip looked at him and said sweetly: “ In the really admirable library of the Gas Light and Coke Company, sir.” There was a riot.’
‘This idea he had of starting a new paper. He’d have been disappointed, certainly. English people won’t pay out good money to read uncomfortable truths.’
‘Philip is never disappointed,’ Hervey said, surprised. ‘He has a religion. If the paper failed he would find some other way to speak. Even if only six people listened.’
‘People always listened to our Philip,’ T.S. said. ‘Visiting generals listened.’
‘He was as uncompromising as an early Christian. Do you remember our old librarian, who loved him and lent him MSS. and first editions? You knew Philip had been calling on him once a week? Last March the old man wrote an article in the Review on the beauty of war. Philip sent him fifteen folio sheets, in his small writing, of devastating criticism, and added that he would not be coming again. The old man was heartbroken.’
T.S. laughed. ‘All the same he’ll outlive our Philip.’
Chapter XIII
The Eighteen Old Gentlemen
Hervey was alone in the room when the old gentleman came in, carrying a portfolio. He had a letter addressed to David Renn in his hand.
‘Mr Renn is away ill,’ Hervey said. ‘I am Miss Russell, his assistant. Can I do anything?’
The old gentleman seated himself shakily with his arms round the portfolio. He was tall, with bright serious eyes, and a fair skin. He looked at Hervey with a little confidence.
‘I beg your pardon, Miss Russell. A friend of mine—no, of my wife’s, I must be accurate—gave me a letter to Mr Renn. I was to show him my sketches. You buy sketches, don’t you? I can draw in any style required.’
‘Usually, we employ our own artists,’ Hervey said. ‘We have a studio upstairs.’ She looked, not knowing what to add, at a number of water-colour drawings, careful, lifeless, such as children once copied.
‘I can leave these for Mr Renn to see.’ He replaced them slowly. ‘I had better tell you that I am a journalist—or was. I was the art critic of the Morning Gazette. When it changed hands last year the new proprietor engaged an efficiency expert, a profession new to me. He sacked eighteen of us at once, without enquiry. Yes, yes, he enquired our ages. All over sixty were dismissed and without pension. I am seventy-two.’
‘You look much younger than that,’ Hervey said. She smiled at him.
He looked innocently pleased. ‘Do you think that? I ought not to take your time, but you are kindness itself, I shall tell you why I need money at once. My wife—we have lived for thirty years in Hove—well, now she’s going. The doctor wrote to tell me this morning. Well I wrote to her and I said, “ Annie, I’ve got the best job I ever had and we’ll go to France as soon as you’re better.” Was that the right thing to tell her? When I was at home, last week, he said, “I suggest giving a little stimulant. You know what she’d like, don’t you.” I knew at once. “ Annie, you’d like some champagne,” I said to her. She only looked at me. Well, I took eight of my sketches to my wine merchant and I said,“ Let me have one bottle of Möet’06. I’ll leave these with you until I can pay for it.” Just fancy, he sent in half a dozen bottles that evening.’
Hervey had been listening with the intensity, only partly deliberate, which drew people to talk to her. At these times the extraordinary sensitiveness of her finger-tips seemed to spread through her body. She felt it drawn taut to receive a sound, like a touch. ‘How long were you on the Morning Gazette?’
‘Forty-two years, my dear Miss Russell. Please don’t think I saved nothing. Why, we saved so much every year. I had invested it in the Northern Counties Shipping Company. In 1918 my Company bought up the Field Ross Line. They issued a great many new shares, over two million pounds worth. Just think of it, and they were all subscribed! What days! Alas, this year my Company had to sell back many of the new ships to their original owners—at a fifth of the price paid. A little later it collapsed, and in April it was put into the official receiver’s hands. My shares were ordinary shares and I lost all, yes, yes, every farthing. Many of the shareholders were incensed, but
I formed the opinion that there could be nothing wrong. Why, the managing director of my Company was a brother-in-law of Field and Ross’s chairman! Still—I had lost all. You can scarcely imagine how startled we were.’
Hervey sat frowning. ‘If I can think of a way to help I’ll write to you,’ she said at last.
‘You’re too kind. Just think, there were eighteen of us sacked that morning. One of us committed suicide.’ He spoke almost with pride, like the survivor of an earthquake. ‘Eighteen! I shouldn’t like to blame our one suicide, but I shan’t come to it. Fortunately, it’s forbidden. My religion is perfectly clear on that as on all other matters.’
You’re a Catholic, are you, Hervey thought. She had begun to wish he would leave, but did not know how to get rid of him. With Renn’s work and her own she was certain of at least three hours’ work in the evening. The slackening of her interest was felt. He stood up, helping himself by touching the wall. Hervey received the portfolio from him and laid it down with an air of respect. She walked with him to the door. The thought came to her: ‘I’ll pray for you and your wife.’
‘Are you a Catholic?’ the old gentleman asked.
‘No. But I think even a Protestant’s prayers may be needed in this.’
He stood in some distress. ‘Oh, you don’t think I’m so bigoted as that,’ he cried, ‘but I never heard a Protestant say that.’
He was neither the first nor the last person to be misled—and comforted—by Hervey’s polite heart.
Chapter XIV
Eighteenth Of May, 1920. Between Six and Seven in the Evening
1. Hervey meets a minor Power
His ownership of the Daily Post gratified the two Marcel Cohens who lived, scarcely in amity, in one body. One could tear at this and that decayed beam, while the other did business on a sound basis. He had never stepped outside the law in his life, or evaded the least clause of a contract; but his own lawyer drew the contract. Thus he could enjoy his intelligence, without the need to sacrifice to it. He flourished on the disorders which have infected our civilisation, because he accepted the conditions of disorder—that there are no spiritual standards of reference, no human values—the only universally acknowledged value is success, and the only alternative to success is failure.
In his newspaper, which he called a Radical Independent paper (to allow himself the widest margin of opposition to all parties), he published articles exposing the filth of the slums. His city editor advised investment in companies relying in part on the existence of slums. The financial page, read by a few thousands, was better worth a penny than any other daily newspaper in the country. A vast public gulped down the rest of the paper, enjoying its fat feast of exposures and the assassination of private and public men. It was a fillip for the day. The political leader writer had a turn for neat festering phrase. On the middle page well-known novelists exposed their views and parts. The cartoonist had been born unable to respect anything and was paid well for his misfortune. At times Marcel Cohen was made to feel the distrust his restless mind inspired in the Christians with whom he did business, and a dismayed sub-editor or a reporter, meeting him accidentally after one of these rebuffs, found himself sacked for no reason. Cohen paid his people well, squeezed the last drops of energy from them, and had a clause inserted in the contracts allowing him to discharge without warning.
He was amused and surprised to receive a note from Hervey Russell, asking him in a very formal way for an interview. Now what does she want, he wondered? He had seen her four or five times since their first meeting in Evelyn Lamb’s house, and she had avoided him—he thought, through shyness. He answered her letter himself.
She came in with a look of confidence. It made him smile to himself. I know all about it, I have pretended confidence, he remembered. An impulse to take the wind out of her sails made him say: ‘You’re astonishingly like your grandmother. By the way, are you still on bad terms with her?’
Hervey only smiled. She had prepared for the question. ‘On no terms at all.’
‘Schade! You’re making a mistake. Mrs Hervey is not only the richest, she’s the most surprising figure in England. An eminent Victorian. You’d better think about forgiving her.’
‘So that she would help me?’ Hervey said. ‘I prefer to help myself. Do you know my grandmother?’
His mouth, shapely and too expressive, twitched. ‘I sat opposite her jaw at fifty board meetings before she resigned from her own firm. Yours is the same jaw. The upper half of your face is different—less, forgive me, less sure of itself. I daresay you’re more intelligent, but you won’t get so far.’
‘I didn’t inherit a shipping firm,’ Hervey said dryly.
Cohen looked at her with a sharp smile. ‘Oh, there’s one thing you don’t forgive her. Well—why have you come to see me?’
‘Do you want an art critic?’ Hervey said.
‘What do you know about art?’
‘Nothing. I don’t want it for myself?’ She hesitated, forgetting the speech she had prepared. ‘Do you remember when the Morning Gazette changed hands they dismissed half the old staff? One, the art critic, is my friend. He must know it all. Can’t you give him work?’
Marcel Cohen laughed out. ‘He will be eighty. The art criticism of the old Morning Gazette was early Victorian. The music worse. Policy and methods also—before the reorganisation it was all but bankrupt. It is still as reactionary and unintelligent as before, but it has smartened itself up and it will last until a Liberal government suppresses it. Liberal governments don’t suppress—one reason why there won’t be another in our time. Ours is a time to suppress or be suppressed. In any case, I don’t employ a regular art critic. Who wants it? I get a painter or a critic, not the most modern but the most modern heard of, to write an article on the Academy. Last week we ran a young writer, William Ridley, on public statues, very destructive and funny. That’s what people like. Do you ever read ordinary art criticism?’
‘I’m not interested.’
‘Neither is Mrs Smith. Can your friend write a slashing attack on anything?’
‘Bless me, no,’ Hervey sighed. She stood up to leave. ‘I see it’s no use.’
‘Sit down a minute,’ Cohen said. ‘Don’t you want to write something?’
An unexpected question usually started cracks in Hervey’s mind, through which everything fell. She blinked and said : ‘I’ll think about it.’
‘What do you do? Are you in business? No, you’re a writer.’
‘A copy writer.’ She put her head down, so that he saw her face foreshortened; boulder of forehead; eyes, one perceptibly lower in her head than the other; short upturned nose. ‘I could write you an article—“ Advertisers are doing the Devil’s work “—would you print it?’
‘Certainly not,’ Cohen said. ‘Like any other newspaper the Daily Post lives by advertisements. Besides I don’t agree with you.’
‘I didn’t suppose ycu would,’ Hervey said. She looked at him with a warm smile. ‘Well then. How would you like one on shipping firms which blow out their capital until they can’t afford to pay dividends, and finally blow up, ruining their ordinary shareholders. I mean the Northern Counties Company.’ She felt a thrill, the familiar sensation of jumping from a great height. Though she had looked up the figures and details of the affair she had not discovered whether Cohen was on the board of either company.
‘You don’t want to write for me at all,’ Cohen said. He kept his eyes on her face, frowning. ‘What do you know about shipping?’ He gave a sudden laugh. ‘Your grandmother ought to have put you in the firm. She had a grandson in it—’
‘Nicholas Roxby, my first cousin,’ Hervey said.
‘First fool,’ Cohen shouted. ‘He walked out during the War. Left her with her ships in her arms. It was then she sold out—at the top of the wave. Just like her. Heaven only knows what she’s worth now.’
‘My cousin must be a fool,’ Hervey said bitterly.
Cohen looked at her. ‘You wouldn’
t have done it, eh?’
‘No,’ Hervey said.
‘Not you. Now, that Northern Counties story would have made your grandmother stare, and sneer. To buy at £22 a ton and sell back at £4.! The government refused an enquiry. Quite rightly. Why all this about the loss of a few millions! How many millions did the War cost? A day! Someone has to lose money in the slump. First in and first out is the rule—known to your grandmother. You’re not a socialist, are you? Comrade Smith proposed that slumps be made illegal. Carried unanimously. Bah!’
Weakly Hervey nodded. She could not force herself to say that she was a socialist. The figure of Mary Hervey, mouth clenched, eyes cold and starting with anger, possessed her mind. She admired that ruthless possessive spirit. One of the masters of an age. Which age? The great houses of merchant princes set within sight of the slave quarters. Her grandmother’s house. Succeeded against her will by Marcel Cohen. The rats are underneath the floors. Am I a socialist? Th-en, comrades, now rally And the last fight let us … The delicate steel-engraved outline of her grandmother, blood staining her dress, retreated slowly. There was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. With pain she tore away the cords fastening her to her grandmother. Brother, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. Cold—how cold it is, said the little lamb. My mother reading from the book. She could not help smiling.
‘Now, you and I are going to get on together,’ Cohen said. His eyes twinkled a little. ‘You’re a clever girl and if you’re sensible I see a future for you.’
‘Thank you,’ Hervey said, smiling at him.
‘We’ll drink a cup of tea, eh?’ He pressed his bell. With a feeling of friendliness he talked to her about his children, about the boy who had died without his mother finding the courage to see him, and about his daughter. The liking Hervey had felt for him when he was talking about the boy died as soon as he began to recite a list of his daughter’s friends; her house in Bruton Street; the room she slept in, like a drawing-room, décor by Charles; the bed, Florentine and painted, in the alcove; two nurseries painted out in pale green; the bathrooms—‘but only quite a simple house.’ She wondered why he did not notice that she had ceased to be sympathetic. There were extraordinary gaps in his understanding of other people—extraordinary because of the assurance in his glance. He ought to know better, she thought. Such childishness, side by side with such experience, repelled her.
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