Self Condemned

by Lewis, Wyndham

  “You intuit.”

  “I suppose that’s it. I was saying that I am certain you are right. I know you better than anybody, and I know that what you have done is sensible and just.”

  He gave her a quick hug, and said, “I have you on my side, Helen. I knew I should. I am so thankful that we were allowed the time to have our talk. But what do I see! Merciful heavens (as Lady Brown would say). There he is! There he comes!”

  Along the opposite crest of the little ravine, there indeed he was — teeth, glass eyes, rubber neck, and all. For he was waving an arm at them as he pedalled. Helen waved back, in wifely salutation.

  “You nearly hit me!” René gasped. “Do not get too hysterical at the sight of old rubberneck.”

  “René! You must not call Robert old rubberneck!” Helen exhorted him, wagging a finger.

  “How you can degrade yourself by biting that rubbery substance!” her brother hissed as he made for the door. “Hurry up! Be at the gate of the castle to greet your lord as he dismounts.”

  “You go too far,” she complained, but did in fact hustle along, as though to reach the gate of the castle in time.

  As René hastened forward to be present at the arrival of the Wicked Giant, he was startled by a soprano in the top register attaining to the shrillness of a steam whistle in the next-door house. Deafened by the shriek, he passed the kitchen window and there was the charlady’s face tilted back, observing him with the remote ethereal derision peculiar (he had supposed) to Mrs. Harradson, observing him in flight from the blast of the soprano. He realized that he had his fingers in his ears. He put his tongue out at her, and she vanished as if by magic. He stepped lightly and briskly into the house and Mrs. Huxtable, the Warwickshire charlady, emerged from the kitchen.... He promptly stuck his tongue out as if it were a reflex action. Mrs. Huxtable, as if knocked back into the kitchen with a sledgehammer blow, vanished: and a door, pivoting madly on its hinges, replaced her. It must be the country mind, he thought. She considered it quite in order to jeer at me in her gaze because I have my fingers in my ears, in order to bar ingress to the steam whistle of a neighbouring soprano: but if I reciprocate by protruding my tongue, this affects her galvanically. Like Mrs. Harradson, she fails to conceal her disrespect. Disrespect shown by me, knocks her out entirely.”

  “What are you doing, René?” came a pant from just behind. “You are up to something I believe.”

  “Incorrect!” he rapped back. “I was merely turning over in my mind how Mrs. Harradson would have reacted. She would have gone into violent action — scrubbing, washing, or merely scuttling. She would respond as a town-bred charlady. She would play up with all that was comic in her; and throw a fit.”

  “I am sure I don’t know what you are talking about,” Helen told him crossly.

  They were in the hall now, and they heard the tramp on the gravel outside of rubberneck. While they had been talking he had pushed his machine in at the gate, and leaning it against a tree, entered the house with routine fracas.

  “Ah, Helen, I have news for you!” he gave forth in a snarling gentlemanly drawl. “Mrs. Pearson’s bitch has been delivered of one fine black and tan puppy and a lot of less interestingly marked little animals.”

  “Has she indeed?” Helen showed interest.

  “I bespoke the fine one, as being what you wanted.”

  Kerridge knew he was observed, and that it had been divined that he was in fact a Wicked Giant, but was determined to stand his ground, on his credentials as a young clergyman addicted to a working-class bicycle. He swung slowly over, from side to side, drifting his feet a little, elephant fashion. Though the dental display was almost non-stop, he never laughed. He was a machine whose creator had forgotten to fix in a bark: or perhaps he had thought that the grin laid on most of the time made the ha-ha unnecessary. If the workmanship had this limitation, that there was a sluggishness and monotony in its reactions which made it smell of the machine; if the eyes behind the fixed spectacles were glassy, and if the feet seemed unnaturally heavy, his talk was as successful as a calculating machine. But of course this is how one would argue if one did not know that Kerridge was in truth a Wicked Giant, attempting to disguise his wickedness by invariably smiling to suggest bonhomie, and that the creatures of Fairyland were big, always lumbered, and mouthed their words.

  René at all times treated him correctly, as a young clergyman who had married his sister. But his uneasiness sometimes amounted to horror. In René’s composition, the Preux caused him to feel that it was his sacred task to rescue Helen from the clutches of a supernatural monster. If his sister were not careful, she would find herself flying away some day, among the stars, to unearthly mountains. She would find herself in the blue mists of a world of rubbernecks.Top-booted and white-bearded giants moved about with an intoxicated gait, lifted their feet waveringly as though they did not know where to put them down. She would be taken to see them in their mildewed castles, bayed at by mournful dogs.

  The longer René stopped at the Kerridges, the more powerful the illusion grew that Robert Kerridge was a supernatural impostor, that he was, not in fancy, but in cold reality, a Wicked Giant: happily he had never stopped more than a few days. Had his stay extended into as many weeks, the sensation would have become intolerable. It is quite likely as the time to go grew near, he would have killed Kerridge. As it was, on this second day, he was still in a playful region, the atmosphere of Fairyland not yet so thick as to madden him. There was still an even chance that this was merely a clergyman after all.

  During lunch Kerridge announced that a housemaster at Rugby, Grattan-Brock by name, was coming to dinner. “I suppose I should have asked you first, René!” he heavily and archly minced. “But he is a great fan of yours. He knows The Secret History of World War II by heart!”

  “I don’t think that we should mislead our guest, Robert,”

  Helen protested, looking very angry. “Dr. Grattan-Brock, far from being an admirer of René’s, has violently attacked him, and in my presence.”

  There was a moment of silence, in which her husband looked with such sullen displeasure at Helen, that instinctively René gripped his knife, and looked, himself, perfectly ferocious.

  “I think, Helen, you should not make such statements. You do not understand these things....”

  “Oh, don’t I!” she said, laughing. “I know far more than you think! But what I am quite certain of, I am not deaf, is that Dr.

  Grattan-Brock, at this table, called René a fascist, an impostor, a poor scholar, and — yes — a cad!”

  A most delighted “ho-ho-ho” came from René, who was gazing with malicious enquiry at Kerridge.

  “Dr. Grattan-Brock, however much he admires a book, does not dispense with criticism and analysis,” Robert Kerridge solemnly pointed out, frowning at an imaginary person hovering between his wife and her brother.

  “Obviously he does not,” René said, frowning with an equal pomp. “Spare the rod and spoil the child is his motto. He lays into those he loves, hot and strong: and considers there is no better way of expressing his appreciation of an author than by jotting down in his diary, ‘The author of this ill-written book is, par dessus le marché, an utter cad.’ In view of the great esteem in which he holds me, I must anticipate tonight, I suppose, some pretty plain speaking.”

  While this persiflage was in progress, Kerridge crumbled up his section of bread, while he eyed his wife with glances far more eloquent than any words. Helen sat with bowed head, but she told herself with a crusading fervour that she was not going to stand by while her dear brother was made a fool of, however bitterly Robert might reproach her! René had opened his heart to her that very day, and she saw how the land lay. There were more loyalties than one; and loyalty to a husband did not wipe out all others.

  Tea they had by the fireside as it had grown unexpectedly cold. After tea Robert Kerridge drew his guest aside, and, with affected embarrassment, informed him that Mrs. Huxtable had threatened to give no
tice: that he would be terribly obliged if René would not put his tongue out at the charlady. She was a very strict Presbyterian.

  “I like that!” René protested.“She was jeering at me because I had my fingers in my ears.”

  “I have never known Mrs. Huxtable to jeer at anybody, René,” Kerridge said coldly.

  “No? Put your fingers in your ears and see what happens!”

  René’s tongue suddenly shot forth from between his bearded lips. “One way of resisting rudeness! If you put your fingers in your ears you will find this handy.” And again he stuck out his tongue, afterwards sauntering away from his round-eyed, pained-looking host, trying to decide whether the tongue was meant for him or not.

  The housemaster’s arrival that evening was accompanied by much stamping about in the hall, the drawling bay of the Oxford Accent and the big-dog barking of the visitor. Dr. Grattan-Brock was only a moderately big man physically, however, though rather obesely stocky. He was one of that numerous class of more or less learned English men (and in this class may be included a few literate Americans too) who believe that they are Dr. Johnson. Their voices roll towards their interlocutor heavy carefully picked words, reminiscent of those which thundered in the small talk of the formidable Lexicographer. A bending of the brows will, at times, accompany these verbal discharges.

  But something had happened to this shadow of the great eighteenth-century doctor. Dr. Grattan-Brock had not come under the spell of Marx, no housemaster could do that. He might be a Morley-like liberal, but nothing stronger. But what had happened was that Dr. Grattan-Brock had been very active during the Spanish Civil War, and events leading up to it. He had shown himself outstandingly liberal. He had met numbers of fellow travelling intellectuals (like Kerridge) and even CP Party men. From these frequentations he had acquired a harshness wholly twentieth-century. This he had incorporated, or worked into, the Johnsonian ponderosity. But some subjects inflamed him and brought back those grand days he had spent in Barcelona, and then the ponderosity began to pound and snarl. As it was, he would go along nicely, no-sirring and yes-sirring you for a long time, until suddenly he would become the soap-boxer.

  It was in Johnsonian vein that he began with Professor René Harding.“I am a reader of yours, sir. I am very grateful to Robert Kerridge for affording me the opportunity of meeting you.” René, on his side, was greatly amused. He was his most urbane. He planned, by the extravagance of his language, to shame this local impersonator of Dr. Johnson out of his pose. He screwed up his mouth and its surroundings into a budding rosette of concentrated sweetness. His eyes directed upon the other a crackling glance (emitting something like a cloud of midges playing all over the person in front of it, in the last refinement of deferential gallantry).

  “My brother-in-law and my sister, too, have told me so much about you. The privilege of meeting you is something, sir, I had never dared to hope for.”

  The housemaster blinked a little at this but he accepted it as normal, and even managed an abbreviated eighteenth-century bow.

  “The privilege, sir, is altogether on my side.” Then came the bow.

  It was in this spirit that they all went in to dinner, with many courtesies on René’s part suggestive of the great social and academic importance of Dr. Grattan-Brock. And had it not been for the incitements of Kerridge it is probable that the dinner would have passed off with Dr. Grattan-Brock basking his way through an excellent meal (for her early home life had provided Helen with a feeling for good cooking), and have gone home thinking what a charming fellow Professor René Harding was. It was Kerridge who first moved the conversation into dangerous channels. In a pause after a number of scholarly exchanges he was heard to say, “By the way, Grattan-Brock, I was telling my brother-in-law that you had read his Secret History of World War II, and how much you had admired it.”

  There was a disagreeable silence, all four suspending the meal and waiting. At last the housemaster shook himself and growled, “Oh (arhumm) yes, of course. Indeed, I did, read your book, (arhurnm). Are you writing another, sir?”

  René laughed. “No, sir. Not for the moment.”

  “My brother-in-law is going to Canada. He is sailing in a few months.” Kerridge beamed at René.

  “Canada! Extraordinary place to go to. Well, sir, I hope you will have a good trip.”

  That the Professor was not returning, that he had resigned his professorship, etc., etc. was, Kerridge saw to it, elicited. The housemaster began to be less ready to bask in the flatteries of this ex-professor; and although René attempted a diversion with the architectural beauties of Strasbourg, which he had recently visited, Kerridge soon drove him out of Strasbourg, though Dr. Grattan-Brock seemed inclined to linger there a little. The St. Estephe, which was now circulating, was all the more conducive to pottering about in a French city, and perhaps becoming acquainted with La Maison Rouge.

  A little later Helen, returned from a somewhat lengthy visit to the kitchen, found, to her astonishment, that the atmosphere had so worsened as to be alarming. Her husband and the housemaster were both turned, with accusing eyes and irritably knitted brows, towards René, who was looking first at one, and then at the other, without speaking. It was Kerridge, evidently, who was the leading spirit.

  “Very well; but the Times, René, described you as fascist-minded, didn’t it?”

  “Did it?” René smiled. “I do not remember that. But quite likely it did, since many people have been called that recently, simply because they had made a remark of an unenthusiastic kind about communism. So many youngish reviewers are romantic about Russia. It is quite absurd. I do not have to love Russia because Hitler, Russia’s enemy, is so vile a man.”

  “I do not think, René, that the critic of the Times would base a judgment on so stupid a reasoning as that.”

  “No?” René looked around awaiting the next move.

  “I must say, sir, that I myself have felt, at times, that you showed fascist tendencies,” Dr. Grattan-Brock began a little gruffly. “It was just an impression, to be sure, but you have used arguments, sir, which have (arhmmp) surprised me.”

  Kerridge showed signs of annoyance at the feebleness of the housemaster’s co-operation. He leaned over and refilled his glass with wine, hoping that this might improve matters.

  “I remember you pointing out to me, Grattan-Brock, a good illustration of what you mean. It was where Professor Harding made a comparison between Herr Hitler and St. Ignatius Loyola.”

  “Yes, I do remember that. How, sir, you could compare that miserable gangster at present terrorizing Europe with the founder of the Society of Jesus I completely fail, sir, to understand.”

  René shook his head. “You have got that wrong, sir. I was not suggesting that those two men personally resemble one another; what I said was that they had functioned much in the same way. Both were ‘military minded,’ both organized paramilitary organizations, both were reactionaries, both stood, or stand, for the old order in Europe, one had the Reformation (potentially), the other the Communist Revolution, to cope with.”

  From the housemaster came a muffled snarl, from Kerridge a deep-toned bay of gentlemanly protest.

  “But, sir, do you consider it seemly to speak in the same breath of this foul blackguard, this guttersnipe who has seized power in Germany with … with anybody?”

  “Upon what plane, sir, are we discussing this? Upon the plane of contemporary political passion, or as History sees these things: not subjectively, sir, but subspecie aeternitatis.”

  “Subspecie aeternitatis fiddlesticks! How can you bring eternity in to supply a monster like that with admission to a place where he can meet saints and heroes upon equal terms? I am ashamed, sir, to be sitting at a table …”

  “No, Grattan-Brock, do not allow yourself …”

  “It is quite clear now,” said René coldly, “upon what plane this discussion is to proceed: upon the plane, that is, of passion, not of reason.”

  Helen’s voice rose full of an u
nexpected sharpness and firmness. “But what is all this about? Will you allow a mere woman to ask a few questions? I cannot quite see what my brother’s offence is. He is a historian, not a political writer. You, Robert, and you too, sir, I gather, are exclusively politically minded. You are talking at cross-purposes.”

  “Classification is one of the historians’ tasks,” René said. “My only offence was, in the course of classification, to put the Iron Chancellor No. II (whose military obsessions I detest as much as you do), to put Herr Hitler in his right pigeon-hole. He has often been compared with Martin Luther. Quite apart from whether one admires or detests these two figures, as a historian, the comparison appears to me erroneous. The soldier-saint seemed to me a far better choice. Oh, gentlemen, please.” René half rose in his chair, holding up a hand. “This is not to say that the German Chancellor is a saint.”

  Helen laughed. “You two seem to be taking up a most unreasonable attitude. This Führer (little beast though he is) has a certain place in history, which may be defined and measured. He has to be pigeonholed, however much we would wish he could be abolished. Just as he has to be shaved, and measured for suits.”

  “I am afraid, my dear lady …”

  “Most unfortunate illustrations. I do wish, Helen, you would not talk nonsense.” Kerridge bayed disgustedly his complaint.

  “You can’t just slap down anything you don’t like,” René told him.

  “I hope Robert will digest that,” Helen laughed.

  “We are devoting too much attention to one point,” Kerridge began. “There are plenty of other things in The Secret History of World War II.” Kerridge looked at Grattan-Brock. “Are there not, Doctor?”

  “I was thinking just now, sir,” Dr. Grattan-Brock was addressing himself to René, “where classification is in question, that your Secret History, sir, can only be classified as a political work.You are as much a politician, sir, as we are politicians.”

  René’s urbanity unimpaired, he turned towards the sour and quarrelsome pseudo-eighteenth-century personality at his side, and observed, “In finding myself classified, sir, as one of you, I suppose I should feel flattered. I am afraid I am unable to return the compliment and invite you over into my class. You belong irrevocably, sir, to the subjective order: I might add to those who, with shouts and brandished fists, throw any argument down on to a lower plane, out of reach of Reason’s arbitrament.”