The Thirteen Travellers. Hugh Walpole
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and then sending them along to somebody else). He had a room to himself, and a lady typist who looked after him like a mother. He was quite delighted when he discovered that she was a daughter of the Bishop of Polchester and very well connected. She was most efficient and did everything for him.
He took his work very seriously indeed, and was delighted to be "doing his bit." No one knew exactly what it was that he did at the Ministry, and he himself was very vague about it, but he hinted at great things and magnificent company. During those first years when there were so many wonderful rumours, he hinted and hinted and hinted. "Well, I mustn't mention names, of course; but you can take it from me——" and people really did think he did know. He had been in the closest touch with so many great people before the war that it was only natural that he should be in touch with them still. As a matter of fact he knew nothing except what his typist told him. He led an extremely quiet life during these years, but he didn't mind that because he understood that it was the right thing to do. All the best people were absorbed in their work—even old Lady Agatha Beaminster was running a home for Serbians, and Rachel Seddon was a V.A.D. in France, and old "Plumtree" Caudle was a Special Constable. He did not therefore feel left out of things, because there was nothing really to be left out of. Moreover, he was so hard up that it was safer to be quiet. All the more would he enjoy himself when the war was over.
But as the years went on and there seemed to be no sign of the war being over, he began to be querulous. He missed James terribly, and when in the summer of 1917 he heard that James was killed in Mesopotamia it was a very serious blow. He seemed to be suddenly quite alone in the world. In Hortons now they employed only women, and the girl straight from Glebeshire who "valeted" him seemed to have but little time to listen to his special needs, being divided up between four flats and finding it all she could do, poor girl, to satisfy them all. "After the war," Mr. Nix, the manager of Hortons, assured Absalom, "we shall have men again!"
"After the war!"—those three simple little words became the very Abracadabra of Absalom's life. "After the war" everything would be as it had always been—prices would go down, Society would come up, his gold mirror would once again be stuck about with invitations, he would find a successor to James, and a little house. What would he live on? Oh, that would be all right. They would keep him at the Ministry. He was so useful there that he couldn't conceive that they would ever get on without him—there would be his work, of course, and probably they would raise his salary. He was an optimist about the future. Nothing made him so indignant as unjustified pessimism. When someone talked pessimistically it was as though he, Absalom Jay, were being personally threatened. Throughout the terrible spring of 1918 he remained optimistic. "Britain couldn't be beaten"—by which he meant that Absalom Jay must be assured of his future comforts. In spite of all that had happened he was as incapable in June, 1918, as he had been in June, 1914, of imagining a different world, a different balance of moral and ethical values. Then the tide turned. During that summer and early autumn of 1918 Absalom was as happy as he had ever been. He simply lived for the moment when "life would begin again." He began to go out a little, to pay calls, to visit an old friend or two. He found changes, of course. His own contemporaries seemed strangely old; many of them had died, many of them had shattered nerves, many were frightened of the future.
If they were frightened it was their own fault, he declared. They would talk of ridiculous things like the Russian Revolution—nothing angered him more than to hear chatter about the Russian Revolution—as though that absurd affair with its cut-throats and Bolsheviks and Jews and murderers could have anything to do with a real country like England.
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