She crossed her arms on her breast, and air escaped her in a long: “Oh!” Jesse edged his arm away from hers. A minute passed; then her arm pressed his again, and out of the corner of his eye, accustomed to the observation of woodcock, he could see her glancing furtively round. The ‘swine’ in question was just behind again with two male friends; he was bending on the girl such a look that Jesse said with surprising suddenness:
“Send the swine to hell!”
“What?” said Giles.
“That swine behind us. Swine who live on girls!”
“Steady, old man!” said Giles.
The man and his companions moved on, muttering.
“Oh!” said the girl under her breath: “whatever made you? I’ll never dare to go ‘ome to-night. What shall I do?”
Jesse did not answer, having no idea. An objection to scenes, rooted in his type, caused him to resume his stare at the stage, now occupied by a male dancer with brisk and glancing legs; but he was conscious of a tear slowly trickling down the girl’s cheek, making a narrow track in her rouge and powder.
“You wouldn’t take me on, I suppose?” he heard her say.
Jesse shook his head.
“Only up for the night. Going to the war.”
“Oh!” said the girl, blankly. “HE WILL wallop me.”
Jesse stared.
“D’you mean to say–”
The girl nodded violently.
“Hear that, Giles?”
Giles grunted.
The girl stealthily removed the traces of emotion.
Jesse turned, and, leaning back against the balustrade, surveyed the promenaders. Giles, with mechanical conformity, had done the same. The girl continued to stare at the stage. If she had been ‘kidding’ him–Jesse thought–she would have turned too; besides, her face had gone a queer colour.
“I believe she’s going to cat,” he murmured to Giles.
They both looked at her, but she seemed to have recovered from the impulse, and was sniffing at a bottle of salts. Deciding to move away from her, Jesse had raised his hand to his hat, when he caught sight of the ‘swine’ among a group of men, all of whom were gazing in his direction.
“See those swine?” he said.
Giles nodded.
The group, seeing the brothers staring at them, moved on. Jesse turned to the girl.
“Look here,” he said, “you go to an hotel for the night. We’ll see you there. Better come now.”
The girl, who still looked very queer, turned from the balustrade.
“Thank you very much,” she said, “but I ‘aven’t any money.”
“That’s all right,” said Jesse. “Come on!”
They crossed the promenade and went down the steps with the girl between them.
“D’you know an hotel?” said Jesse, in the Square. “They won’t take you at ours–men only.”
“There’s Robin’s Hotel, off Covent Garden.”
“All right; that’s on our way. Here’s a fiver for you. You’re looking queer.”
“I feel queer,” said the girl, simply. They walked a little in silence, and then she said:
“I couldn’t have stood being walloped to-night–I just couldn’t.”
“Swine!” said Jesse. Giles growled.
Turning into Bedford Street, the girl touched Jesse’s arm.
“Oh!” she said in a scared voice; “they’re after us!”
About fifty yards behind, five men were strolling, keeping their distance, but quite clearly following. Instinctively the Dromios increased their pace, turning into Henrietta Street.
“If they turn down here too, we’ll know,” said Giles.
“I think I’m going to faint,” said the girl.
“Bosh!” said Jesse. “If they follow, we’ll stop them at the bottom here. You can slip on to the hotel sharp. They won’t know where you are. Take her other arm, Giles.”
At the Covent Garden end, he looked back; the men were just turning into Henrietta Street. He gave the girl a shove.
“Now run for it! Don’t be a little fool! They shan’t see where you go; we’ll stop ’em here. Cut on!”
The girl caught her breath, and stammered out:
“Oh! Thank you!” Then, helped by a push from Giles, she vanished round the corner. The Dromios began walking with extreme slowness back towards the men. Giles hummed out of tune, the air of ‘Tommy Atkins.’ The five pursuers, who had been hurrying, slowed up, and came to a halt. Indeed, without going off the pavement, the two parties could not pass each other. ‘That swine’ who was the biggest of the lot, took a step forward, and raising his fist, thus addressed the Dromios.
“We want you two – . What the – did you mean by what you said just now? Swine indeed? Swine yourselves!”
The Dromios did not answer.
“You – have got to learn manners, and you’re – well going to.”
Giles turned to Jesse, “These sportsmen,” he said, “are rather a bore.”
“Give ’em socks, boys!” said the ‘swine.’
The proceedings which followed had elements so unsporting as to offend every instinct of the Dromios. From the point of view of ‘form’ the whole thing was deplorable; the only feature in good taste being the first blow, a lefthander from Giles which tapped the ‘swine’s claret.’ He was instantly thereafter involved with three of the ‘sportsmen’ and Jesse with the other two. The Dromios were expert boxers, but their opponents butted, kicked, and collared below the belt, so that the brothers were unable to assume any attitude other than those in which circumstances placed them. They were, however, lean and in hard condition, their winds were good, and they fought like tiger cats. The sight of Giles, overborne by weight, being dragged horizontally, so stimulated Jesse that, contrary to all the canons of sportsmanship, he brought his knee up against the chin of one of his opponents; springing at the other, he seized him by the throat in a manner totally unorthodox, and rammed his head against the lintel of a door, then, dashing to Giles’s rescue he so socked one of the ‘sportsmen’ behind the ear that he fell prone. The other two let go of Giles, and the two Dromios were able to place themselves in proper postures of defence. Thereon the combat ceased as instantly as it had begun, the ‘sportsmen’ vanished and the Dromios were left in an empty Covent Garden. Giles had a cut on his cheekbone, a broken knee, a rent in the tail of his overcoat; Jesse a bruised jaw. Both their ties had come untied, both their Opera hats were in the gutter. In silence they retied their ties, pinned up the rent, brushed each other, recovered their hats, and walked on towards their hotel.
Going up to their bedrooms, they washed, plastered Giles’s cheek, bound a handkerchief round his knee, put on smoking jackets, and went down to the billiard-room. There in a corner they sat down, ordered themselves whiskies and sodas, and lit their pipes.
“Those sportsmen!” said Giles. “They got what for, all right!” said Jesse. Both grinned, and for a long time, in silence, gazed before them with the same hungry expression in their thrusting grey eyes.
“Hang that Judy!” said Jesse suddenly. Giles nodded. Soon after, they retired to bed, and completed their night out.
The next day they enlisted, and a month later ‘went out’ on horses.
A FORSYTE ENCOUNTERS THE PEOPLE, 1917
In October 1917, when the air raids on London were acutely monotonous, there was a marked tendency on the part of Eustace Forsyte to take Turkish baths. The most fastidious of his family, who had carried imperturbability of demeanour to the pitch of defiance, he had perceived in the Turkish bath a gesture, as of a finger to a nose, in the face of a boring peril. As soon then as the maroons of alarm went off, he would issue from his rooms or Club and head straight for Northumberland Avenue. With his springy and slightly arched walk, as of a man spurning a pavement, he would move deliberately among the hurrying throng; and, undressing without haste, would lay his form, remarkably trim and slim for a man well over fifty, on a couch in the hottest room at about the moment when less self-contained citizens were merely sweating in their shoes. Confirmed in the tastes of a widower of somewhat self-centred character, he gave but few damns to what happened to anything–he it was who used to set his study on fire at school in order to practise being cool in moments of danger, and at college, on being dared, had jumped through a first-floor window and been picked up sensible. On his back, with his pale clean-shaven face composed to a slight superciliousness and his dark grey eyes, below the banding towel, fixed on those golden stars that tick the domed ceilings of any room with aspirations to be oriental, he would think of Maidenhead, or of Chelsea china, and now and then glance at his skin to see if it was glistening. Not a good mixer, as the saying was, he seldom spoke to his bathing fellows, and they mostly fat. Thus would he pass the hours of menace, and when the ‘all clear’ had sounded, return to his club or to his rooms with the slight smile of one who has perspired well. There he would partake of a repast feeling that he had cheated the Boche.
On a certain occasion, however, towards the end of that invasive period, events did not run true to type. The alarm had sounded, and Eustace had pursued his usual course, but the raid had not matured. Cool and hungry, he emerged from the Baths about eight o’clock and set his face towards the Strand. He had arrived opposite Charing Cross when a number of explosions attracted his attention; people began to run past him and a special constable cried loudly: “Take cover, take cover!” Eustace frowned. A second Turkish bath was out of the question, and he stood still wondering what he should do, the only person in the street not in somewhat violent motion. Before he could make up his mind whether to walk back to his club or on to the restaurant where he had meant to dine, a large and burly ‘special’ had seized him by the shoulders and pushed him into the entrance of the Tube Station.
“Take cover, can’t you!” he said, rudely.
Eustace freed his sleeve. “I don’t wish to.”
“Then you–well will,” replied the ‘special.’
Perceiving that he could only proceed over the considerable body of this intrusive being, Eustace shrugged his shoulders and endeavoured to stand still again, but an inflowing tide of his fellow-beings forced him down the slope into the hallway and on towards the stairs. Here he made a resolute effort to squeeze his way back towards the air. It was totally unavailing, and he was swept on till he was standing about halfway down the stairs among a solid mass of men, women and children of types that seemed to him in no way attractive. He had frequently noticed that mankind in the bulk is unpleasing to the eye, the ear, and the nose; but this deduction had, as it were, been formed by his brain. It was now reinforced by his senses in a manner, to one purified by a Turkish bath, intensely vivid and unpleasing. The air in this rat-run, normally distasteful to Eustace, who never took the Tube, was rapidly becoming fetid, and he at once decided that he would rather brave all the shrapnel of all the anti-aircraft guns defending him than stay where he was. Unfortunately the decision was rendered nugatory by the close pressure of a stout woman with splotches on her face, who kept saying: “We’re all right in ’ere, ‘Enry”; by ‘Enry, a white-faced mechanician with a rat-gnawed moustache; by their spindle-legged child, who muttered at intervals: “I’ll kill that Kaiser”; and by two Jewish-looking youths, on whom Eustace had at once passed the verdict ‘better dead’! His back, moreover, was wedged partly against the front of a young woman smelling of stale powder who panted in one of his ears, and partly against the bow window of her partner, who, judging from the breeze that came from him, was a whisky-taster.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34