Compton MacKenzie

“ Why can't I see myself as a husband? When I think of the number of people and things I've been in imagination it really does seem extraordinary I should never have thought of being a husband. Apparently Maud has completely forgotten about the curtains. It looks as if I should have to give up all hope now of her coming in to draw them of her own accord. Poor Miss Hamilton! I do trust that horrible old clown of a mother isn't turning somersaults round her room at this moment and sending up her temperature to three figures. ”

“ Crutchley murmured. "But I blame myself. I should not have left an old check book lying about. It was careless—it was, I do not hesitate to say so, criminally careless. But you know my attitude towards money. I am radically incapable of dealing with money."
"Of course you are," John assented with conviction. "So am I. Money with me is merely a means to an end."
"Exactly what it is with me," the architect declared. "Money in itself conveys nothing to me. What I always say to my clients is that if they want the best work they must pay for it. It's the work that counts, not the money." ”

“ To-morrow he might learn that James had murdered Beatrice because she had slept through the opening chapters of Lord Ormont and his Aminta. To-morrow he might learn that George was a defaulting bookmaker, that Hilda had embezzled the whole of Laurence's board, and that Harold was about to be prosecuted by the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Why, even his mother might have taken to gin-drinking in the small hours of the morning!
"God forgive me," said John. "I am losing my faith in humanity and my respect for my mother. Yet some imbeciles prate about the romance of crime." ”

“ John embarked upon a justification of his attitude, in the course of which he pointed out the dangers of idleness, reminded Hugh of the forgery, tried to inspire him with hopes of independence, hinted at moral obligations, and rhapsodized about colonial enterprise. As a mountain of forensic art the speech was wonderful: clothed on the lower slopes with a rich and varied vegetation of example and precept, it gradually ascended to the hard rocks of necessity, honor, and duty until it culminated in a peak of snow where John's singleness of motive glittered immaculately and inviolably to heaven. ”

“ Rather good, eh? And you can rosify anything from Lucretia Borgia to cold mutton. Now don't look angry with me, Johnnie; you must rosify my ill-humor. With so many roses you can't expect not to have a few thorns as well, and I'm one of them. No, seriously, I congratulate you on your success. And I always try to remember that you write with your tongue in your cheek."
"On the contrary I believe I write as well as I can," said John, earnestly. "I admit that I gave up writing realistic novels, but that was because they didn't suit my temperament." ”

“ I'm glad Harold is never likely to be an uncle: he would bring the relationship into an even greater disrepute. Still, even now an uncle is disreputable enough. The wicked uncle! It's proverbial, of course. We never hear of the wicked cousin or the nefarious aunt. No, uncles share with stepmothers the opprobrium and with mothers-in-law the ridicule of the mob. Unquestionably, if I do marry, I shall still be an uncle, but the status may perhaps be merged in paternity. Suppose I marry and never have any children? My wife will be pitied by Hilda, Edith, and Eleanor and condoled with by Beatrice. ”

“ It was only when John reached the offices of Stephen Crutchley in Staple Inn that he discovered it was Sunday, which meant another whole day's idleness and suspense, and he almost fell to wishing that he was in church again with Bertram and Viola. But there was a sweet sadness in this old paved court, where a few sparrows chirped their plaintive monotone from an overarching tree, the branches of which fretted a sky of pearly blue, and where several dreary men were sitting upon the benches regarding their frayed boots. ”

“ Benedictine did win that afternoon at six to one: indubitably the life of a taxi-driver was superior to his own, John thought as he turned with a shudder from the virgin foolscap upon his writing-desk and with a late edition of the Star sank into a deep armchair.
"A bachelor's life is a very lonely one," he sighed. For some reason Maud had neglected to draw the curtains after tea, and the black yawning window where the rain glistened drearily weighed upon his heart with a sense of utter abandonment. ”

“ John's cheeks flushed with stormy rose like a menacing down, and he was about to break over his sister-in-law in thunder and lightning when Laurence, entering the room at the moment and only hearing imperfectly her last speech, nodded and sighed:
"Yes, yes. Eleanor is indeed right. Yes, yes. In the midst of life...."
Everybody hurried to take advantage of the diversion; a hum of platitudes rose and fell upon the funereal air. John in a convulsion of irritability ordered the dog-cart to drive him to the station. ”

“ John retorted in an offended voice. "And anyway you can't expect me to burst into blank verse the moment you arrive, like a canary that's been uncovered by the housemaid. It would be an affectation to pretend I feel poetical this afternoon. I feel like a jolly good tramp before tea. I can't stand writers who always want to be literary. I have the temperament of a country squire, and if I had more money and fewer relations I should hardly write at all." ”

“ In deference to the Lord Chamberlain while reserving to my conscience the right to execrate his despotism I have expunged from my scenes the central figures of the gospel story, and I venture to think that there is now no reason why Thomas should not be—ah—produced."
"I'm afraid I can't invite you to read it to me just at present, Laurence," said John, hurriedly. "No, not just at present, I'm afraid. When I'm working myself I'm always chary of being exposed to outside influences. You wouldn't like and I shouldn't like to find in Joan of Arc echoes of Thomas. ”

“ It was a noble beard, and when John had fixed it to his cheeks with a profusion of spirit-gum, he made up his mind that it became him so well that he would grow one of his own, which whitening with the flight of time would in another thirty years make him look what he hoped to be—the doyen of romantic playwrights. The scarlet robe of Santa Claus with its trimming of bells, icicles, and holly and its ruching of snow had been made in a single piece without buttons, so that when John put it over his head the beard caught in the folds and part of it was thinned out by an icicle. ”

“ Viola burst out, impatiently. "What's the good of your dressing up as a diver? In those goggles you always look like a diver."
"I don't, do I, Frida?" Harold implored.
Now Frida was happy with her dolls'-house; she had no reason to be loyal to Harold, who had always treated her shamefully; but the spirit of the squaw rose in her breast and she felt bound to defend the wigwam against outside criticism. Therefore she assured Harold that in ordinary life he did not look in the least like a diver. ”

“ James had once exclaimed, "is how a man like you who professes to admire—no, I believe you're honest—who does admire Stendhal, Turgenev, Flaubert and Merimée, who recognizes the perfection of Manon Lescaut and Adolphe, who in a word has taste, can bring himself to eructate the Fall of Babylon."
"It's all a matter of knowing one's own limitations," John had replied. "I tried to write realistic novels. But my temperament is not realistic."
"No, if it were," James had murmured, "you wouldn't stand my affectation of superiority." ”

“ Hamilton is at home," said the maid.
The last bars of something by Schumann or Chopin died away; in the comparative stillness that succeeded John could hear a canary singing, and the tinkle of tea-cups; there was also a smell of muffins and—mimosa, was it? Anyway it was very delicious, he thought, while he made his overcoat as small as possible, so as not to fill the tiny hall entirely.
"Mr. Touchwood was the name?" the maid asked.
"What an intelligent young woman," he thought. "How much more intelligent than that policeman. But women are more intelligent in small things." ”

“ All the bland, the almost infantine simplicity of Aubrey Fenton's demeanor did not avail to propitiate John's rage; and when the maid came in with a message from his hostess to ask if it would soon be convenient to allow the table to be cleared, he announced that he should not remain another minute in the house.
"But can Hugh count on your support?" Aubrey persisted. He spoke like an election agent who is growing rapidly doubtful of his candidate's prospects.
"He can count on nothing," said John, violently. "He can count on nothing at all. On absolutely nothing at all." ”

“ However, he decided not to risk it, pulled down the lapels of his smoke-colored tweed coat, put on his deerstalker, tipped the barber sufficiently well to secure a parting caress from the brush, promised to meditate the purchase of the rope-soled shoes, and stepped jauntily in the direction of the luncheon bugle. If John Touchwood had not been a successful romantic playwright and an unsuccessful realistic novelist, he might have found in the spectacle of the first lunch of an Atlantic voyage an illustration of human madness and the destructive will of the gods. ”

“ We cannot escape the omniscient eye."
"I wasn't speaking about God," Harold objected. "I was asking about Grandmama. Does she hear Frida kicking the table, or does she only see her?"
"At this solemn moment, Harold, when we should all of us be dumb with grief, you should not persist. Your poor grandmother would be pained to hear you being persistent like this."
Harold seemed to think he had tricked his uncle into answering the question, for he relapsed into a satisfied silence; Edith's eyes flashed gladly through her tears to welcome the return of her husband's truant orthodoxy. ”

“ I mean to say, the rug."
He tried to think of any other animal whose personality survived in rugs, but could think of none except a rabbit, and condemning the ambiguity of the English language waited in some embarrassment for Mrs. Easton to reply. She was by this time so surely convinced of John's interest in her that she opened to him with a trilling flutter of complacency like a turkey's tail.
"It happened to be a bearskin," she murmured. "But children will be children. We oughtn't to forget that we were all children once, Mr. Touchwood." ”

“ I don't grudge the dear boy his youth. We all get old in time, and its natural that with us old fogies round him he should be a little interested in Miss Hamilton. All the same, it wouldn't be a prudent match. I dare say she thinks I shall have something to leave Hugh, but I told her only yesterday that I should leave little or nothing."
"My dear Mama, I can assure you that my secretary—my secretary," John repeated with as much pomposity as might impress the old lady, "is not at all dazzled by the glamour of your wealth or James' wealth or George's wealth or anybody's wealth for that matter." ”

“ During the first half of supper Beatrice delivered a kind of lecture on housekeeping in London on two pounds twelve shillings and sixpence a week, including bones for the dog; by the time that the stewed figs were put on the table this monologue had reduced both brothers to such a state of gloom by striking at James' experience and John's imagination, that the sourness of the cream came as a natural corollary; anything but sour cream would have seemed an obtrusive reminder of housekeeping on more than two pounds twelve shillings and sixpence a week, including bones for the dog. ”

“ John had insisted that Doris should wear her misty green suit of Harris tweed; but he himself had bought at the Burlington Arcade a traveling cap that showed plainly the sobering effects of matrimony. In the barber's saloon he invested in a pair of rope-soled shoes; he wanted to be sure of being able to support his wife even upon a heeling deck. Before dinner they went forward to watch the stars come out in the twilight—stars that were scarcely as yet more luminous in the green April sky than daisies in a meadow. ”

“ Whirring home to Hampstead John fell asleep, and when he had supplemented that amount of repose in the taxi by eight hours in his own bed, he woke next morning with his mind made up to square matters with Stephen Crutchley, to withdraw Hugh from architecture, to intern him until Christmas at Ambles, and in the New Year to transport him to British Honduras as a mahogany-planter. He had met on board the Murmania a mahogany-planter who was visiting England for the first time in thirteen years: the profession must be an enthralling one. ”

“ Anybody who had seen Hugh's condition at this moment would have agreed with John. His eyes had already lost even as much life as might have been discerned in the slow freezing of a puddle, and had now assumed the glassy fixity and perfect roundness of two bottle-stoppers.
"He can count on nothing," John asseverated.
"I see," said Aubrey, tactfully. "I'll try and get that across to him. Must you really be going?" ”

“ But then the average audience was middle-aged. Thinking of the many audiences on which from private boxes he had looked down, John was sure that bald heads always predominated in the auditorium; and naturally those bald heads had been only too ready to nod approval of a heroine who rejected the dashing jeune premier to fling herself into the arms of the elderly actor-manager. It was impossible to think of any infirmity severe enough to thwart an actor-manager. Yet a play was make-believe: in real life events would probably turn out quite differently. ”

“ John hoped a blizzard would blow to-morrow, that Harold would toboggan recklessly down the steepest slope of the downs behind Ambles, and that he would hit an oak tree at the bottom and break his glasses. However, none of these dark thoughts obscured the remote brightness with which he answered:
"Really, Harold. Very likely. There is a considerable exportation of china animals from America nowadays. In fact I was very lucky to find any left in America." ”

“ At first John was inclined to compare her to a diminutive clown; but presently he caught sight of some golden mandarins marching across a lacquer cupboard and decided that she resembled a mandarin; after which wherever he looked in the room he seemed to catch sight of her miniature—on the willow-pattern plates, on the mantelpiece in porcelain, and even on the red lacquer bridge that spanned the tea-caddy. ”

“ John expostulated. "Why should I want you to die?"
He could indeed ask this, for such an event would inevitably connote his adoption of Harold.
"I didn't mean you wanted me to die," said Hilda, crossly. "I meant you would like me to leave Ambles."
"Not at all. I'm delighted for you to stay here so long as it suits your convenience. And that applies equally to Edith. Also I may say to George," he added with a glance at Eleanor, who had taken the opportunity of mourning to equip herself with a new set of black bearskin furs. Eleanor shook herself like a large animal emerging from the stream. ”