“Oh, nonsense, Gerald! There’s nothing so silly and mean as this reticence about money. …”
“God, but you’ve given me an idea. I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you, as you’re late for dinner. I’ll damn well lend you a fiver.”
“But, Gerald—”
“You talk too much,” Gerald stammered. “I’d like to do you a bit of good. And I’ve still got to thank you for chloroforming me and lugging me off to that Home for Drunks, thanks very much. Now, am I going to lend you a fiver or am I going to make such a roughhouse just here that all the police in London will come and arrest you for soliciting? I’ll scream if you don’t touch me!”
I was in a hurry. I had to take that fiver. I have that fiver still.
“I’ll keep it for you,” I said. “Damn you.”
“Yes, you keep it for me,” said Gerald thoughtfully. “Nice, fivers are …” and then, savagely muttering “Oh, hell!” he strode abruptly away down the slope of East Chapel Street, which leads into Shepherd’s Market. Drunk or sober, you simply couldn’t tell. You never knew that man was drunk until he was speechless. I was hurrying away when his voice held me—and a very boyish voice Gerald had, like a prefect’s at school.
“I say, seen that sister of mine again? … You haven’t?” He seemed to reflect profoundly. “I say, if ever you do, give her my love. What? I say, don’t forget. …”
“I won’t forget,” I called back. “Good night, Gerald.” But he had turned away, and the last I saw of him he was putting his shoulder against the saloon-door of The Leather Butler. I plunged across the road to Chesterfield Street, glad of the message I would certainly give to Gerald’s sister. Maybe tonight, somehow. A furious conference of livid pink and purple monsters hung over Seamore Place, where the sun was sinking into Kensington Gardens.
II
“There was a cocktail for you,” said Hilary gloomily, “but I drank it, in case it grew warm.” I thanked him politely for the idea. “It wasn’t an idea, really,” said Hilary gloomily. “It was an impulse.”
It is not, therefore, impossible to understand how it came about that there were not a few people, youngish people, who considered Mr. Townshend to be a tiresome man. They said: “He is very nice, but frankly, isn’t he rather tiresome?” I supposed he was rather tiresome.
Hilary was a man of various ages; when nothing was going well with him, he would look no more than forty; when everything was going well with him, he would look about forty-five; when he was crossing a road, that is to say when he was thinking, he looked about fifty. This last was, I believe, his age.
Hilary was a man who had convinced himself and everyone else that he had neither use nor time for the flibberty-gibberties of life. He collected postage-stamps and had sat as Liberal Member for an Essex constituency for fifteen years. To be a Liberal was against every one of his prejudices, but to be a Conservative was against all his convictions. He thought of democracy as a drainpipe through which the world must crawl for its health. He did not think the health of the world would ever be good. When travelling he looked porters sternly in the face and over-tipped them. His eyes were grey and gentle, and they were suspicious of being amused. I think that Hilary treasured a belief that his eyes were cold and ironic, as also that his face was of a stern cast. His face was long, and the features somehow muddled. It was a kind face.
Hilary is the last in direct line of the Townshends, who have held Magralt, a Tudor manor on the Essex coast, since a Townshend deserted to Henry Tudor on Bosworth Field. The Townshends of Magralt have always been soldiers, “and that,” Guy, first and last, a soldier, will say, “is the only reason one can see why Hilary is a politician by profession and the foremost stamp-collector in Chesterfield Street by the sweat of his brow.” But one has to report that Hilary was once, before witnesses, perfectly beastly to an American gentleman who said that Blucher had arrived in time for the Battle of Waterloo.
But it was on the question of marriage that the two friends would indulge the sharpest difference of opinion; or rather, Hilary’s wasn’t an opinion, it was a lurking Silence.
“Suppose you die,” said Guy de Travest. “You might. You are ten years older than me in years alone. You may receive your call to higher things at any moment. Look how I beat you at squash the other day! Let us suppose, then, that you are as good as dead. Unmarried, childless. You have done nothing. You are nothing. You leave nothing. Except, of course, what was left to you—”
“Less,” said Hilary.
“Your memory, then, goes down as that of a sickening philatelist. Whereas, had anyone of your ancestors had a chance of a bit of war like ours, he would have died a Major-General!”
“A Field-Marshal, Guy. You forget that the Townshends have the reputation of having lost more of their soldiers’ lives than any other service-family in England.” And so it would go on forever, Guy contending that as Hilary was nothing in himself it was disloyal of him not to wed and bring forth direct heirs, while Hilary’s attitude would be one of benevolently beckoning to the sombre heights of Cumberland, where sat the house of Curle-Townshend, heirs-apparent to Magralt and all its fiefs.
Anyone, as Hilary was once goaded into muttering, would have thought that Guy’s own marriage was the happiest in the world; at worst, anyone might have thought that it was a happy marriage, as marriages go. Guy, it was said, adored his wife. Guy, it was said, never spoke to his wife except in public and as he passed through her
