Poor Relations Part 1

Poor Relations.

by Compton Mackenzie.

CHAPTER I

There was nothing to distinguish the departure of the _Murmania_ from that of any other big liner leaving New York in October for Liverpool or Southampton. At the crowded gangways there was the usual rain of ultimate kisses, from the quayside the usual gale of speeding handkerchiefs. Ladies in blanket-coats handed over to the arrangement of their table-stewards the expensive bouquets presented by friends who, as the case might be, had been glad or sorry to see them go. Middle-aged gentlemen, who were probably not at all conspicuous on sh.o.r.e, at once made their appearance in caps that they might have felt shy about wearing even during their university prime. Children in the first confusion of settling down ate more chocolates from the gift boxes lying about the cabins than they were likely to be given (or perhaps to want) for some time. Two young women with fresh complexions, short skirts, tam o' shanters, brightly colored jumpers, and big bows to their shoes were already on familiar terms with one of the junior s.h.i.+p's officers, and their laughter (which would soon become one of those unending oceanic accompaniments that make land so pleasant again) was already competing with the noise of the crew. Everybody boasted aloud that they fed you really well on the _Murmania_, and hoped silently that perhaps the sense of being imprisoned in a decaying hot-water bottle (or whatever more or less apt comparison was invented to suggest atmosphere below decks) would pa.s.s away in the fresh Atlantic breezes. Indeed it might be said, except in the case of a few ivory-faced ladies already lying back with the professional aloofness of those who are a prey to chronic headaches, that outwardly optimism was rampant.

It was not surprising, therefore, that John Touchwood, the successful romantic playwright and unsuccessful realistic novelist, should on finding himself hemmed in by such invincible cheerfulness surrender to his own pleasant fancies of home. This was one of those moments when he was able to feel that the accusation of sentimentality so persistently laid against his work by superior critics was reb.u.t.ted out of the very mouth of real life. He looked round at his fellow pa.s.sengers as though he would congratulate them on conforming to his later and more profitable theory of art; and if occasionally he could not help seeing a stewardess with a glance of discreet sympathy reveal to an inquirer the s.h.i.+p's provision for human weakness, he did not on this account feel better disposed toward morbid intrusions either upon art or life, partly because he was himself an excellent sailor and partly because after all as a realist he had unquestionably not been a success.

"Time for a shave before lunch, steward?" he inquired heartily.

"The first bugle will go in about twenty minutes, sir."

John paused for an instant at his own cabin to extract from his suitcase the particular outrage upon conventional headgear (it was a deerstalker of Lovat tweed) that he had evolved for this voyage; and presently he was sitting in the barber shop, wondering at first why anybody should be expected to buy any of the miscellaneous articles exposed for sale at such enhanced prices on every hook and in every nook of the little saloon, and soon afterward seriously considering the advantage of a pair of rope-soled shoes upon a heeling deck.

"Very natty things those, sir," said the barber. "I laid in a stock once at Gib., when we did the southern rowt. Shave you close, sir?"

"Once over, please."

"Skin tender?"

"Rather tender."

"Yes, sir. And the beard's a bit strong, sir. Shave yourself, sir?"

"Usually, but I was up rather early this morning."

"Safety razor, sir?"

"If you think such a description justifiable--yes--a safety."

"They're all the go now, and no mistake ... safety bicycles, safety matches, safety razors ... they've all come in our time ... yes, sir, just a little bit to the right--thank you, sir! Not your first crossing, I take it?"

"No, my third."

"Interesting place, America. But I am from Wandsworth myself. Hair's getting rather thin round the temples. Would you like something to brisken up the growth a bit? Another time? Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.

Parting on the left's it, I think?"

"No grease," said John as fiercely as he ever spoke. The barber seemed to replace the pot of brilliantine with regret.

"What would you like then?" He might have been addressing a spoilt child. "Flowers-and-honey? Eau-de-quinine? Or perhaps a friction? I've got lavingder, carnation, wallflower, vilit, lilerk...."

"Bay rum," John declared, firmly.

The barber sighed for such an unadventurous soul; and John, who could not bear to hurt even the most superficial emotions of a barber, changed his mind and threw him into a smiling bustle of gratification.

"Rather strong," John said, half apologetically; for while the friction was being administered the barber had explained in jerks how every time he went ash.o.r.e in New York or Liverpool he was in the habit of searching about for some novel wash or tonic or pomade, and John did not want to make him feel that his enterprise was unappreciated.

"Strong is it? Well, that's a good fault, sir."

"Yes, I suppose it is."

"What took my fancy was the natural way it smelled."

"Yes, indeed, painfully natural," John agreed.

He stood up and confronted himself in the barber's mirror; regarding the fair, almost florid man, rather under six feet in height, with sanguine blue eyes and full, but clearly cut, lips therein reflected, he came to the comforting conclusion that he did not look his forty-two years and nine months; indeed, while his m.u.f.fled whistle was shaping rather than uttering the tune of _Nancy Lee_, he nearly asked the barber to guess his age. 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 ill.u.s.tration of human madness and the destructive will of the G.o.ds. As it was, his capacity for rapidly covering the domestic offices of the brain with the crimson-ramblers of a lush idealism made him forget the base fabric so prettily if obviously concealed. As it was, he found an exhilaration in all this berserker greed, in the cries of inquisitive children, in the rumpled appearance of women whom the bugle had torn from their unpacking with the urgency of the last trump, in the acrid smell of pickles, and in the persuasive gesture with which the glistening stewards handed the potatoes while they glared angrily at one another over their shoulders. If a cynical realist had in respect of this lunch observed to John that a sow's ear was poor material for a silk purse, he would have contested the universal truth of the proverb, for at this moment he was engaged in c.h.i.n.king the small change of sentimentality in just such a purse.

"How jolly everybody is," he thought, swinging round to his neighbor, a gaunt woman in a kind of draggled mantilla, with an effusion of good-will that expressed itself in a request to pa.s.s her the pickled walnuts. John fancied an impulse to move away her chair when she declined his offer; but of course the chair was fixed, and the only sign of her distaste for pickles or conversation was a faint quiver, which to any one less rosy than John might have suggested abhorrence, but which struck him as merely shyness. It was now that for the first time he became aware of a sickly fragrance that was permeating the atmosphere, a fragrance that other people, too, seemed to be noticing by the way in which they were looking suspiciously at the stewards.

"Rather oppressive, some of these flowers," said John to the gaunt lady.

"I don't see any flowers at our end of the table," she replied.

And then with an emotion that was very nearly horror John realized that, though the barber was responsible, he must pay the penalty in a vicarious mortification. His first impulse was to s.n.a.t.c.h a napkin and wipe his hair; then he decided to leave the table immediately, because after all n.o.body _could_ suspect him, in these as yet unvexed waters, of anything but repletion; finally, hoping that the much powdered lady opposite swathed in mauve chiffons was getting the discredit for the fragrance, he stayed where he was. Nevertheless, the exhilaration had departed; his neighbors all seemed dull folk; and congratulating himself that after this first confused lunch he might reasonably expect to be put at the captain's table in recognition of the celebrity that he could fairly claim, John took from his pocket a bundle of letters which had arrived just before he had left his hotel and busied himself with them for the rest of the meal.

His success as a romantic playwright and his failure--or, as he would have preferred to think of it in the satisfaction of fixing the guilty fragrance upon the lady in mauve chiffons, his comparative failure--as a realistic novelist had not destroyed John's pa.s.sion for what he called "being practical in small matters," and it was in pursuit of this that having arranged his letters in two heaps which he mentally labeled as "business" and "pleasure" he began with the former, as a child begins (or ought to begin) his tea with the bread and b.u.t.ter and ends it with the plumcake. In John's case, fresh from what really might be described as a triumphant production in New York, the b.u.t.ter was spread so thickly that "business" was too forbidding a name for such pleasantly nutritious communications. His agent had sent him the returns of the second week; and playing to capacity in one of the largest New York theaters is nearer to a material paradise than anything outside the Mohammedan religion. Then there was an offer from one of the chief film companies to produce his romantic drama of two years ago, that wonderful riot of color and Biblical phraseology, _The Fall of Babylon_. They ventured to think that the cinematographer would do his imagination more justice than the theater, particularly as upon their dramatic ranch in California they now had more than a hundred real camels and eight real elephants. John chuckled at the idea of a few animals compensating for the absence of his words, but nevertheless ... the entrance of Nebuchadnezzar, yes, it should be wonderfully effective ... and the great gra.s.s-eating scene, yes, that might positively be more impressive on the films ... with one or two audiences it had trembled for a moment between the sublime and the ridiculous. It was a pity that the offer had not arrived before he was leaving New York, but no doubt he should be able to talk it over with the London representatives of the firm. Hullo here was Janet Bond writing to him ... charming woman, charming actress.... He wandered for a few minutes rather vaguely in the maze of her immense handwriting, but disentangled his comprehension at last and deciphered:

THE PARTHENON THEATRE.

Sole Proprietress: Miss Janet Bond.

_October 10, 1910._

DEAR MR. TOUCHWOOD,--I wonder if you have forgotten our talk at Sir Herbert's that night? I'm so hoping not. And your scheme for a real Joan of Arc? Do think of me this winter. Your picture of the scene with Gilles de Rais--you see I followed your advice and read him up--has _haunted_ me ever since. I can hear the horses' hoofs coming nearer and nearer and the cries of the murdered children. I'm so glad you've had a success with _Lucrezia_ in New York. I don't _think_ it would suit me from what I read about it. You know how _particular_ my public is.

That's why I'm so anxious to play the Maid. When will _Lucrezia_ be produced in London, and where? There are many rumours. Do come and see me when you get back to England, and I'll tell you who I've thought of to play Gilles. I _think_ you'll find him very intelligent. But of course everything depends on your inclination, or should I say inspiration? And then that wonderful speech to the Bishop! How does it begin? "Bishop, thou hast betrayed thy holy trust." Do be a little flattered that I've remembered that line. It needn't _all_ be in blank verse, and I think little Truscott would be so good as the Bishop. You see how _enthusiastic_ I am and how I _believe_ in the idea. All good wishes.

Yours sincerely and hopefully,

JANET BOND.

John certainly was a little flattered that Miss Bond should have remembered the Maid's great speech to the Bishop of Beauvais, and the actress's enthusiasm roused in him an answering flame, so that the cruet before him began to look like the castelated walls of Orleans, and while his gaze was fixed upon the bowl of salad he began to compose _Act II._ _Scene I_--_Open country. Enter Joan on horseback. From the summit of a gra.s.sy knoll she searches the horizon._ So fixedly was John regarding his heroine on top of the salad that the head steward came over and asked anxiously if there was anything the matter with it. And even when John a.s.sured him that there was nothing he took it away and told one of the under-stewards to remove the caterpillar and bring a fresh bowl.

Meanwhile, John had picked up the other bundle of letters and begun to read his news from home.

65 HILL ROAD,

St. John's Wood, N.W.,

_October 10_.

DEAR JOHN,--We have just read in the _Telegraph_ of your great success and we are both very glad. Edith writes me that she did have a letter from you. I dare say you thought she would send it on to us but she didn't, and of course I understand you're busy only I should have liked to have had a letter ourselves. James asks me to tell you that he is probably going to do a book on the Cymbalist movement in literature. He says that the time has come to take a final survey of it. He is also writing some articles for the _Fortnightly Review_. We shall all be so glad to welcome you home again.

Your affectionate sister-in-law,

BEATRICE TOUCHWOOD.