Hervey Loses a Patron
Hervey now did what any sensible young woman, who wished to do the best for herself, would have tried a year earlier. The inconsistency in her nature went too deep: she would use all her wit, shrewdness, and tact on behalf of another person or to get something she did not want but only needed for the security which disgusted her—but for herself, to advance her as a writer, she never lifted a finger. This was not the result of delicacy. Only the effort bored her to such a degree that she would never make it for herself alone. Other people might have reproached her if she refused to exert herself on their behalf, but she would not reproach herself for having neglected her own interests.
With the idea of helping Penn to get what he wanted she took endless trouble to please Evelyn Lamb. It was not impossible. Hervey had great natural charm when she could use it, and her childhood had been one long severe training in diplomacy. She had learned young to read faces, tones of voice, and hearts.
Before long the older woman found it natural as well as pleasant to talk to Hervey more freely than she had talked to any woman since the death of her sister. The young girl listened with the whole of her mind. This happens so rarely to anyone—half of your friend’s mind is a generous gift—that it is the finest flattery. Moreover, it is a true gift—you cannot make a feint of listening with your whole mind. Hervey felt a deep interest in the older woman. Without knowing why, she was sorry for her. She was also greatly frightened by her. Even when she saw Evelyn two or three times a week she went through the same tortures of shyness and sighed with relief when she escaped. Though Evelyn was really pleased with her, she could not resist making the young girl pay for their friendship by nipping her sharply several times the week. Since Hervey could never think of any retort that was not fatally harsh she blushed and was silent.
She was ashamed of being shy, and she failed to realise that nothing, in a society of writers, is so dull as civility and a soft heart. She met a great many well-known or about to be well-known people in Evelyn’s house. Only a few of them spoke twice to a polite young woman with nothing to say for herself. On these persons she made a deep impression, but not in all cases a good one. William Ridley had the wit to notice that she was obstinate, opinionated, and malicious.
Evelyn allowed her to write short unsigned notices for the London Review and employed her to check references and quotations. She did not pay her for these services, which engaged all Hervey’s leisure. Hervey toiled cheerfully, since she meant at the right moment to suggest making use of Penn. It was ironical—since she wanted nothing for herself—that Evelyn kept promising to take signed paid work from her when she had learned her trade. As to that—Hervey considered that she wrote a great deal better than William Ridley, whose weekly essay followed Evelyn’s in the paper.
One Thursday in April she was drinking tea alone with Evelyn. Evelyn had asked her opinion of Ridley. Hervey had none. She did not know that he was Evelyn’s lover, and spoke honestly.
‘I should say he was a very commonplace writer. He has so much energy, and he notices everything—I think perhaps he is a commonplace genius. He’s very conceited.’
‘He was laughing yesterday over your novel,’ Evelyn said dryly. ‘Are you writing another, by the way?’
‘Yes,’ Hervey said. She blushed.
‘Try to write about what you feel,’ Evelyn went on. ‘That might be new. Do leave clever talk about problems to the undergraduates, and write only what you have felt—about falling in love, or mathematics, or talking to other women. That will be first-hand revelation. You should use your mind to search your heart. Anyone can search the newspapers, for stories of unhappy marriages, suicides, and all that.’
Hervey looked down. She longed to deserve praise, but the truth is that she learned nothing by hearing it, and years would pass over her before she understood what Evelyn meant. At this moment the door opened and William Ridley came in. He sprawled on a chair and talked to Evelyn without paying any attention to Hervey. She walked over to a window and tried to think of a way of leaving without seeming awkward. It was clear that she was unwanted, but Evelyn had borrowed five shillings from her to pay for a cab and if she went without it she would be penniless until to-morrow afternoon. At last she jumped up and calling out—‘Goodbye, I shall see you again this week’—she ran from the room.
As soon as she had gone Ridley said, jerking his thumb: ‘I can’t stand the airs she gives herself.’
‘Airs?’ Evelyn said. ‘My poor young Hervey? Nonsense.’
‘I didn’t come to talk about her. What’s this someone’s been saying in the Review about my friend Mrs Harben? She’s in a rare temper. I said I’d ask you about it.’
Evelyn smiled slightly. So he is going without me to Lucy Harben’s, she said to herself.
An extraordinary emotion seized her. She shuddered at the complacence with which he uttered the words ‘my friend Mrs Harben’—never had he looked less pleasing—and in the same moment she was waiting, rigid, for the clumsily violent caress she expected. Her fingers gripped the edge of her chair. It would give her no pleasure, it confused and wearied her, yet she craved it. It was as though she craved the confusion, but without knowing what she hoped from it.
Her inner life had fallen into disorder. She felt that for years she had been keeping up a pretence of order in her mind by an effort of nerves or will. Now that the pretence was finished she looked inward at a life which had collapsed on itself.
Her first thought was that no one else must see it. There must be a rigid outer order—in everything, in her actions and writing, in other people’s, everywhere. She wrote the first of a series of unsigned essays condemning romantic licence. In the second, she allowed herself to make fun of Mrs Thomas Harben’s taste in art—it was the week the other woman lent her house for an exhibition in aid of blinded soldiers. This was not pure criticism—she had always been subject to impulses wildly at variance with her known character. Already she bitterly regretted the attack. It threatened her social front with disorder, at the moment when order, and more order, was what she wanted.
Ridley was disconcerted by her smile. Even now, though he believed firmly that women are at the mercy of their feelings, he was a little intimidated by her reputation as a clever woman. Moreover she was an editor, one of the creatures upon whom he depended for his life. He threw himself back in his chair. ‘I suppose you didn’t write the article yourself.’
‘Certainly not,’ Evelyn said, without giving herself time to think. ‘In fact, it was set up in mistake for another with much the same title. You know I was ill last week and left that idiot Kerr in charge.’
‘He didn’t write it! Come now, you’d better tell me who did. I can soothe Lucy Harben for you.’
‘Thank you,’ Evelyn said, smiling. She felt a spasm of fury. ‘The little Russell wrote it. She writes very well, and though I can’t use much she writes it is good practice for her.’
‘I never see anything by her in the London Review? ‘
‘She hasn’t signed anything.’
‘She’d better not,’ Ridley chuckled. ‘Our Mrs Harben won’t forgive you for encouraging her after this.’
Evelyn said nothing. She felt as though she were being crushed from all sides. And there was nothing, no force in her, to keep her safe. She would die. But it was her own fault, and her own act had started the destruction. I shall repair it, she thought, with growing energy; my mind is not weakened, I shall repair everything. Shall I at least get rid of this fellow? She had closed her eyes. Opening them she saw first Ridley’s thick short hand on the arm of her chair. It would not be a bad idea to pick it up between finger and thumb and drop it.
She began to laugh.
When Hervey came to see her on Saturday she brought with her the criticism of a play. The dramatic critic of the Review was going to resign and Evelyn had half promised to try Hervey in his place. This half promise had excited Hervey so that she was afraid to think about it. She laid the copy of her criticism on Evelyn’s desk and waited. Her stomach felt horribly empty.
Evelyn read it through quickly and said: ‘You can do another one or two if you like. I’ll pay for them but I’d rather you didn’t sign them. I’ve taken on a young man as dramatic critic. He’ll begin in a fortnight.’
Hervey fell down an endless flight of stairs. When she could speak she said quietly: ‘I don’t mind working for you for nothing. But—will you give Penn a chance to do something? He reads Greek and Latin and knows a great deal of history, he could review solid books for you.’
Suddenly, while she was still speaking, it came to Evelyn that Hervey was responsible for the mistakes she had made in the last few months. There was something disturbing, unreliable, about the young girl. She gave way to a cruel impulse.
‘Don’t talk to me about that ridiculous husband of yours,’ she cried. ‘I don’t mind your bringing him here in the evening now and then, if it helps you, but I warn you not to let him make a nuisance of himself.’
Hervey walked out of the room.
In the hall she found T.S., half in his overcoat. He asked her where she was going and offered to walk part of the way with her. She nodded. She was trembling, but he did not notice it. In the street he stumped along beside her in silence, head down, until they reached Ebury Street. Then he said : ‘Philip’s in hospital.’
‘What?’ Hervey felt a shock of dismay. The blood rushed through her body, checked, dropped. She looked at T.S. He did not seem to be sharing her dismay, but only looked more sardonic than usual. Come, it can’t be so bad, she thought. Nevertheless she stood still, touching the wall with her hand. ‘Why is he in hospital? Is he worse?’
‘He has cancer, of course. I knew that a year ago, but the damned fools have been treating him for dyspepsia and then for an ulcer. I don’t suppose it would have made any difference.’
Hervey bit her lip. She did not want details. ‘Is it his wounds?’
‘Oh yes, I think so,’ T.S. said.
‘Will they cure him now?’
‘Almost certainly not.’ He added: ‘I went with him to-day to see him in. Visiting hours are between four and six, so you can come with me next Saturday.’
Hervey did not say anything. She had a singular horror of sickness in any form and wished Saturday would never come.
‘Do you remember?—you told him he was a doomed young man.’
‘One of my lighter efforts,’ T.S. grinned. ‘Come on, young Hervey. We’ll drink a cup of coffee together. To our good intentions.’
The café they went into was underground, one of those cellars disguised with hangings, carved screens, and cushions, which a single added layer of dust would obliterate. Hervey pulled a face at it. ‘Fancy if an earthquake buried us down here. I should turn in my bones at the things the archaeologists will say when they dig us up. “ The places they lived in! ” They’ll label us the Sordid Age.’
‘So we are,’ T.S. said swiftly. ‘Do you remember that place in Surrey we walked to, you and I and Philip, in 1913? Philip and I went there yesterday—his idea.’ He looked at her and said: ‘We didn’t take you because we were afraid you would have trouble with Penn. It was a mistake, too. The place was torn to pieces. The field of the chestnut tree is a street of new houses, ending nowhere, so ugly you never saw, the grey manor house is a tea-shop, the hedges have been cut down, houses everywhere, like a disease, and the air reeks of petrol. We couldn’t find our way and were as lost as ghosts. Philip said: “ I’m glad I didn’t go over to look at the battlefields. I shouldn’t be surprised if some brute has gone and built houses on them.” Rose at the pub is fat and minus a tooth or so.’
Hervey laughed out. ‘I should hate not knowing what the country was like before the War. We’ve known better times. Not much to boast of; but something to make do, in another age.
‘The War went on too long. Everything’s spoiled.’
‘You can’t see round the next corner,’ Hervey said. She made an incautious movement, and seized the table for support. ‘This couch isn’t safe!’
‘Once Philip and I were summoned to Corps Headquarters. It was a castle of sorts. We were waiting, alone in a room. Philip sat down on a sofa, which collapsed and he rolled across the floor bringing down with him a cloisonné vase as big as a man. You never saw such ruin, like a hurricane. I was paralysed with terror. I thought we should be shot for counter-military action. Philip rang the bell and when a servant came in he said in a cold furious voice : “ Clear away this mess. It’s disgraceful, unheard of.” The man ran about like a hare under Philip’s steely eye—the eye of a second lieutenant!—I think it hypnotised him—and the last fragment disappeared through one door as the G.S.O.2 came in at the other.’
‘Don’t you remember?—no, you missed the evening Philip read a paper to the Literary Society at King’s on the life and work of a Polish philosopher called Csychewinski. It was just after we’d been forbidden to debate Socialism and this Csychewinski was a socialist, an atheist, and held astonishing views on sex. Hardly a soul in the hall realised that our Philip had invented him until that theological lecturer, the camel-faced one, got up and asked where the eighty-six volumes of the Life and Works could be seen. Philip looked at him and said sweetly: “ In the really admirable library of the Gas Light and Coke Company, sir.” There was a riot.’
‘This idea he had of starting a new paper. He’d have been disappointed, certainly. English people won’t pay out good money to read uncomfortable truths.’
‘Philip is never disappointed,’ Hervey said, surprised. ‘He has a religion. If the paper failed he would find some other way to speak. Even if only six people listened.’
‘People always listened to our Philip,’ T.S. said. ‘Visiting generals listened.’
‘He was as uncompromising as an early Christian. Do you remember our old librarian, who loved him and lent him MSS. and first editions? You knew Philip had been calling on him once a week? Last March the old man wrote an article in the Review on the beauty of war. Philip sent him fifteen folio sheets, in his small writing, of devastating criticism, and added that he would not be coming again. The old man was heartbroken.’
T.S. laughed. ‘All the same he’ll outlive our Philip.’