VIII SERGE

          It’s a queer place, and indeed I don’t know the place that isn’t.         
          THE ARAN ISLANDS.

SERGE FOLYAT landed at Plymouth on a wet autumn day and walked to St. Withans rejoicing and declaring in his heart that England was the most beautiful country in the world. He saw no reason to alter his opinion as he walked north until he came to the outcrop of industrialism in the plain of Cheshire.

It took him ten days to walk from St. Withans to our town, and six of them were wet. He loved the soft English rain and the rich green of the countryside and the glorious gold and red of the sodden autumn leaves, and when, for the first time, he saw the black and grey of South Lancashire skies and the dark chimneys rising out of the dense mass of buildings he could be glad of them too. All the same he wondered what strange whimsey could have taken his father out of the soft Southern air into such menacing harshness. However, it did not greatly exercise his mind. He had never troubled to find reasons for his own follies and accepted those of others with as good a grace.

He was a man a little above middle height, tanned and brown, with bright blue eyes like his father’s, and a close clipped golden-brown beard, turning grey at the corners of the jawbones. He loved talking, and engaged all whom he met or caught up on the road, and nearly always left them more cheerful than when he encountered them. When he was alone he talked or sang to himself in a very loud voice. He was not looking for adventure and met with none. His clothes he carried in a sack on [Pg 72]his back, and he had a great stick in his hand, a pocketful of tobacco, and a calabash pipe. Other possessions he had none. He walked very fast and sometimes covered forty miles in a day.

In the evening of the tenth day he entered the town by the Derby Road and followed his nose and the tramlines until he came to St. Thomas’ Church. There he asked for Fern Square and received no response. He stopped a dismal-looking man and asked him. The stranger gaped at him and said:

“A’m a stranger ’ere, my sen.”

His next enquiry provoked a long answer in a language so uncouth that he could make nothing of it. He followed the tram-lines again and wandered vaguely until he came to a cross-road from which he could see the Collegiate Church standing velvety-black against a sooty sky, with a railway bridge and the dome of a station beyond. He saw a tram labelled Pendle and followed it. The road led him under the railway bridge, past a sequestered market and a sort of fair with booths and swing-boats and a cocoa-nut shy and a merry-go-round. He stopped and watched the dirty mournful-looking people taking their pleasure, and the sight rather depressed him. A little farther on he had to pass through the places in which these people lived, and under the factories where they worked. He liked the hum and business of it all, and he liked the slatternly grubby little shops.

There is a place where the road skirts a height, and from the road a public park stretches down to the oily-black river winding through flats. Beyond the river gleam the reservoirs of the mills, steaming under the humid air. Beyond them again are hills covered with houses, and away to right and left a forest of tall chimneys. Over all hangs a pall of mist and smoke, a railing edges the road, and here Serge stood and gazed at the queer degraded beauty of it all. There was hardly a blade of grass in the park, none at all on the flats by the river. Trees and plants were stunted. Down in the park, on the benches, sauntering down the paths, hiding behind the bushes, he could see lovers, and that comforted him.

[Pg 73]

He moved on singing to himself and swinging his stick, and presently he came to a wide place over against a washing-machine factory. The road here was finely broad, but it was flanked on either side by mean little houses and forlorn little shops. It made the slow ascent of a long hill, and although there was plenty of traffic—trams, cabs, drays, lorries—it looked empty and desolate. There was not a tree in sight.

Serge stopped a man with a sandy moustache and a complexion like a suet-pudding and asked his direction to Fern Square.

“I’ll take you there,” said the man. “What number?”

“Five,” answered Serge.

“Mr. Folyat’s.” Serge nodded.

“He’s a good man is Mr. Folyat, and that kind to the poor, and they don’t need to go to his church neither. Him and the Roman priest, Father Soledano, they does a lot of good, and there’s a deal of good needs doing, there is. He gave me a job when I come out o’ prison.”

“Oh! You’ve been in prison?”

“A month ago, I come out.”

“What for?”

“’Spicious character. The p’leece put a jemmy in my carpenter’s bag and found it there. Mr. Folyat ’e spoke for my repu-character, but you can’t say nothing agin the p’leece. There it was, and I ’ad to do my six months. Here we are. You look like a sea-faring man.”

“Good-night,” said Serge.

“Good-night.” And the man shambled off.

Serge stood gazing at the door and then he turned and looked over the square at the Wesleyan Chapel. A factory hooter buzzed. From the inside of the house came the wailing of a violin.

Serge knocked at the door Minna opened it and stood peering out at him.

“Hullo!” said Serge. “Which are you? Mary?”

“My father isn’t in,” replied Minna.

“All the better. You don’t remember me, and I’ve been thinking of you as a baby. I’m Serge.”

[Pg 74]

“Serge!”

He stepped in. Minna rushed away, and he heard her calling all over the house:

“Serge has come! Serge has come!”

There was a pattering of feet on the stairs, a banging of doors, and presently Gertrude, Mary, Mrs. Folyat and Minna came down upon him. He caught his mother up in a great hug and squeezed the breath out of her, and she stood talking and crying while he kissed Gertrude and Mary on the cheek and Minna full on the lips.

Mrs. Folyat led the way to the dining-room, and he sat at the table and they round him, and they devoured him with their eyes. He looked from one to the other. He thought that Gertrude looked sly, Mary plain, but he liked the mischief in Minna’s eyes, and she had a wide friendly grin and a dimple in her cheek. His mother was so much older than he had imagined her and he wanted to tease her out of it. She was wearing a white woollen shawl, and she had shoved her spectacles up on to her forehead when Minna broke in upon her reading. The room was dark and rather oppressive and none of the windows were open.

Minna lit the gas and pulled down the blinds.

“Well!” said Mrs. Folyat, “you have taken us by surprise.”

“I meant to,” replied Serge. “I went to St. Withans first. I didn’t know you’d gone. I walked on here.”

“Walked!” This came from Mary.

“Yes. It’s a nice cheerful hole you’ve come to live in.”

“Horrible!” said Minna.

“Dreadful!” capped Mrs. Folyat. “But your father would come. He said his place was among the poor.”

Gertrude and Mary exchanged glances, but said nothing. Serge noticed it and tried another topic.

“How’s all the children? How many are there?”

“Oh! My dear.” Mrs. Folyat felt for her handkerchief.

Minna answered for her.

“Annette’s away. She’s a governess with some rich [Pg 75]vulgar people. James is dead. He fell from the roof. Frederic is out. He always is. We’re in. We always are. And that’s the lot.”

“What about Leedham?”

“I forgot Leedham. He’s in Rio, in a bank. Are you rich, Serge?”

Serge felt in his trousers pocket and produced four sovereigns, three shillings and ten coppers. He laid them out neatly on the red baize table-cloth.

“That’s all,” he said.

Minna laughed and counted out the money. Gertrude and Mary and his mother looked at Serge in dismay.

“I don’t know,” said Serge. “If this place isn’t full of money, there’s no excuse for it.”

“It’s a queer place,” said Minna, “and not so much money in it as all that. What you’ve got would be wealth to most of father’s people.”

“Your father,” put in Mrs. Folyat, “said his place was among the poor. I’m sure he got what he wanted.”

Serge felt that she was fishing for his opinion. He gave it.

“I met a man,” he said, “who brought me to the door. He said my father was very good to the poor. He was a wretched devil who had just been let out of prison.”

“Sam Dimsdale. That’s his name.” Minna heaped Serge’s money up into little piles.

“How’s Frederic?” asked Serge.

“Frederic’s a solicitor,” replied Mrs. Folyat with a little show of pride.

Conversation flagged until Mrs. Folyat asked Gertrude and Mary to get the supper, and then Serge insisted on helping and asked if he might cook an omelette. Mrs. Folyat bade him stay with her.

He sat opposite her and she fixed her spectacles and looked long at him. Then she said:

“You’re like your father, but there’s a look in you too of my mother. What are you going to do?”

“Do? I don’t know. I’ve spent all my life trying things and leaving them before they left me.”

[Pg 76]

“It was a terrible blow to us, your leaving the Navy like that.”

“Was it? It’s so long ago now, but I was rather surprised at it myself. I was sick of the water and pretending to defend England’s shores when nobody seemed to want to attack them.”

“But you were only a boy.”

“I sometimes think I shall never be anything else. I can’t stand the things men do. They waste such a lot of time over them.”

“But you must work.”

“I suppose so. But I shall have to ask you to feed me for a little.”

“Oh! your father won’t say no to you. He never says no to any one.”

“There’s consistency in that.”

“Your father is not the man he was. We have had terrible times, my dear. Too dreadful. The people in this town.”

“Why don’t the girls get married?” asked Serge.

“My dear,” answered his mother, “there are so few men whom one would like to see them marry.”

Mary and Gertrude returned, and just then Francis came in. Serge went up to him and kissed him, and Francis said “God bless my soul.” When he realised who it was he shook his son warmly by the hand and went on saying: “I’m glad to see you, glad to see you, glad to see you.” And he chuckled inside him and made Serge sit down, and stood looking at him, taking him in, and went on:

“Something like a prodigal son, eh, Martha? Only the queer thing is that I feel it is I who ought to say ‘I am no more worthy to be called thy father!’”

Martha protested, and they sat down to supper.

Francis sat absolutely silent at the head of the table and Martha prattled and told Serge all the family news, all the deaths, and all the contents of all the wills, especially those by which neither she nor Francis had benefited, and how Willie Folyat had won his case and become Earl of Leedham, and how Minna had been practically engaged [Pg 77]to him once and might have been a countess but for her folly.

“I couldn’t have borne Willie for a husband. He was so mushy,” said Minna.

“You might have left him and got a handsome settlement,” suggested Serge.

“Oh, no! The title carries very little money.”

“Left him! Serge!” Mrs. Folyat apostrophised him.

Minna winked at Serge and said:

“You’re not married, I suppose?”

“No.”

They ate cold ham and pickles and Gruyère cheese and captains’ biscuits. Francis drank toast and water and Serge disposed of two bottles of beer. He looked round at the family portraits and drank their healths.

“I wonder,” he said, “how they like seeing us here?”

“I often sit with them,” replied Francis, breaking his silence, “and I fancy they are snobs and like being in a place where they can feel themselves immeasurably superior.”

“Some of them,” remarked Mrs. Folyat, “are worth at least a hundred pounds.”

“I found myself rather liking this place as I walked here,” said Serge. “But I found myself wondering what happens to all the suppressed vitality of the people in it. How many people are there? There must be half a million. What do they all do? Their work can’t be very satisfying. Do they produce children at an appalling rate? Or is there any artistic outlet? There can’t be, or it wouldn’t be so ugly. I suppose there’s a lot of crime and a lot of mess. I must have a look at it. Do they have frightful diseases, and isn’t it rather a mockery spreading the Gospel of Christ in such a place?”

“Serge!” Mrs. Folyat was unable to follow what he said, but she was hurt at the mention of one whom she had always regarded as her Saviour at the supper-table.

“Have I shocked you, mother? I’m sorry,” said Serge. “You’re all so different from what I have been thinking you for years and years and I find it difficult to [Pg 78]say anything. You’re not exactly full of news about yourselves, and my thoughts ran away with me. That’s bad.”

“You haven’t become an infidel I hope.” Mrs. Folyat was rather querulous. “You went to church in Africa?”

“I was lay reader to the Bishop of Bloemfontein for six months.”

“Ah!”

That reassured Mrs. Folyat, and she turned to her food again. She enjoyed eating, and took very small mouthfuls and nibbled at them in a most genteel fashion. Francis on the other hand ate hurriedly in large gulps and had always finished his plateful before everybody else. Serge suddenly found their methods of eating intensely interesting. He too loved eating—he had revelled in English cooking after his years in Africa—and it was pleasant to find that he had something in common with his father and mother, though, instinctively, he knew that he must not talk about it.

Francis rose from the table and took up pipe and tobacco. Serge produced his calabash and filled it.

“You don’t smoke cigarettes?” asked Francis.

“No.”

“Frederic does. Beastly habit.”

Mary and Minna cleared away the things from the table and Gertrude disappeared upstairs. Francis sat by the fireplace and said nothing. Mrs. Folyat remained in her chair at the end of the table and said nothing either. Serge blew rings and clouds of smoke into the air and stretched his legs. Outside it had begun to rain, and the water gurgled in the gutters.

“How long have you been here?” asked Serge.

For a long time it seemed that he was to receive no answer, but then Mrs. Folyat in a ventriloquial voice, without the smallest expression in her face and without turning her head said to her husband:

“How many years have we been here, Frank?”

“A good many. Nine, ten—more.”

“It seems more than that.”

Again there was a silence, and Serge glared at the [Pg 79]gas-jet until black spots swam in front of his eyes. A gust of indignation swept through him, and he brought his fist down on the table with a bang.

“Look here!” he almost shouted, “this isn’t good enough! Aren’t you glad to see me? I’ve come home to you after nearly twenty years, and here you are as silent and gloom-stricken as though I’d risen and confronted you from the grave. . . . Do you remember how I blubbered when I left you at the rectory gate at St. Withans? A boy’s grief is a little thing, but it’s kept you warm in my thoughts all these years. . . .”

He stopped. He saw that his mother was mopping at her eyes and her hand was fumbling at the tablecloth, and she seemed very old and pitiful to him then, and he knew that he must not hurt her. His father seemed not to have heard him and went on sucking at his pipe, which he smoked with great skill so that the blue smoke only came from the bowl and his mouth at long intervals. He looked all beard and spectacles, impersonal and unexpressive, sitting there by the fireplace, and yet there was humour in his very bulk. Serge felt that he had made an error in tactics, a blunder in manners. These people, his father and mother, were not to be taken by assault. They had ramparts and bulwarks against all comers, perhaps against each other, and their inmost lives were not to be laid bare for the first clamorous belligerent. He realised that his mother’s tears were defensive weapons—a shower of Greek fire and boiling pitch. They were very effective, and they drove Serge back blistered and wounded, but also they roused the devil of obstinacy in him and made him resolved to stay in the queer dark house so full of shadows and to fight with all his might against its oppressive atmosphere, and to win his way through to the hearts of the old woman, his mother, and the bulky, silent, bearded man, his father.

He leaned forward and took his mother’s hand and fondled it. He squeezed it like a lover, and gave a funny little laugh deep down in his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She gave his hand a convulsive, sudden little pressure, [Pg 80]and he began to talk about himself and his adventures. How he had wandered in America and worked his way across to Cape Town and gone up-country hunting elephants; and how he had fought in the Zulu War and taught Dutch girls English on a Boer farm, done anything and everything—prospected for gold, diamonds; cheated and been cheated; thrashed and been thrashed; and as he told the smoke came faster from his father’s bowl and pipe, and at last he told how he had taken to painting pictures for a living, because he was starving in Kimberley, and how he made enough money to pay his passage home, and came because he wanted to see green England again and the people with whom he had been happy as a boy.

“Did you get the pictures I sent you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Francis. “I thought some of them very good.”

“I’m glad of that. I don’t know much about it, but they said out there the colour was fine. One or two were sent to London and a picture swell there wrote to me about them.”

Mrs. Folyat said she thought she would like to finish her book before she went to bed, gathered her shawl about her shoulders, told them not to be late, gave Serge her cheek to kiss, and wandered from the room. Serge opened the door and closed it after her.

Francis laid down his pipe. He grunted once or twice and then leaned forward in his chair and said:

“I don’t think I realised before that my children are grown men and women. It makes a difference. One loses the right to interfere, if one ever had any. What are you going to do?”

“If possible I shall become a painter. If it’s impossible—there are plenty of other things to do.”

“And where will you live?”

“Here. I’ve got four pounds and a few shillings and the clothes I stand up in and my drawings.”

“I’m not a rich man.”

“You haven’t paid out a penny for me since I was fifteen.”

“That’s true.”

[Pg 81]

“Give me a couple of years’ board and lodging and a hundred a year and I’ll pay you back every penny as soon as I can.”

“I can’t give you a hundred a year.”

“How much has Frederic had?”

“Frederic? A good deal. . . . More than I could afford. Your mother’s very fond of Frederic.”

“Shall I tell you what will happen if you don’t take my offer? I shall stay, and go on staying until you suddenly realise that I have been here for years.”

“How do you know that?” asked Francis, a little uneasily.

“The house is like that. I’m rather like that myself—sometimes. I suppose it’s in the blood. We get into false positions—we’re intelligent enough to know that they’re false, but we’re not strong enough to break away. Isn’t it so? It’s called good-nature. Doesn’t everybody call you a good-natured man? They do me. A damned good sort they call me—men I hate too—but it only means that I’m easy and don’t make situations painful by demanding a clear issue.”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing now?”

“Only because we’re both good-natured men and there won’t be any issue at all if I don’t. I’ve come home. I’m interested. Things are going to happen in the house, and I want to be in at the fun. I may be useful.”

“What sort of things?”

“I don’t know. Who does? What matters is that they should happen. . . .”

Francis began to chuckle, and Serge threw back his head and laughed, though there was nothing particular to laugh at, and yet it was very strange to him to be sitting opposite a man and trying to get at him and salute his soul, and that man his father. Their conversation seemed to him like two cogged wheels in a machine missing their clutch and whizzing round separately. They went on talking, but finally admitted the futility of it, exchanged tobacco and sat in silence, enjoying it and each other. Francis found company in his eldest son, [Pg 82]and it was very pleasant just to sit and look at him, he was so strong and clean and healthy.

Frederic come in very late and found them sitting there and the room full of smoke. Serge rose and took his thin nervous hand in his great paw and said:

“Hello! Frederic. I’m Serge.”

“How are you?” returned Frederic. “Going to stay long?”

“About two years.”

“The devil you are. I’ve just been talking to some men about you. I showed them your drawings. One man says you’re a genius. What does it feel like?”

“Being a genius? I don’t know. But I imagine it’s like being an ordinary person—only more so. You look rather washed out.”

“Oh! I’ve been working hard. I’m tired.”

“You’re very late,” said Francis.

“Yes. I didn’t think you’d be sitting up. All the women in bed? Where are you to sleep?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where is he to sleep, pa?”

“I don’t know. I can’t wake your mother up, and the girls will be asleep.”

Serge laughed.

“I don’t see anything to laugh at,” muttered Frederic. “I don’t want you in my bed.”

“I’ll sleep on the sofa,” said Serge. “I was laughing because it was so like the Folyats.”

Francis took a book in his hand and rolled out of the room. Serge removed his collar and covered his feet with his coat and lay down on the sofa. Frederic stood tugging at his little golden-red moustache and looked down at him.

“Good-night,” he muttered, and went away.

“God!” said Serge. “What a weak chin he has.”