and have big fists and Rolls-Royces. He spent one especially jolly evening, first at Claridge's, then "As you Were" at the Pavilion (Sir Billion de Boost was what he would shortly be, he told his laughing companion), then dancing. Oh, a delightful evening! "My last kick!" he called it; and looking back afterwards, he found that he had spoken more truly than he knew.
His friends answered his notes and asked him to go and see them. He went. There then began a very strange period of discovery. First he went to the Labour Ministry and saw his old friend Reggie Burr.
Reggie looked most official in his room with his telephone and things. Clive told him so. Reggie smiled, but said that he was pressed for time and would Clive just mind telling him what it was he wanted. Clive found it harder to tell him than he had expected. He was modest and uneloquent about his time in France, and after that there really was not very much to say. What had he done? What could he do? … Well, not very much. He laughed. "I'm sure I'd fit into something," he said.
"I'll let you know if there is anything," said Reggie Burr.
And so it went on. It was too strange how definite these men wanted him to be! As the days passed Clive had the impression that the world was getting larger and larger and emptier and emptier. It seemed as though he could not touch boundaries nor horizons. … It was a new world, and he had no place in it. …
The dancing suddenly receded, or rather was pushed and huddled back, as the nurse in old days took one's toys and crammed them into a corner. Clive found it no longer amusing. He was puzzled, and dancing did not help him to any discovery. He found that he had nothing to say to his friends on these occasions. He was aware that they were saying behind his back: "What's come to Clive Toby? … Dull as ditchwater."
He went about with a bemused, blinded expression. He was seeing himself for the first time. Hortons and everything in it had quite a new life for him: Mr. Nix, Fanny, Albert Edward—all these people were earning their living and earning it much more efficiently than he seemed to be able to do. All the time behind them seemed to stand that wistful figure of his father. "I'd like to do something for the old man," he thought.
Down in the City his experiences were very strange. The first three men whom he saw were very polite and jolly, and said "they'd let him know if anything turned up." They asked him what business experience he had had, and then how much money he was prepared to put into a "concern"; and when he had answered them with a jolly laugh and said that he had had no experience, but had no doubt that he "would shake down all right," and that he had no money, but "really would take his coat off and work," they smiled, and said that "things were bad in the City just now, but they would let him know."
They all liked him, he felt, and he liked them, and that was as far as it went. But his experience with his fourth friend was different. Sir James Maradick, Bart., could scarcely be called a friend of his. He had met him once at someone's house; Reggie Burr had given him a note to him. He was a big broad man somewhere near sixty, and he was as nice to Clive as possible, but he didn't mince matters.
He had been given his Baronetcy for some fine organising work that he had done in the war. Clive, who did not think much about men as a rule, liked him better than any man he'd ever met. "This fellow would do for me," he thought.
The question, however, was whether Clive would do for Maradick.
"What have you done?" Maradick asked.
"H'm. Eton and Oxford. … And what kind of job are you looking for?"
Clive modestly explained—somewhere about six hundred a year. He wanted to help the governor through a stiff time.
Maradick smiled. That was very nice. Would Clive mind Maradick speaking quite plainly? Not at all. That was what Clive wanted.
Maradick then said that it was like a fairy-tale. He had had, during the last fortnight, four fellows who wanted jobs at anything from five hundred to a thousand a year. All of them very modest. Hadn't had any experience, but thought they could drop into it. All of them done well in the war. All of them wanted to keep their parents … very creditable.
But there was another side to the question. Did Clive know that there were hundreds of men ready to come in at three hundred a year and less, men who had been in the City since nine years old, men who had the whole thing at their fingers' ends … hundreds of them … ?
"The world was made for you boys before the war. You won't think me rude, will you? You went to Eton and Oxford and learnt nothing at all, and then waited for things to tumble into your hands. That's why commercial Germany beat us all round the world. Well, it won't be so any longer. The new world isn't made for you boys. You've got to win your way into it."
"You're quite right," Clive blushed. "Thank you very much."
Maradick looked at him, and his heart warmed to him.
"Take my tip and do a working-man's job. What about house-painting, for instance, or driving a taxi? They're getting big money. Just for a bit—to try your hand."
"Not a bad idea," said Clive. They shook hands in a most friendly fashion. Maradick spoke to his partner (at lunch) about him. "Nice boy," he said. "We'll have him in here later."
Clive went back to Hortons and met there the temptation of his life in the shape of his mother.
She was looking lovely in grey silk, Parma violets, and a little black hat. She was in one of her most sentimental moods. She cried a good deal and asked Clive what he intended to do. When she asked him that, what she really wanted was that he should say that he loved her. This he did in a hurried fashion, because he wanted to tell her about Maradick. She had, however, her own things that she wanted to say, and these were, in the main, that he was "her all," that it was too awful about Dronda, that John (Lord Dronda) had simply been losing thousands over his stupid old agriculture, and, finally, that she had money of her own on which dear Clive should live to the end of his days. All this nonsense about his working, as though he hadn't done enough already with his poor arm and everything. They should go away together and have a lovely time.
Clive was tempted. For ten minutes there raged a fierce battle. He knew that what she said could be true enough. That they could go away together and spend money together, and that she would give him everything that she had, and only want him in return to say over and over again that he loved her. They would wander about, and probably he would find some rich girl who would marry him, and then he would live on her. …
While he thought this out, words poured from his mother's lips in tattered confusion. No words used by his mother ever meant what she intended them to mean. Nevertheless, the last question held the substance of them all. "And you do really love me, Clive boy, don't you?"
The "Clive boy" really settled it, although I hope and believe that it would have been settled without that. But he could not wander about Europe as "Clive boy." …
So he said: "Thanks, mother. You're a brick, wantin' me to have everything and all that. But I really won't. I'm going to settle down and work."
"Whatever at, you poor foolish darling?" asked his mother.
"At anything I can get," he replied.
She left him at last, having cried just enough to show her real emotion without damaging her unreal complexion. Her Parma violets were also intact.
He was an unkind, ungrateful son, and her heart was broken, but at the same time he was "her all," and would he lunch with her to-morrow at Claridge's?
This
