“Jenny?” he gasped.
“That’s right,” she answered in a low voice. “She sent me this letter.” And saying no more, she handed it to him.
Mechanically he took the letter. It was on thick violet notepaper with deckled edges, heavily scented, and written in Jenny’s round, childish hand. The envelope had a deep violet lining. The address was: The Excelsior Hotel, Cheltenham, and the date a few weeks before.
“My dearest Sally,” the letter ran, “I feel I must take up my pen to bridge the long silence chiefly due to me being abroad. What you must have thought I really cannot imagine. But wait, Sally, till I tell you. When I was in Barnham I saw an advertisement in the paper for an old lady needing a companion. Well, just for fun like I applied and to my surprise I received a most polite answer enclosing railway fare to London. So I went to see her and oh my dear she would not take no. She was going abroad to Spain and Italy and Venice and Paris. She had white hair and the loveliest lace and a mauve dress and the most beautiful kind eyes. Such a fancy she took for me you could not believe. My dear, she kep saying your sweet, I cannot let you go, so to cut a long story short I just had to Sally. Oh I know I done wrong, but there I could not resist the travel. My dear we been everywhere—Spain and Italy and Venice and Paris, oh, and Egypt too. And such style! The best hotels everywhere, servants bowing and scraping, the opera in foreign places, a box mind you, with counts in uniform. Oh, Mrs. Vansittar cannot bear me out of her sight, she dotes on me. She says I am like a daughter to her. I am in her will too. I only read to her and go for drives and out to tea and that. Oh, and arrange the flowers. I must say I am lucky don’t you think so Sally. Oh, I would not make you jealous for untold gold Sally but if you could only see the style we keep your eyes would drop out your head. I meant to plan so we could meet but we are only hear a few days just to drink the waters then we are off again. Dear, dear life is very gay for me Sally I wish you were as lucky as me. Give my love to mar and Clarice and Phyllis and pa and of course your self. If you see David tell him I think about him sometimes. There is nobody in my life now, Sally, tell him that too. I think men is beasts. He was good to me though. Now I must close as it is time for me to dress for dinner, I have a new one black, with sequins, think on me in it Sally oh it’s a dream. Good-bye and God bless you then Yours for ever and a day Jenny.”
Silence. Then a long sigh came from David. He stared and stared at the grotesque effusion, every line of which breathed a memory of Jenny, painful and pitiful, yet somehow tender.
“Why didn’t you let me know before?” he asked heavily at length.
“What was the use?” Sally answered in a quiet voice. She hesitated. “You see, I went to Cheltenham, to the Excelsior Hotel. Jenny had been there all right for a couple of days during the race week. But not with Mrs. what’s her name.”
“So I can gather,” he said grimly.
“Don’t let it upset you, David.” She reached across the table and touched his hand. “Cheer up now, there’s a good lad. It’s something to know she’s alive and well.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s something.”
“Did I do right showing you?” she persisted anxiously.
He folded the letter and slipped it in the envelope, then placed it in his pocket.
“I’m glad you did, Sally,” he said. “Surely I’m the one who ought to know.”
“Yes. That’s what I thought.”
Another silence fell, during which Alf rejoined them. He glanced quickly from one to the other but he asked no questions. Alf’s taciturnity sometimes revealed itself as a gift greater than many tongues.
They left the hotel half an hour later, and David walked down with Alf and Sally to their bus. He forced himself to appear unconcerned, even to smile. Sally was happy — he had no wish to spoil her happiness with his private sorrow nor to make her feel that in showing him the letter — so obviously her duty — she had reopened a deep and painful wound. He knew the letter to be cheap and vulgar and untrue. With unerring vision he drew the picture: Jenny, alone for an hour in this cheap hotel while her companion visited the races or an adjoining pub; a momentary impulse to kill her boredom, utilise the visit to Cheltenham — such a refined resort! — to impress her family, appease the insatiable cravings of her romantic mind. He sighed. The scent from the cheap notepaper nauseated him. Tell David I sometimes think about him. Why should that touch him? But did she ever think about him? He wondered sadly. Yes, perhaps she did; even as he thought of her. For in spite of everything he could not forget her. He still felt tenderness towards Jenny; her memory lived with him, lay like a light shadow across his heart. He knew he might despise her, he might even hate her. But he could never wipe that shadow, that secret tenderness away.
That night he sat brooding by the fire with the Report lying on the table untouched. He could not settle to it. A strange restlessness had seized him. Late at night he went out and took a long walk through the empty streets.
For days his restlessness continued, and he made no attempt to work. He walked. He revisited the Tate Gallery, standing silently before the small Degas, Lecture de la Letter, which had always fascinated him. He sought distraction and enlightenment in Tolstoi, whose nervous impressionism seemed to vibrate in sympathy with his present mood. Rapidly he re-read Anna Karenina, Three Sons, Resurrection and The Power of Darkness. He, too, saw human society as crossed by fateful and contrary tendencies, earthbound by a sordid self-interest, yet soaring occasionally with a gesture of nobility, of sacrifice, towards the sublime.
He was able, at last, to concentrate upon work. April passed into May. Then events came tumbling rapidly one upon another. It became more and more evident that the Government was about to die. Immersed in the preparation for the great campaign David had no opportunity for brooding. He found time to dash up to Tynecastle to attend Sally’s wedding. But for the rest he had not a moment to himself.
On May 10th Parliament dissolved, nominations were in by the 20th of the same month and on May 30th the General Election took place. The policy of Nationalisation was the main plank in the Labour Programme. Labour appealed to the nation in the great manifesto:
The state of the coal-mining industry is so tragic that measures would be immediately undertaken to alleviate the distress in the coal-fields, reorganise the industry from top to bottom, both on its productive and marketing sides, and shorten the hours of labour. A Labour majority would Nationalise the Mines and Minerals as the only condition for satisfactory working. It would develop the scientific utilisation of coal and its valuable by-products, now largely wasted.
The manifesto was signed.
J. RAMSAY MACDONALD.
J. R. CLYNES.
HERBERT MORRISON.
ARTHUR HENDERSON.
On that manifesto and its policy of Nationalisation Labour went into office. David increased his majority by almost two thousand. Nugent, Bebbington, Dudgeon, Chalmers, Cleghorn polled more votes than ever before. With a sense of exultation mingled with expectation, David returned to London. He visualised the Coal Mines Bill so long projected by the party, presented, pressed in the face of all protests and triumphantly debated. The thought mounted to his head like wine. At last, he thought, at last! On July 2nd, 1929, the Session formally opened.
THIRTEEN