They seemed pretty dreadful then to everyone. Antwerp had been shelled and scores of civilians had been killed. One story was of a human shoulder-blade lying in the street far away from the heap of clothes and the pool of blood that had once been its body, and the other was of a man who just stepped out on a balcony to see what was happening. His wife called out to him to come in for his coffee, and, getting no answer, went out to find him—headless!
That sort of thing. It was strange to listen to people who could not speak three words of English talking so freely and quickly in their own difficult tongue.
Harold Thump was disposed to be critical of those Belgians from the first, and cast a doubt, some indefinite sort of doubt, upon them. They constituted a rival attraction and he could not bear it. He would make a humorous face and discover Edward Albert was not looking at him. He tried to recover that attention by affecting to jump and be alarmed at Monsieur Harcourt’s more emphatic gestures, and watching him with extreme caution and looking round at him suddenly, as if he was something that might explode at any moment. This succeeded partially. But only partially.
Because Tewler was listening most of the time for bits of Elementary French and hoping against hope that he might be able to cut in. But it was just gabble, gabble, so that at times he doubted if it really was French at all.
Never once did he hear of Lar mair, ler frair, that ever-present tante, the gardener, the books of my uncle, the house that is ours, the dog, the cat, and all that curious world which pullulates round and round and round the foundations laid for the French language in English.
Did these Belgians really speak good French? There was talk fostered by Mrs Doober of everybody having French lessons now while they had the opportunity. But you cannot be too careful. Edward Albert, listening attentively, heard Monsieur Harcourt say, whenever he was interrupted, “Comment?” Now that wasn’t the proper French for “What”, which was what he was trying to say. The proper French for “What” is “Quoi.”
“Comment” means “How.” In Elementary French it does, anyhow, because it said so in the vocabulary at the end of his French Primer. And anyhow he wasn’t going to be taught French if he wasn’t to be taught French in English, and the Harcourts had no English. No fear!
So it was that Edward Albert became one of that vast majority of humanity who, after courses and examinations and certificates and so forth in French, are still unable to speak or understand or even read a dozen words in that language. When at long last, if ever—for the outlook for civilisation seems still very uncertain—when the history of the human mind comes to be written, it will be noted incidentally that from first to last throughout the earth, in the course of the centuries, some billions of people—using “billions” in the English and not the American sense—“learnt French” and still remained entirely uncontaminated. The vast edifice of things the world has been “taught” and which yet remained unknown! Whackings, keepings-in, yells and insults, forced competitions, bogus examinations, sham graduations, gowns, hoods and honours, a vast parade of learning. And what have we got?
The world knows little as yet of what it owes to its teachers. But it is beginning to suspect.
It did glimmer at times in Edward Albert’s dim and now rapidly closing mind that in some hidden way a certain number of people “got the hang of” this French. It wasn’t all a bluff.
He watched Miss Pooley closely. She wasn’t just pretending to understand and making up a story. She really did appear to be understanding and to be saying things that were understood.
Anyhow, Edward Albert reflected, he didn’t intend ever to talk French. So why worry? He wanted it, if he wanted it at all, only for examination purposes, and that was that. Nevertheless—
XV. Things He Missed
It added to the vagueness due to his growing habit of inattention to anything that did not immediately concern him, that there was a real element of mystery about the occupations of nearly all his fellow-boarders during the middle part of the day. It never dawned upon Edward Albert from first to last that Mr Harold Thump was living almost entirely on the earnings of his wife. The fiction that she was engaged in some literary work of an exalted sort veiled the fact that she managed an ill-ventilated dressmaking workroom in Shaftesbury Avenue with considerable harshness and success. Harold Thump sat about in the parks in fine weather or repaired to Selfridge’s extremely hospitable new premises in Oxford Street when it was cold or wet, or he watched the world go by at some railway station, alert for any conversation that might lead to a lesson in voice production or an invitation to a sing-song. Or if he was in a state of financial elation, he would drift to the Hippodrome corner, and there exchange drinks and reminiscences of success, with various kindred spirits who gathered there, the “Boys”, the ripe characters, the good Old Guard. That way he sometimes heard of opportunities, though they were usually opportunities that fled too quickly to be grasped. But Edward Albert imagined a different picture altogether of his off-stage hours. He thought of a great classroom and Harold leading a large resonant chorus. Harold: “Oorl the Woorrld’s a Stay-je.”
Chorus in thunderous unison: “Oorl the Woorrld’s a Stay-je.”
It did not dawn upon Edward Albert that the young lady from Harley Street, Miss Pooley, whose Christian name was part of her personal reserve, was not a distinguished medical practitioner but the young lady who made appointments for an oculist and stood by helpfully to hand him the various lights, mirrors, spectacle frames, needed in his practice, or that bitter old Mr Blake, who displayed so vivid a hatred and contempt for every prominent scientific reputation, because, it seemed, they appropriated the work that far better men did for them, was in fact a decaying laboratory assistant from University College.
Nor did our hero ever realise that the quiet genteel widow who was constantly referring to “my friend Lady Tweedman”—that Lady Tweedman who “used to say” so many authoritative and quenching things about social behaviour—disappeared so suddenly from Doober’s because, after repeated warnings, she had been caught red-handed shoplifting. The magistrate made an example of her. He swept Lady Tweedman aside. “If this Lady Twiddlum (oh, Tweedman, did you say? Tweedman) can answer for your character, why isn’t she here to do so?”
Edward Albert heard Mrs Doober say “Kleptomania” to Miss Pooley, but it meant nothing to him. Suddenly the widow was not, and dear Lady Tweedman was heard of no more. And he pursued his destiny unobservantly as ever, not missing her.
She was just one less person that you need not listen to.
It took him a long time even to grasp the constitution of Mrs Doober’s staff. The chief assistant was a niece of Mr Doober. Mr Doober was “something in the city” that demanded a punctual departure every morning. He was not, as a matter of fact, a company director or a stockbroker. He was an office cleaner and hall porter, and he changed into a green baize apron for duty.. But he resumed his social importance as he removed the green apron and made his way home, and Edward Albert never found him out. He talked but little, and that mostly of stocks and shares. His advice on promising lock-ups and sound investments was invariably sound. Old Mr Blake, who hunted a small nest egg from nest to nest in search of something called capital appreciation, was guided by him entirely.
Then there was Gawpy. Gawpy was a cousin who had lent her savings to Mrs Doober and acquired a half share in the concern, but as it was impossible for Mrs Doober ever to pay her back, and as she had nowhere else to go, she remained as a general utility, to hold on to and live by her invested bit of money as long as it lasted. To Edward Albert and the rest of the boarders she was just Gawpy, something in the nature of things, like the milkman or atmospheric pressure. You took her for granted. You could not imagine what life would be without her. You asked her for everything and she always got you something more or less.