The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton Read Free Book Online

before the totally
unforeseen and awful Bird which had materialised in its midst – its wisdom and unearthly reticence . . . Miss Roach guessed that honour was now satisfied, and that this would be enough. It
was not, however, enough. With Mr. Thwaites nothing was ever enough.
     ‘I Hay ma Doots, that’s all . . .’ said Mr. Thwaites. ‘I Hay ma Doots . . .’
    (He is
not
, thought Miss Roach, going to add ‘as the Scotchman said,’ is he?
Surely
he is not going to add ‘as the Scotchman said’?)
    ‘As the Scotchman said,’ said Mr. Thwaites. ‘Yes . . . I Hay ma Doots, as the Scotchman said – of Yore . . .’
    (Only Mr. Thwaites, Miss Roach realised, could, as it were, have out-Thwaited Thwaites and brought ‘of Yore’ from the bag like that.)
    The room, which had by this time finished its soup, maintained its stupefied silence – a silence permeated and oppressed, of course, by the knowledge that Mr. Thwaites, in regard to the
Russians, kept his counsel like the wise old bird, and hayed his doots as the Scotchman said of yore. If he had nothing else, Mr. Thwaites had personality in a dining-room. The maid went round
quietly removing the soup-plates . . .
    ‘Ah, Wheel . . .’ said Mr. Thwaites, philosophically, and by some curious process of association identifying himself with the Scotchman of yore whom he had quoted. ‘Ah, Wheel .
. .’
    And again, as the maid replaced the soup-plates with the plates of warm spam and mashed potatoes, the room seemed to have to echo reverently Mr. Thwaites’ ‘Ah, Wheel’, and to
be bathing in the infinite Scottish acumen with which it had been uttered.
    ‘Oh, well,’ said Mr. Thwaites a little later, briskly returning to his own race and language, and with a note of challenge, ‘we’ll all be equal soon, no doubt.’
    This, clearly, was another stab at the Russians. The Russians, in Mr. Thwaites’ embittered vision, were undoubtedly perceived as being ‘all equal’, and so if the Germans went
on retreating westward (and if Miss Roach went on approving of it and doing nothing about it) before long we should, all of us, be ‘all equal’.
    ‘My Lady’s Maid,’ continued Mr. Thwaites, ‘will soon be giving orders to My Lady. And Milord will be Polishing the Pot-boy’s boots.’
    Failing to see that he had already over-reached himself in anticipating very far from equal conditions, Mr. Thwaites went on.
    ‘The Cabby,’ he said, resignedly, ‘will take it unto himself to give the orders, I suppose – and the pantry-boy tell us how to proceed on our ways.’
    Still no one had anything to say, and Mr. Thwaites, now carried away both by his own vision and his own style, went on to portray a state of society such as might have recommended itself to the
art of the surrealist, or appeared in the dreams of an opium-smoker.
    ‘The Coalman, no doubt, will see fit to give commands to the King,’ he said, ‘and the Navvy lord it gaily o’er the man of wealth. The Banker will bow the knee to the
Crossing-Sweeper, I expect, and the millionaire take his wages from the passing Tramp.’
    And there was yet another silence as Mr. Thwaites gazed into the distance seeking further luxuriant images. He had, however, now exhausted himself on this head, and for half a minute one could
hear only the clatter of knives and forks upon plates. . .
    ‘The Lord Forefend,’ said Mr. Thwaites, at last. ‘The Lord, in His grace, Forefend . . .’
    And Miss Roach had a fleeting hope in her heart that, with this little prayer, the discussion, or rather monologue, might be terminated. But Mr. Thwaites, suddenly aware of the quietness which
had for so long surrounded him, and sensing, perhaps, that it was a little too heavy to be wholly applauding, looked around him and did not hesitate to throw down the gauntlet.
    ‘At least,’ he said, looking straight at Miss Roach, ‘that’s what
you
want, isn’t it?’
    Miss Roach, putting food into her mouth, now gave as clever