My Fellow Devils

by L.P. Hartley

Genres: General Fiction; Classics

Synopsis

A forgotten classic, filled with subtle satire Margaret Pennefather is essentially a good person—too good, perhaps, for her own good. Her rash and hasty marriage to film star Colum McInnes, and his very different set of moral values, leads gradually and relentlessly to the utter destruction of their love and their marriage. Although she is only a nominal Protestant and he a very lax Roman Catholic, Margaret cannot escape the religious questionings implicit in their union. Her mental and spiritual struggles persist and gather momentum through all the disasters of her married life. Its outcome is the climax to a story that must surely rank as one of the most impressive L. P. Hartley has given us.

Release date: May 1, 2014

Publisher: John Murray

Print pages: 448

Sample

Chapter 1

THE first time that Margaret Pennefather saw Colum McInnes on the films she was not attracted by him, indeed she was repelled, even more sharply repelled than she expected to be. She had heard of him, of course, for who had not heard of this latest tough guy of the screen? On the hoardings she had seen his squarish face, with its blunt features and over-animated eyes, staring at her, and the revolver which he nearly always carried, threatening her – ‘Watch out, babe!’ – many times, and had always turned away. She did not care for that sort of thing; she did not care for the cinema at all, and had hardly been since before the war, when she sometimes let herself be taken to an Austrian film at the Academy or a French film at Studio One. She was serious-minded.

Too serious-minded, her friends told her. She had a good many friends, most of them women, and most of them, though of this she had no idea, a little in awe of her. Her mother had died when Margaret was five years old and she had been brought up by her father, a fairly prosperous merchant in the city. He had retired when the war came, having attained the age of sixty and being in rather delicate health; and now their roles were reversed; it was she who looked after him. This was by no means a whole-time job but it absorbed her affectionate instincts and developed their protective side, so that at the age of twenty-eight she had never fallen in love or given much thought to men. The men she saw most of were her father’s contemporaries who shared his interests and treated her rather as the lady of the house, to whom bread-and-butter letters should be addressed. She had another reason for feeling older than she was; her father had divided his fortune with her, she was financially independent, and could have walked out of the house at any time and lived comfortably on her own. She didn’t dream of doing this but it was a fact that insensibly influenced her attitude to herself and other people’s attitude to her. In a small way she was an heiress, for whom the material stability of marriage had no appeal. She had a position of her own, she was an independent sovereign, and when she visited her cousins who belonged to a large family and were normally occupied with the manifold emotional experiences of growing up she felt the difference between herself and them. She gave them her news and they gave her theirs, but the transactions were made in different currencies; they were token presents, manifestations of family solidarity, rather than an interchange of confidences. Her cousins felt strange with her and she with them; perhaps there was a touch of wistfulness on both sides – on theirs for her security and on hers, less analysably, for the daily and hourly uncertainties which somehow enriched their lives.

But she was far from being discontented or shut up in herself. She had a great deal to give; and in the small town where they lived, within easy reach of London yet surprisingly not a dormitory town, she found outlets for it. War work while the war lasted; and after the war, municipal bodies and charitable enterprises. She had a gentle dignity of manner that was innate, so that although she was generally the youngest member of the committees on which she sat she never seemed, or indeed felt, out of place. Listening to stories of crime, hardship and poverty she learned a great deal about the world at second hand. At first it horrified her, brought up as she was in surroundings where such things never happened; but gradually, and increasingly as she herself was called upon to investigate cases, lighten loads and adjust disagreements, she found herself thinking in terms of other standards, in which there was no place for feeling shocked. Whatever righteous indignation she felt at first soon melted when practical measures had to be taken. Yet when she got home from interviewing some family whose entire behaviour seemed devoid of good-will, decency and commonsense, she could be quite critical of domestic lapses – a cobweb the housemaid had overlooked, or too much salt in the soup. She had trained herself to see cases of severe illness and to go without flinching where infection was; but she still worried when her father sneezed, in case he should be going to get a cold. If she had been introspective or gifted with a keener sense of humour she might have wondered at or been amused by the different standards she kept for her home life and for the world outside. As it was she did not even notice they were inconsistent.

Most of the friends she made in the course of her public work were, like her father’s, older than herself, and the bond between them was vocational rather than personal; she did not visit with them much or see them socially. But with a few, both on and off committees, she was on more intimate terms, and they, unlike her, did not think that filial piety and attention to one’s station and its duties constituted the be-all and the end-all here. Her air of detachment, and the suggestion of primness they professed to find in her, were a challenge; obscurely they felt she ought to be more involved, and by involved they meant involved in affairs of the heart. It was characteristic of her position that her friends tended to be drawn from different walks of life. People met in her drawing-room who, except on committees, would not perhaps have met elsewhere; but even those who were not socially homogeneous had the same thought, and discussed it among themselves, though they did not quite know how to broach it to Margaret, in the face of her apparent indifference to the exciting and tender side of life, well as she was acquainted with its more sensational manifestations among the humbler townsfolk of Dittingham.

Afterwards, no one could remember who first had the idea that the solution to the problem might be found in Colum McInnes’ latest film, nor by what reasoning it was arrived at; but they remembered vividly that by common consent the task of approaching Margaret had been allotted to Diana Crossthwaite.

Besides being one of Margaret’s closest friends Diana had a natural impetus of personality developed by much social experience, and at this moment made all but irresistible by the fact that she had become engaged to one of the most eligible young men in the place. Stuart Tufton was his name.

‘He isn’t everybody’s choice, of course,’ said Diana, who had brought him, at Margaret’s request, to a small cocktail party she was giving. ‘I wish he had been more like a film-star, but nowadays one has to be content with what one can get.’

She looked at him with fond possessiveness. Stuart Tufton was a tall young man with a pink complexion and a small, fair moustache. In speaking he sometimes tried to overcome what seemed to his interlocutor a disdainful expression, partly natural, for he was conventional and there was much he disapproved of, partly assumed to disguise the babyish cast of his features. But once he had disposed of this protection he was pleasant enough.

Remembering his cue, he put off his hauteur and shyly said to Margaret,

‘Who is your favourite film-star?’

Margaret, who was measuring out the drinks, a task she performed with painstaking exactitude as if they were libations to the god of hospitality, hesitated a moment and said,

‘Greta Garbo, I think.’

‘But my dear she was before the Flood!’ exclaimed Diana. ‘And he doesn’t mean that kind of film-star. If I can say it without sounding coarse, he means a man.’

‘Oh, a man,’ said Margaret vaguely, and began to search her mind.

‘Yes, a man,’ repeated Diana, defiantly. ‘Colum McInnes, for instance.’

At the mention of his name, a hush fell on the company. Then one girl said, ‘I think I’ve seen him in every film he’s been in.’

‘My dear, I’ve seen him six times in every film he’s been in.’

‘Do you remember him in Rogue Richard?’

‘Shall I ever forget? It was too cruel when they caught him. I cried and cried.’

‘I think I almost like him better when he’s the villain than when he’s the hero.’

‘Oh, but he’s always the hero.’

‘Oh yes, if all murderers were like him they’d be simply irresistible.’

‘I’m afraid I’ve never seen him,’ said Margaret, trying not to sound chilling.

‘Not seen him? Not seen Colum McInnes?’ Murmurs of incredulity ran round the room, glancing off the shining china, dusted by Margaret’s own hand, that crowned with domes and spires the long, low bookcases. ‘Not seen him?’ repeated Diana. ‘Not even in Kiss The Highwayman?’

‘No.’

‘Then your education has been neglected. We dote upon Margaret, don’t we?’ Diana appealed to the company, who chorused assent. ‘She’s the backbone of the place. We should all go to pieces without her. Everyone in Dittingham would give themselves to a life of vice. She has only one fault or she’d be perfect.’

They all stared at the paragon, whose comely, softly-blooming face began to expand into an awkward smile.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘She hasn’t seen Colum McInnes, of course! Look, she’s blushing, and no wonder. But we’ll soon put that right. We’ll make a party next week to go and see him in Put Paid to It.’

‘I hope he won’t be smoking a cigar,’ said someone plaintively. ‘In Under the Lilac, it quite spoilt his profile.’

‘Oh but you could see round it,’ said Diana. ‘Now what about dates?’

‘Next week I’m afraid I’m rather—’

‘Now, now, no excuses, Margaret darling, and no looking at little books,’ for Margaret was automatically opening her bag. ‘We’ll take no denial. Honestly, dearest, you must come. You’re so serious about most things, but you’re positively flippant about the films. How can you go on being a godsend to people, when you don’t know what’s happening in their minds? You’ll get like one of those social workers in books, you know, very well-meaning, but—’

Margaret’s face clouded over and she looked a little frightened.

‘Of course, you never could,’ pursued Diana, ‘but after you have seen Colum McInnes, it would be still more unthinkable.’

The cloud slowly faded from Margaret’s face. She raised no further protests, and before the party broke up arrangements for the expedition had been made.

 

When the film was over they walked back to the parking-place where Stuart Tufton had left his car. Diana and he went on in front, their profiles almost touching. The other man, who was a friend of Stuart’s lagged behind, and said,

‘I’m afraid you didn’t enjoy that very much.’

Margaret looked at him in surprise and some dismay. How could he have known? Sincerely she hoped the others had not noticed. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I did enjoy it quite. Please don’t think I didn’t. It’s only that I’m not very used to films . . . of that kind.’

‘Films of violence, you mean?’

Margaret nodded.

‘I don’t know that I’m all that keen on them myself,’ he said.

Margaret immediately felt drawn to him. She had had little opportunity of talking to him, for she had only met him in the foyer of the cinema. All through the performance she had felt at a disadvantage by being out of tune with the spirit of the film. She did not, of course, admit that to her hosts, but she was afraid that her professions of enjoyment had sounded a little false. It was a relief to know that someone else felt about it as she did.

‘I didn’t like it when he shot the policeman,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘Or when he broke that other man’s arm.’

‘No. But the audience enjoyed it. The more red-handed he is, the better they like him.’

‘I suppose people would say we were prigs,’ said Margaret.

‘Yes, but it’s rather nice being prigs together.’

She smiled at him and felt the sense of their companionship deepen almost into conspiracy.

‘I wonder,’ she began, ‘Mr—?’ She reddened and glanced at him in confused inquiry.

‘Burden,’ he told her. ‘Nicholas Burden. I’m usually called Nick.’

‘I am so sorry,’ she said. ‘I mean,’ she blundered on, ‘I don’t usually forget people’s names.’

‘Well, please don’t forget mine,’ he said quite sharply. ‘But I interrupted you. You were going to say?—’

With an effort she recollected herself.

‘I was going to say I wondered what made men take to playing parts of . . . of that kind.’

‘Oh,’ said Nick, ‘he was always a tough little gangster.’

‘You knew him then?’ exclaimed Margaret. ‘You know Colum McInnes?’ Even she could not keep the awe out of her voice.

‘Yes, I was at school with him. But that isn’t his real name.’

‘What is his real name?’

‘Does it matter?’ Then, unwillingly, Nick told her.

‘Oh,’ Margaret’s voice sounded disappointed. ‘So he’s not a Scotsman?’ She had always felt romantic about the Scots.

‘No more than I am.’

‘Oh,’ said Margaret again. She couldn’t understand why she felt deflated. But soon her interest began to revive. ‘Do tell me what he was like,’ she begged him.

‘Oh, much the same as he is now,’ said Nick rather shortly.

‘Do you mean as he is in the film or . . . or in real life?’

‘Well, in the film. In real life I don’t know. I haven’t seen him much for several years. But they say he’s turned over a new leaf. He doesn’t smoke or drink – he’s the Bayard of the film world now.’

‘Is he married?’ Margaret asked.

‘Yes, but only once, and he’s my age, nearly thirty. It’s quite a remarkable record for a film star. But he’s divorced now, or has managed to get rid of his wife – I don’t know how, as he’s a Roman Catholic.’

‘Was it his fault?’ Margaret asked.

‘I’ve no idea – I’m not in the secrets of his later life.’

Margaret considered. Her companion had been a little curt in his replies, but she found she did not want to let the subject drop.

‘Was he a bully at school?’ she asked.

‘No, I can’t honestly say he was. He was vain and wanted admiration, liked you to feel his muscles, and so on, he threw his weight about a bit and wasn’t popular with the masters. He used to get into scraps and scrapes. But no, you couldn’t call him a bully, he was too detached for that.’

‘Was he – er – good at games?’ persisted Margaret.

‘Oh yes, he was in both elevens, I think. But he never had much team spirit. He was a cabotin sort of character, always playing a lonely part – the Ulysses type, which so many men want to be, or to be thought – you know, full of wiles, and god-like, or goodly, or whatever the word means.’

‘But not godly?’ Margaret was pleased with this quip.

‘Oh no, not nearly sure enough of himself for that. He may be now – everyone says he is. I suppose that sort of character is really rather vulnerable – always pretending to be something that you’re not and wondering what effect you are making.’

‘Was he a friend of yours?’ asked Margaret.

Nick hesitated, and looked away. ‘Yes; I suppose he was. For a few terms we used to go about together. But I’m a struggling barrister and he—’ Nick spread out his hands. ‘He wouldn’t know me now, he’s much too grand.’

There was a touch of finality in his tone, which restored Margaret to a sense of their relationship, lost sight of during her inquest into Colum McInnes’ past life. She wondered if she had been a little rude, but she could not let the subject – which she obscurely felt must not be referred to again – die away completely.

‘Fancy your knowing him all the time,’ she said, ‘and never telling us!’

At that he turned towards her, and she saw how charming his face was with its wide smile and the wrinkles of amusement that radiated from his eyes. They had reached the car-park, and Diana and Stuart were busy with their car, showing the renewed animation of face and movement that reunion with a beloved car often brings.

‘They might want me to introduce them to him,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell them that I used to be a friend of his. Promise.’

‘Yes, if you promise not to tell them that I didn’t enjoy the film.’

They had just time to smile at each other over their shared secrets before the others joined them and Nick took his leave.

Chapter 10

DIANA TUFTON, as she now was, listened to Margaret’s recital with her blue eyes popping from her head. It went on all teatime, and long after, to an accompaniment of ohs and ahs and other sounds more explosive and less articulate, in the very modern drawing-room, furnished with highly polished light woods bent into surprising but comfortable curves, of Stuart and Diana’s new house. ‘The Starting Point’, they had facetiously called it, and it bordered the racecourse about three miles from Fair Haven. To begin with Margaret could hardly get any sense out of her friend, so overwhelmed was she by the romantic aspects of Margaret’s engagement; but being practical and a woman of the world she presently emerged from this phase and began to regard Margaret’s position from a more realistic standpoint.

‘But you won’t tell anyone else, will you?’ Margaret begged, ‘Colum said I could tell you but he doesn’t want any one else to know.’

Diana nodded vigorously several times.

‘But I expect they do know,’ she said, ‘you couldn’t keep a thing like that secret.’

‘There’s been nothing about it in the papers,’ said Margaret.

‘So he’s known how to muzzle the Press,’ said Diana. ‘That shows, doesn’t it?’ She meant, what an amount of influence Colum had; but both their minds flew back to Margaret’s earlier engagement, which the Press had done so much to break up.

‘Do you ever think of Nick at all?’

Margaret coloured.

‘Yes, but not emotionally. I . . . I want him to get on and make a name. I should love to hear that he’s doing well.’

‘He is, Stuart says he is. He’s working harder than ever. He gets a lot of work. Do you know, Margaret, I was wretched when I heard about it, for both your sakes, but now it seems to have been an inevitable stage in both your lives – you weren’t meant for each other, that’s clear, but without Nick you wouldn’t have got into – how shall I say? – the Colum McInnes state of mind, and without you Nick wouldn’t be going ahead as he is, by all accounts. Probably he’s a natural bachelor – he must be, or he wouldn’t have let that little rumpus at the party upset him so much. No real man would have let it influence him.’

‘Daddy seemed to think it was my fault.’

‘Masculine solidarity, my dear, masculine solidarity. Men always hang together. Your sweet Colum really had something to complain of and look how well he behaved. He might almost have been on the stage.’

‘Yes,’ breathed Margaret. The mere mention of Colum’s name still had power to thrill her.

‘But you say he doesn’t let you see many of his friends. That’s odd.’

‘Well, I’ve met a few, but mostly people he doesn’t know very well – he has such an enormous number of acquaintances. But not his cronies. He says they’d spread the news all over London.’

‘The darling! I’m sure he’s right. But you’ll have to meet them sometime.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Margaret, uneasily.

‘Oh well, I don’t expect they’ll eat you, but they’re bound to be rather jealous. You must expect that. You must sharpen your claws, Margaret dear. And now he wants you to become a Roman Catholic. I think that’s the oddest thing of all.’

‘Why?’ said Margaret, defensively.

‘Oh, I don’t know, it seems so incongruous in a film-star. If he’d wanted you to become a Mormon!—’

‘I see what you mean,’ said Margaret. ‘But what would you do in my place?’

Diana fixed her eyes on vacancy and drew an audible breath.

‘Have you told your father about it?’

‘No, I couldn’t discuss it with him. He’s so unfair about Colum, as it is.’ A thread of indignation quivered in Margaret’s voice.

‘If you became a Catholic Colum couldn’t divorce you.’

‘No.’

‘But he divorced his first wife.’

‘Yes, but it was only a civil marriage, and she wouldn’t have any children.’

‘What an awful woman. She can’t have cared for him in the least. Do we know anything about her?’

‘Only that she’s married again.’

‘The monster. I pictured her a vague divorcée. I hope she has a hundred children,’ Diana said vindictively. She thought a moment and said in a different voice, ‘It looks as if he was really fond of you, doesn’t it, wanting to tie himself to you?’

With suitable casualness Margaret said she thought he was.

‘But that mustn’t prevent us being practical,’ said Diana crisply. ‘What is sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose, if you’ll excuse my farmyard language. If you’re a Catholic, you won’t be able to divorce him either. Had you thought of that?’

Emotion thickening her voice Margaret was understood to say she had thought of it, but the question was purely hypothetical, it could never arise.

‘I don’t want to wound you,’ said Diana, ‘and you know I loved Colum McInnes long, long before you had even heard of him. I often tell Stuart he was the only man I ever loved. And as long as I’m about, unless you keep him under lock and key, you’ll never be really safe. But I must warn you, Margaret, that film-stars have been known to stray, and their wives have worn a highway to the divorce-court – Packards, Hispanos and Rolls Royces are skimming down it all day long.’

But Margaret didn’t want to be caught up into the flippant tone of her friend’s conversation. ‘I shall never want to leave him,’ she declared, ‘unless he wants me to.’

‘In that case,’ said Diana, ‘why don’t you give way to him in this small matter?’

Feeling a change steal through the atmosphere of the room, Diana waited for her friend to speak.

‘He doesn’t insist on it,’ Margaret said at last. ‘He doesn’t insist on it at all. He asked me as a kind of favour. I can hardly tell you – it was all very personal, something to do with the difficulties of his private life. He said that by becoming a Roman Catholic I should help him. He said he was a bad Catholic.’

‘That sounds rather bad,’ said Diana, shaking her head, and unconsciously adopting Margaret’s serious tone.

‘I expect it means something different with them, I don’t think it means that he’s a bad man. Whatever he did mean, I feel I can’t disregard it. And yet I don’t want to be “converted” – I mean, you know what I’m like – I go to Church but I’m not at all religious. Daddy’s an old-fashioned agnostic and I suppose I take after him. If I was giving up something I really valued I should find it easier – if you understand me. Then it would be a sacrifice – now it feels like a betrayal, I don’t know of what. I feel it would be a mockery and no good would come of it. And yet there it is, since Colum told me, I can’t get it out of my mind. It’s as if he’d started something that keeps nagging at me.’

Diana looked concerned and patted Margaret’s hand. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘I really have no experience of these things at all. It’s quite left out of me. If Stuart had been a Hottentot and insisted on my being baptized one I should have just let them lead me to the font, or whatever they have. But if you have a conscientious objection to becoming a Roman Catholic, I see how difficult that is. Of course many people have,’ she went on, looking round the room as though she could see them. ‘You aren’t peculiar in that respect. It’s he who seems peculiar to me. I think you’d better ask somebody about it.’ She dwelt heavily on the work ‘ask’.

‘Yes, but who?’

‘Why not try Father McBane? He’s rather a pet, by all accounts. My R.C. friends simply swear by him. He’d get you in in no time.’

‘But I’m not sure I want him to,’ wailed Margaret. ‘In fact, I’m sure I don’t.’

‘Well, it wouldn’t commit you just to give the old boy a trial,’ Diana said. ‘They all say he’s a perfect lamb, except for just one thing. He doesn’t like sin. He’s much more down on it than some of them are, I gather. Penelope Carstairs cried for days after she’d confessed to him some little peccadillo that she’d done. Truly, she was a perfect sight. But she adores him just the same. You can consult him like a specialist, you needn’t follow his advice. And he has this advantage – he lives in London, so no one need see you crossing his threshold and put it about that you are going over to Rome.’

‘Could you get me his address?’

‘Of course, darling, I’m only too glad to help in any way I can. Everything you’ve done lately has been a surprise, but this is the most unexpected development of all. I’m afraid it isn’t really up my street.’

 

August was now well advanced. Colum did not again bring up the subject of their wedding, but Margaret knew he wanted it to be in September and there was little time to lose if she was to—

But was she? A mood of exasperated frustration seized her. Why, of all things, should this have happened to her? With whom did she feel irritated? Certainly not with Colum, indeed she liked him the better for what he wanted her to do, and liking is a delicious and not an inevitable concomitant of love. She could not be more in love with him but she was decidedly fonder of him. Was she then annoyed with herself? No, the situation had been forced on her, she had done nothing to bring it about. With the Roman Catholic Church? Well, perhaps a little, but apart from the futility of being annoyed with such an ancient and venerable institution, she could not pretend that it had done anything to put her in her present plight.

Destiny, destiny was to blame; but how ridiculous to feel, as certainly she did, a sense of personal grievance with what was surely an impersonal force? She was not so superstitious as to believe that destiny was hunting her, Margaret Pennefather, with special malevolence. Nor, though chafing at the restlessness and mental inconvenience it caused her, did she feel the force itself to be malevolent. She would be ready, in a way, to meet its wishes if only she could be certain what it was. It was not the force, she thought, that she resented, but the pressure it was putting on her to make her mind up. She did not want to make her mind up, and she lacked the necessary qualifications. It was as though she had been required, quite kindly but very firmly, to give her opinion on the merits of an unknown racehorse – to make a strong, positive, public declaration about something which she was totally ignorant of, and which was indifferent to her. Well, perhaps not quite indifferent, or why should she be so preoccupied by it?

The Rector of Dittingham was a good friend of hers. Every month or so he dined at Fair Haven. Sometimes he teased her for her rather perfunctory attendances at Church. He was the natural person to consult, and had she been a more regular church-goer she would perhaps have consulted him. But how could she expect him to believe in her spiritual needs? Her behaviour as a member of his flock had never given him the slightest reason to suppose she had any. He would require all his good manners to conceal his scepticism. And how could she ask a clergyman of the Church of England whether he recommended her to join the Church of Rome? As well ask a Roman Catholic priest whether he would advise her to join the Church of England. She knew in advance what he would say. But the attempt to clarify her position did not make it any easier to take action: rather the opposite.

At any rate if she went to Father McBane she would be spared some of the purely local and superficial embarrassment of a visit to her parish priest. She would be almost anonymous. It would not be Margaret Pennefather who was undergoing this penance (penance, what a word!) but just any woman.

 

She made the appointment by telephone, and kept it punctually. The street was not dark but the houses were tall and of a uniformly sombre hue. Still feeling aggrieved, she knew not with whom, she pressed the bell in the Gothic doorway. Oh, that this was over, she thought. A maid showed her into a study, not too well lighted, and Father McBane got up from his writing table and begged her to sit down. He was not an old boy but a sallow dark-haired man in early middle life, with eyes that kindled quickly. Overwhelmed with distaste for her mission, she could not tell whether she liked him or not.

‘You came to see me?’ – he said.

Margaret had rehearsed some of her part of the interview, and though she was nervous she had had too much experience of speaking to forget her cues. She proceeded, feeling gradually less strange.

‘My fiancé, Colum McInnes – perhaps you know his name—’

‘Oh yes,’ the priest said, hurriedly, ‘I don’t live out of the world to that extent, you know. I’ve seen his pictures like everyone else. He is an interesting actor.’

At this Margaret felt more comfortable with him, more elastic in mind and speech, and readier to depart from the letter of her programme. But she still felt vaguely resentful and some of her resentment, she was sorry to find, seemed to be centred on this nice and sympathetic young man. He did not appear to be aware of this, however, and contented himself with making encouraging noises of understanding and assent until she had said her say.

‘And what is it you want to ask me?’ he said at last. It was the very sen