It was rather queer seeing Mr. Golspie again, in the grey light of
Angel Pavement, after that strange meeting at the Colladium. It was
rather like seeing someone you had just met in a vivid dream. She did
some letters for him the next morning, and when he had finished them,
he dropped his impersonal stare and tone of voice, grinned at her, and
said: “Enjoy the show last night?”
“Not very much,” she told him. “Did you?”
“No, I didn’t,” he boomed. “Dead as mutton. Not a patch on the old
halls. They call it Variety now, but that’s about all the variety you
get. All the same, isn’t it? I keep trying it, but it’s poor stuff.
That girl of mine likes to go. She enjoys it all right. Did you see her
last night? She was there with me.”
“I wondered if it was your daughter. She’s awfully pretty, isn’t she?”
“Think so?” He was pleased at this. “Well, she’s pretty enough, and
knows it, the little monkey. Was that the young man, the one I saw you
with?”
He really had some ghastly expressions. The young man! “Good Lord,
no!” she cried. “He was just an old friend who comes from my part of
the world. Shall I bring these letters in to sign as soon as I’ve done
them?”
“I’d like them as soon as possible, Miss Matfield. I want to be off
before lunch. I’ve got several members of the Chosen Race to see this
afternoon.”
That was all. The awful “young man” question was, of course, in his
favourite vein, but apart from that, he was much quieter and pleasanter
than usual in this little talk. For once he had dropped the jeering and
leering style that made her feel so uncomfortable. He was friendlier.
And she had never thanked him for the chocolates. She would have to do
that when she went back with the letters.
“Oh, Mr. Golspie,” she cried, when he had finished signing the letters,
“I forgot to thank you for the lovely box of chocolates. I don’t know
why you gave them to me--so suddenly, like that----”
“Just to celebrate the little meeting, that’s all,” he replied,
waving a hand. “‘Here’s our Miss Matfield,’ I thought, ‘looking a bit
uncomfortable because her young man’s landed in the wrong seats.’”
“Oh, did you notice that? It was a stupid business.”
“Bit of a box-up, certainly,” he said, grinning at her. “Yes, I saw you
all right. You looked very annoyed, too. Anyhow, I thought something
ought to be done about it.”
“Well, it was very nice of you,” she said, though she was not
altogether pleased at the turn the conversation had taken.
“Ah, but I’m a very nice man,” he assured her, looking very solemn for
a moment. Then he produced a short disconcerting guffaw, and waved
his hand again. She turned away. “And another thing,” he called out.
She stopped. “You never catch me getting into the wrong seats, you
try me sometime, Miss Matfield, you just try me. You’d be surprised.”
He chuckled a little as she went out. This time she felt hot and
uncomfortable again, and felt ready to dislike him just as much as she
had done when he first came. It was odd how uncomfortable he could make
her feel. After all, she had worked for unpleasant men before to-day.
But this was rather different.
Messrs. Twigg & Dersingham were now busy making what Mr. Dersingham,
who was beginning to wear a look of great self-importance, called a
“big drive.” He and Mr. Golspie and the two travellers were visiting
as many firms as they could, showing the new stuff that Mr. Golspie
had introduced and piling up the orders. Apparently, it was important
that as many orders as possible should be obtained during this little
period, for some reason that was not made plain to the office staff,
and perhaps was not plain to anybody but Mr. Golspie. It meant a great
deal of work for everybody. Miss Matfield was kept at her machine
nearly all day making out lists, invoices, and advices. It was not
difficult work but it was rather close work and very dreary, and it
left her fagged and feeling quite unfit to plan some amusement for
herself. There were plenty of mildly amusing things that could be done
with a little planning, but she was too tired to bother, like so many
of the girls at the Club. Going anywhere, even if it was only attending
a concert or doing a theatre, always meant so much fuss and arranging
that she let it all slide, not excepting the week-end. If somebody had
come along with a cut and dried plan for doing something entertaining,
that would have been quite different, indeed heavenly; but nobody did.
She spent a good deal of her time at the Club listening to Evelyn
Ansdell, who was in the thick of her preparations for the Empire tour
with the Major and talked at great length about every single thing
she had to buy. Evelyn was quite amusing about it, of course, but it
was distinctly depressing to think that very soon she would be gone,
probably for ever. On the Sunday they both went round to have tea with
Major Ansdell who was quite absurd and provided them with an enormous
sticky tea--bless him!--but it was really all rather sad. And on
Monday and Tuesday there was quite a frantic bustle at the office. Mr.
Smeeth turned himself into a faintly apologetic slave-driver, and Mr.
Dersingham ran in and out like a large pink fox terrier.
The next morning they learned the reason for all this fuss. Mr. Smeeth,
after visiting the private office, came back looking rather important,
and said, “Mr. Golspie’s leaving us to-day.”
Every one of them looked surprised, and three of them, Miss Matfield,
Turgis, and Stanley, looked either startled or disappointed.
“He’s not going for good, is he, Mr. Smeeth?” asked Turgis, before
anyone else could speak.
He had spoken for Miss Matfield, who felt, she did not know why, the
most acute anxiety. For some strange reason, which had certainly
nothing to do with business, for at heart she did not care a rap
whether Twigg & Dersingham sold all the veneers and inlays in England
or drifted into bankruptcy, she hated the thought of Mr. Golspie
leaving them. At one stroke it flattened the whole life of Angel
Pavement.
“He’s not going for good, I’m glad to say,” Mr. Smeeth replied,
enjoying their suspense. “He’s only going back for a short visit, on
our business, to the place he came from, up there in the Baltic. I
don’t know how long he’ll be away. He doesn’t know exactly himself
yet. But he’s sailing this afternoon, going the whole way by boat on
the Anglo-Baltic. And,” here Mr. Smeeth glanced out of the window at
the raw damp morning, “I don’t envy him. It’ll be a cold job crossing
the North Sea, this weather. I remember I once had a sail on a boat at
Yarmouth one Easter, not very far out, y’know, but--my word!--it was
perishing. I was glad to get back. Well, what’s it going to be like
right in the middle, this time of year. I wouldn’t be paid, wouldn’t be
paid, to do it.”
“I’ll bet he doesn’t care,” said Stanley boastfully. Mr. Golspie was
still one of Stanley’s heroes--though nobody could discover why,
except that he looked rather like a detective--and Stanley had no half
measures in the heroic. “I’ll bet he likes it. I would. I wish he’d
take me with him. I wouldn’t go. Oh no, oh no! Wouldn’t I just!”
“You get on with your work, Stanley,” said Mr. Smeeth mechanically. “We
all know what you’d do and what you wouldn’t do. Well, he’s sailing
this afternoon, all the way to the Baltic Sea, and, as I say, I don’t
envy him.” And Mr. Smeeth returned, well content, to his cosy desk and
his neat little rows of figures.
Half an hour afterwards, Mr. Golspie, wearing an enormous ulster,
looked in on them. “You won’t see me for a week or two,” he announced
cheerfully. “Keep it going. Shoulders to the wheel! Full steam ahead,
as people say--though why they say it, God only knows, because nobody
in a ship ever said it--doesn’t mean anything. Make ’em all pay up,
Smeeth. Keep your eye on that cut rate with the Anglo-Baltic, Turgis.
Just remember me in your prayers, you girls, if you do pray. Do you
pray, Miss Matfield? Never mind, tell me another time. And, Stanley----”
“Yes, sir,” said Stanley, springing to attention.
“Run down and get me a taxi, sharp as you can. Good-bye, everybody.”
When they had all said good-bye, too, and he had gone and they had
heard the outer door slam behind him, in the sudden quiet that
followed, the whole office had appeared to shrink and darken a little.
Miss Matfield, aware of this, resented it, and, compressing her lips,
threw herself into what work she had on hand with a sort of grey
determination, never looking up and only speaking when compelled
to answer a question. By lunch time she felt so discontented that,
instead of spending the usual ninepence or so at the little teashop
not far away, she went further afield, to a superior place just off
Cannon Street, and had cutlet and peas, apple tart and cream, and a
cup of coffee, paying her half-crown manfully. After that she was
more cheerful and more honest. She had been depressed because though
all kinds of things seemed to be happening to other people, nothing
was happening to her. It was hard luck losing Evelyn Ansdell. It was
hard luck losing Mr. Golspie, if only for a week or two. She could not
say yet whether she really liked the man, but at least he made Angel
Pavement more amusing. It would be terribly flat now without him.
Everything, it seemed, was sinking into dullness. Well, she must make
an effort and think of something amusing to do. When she returned to
the office, quarter of an hour late, as usual, she was cheerful and
comparatively friendly with everybody.
Perhaps the little gods who look after these minor affairs decided that
she must be encouraged, for at once they found something amusing for
her to do. Shortly after three, Mr. Smeeth took a telephone message and
then called Miss Matfield to him.
“That was Mr. Golspie, Miss Matfield,” he began, in his pleasantly
fussy and important way. “He says they’re sailing later than he
thought, about five or so, and he wants you to go down to the ship
and take down a few important letters he’s just remembered about.
And you’ve also got to take that sample book--it’s in the private
office--he forgot it. I haven’t got Mr. Dersingham’s permission for you
to go, and I can’t get it, because he’s out, but of course it’s all
right. I accept all responsibility. You don’t mind going, do you?”
“I’d love it,” cried Miss Matfield. “But where exactly do I go?” Mr.
Smeeth adjusted his eyeglasses and then examined the slip of paper
he had been carrying. “You go to Hay’s Wharf, that’s on the south
side of the river between London Bridge and the Tower Bridge, you go
over London Bridge and turn straight to the left to get there. And
the ship’s the _L-e-m-m-a-l-a, Lemmala_. Can you remember that, Miss
Matfield? And he says, ‘Take a taxi,’ so I’d better give you half a
crown out of the petty cash for that--I’ll have to put it down as
travelling expenses. Now you get your notebook and pencil and your
things on, and I’ll get that sample book out of the private office for
you. It’ll be a little jaunt for you, something out of the common,
won’t it? Stanley’d give his ears to go, wouldn’t you, Stanley? Oh,
he’s not there. Where is that lad?”
Yes, it was a little jaunt for her. It was great fun. First, Moorgate
Street, the Bank, then King William Street, went rattling past the
taxi window; then came London Bridge, with leaden gleams of the river
far below on either side; then a slow progress along a narrow street
on the other side, a turn to the left up a street still narrower, a
mere passage, at the end of which the taxi had to stop altogether.
She dodged up another dark lane, asked a pleasant large policeman if
she was going the right way, and finally found herself at the water’s
edge, where men were busy loading and running about with papers and
shouting to one another. There, about fifty yards further down, was the
_Lemmala_, a steamship with one tall thin funnel, not very large and
rather dingy but nevertheless a fine romantic sight. A flag she had
never seen before drooped from its little mast. As she drew nearer,
she heard some of the men shouting down from the deck, and they were
speaking in a language she had never heard before, a tremendously
foreign language. Up to that moment, business had been for her an
affair of clerks and desks and telephones and stupid letters that
always began and ended in the same dull way, but now, in a flash, she
suddenly realised that it was all very romantic. It was as if Mr.
Dersingham had stalked into the office in Elizabethan costume. The
wood they sold in Angel Pavement came in boats like this, indeed in
this very ship, and at the other end, where the veneers began, there
was quite a different sort of life going on, huge forests, thick snow
and frosts all winter, wolves on the prowl, bearded men wearing high
boots, women in strange bright shawls, scenes out of the Russian
Ballet. Miss Matfield, like most members of the English middle classes,
was incurably romantic at heart, and now she was genuinely thrilled,
and could hardly have been more astonished and delighted if a few
nightingales had suddenly burst into song in one of the dark archways.
London was really marvellous, and the wonder of it rushed up in her
mind and burst there like a rocket, scattering a multi-coloured host
of vague but rich associations, a glittering jumble of history and
nonsense and poetry, Dick Whittington and galleons, Muscovy and Cathay,
East Indiamen, the doldrums far away, and the Pool of London, lapping
here only a stone’s throw from the shops and offices and buses.
She had arrived now at the foot of a gangway that came down steeply
from the rusty side of the _Lemmala_. She looked up, hesitating.
Somebody was calling. It was Mr. Golspie above, and he was waving her
up. When she reached the head of the gangway he was there, waiting for
her.
“We’ve a couple of hours at least before she moves,” he explained,
piloting her along the deck, then up a short flight of stairs to the
deck above, “but I shan’t keep you so long, y’know. Awkward if she
moved off and you were still aboard, eh? Have to take a trip then, eh?”
“I don’t know that I’d mind very much,” she told him, looking about her
on the upper deck. “It would be rather amusing.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t have a bad time at all, so long as you weren’t
seasick. These fellows here would make a great fuss of you, I can tell
you.”
“Well, that would be rather a nice change.”
“Would it now?” He grinned. “Well, we won’t kidnap you this time.
We’ll go in here.” And he led the way into a little saloon, quite neat
and cheerful. On the table, which was covered with a hideously bright
cloth, were some cigars, a mysterious tall bottle of a shape she had
never seen before, and several small glasses. Some newspapers and
illustrated papers, printed in fantastic characters, were scattered
about, and these helped more than anything else, unless it was the tall
bottle, to make it all seem very foreign. Yet through the windows at
each side she could see the roofs and spires, the familiar smoky mass,
of London.
“Ah, I’d better look after that sample book,” said Mr. Golspie. “Now
then, you sit down there, Miss Matfield, with your notebook.”
She sat down and tried to pull the chair nearer to the table, but of
course it would not move, or at least would only swing round. She
was forgetting that she was on board a ship. It was all very odd and
delightful.
The letters were not difficult and were all more or less alike, and in
half an hour they had done. Once or twice, while they were at work,
various faces, foreign faces, had peeped in at them, had nodded,
smiled, and then disappeared. The only other interruptions were
occasional shouts and hootings outside.
“I think that’s all,” said Mr. Golspie, lighting a cigar and pouring
himself out a drink from the tall bottle. “But just you read through
what you’ve done while I try to think if there’s anything else. There’s
plenty of time. D’you smoke? That’s right. Well, have a cigarette.
Here, have one of these.” And he threw over a very fancy cardboard box,
from which she took a long cigarette that was half stiff paper, like a
Russian. It was a fine romantic cigarette and she enjoyed it.
“Can’t think of anything else,” said Mr. Golspie, puffing out a cloud
of smoke. “Just run through that lot quickly, will you?” She did, and
there was only one change to be made. “I’ll sign some sheets now for
you,” he continued, “and then you can take ’em back with you to the
office. I brought plenty of the firm’s stationery with me. Always do,
wherever I am. That’s the worst of being on your own. Have to buy your
own stationery. It’s a thing I hate doing. Funny, isn’t it? I’d spend
money like water on all sorts of silly rubbish and never turn a hair,
but I hate spending money on paper. Expect you’re the same, aren’t you,
about something?”
“Pencils,” replied Miss Matfield promptly. “I loathe and detest having
to buy pencils. If I can’t borrow or steal one, and actually have to go
to a shop and pay money for one of the wretched things, I simply hate
it.”
“Ah, we’re all a queer lot, even the best-looking of us,” Mr. Golspie
ruminated while he signed the blank sheets. “We’re all both crooks and
old washerwomen rolled into one, though I expect you’ll tell me that
_you_ aren’t, eh?”
“No, I shan’t. I know exactly what you mean.”
If they were on the very edge of a pleasant sympathetic talk, as it
appeared at that moment, then Mr. Golspie only yanked them miles away
at one swoop with his next remark. “Well, if you do,” he said, “you
know more than I do. And that’s a nuisance.” He looked up, having
finished with the sheets. “Here, you’re shivering.”
“Am I? I didn’t know I was. But I am rather cold now,” she admitted.
She was still wearing her thick coat, but the little saloon was not
warmed and there was a nipping air along the river.
“You’ve finished here now,” said Mr. Golspie, looking at her, “but
if you’ll take my tip you won’t go like that, you’ll have a drink of
something to warm you up first. Might get a cold before you could say
‘knife.’”
This was Mr. Golspie in a new and unsuspected vein. She could have
laughed in his face.
“If the steward’s about,” he continued, “I could get some tea for you.
These people aren’t great on tea but they can make it all right. Or
coffee, if you’d rather have that. It just depends if he’s handy.” He
got up, passing the signed sheets to her.
“Oh, don’t bother, Mr. Golspie. They’re probably all frightfully busy
now, and I’d rather not, thanks. I can get some tea on my way back to
the office.”
“Well, you must have something. You can’t leave the ship shivering like
that. Have some of this stuff,” and he pointed to the tall bottle.
“It’ll warm you up. I’m going to have some. You join me.” He poured out
two small glasses of the colourless liquor.
“Shall I? What is it?”
“Vodka. It’s the favourite tipple in these ships.”
Vodka! She picked up the glass and put her nose to it. She had never
tasted vodka before, never remembered ever having seen it before,
but of course it was richly associated with her memories of romantic
fiction of various kinds, and was tremendously thrilling, the final
completing thrill of the afternoon’s adventure. At once she could hear
herself bringing the vodka into her account of the adventure at the
Club. “And then, my dear,” it would run, “I was given some vodka. There
I was, in the cabin, swilling vodka like mad. Marvellous!”
“Come along, Miss Matfield,” said Mr. Golspie, looking at her over his
raised glass. “Down it goes. Happy days!” And he emptied his glass with
one turn of the wrist.
“All right,” she cried, raising hers. “What do I say? Cheerio?” Boldly
she drained her glass, too, in one gulp. For a second or so nothing
happened but a curious aniseedy taste as the liquor slipped over her
palate, but then, suddenly, it was as if an incendiary bomb had burst
in her throat and sent white fire racing down every channel of her
body. She gasped, laughed, coughed, all at once.
“That’s the way, Miss Matfield. You put it down in great style. Try
another. I’m going to have one. Just another for good luck.” He filled
the glasses again.
She floated easily now on a warm tide. It was very pleasant. She
took the glass, hesitated, then looked up at him. “I’m not going to
be tight, am I? If you make me drunk I shan’t be able to type your
letters, you know.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” he told her, grinning amiably and then
patting her shoulder. “You couldn’t be soused on two glasses of this
stuff, and you’ll be as sober as a judge by the time you get back to
Angel Pavement. It’ll just make you feel warm and comfortable, and keep
the cold out. Now then. Here she goes.”
“Happy days!” cried Miss Matfield, smiling at him, and once more there
came the aniseedy taste, the incendiary bomb, the racing white fire,
and the final warm tide.
“Now I like you, Miss Matfield,” he told her, with a full stare of
approval. “That was done in real style, like a good sport. You’ve got
some character, not like most of these pink little ninnies of girls you
see here. I noticed that right at the start. I said to myself, ‘That
girl’s not only got looks, but she’s got character, too.’ I wish you
were coming with us.”
“Thank you.”
“Well, it’s a real compliment. Though I don’t know that you’d like it.
It’ll be perishingly cold, and by to-morrow she’ll be rolling like the
devil all the way across the North Sea, and she’ll start rolling again
when we get into the Baltic. I know her of old. How d’you feel now?”
“Marvellous!” And she did. She rose and gathered her things together.
“Not too sober, though.”
When they went out on to the upper deck, she stopped and looked down
the river. Daylight had dwindled to a faint silver above and an
occasional cold gleam on the water, and at any other time she would
probably have been depressed or half frightened by the leaden swell
of the river itself, the uncertain lights beyond, and the melancholy
hooting, but now it all seemed wonderfully mysterious and romantic. For
a minute or so, she lost herself in it. She was quite happy and yet she
felt close to tears. It was probably the vodka.
“Sort of hypnotises you, doesn’t it?” said Mr. Golspie gruffly, at her
elbow.
“It does, doesn’t it?” she said softly. At that moment, she decided
that she liked Mr. Golspie and that he was an unusual and fascinating
man. She also felt that she herself was fascinating, really rather
wonderful. Then she gave a quick shiver.
“Hello, you’re not starting again?” he said, humorous but concerned
too, and he took hold of her arm and drew her closer to his side. They
stayed like that for a few moments. She did not mind being there. All
that she felt was a sudden sense of warmth and safety.
She stepped aside, and announced that she must go. He made no effort to
detain her, said nothing, but simply led the way back to the lower deck
and the gangway. There he stopped and held out his hand.
“Very pleased to have met you, Miss Matfield,” he said, taking her hand
and, for once, smiling rather than grinning.
“I hope you have a good trip, Mr. Golspie,” she told him hurriedly,
“and it isn’t too cold and the crossing isn’t too bad.” Then, without
knowing why, she added: “And don’t forget to come back.”
He gave a sudden deep laugh. “Not I. You’ll be seeing me again soon.
I’ll be back in Angel Pavement before you can turn round.” And he gave
her hand a huge squeeze, then released it.
She turned round once and waved, though it was almost impossible to
see if he was still there, then hurried down the narrow lane, which
brought her gradually back into the ordinary world. By the time she
crossed London Bridge again and looked through the bus window, there
was hardly anything to be seen of that other world, only a glimmer of
lights. By the time she was back at her table, holding her notebook up
to the nearest shaded electric light, that other world was infinitely
remote and might never have existed outside a daydream in the November
dusk. Yet there, on the very paper she slipped behind the typewriter
roller, was the sign that it was there, the sprawling _J. Golspie_ of
the signature. And it was queer now to think that he would be coming
back, returning from his tall bottle and rolling ship and the snow and
forests of the Baltic place, to walk through that swing door there,
not a yard from Smeeth’s elbow. It was queer and it was also rather
exciting, which was more than could be said of the 13 bus and the
lounge at the Burpenfield and her room there and the aspirin and the
hot water. She sent the typewriter carriage flying along. It gave a
sharp _ping_.
_Chapter Six_: MR. SMEETH GETS HIS RISE
I
Mr. Smeeth was happier than he had been for some time. The shadow
of dismissal, unemployment, degradation, ruin, had gone, except in
occasional dreams, when, after a bit of fried liver or toasted cheese
had refused to be digested, he had found himself out of a job for ever
and walking down vague dark streets with nothing on but his vest and
pants. It had vanished from his waking hours. The firm had not only
staved off bankruptcy, but it was doing a brisk trade--you might almost
call it a roaring trade--in these new Baltic veneers and inlays. This
meant that Mr. Smeeth had more and more columns of neat little figures
to enter and then add up, and that no matter how hard he worked during
the day he had to put in an extra half hour or so with the ledger and
day books in the evening. He did not mind that, though sometimes when
it was nearer seven than six and the electric light above his desk had
been burning half the day and any real air there might have been in
Angel Pavement during the morning had been used over and over again,
well, he did find himself with a bit of a headache. Once or twice too
he had that nasty little ticking sensation somewhere in his inside, but
it never went on long, so he never said anything about it to anybody.
If he had mentioned it to his wife, she would have dosed him with
half a dozen different patent medicines and would have rushed out for
half a dozen more. She did not care for doctors, but she loved patent
medicines and would try one after another, not as an attempt to cure
some definite ailment, for she could not claim to have one, but simply
in the hope that there would be some mysterious magic in the bottle.
Mrs. Smeeth called at the chemist’s in the same spirit in which she
called on her fortune-telling friends. Mr. Smeeth was sceptical about
both, though not so sceptical as he imagined himself to be.
Occasional little pains, however, were nothing compared with the
relief of seeing the firm busy again. There had been times when he had
almost hated going to the bank, for he felt that even the cashiers
were telling one another that Twigg & Dersingham were looking pretty
rocky, but now it was a pleasure again. “Just going round to the bank,
Turgis,” he would say, trying not to sound too important. (Not that it
mattered with Turgis, who really thought Mr. Smeeth _was_ important.
But once or twice, when he had said something like this, he had caught
a certain look, a kind of gleam, in Miss Matfield’s eye. With that
young madam you never knew.) Then he would button up his old brown
overcoat, which had lasted very well but would have to be replaced as
soon as he got a rise, put on his hat, fill his pipe as he went down
the steps, stop and light it outside the _Kwik-Work Razor Blade_ place,
and then march cosily with it down the chilled and smoky length of
Angel Pavement. Everywhere there would be a bustle and a jostling, with
the roadway a bedlam of hooting and clanging and grinding gears, but
he had his place in it all, his work to do, his position to occupy,
and so he did not mind but turned on it a friendly eye and indulgent
ear. The bank, secure in its marble and mahogany, would shut out the
raw day and the raw sounds, and he would quietly, comfortably wait his
turn, sending an occasional jet of fragrant _T. Benenden_ towards the
ornamental grill. “Morning, Mr. Smeeth,” they would say. “A bit nippy,
this morning. How are things with you?” And then, if there was time for
it, one of them might have a little story to tell, about one of those
queer things that happen in the City. Then back again in the office,
at his desk, and very cosy it was after the streets. The very sight of
the blue ink, the red ink, the pencils and pens, the rubber, the paper
fasteners, the pad and rubber stamps, all the paraphernalia of his
desk, all there in their places, at his service, gave him a feeling of
deep satisfaction. He felt dimly too that this was a satisfaction that
none of the others there, Turgis, the girls, young Stanley, would ever
know, simply because they never came to work in the right spirit. His
own two children were just the same. They were all alike now. Earn a
bit, grab it, rush out and spend it, that was their lives.
“And it beats me, Mr. Dersingham,” he said to that gentleman, one
morning, “who is going to be responsible in this lot, when the time
comes. And the time must come, mustn’t it? I mean, they can’t be young
and careless all their lives.”
“Don’t you worry, Smeeth. They’ll all settle down,” replied Mr.
Dersingham, who felt that he stood between these two different
generations, and also felt that anyhow he knew a lot more about
everything than Smeeth. “I can remember the time, and not so long
ago, when I felt just the same,” he continued, evidently under the
impression that he was now a tremendously responsible person. “When the
time comes, we take the responsibility all right. That’s the English
way, you know, Smeeth.”
“I hope that is so, Mr. Dersingham,” said Mr. Smeeth doubtfully, “but
this new lot does seem different, I must say. I know from my own two.
Anything for tuppence, that’s their style, and let next week look after
itself. It frightens me to hear them talk, though I say their mother’s
always been a bit like that and they may have got it from her.”
Both George and Edna, however, unsatisfactory as their general outlook
might be, seemed to be going on all right just then, and this too was
a great source of pleasure to Mr. Smeeth, who saw them--and had seen
them ever since they were babies--surrounded by snares and pitfalls
without number. He had to worry for two, for their mother never seemed
to worry about them or anything else, for all her fortune tellings and
bottles from the chemist’s, and to listen to her, you might think life
was a fairy tale. To Mr. Smeeth--though he did not say so--life was a
journey, unarmed and without guide or compass, through a jungle where
poisonous snakes were lurking and man-eating tigers might spring out
of every thicket. Only when he saw a little clear space in front of him
could he be easy in mind. His was a naturally apprehensive nature, and
in a religious age he would never have overlooked the least comforting
observance. But he did not live in a religious age, and he had no faith
of his own. In his universe, the gods had been banished but not the
devils. He saw clearly enough all the signs and marks of evil in the
world, having a mind that could foreshadow every stroke of malice out
of the dark, and so was surrounded by demons that he was powerless
either to placate or to vanquish. If, desiring as he did to be honest,
decent, kind, good and happy, his courage failed, he could call upon
nobody, nothing--but the police. Thus he lived, this man who went so
cosily from his little house to his little office, more apprehensively,
more dangerously, than one of Edward the Third’s bowmen. He touched
wood, and desperately hoped for the best. Just now, it seemed to be
arriving. He was happier than he had been for some time.