“Just read that over, please, Miss Matfield,” said Mr. Dersingham, and
then listened self-consciously. “Does that sound all right to you?”
he inquired, when she had done. “I want to send them--y’know--a jolly
stiff letter. They’ve asked for it, by George!”
“I think it sounds rather feeble,” replied Miss Matfield. She had no
respect for Mr. Dersingham; he was too vague, pink, and flabby; he was
like too many men she had met at home, the sort who cry “Shooting!”
when somebody makes a good stroke at tennis; he did not really exist,
in her eyes, as an individual at all; there were hundreds, thousands
of him. She knew that though he might be her employer he was really
frightened of her. Impossible for her to have any respect for him.
Quite a decent fellow, of course, but then the place is stiff with
dull, decent fellows; a few fascinating crooks would be a change.
“Oh, I don’t know about that, Miss Matfield,” he said. “Seems to me to
touch ’em up a bit. What’s wrong with it exactly?”
“I should change it--there”--she pointed--“and there, don’t you think
so?” What was it like being Mrs. Dersingham, she wondered, and came
to the conclusion that it must be rather fussing half the day, boring
the other half, but on the whole pleasanter than being Lilian Matfield
at the Burpenfield. But that was leaving out Dersingham himself. She
couldn’t marry him. Help! She stared at his nose, which was quite a
healthy, sound nose, slightly bulbous, a shiny pink deepening to a
fishy red at the blunted tip; there was really nothing wrong with
it; nevertheless, it annoyed her; it was a silly nose. What was Mrs.
Dersingham’s real opinion now, of that nose? Did she think it was
marvellous? Was she indifferent to it? Had she been irritated by it so
long that she was ready to scream at the very thought of that nose?
Happily unconscious of what was buzzing about in the dark head so close
to his, Mr. Dersingham frowned down upon the letter he was answering,
an evasive, slinking, slimy letter from the mysterious fellow who
ran the Alexander Imperial Furnishing Company. “He’s a dirty dog,
y’know, Miss Matfield,” he mused. “This is the fourth letter he’s sent
explaining why he can’t pay, and every time it’s a different excuse. By
the way, remind me to send Sandycroft a note, telling him not to call
there any more. All right, I’ll write something shorter and stronger.
‘Unless our account is settled within the next fourteen days, we shall
be obliged to take--what is it?--proceedings.’ Something like that, eh?
Right you are, then. Cancel that one. We’ll start again.”
That did not take long. The note to Sandycroft could be left to Miss
Matfield. She was given several letters that Mr. Smeeth could attend
to, and then there was nothing left. “I’m expecting Mr. Golspie back
this morning,” said Mr. Dersingham. “He’ll probably have some letters
for you. He rang me up last night, at home, to say he’d just arrived
and would be down this morning. Just take this lot, will you? Half a
minute, though, I must have another look at that North-Western and
Trades Furnishing letter. Hang on a minute.”
Miss Matfield, hanging on, found she was quite excited by the prospect
of seeing Mr. Golspie again so soon, though they had been expecting
him to return any time these last few days. It was not quite three
weeks since she had stood by his side on the deck of that steamer in
the Thames, but, nevertheless, Mr. Golspie, strictly as a person, a
face, a body, a voice, had become curiously dim and unreal, though as
a figure in outline and as a mass of character he had been constantly
in her thoughts, where he had appeared, especially during the last few
days, hardly as a real person she knew, but rather as a particularly
vivid and memorable character in a play she had seen or a novel she
had recently read. It was queer and exciting to think that he would
actually walk into the office at any moment.
“I think I’d better have a talk to Mr. Smeeth about that letter,” said
Mr. Dersingham, putting it on one side. “You might tell him, Miss
Matfield----” But now two doors were flung open and banged to in rapid
succession. Mr. Golspie had arrived.
“Hello, Dersingham,” he boomed, clapping and rubbing his hands. “Hello,
Miss Matfield. Brrrrr--but it’s devilish cold here. I can feel it
creeping up and down my bones. Funny thing, but it’s colder here than
it ever is in places that pretend to be really cold, twenty below and
all the rest of it. Damp, I suppose. Ten years of this would do me in.
Well, how’s everything? Making money?”
“All right, Miss Matfield,” said Mr. Dersingham.
Miss Matfield could not decide whether she had exaggerated the size
of Mr. Golspie’s moustache or whether he had had it trimmed. The fact
remained that it seemed considerably smaller. Another fact remained,
and that was that she felt disappointed. She walked out of the room
feeling absurdly disappointed. It was quite unreasonable, but there it
was.
This feeling persisted throughout the day. Mr. Golspie came into the
general office and shouted genial greetings at everybody. Afterwards,
when Mr. Dersingham had gone, he dictated a few letters to her, but he
said little or nothing, and neither that day nor any of the days before
Christmas did he once refer to her visit to the _Lemmala_. There was no
particular reason why he should, but still it was disappointing, and he
was disappointing, and everything was disappointing.
Those last few days before Christmas were so awful that she found
herself looking forward more and more eagerly to the holiday at home,
to that train which would take her away, on Christmas Eve, from the
vast glittering muddle of London. Mr. Golspie, who was apparently going
to spend Christmas in Paris with his daughter, and Mr. Dersingham,
whose spirits rose at the approach of all holidays, were in a good
temper, but everybody else in the office seemed unusually gloomy. Mr.
Smeeth was not exactly gloomy, but he was worried and fussy, as if
something was troubling his grey and shrinking little mind. Turgis,
who was not very cheerful at any time, was simply terrible; he went
slouching about the place, sat at his desk staring out of the window
at the black roofs, made a mess of his work, and almost snarled his
replies to any civil question. Several times she had to speak to him
quite sharply, the lout. The little Sellers girl, perhaps because
Turgis was either so aloof or so rude, was not her usual perky self,
and even Stanley, though ready to give Christmas or any other holiday
the warmest welcome, had suffered so much lately from the moods of
Mr. Smeeth and Turgis, who accused him unjustly of dawdling over
every errand, that he was now turning into quite a sulky boy. And
although Miss Matfield, who considered herself merely a visitor to
Angel Pavement, _in_ it but not _of_ it, had always preserved her
independence, she had to sit in the same room all day with these
others, to work with them, and could not help being influenced by the
prevailing outlook and their various attitudes. It was depressing.
Outside the office it was as bad, if not worse. She had her presents
to buy, which meant frantic rushes to the shops during lunchtime or
the short space left to her in the evening before they closed. They
were packed out with people, and, of course, you could never find
the things you wanted, and if you went late, the assistants, who had
not drawn a proper breath for several hours, hated the sight of you
and would not help. At last the army of advertising managers, copy
writers, commercial artists, colour printers, window dressers, bill
posters, which had been screaming “Buy, buy. Christmas is coming. Buy,
buy, buy” for weeks and weeks, was charging to victory. London was
looting itself. Those damp dark afternoons seemed to rain people down
into the shopping streets; whole suburbs burst upon Oxford Street,
Holborn, Regent Street; the shops themselves were full, the pavements
were jammed, and the vehicles on the crowded road could hold no
more. Never before had Miss Matfield seen so many boxes of figs and
dates, obscenely naked fowls, cheeses, puddings in basins, beribboned
cakes, and crackers, so much morocco and limp leather and suede and
pig-skin, so many calendars, diaries, engagement books, bridge-scorers,
fountain-pens, pencils, patent lighters, cigarette-holders,
dressing-cases, slippers, handbags, manicure sets, powder-bowls, and
“latest novelties.” There were several brigades of Santa Clauses,
tons and tons of imitation holly, and enough cotton-wool piled in the
windows and dabbed on the glass to keep the hospitals supplied for the
next ten years. Between those festive windows and a line of hawkers,
street musicians, beggars, there passed a million women dragging after
them a million children, who, after a brief space in some enchanted
wonderland were dazed, tired, peevish, wanting nothing but a rest and
another bun. From a million bags, bags of every conceivable shape and
colour, money, wads of clean pound notes straight from the bank, dirty
notes from the vase on the mantelpiece, half-crowns and florins from
the tin box in the bedroom, money that had come showering down out
of the blue, money that had been stolen, money that had been earned,
begged, hoarded up, was being pushed over counters and under little
glass windows and then conjured into parcels, parcels, parcels, with
whole acres of brown paper and miles of string called into service
every few minutes. Hundreds of these parcels, especially the huge
three-cornered ones, seemed to find their way into every bus that Miss
Matfield, after waiting and running forward and returning and waiting
again, contrived to board. She felt like a shivering and bruised ant.
Never had she hated London so much. She wanted to scream at it. When
she got back to the Club, the only thing she wished to do was to have
a long hot soak in the bath, and of course it was precisely the thing
that everybody else wanted to do too, so she would find herself hanging
about, still waiting, after waiting to leave the office, waiting to
get a bus, waiting to be served in the shop, waiting at the cash desk,
waiting for her parcel, waiting for another bus; and then Kersey would
come up and say: “Going out to-night, Matfield? No? Well, you can’t
expect to go out every night, can you, dee-ar?” Hell!
Mr. Golspie left for Paris--lucky man--on the morning of Christmas
Eve; Mr. Dersingham wished them all a merry Christmas and departed
early; Mr. Smeeth gave them all an extra week’s money, brightened up
a little, and hoped they would have a very good time. Miss Matfield,
after working miracles, arrived at Paddington, a Paddington that
suggested that some invading army had already reached the Bank and that
shells were falling into Hyde Park and that the seat of government had
already been transferred to Bristol, and she was just in time to get
three-quarters of a seat and no leg space in the 5.46. The lights of
Westbourne Park and Kensal Green, such as they were, blinked at her
and then were gone. Thank God she was done with this nightmare of a
London for a few days! Perhaps Christmas at home this time would be
amusing. At any rate, it would be reasonable and quiet, and her father
and mother would be glad to see her, and she would be glad to see them.
As the train gathered speed, shrugging off the outer western suburbs,
she thought of her parents with affection, and for a little time felt
nearer the child she had once been, the child who had thought her
father and mother so wonderful and had found Christmas the most radiant
and magical season than she had done for many a month. She closed her
eyes; her mouth gradually lost its discontented curve; her whole face
softened. Angel Pavement would hardly have recognized her.