On Tuesday morning, Mr. Golspie and Mr. Dersingham spent more than an
hour talking together in the private office, and Mr. Smeeth, whose
chief duty during that time was to examine a number of replies to Twigg
& Dersingham’s advertisement for an office boy, found it difficult to
concentrate his attention upon these rather monotonous letters, all in
round handwriting that began well, but always wobbled towards the end.
He was curious to know what was happening in the private office. Now
and again he had heard voices raised, and once the door had opened, so
that Mr. Golspie’s booming tones had come flying out into the general
office, but the next minute the door had been closed again. Just after
half-past eleven, the bell in the private office rang dramatically.
Miss Sellers, now the junior, answered it, and came back to say: “Mr.
Smeeth, Mr. Dersingham wants to see you.”
The private office was filled with cigar and cigarette smoke, and Mr.
Golspie, who stood in front of the fire, his legs wide apart, clearly
dominating the scene. Mr. Dersingham, sitting at his table, was rather
rumpled and flushed and obviously not at ease.
“A-ha!” Mr. Golspie cried, “here’s Smeeth. He’s the man. He’ll tidy
us up a bit. You know, Smeeth, if I’d been as tidy as you, as good at
putting down little figures every day, never forgetting ’em, adding ’em
up, I’d have been a rich man now.”
“Well, I’m not a rich man, Mr. Golspie,” said Mr. Smeeth, smiling
nervously.
“No, but I didn’t say--if I could do that and nothing else, d’you
follow me? What I meant was, if I could do what you do, _plus_ what I
can already do. I’d be a very rich man now, and you wouldn’t find me in
a dustbin, eh? Now if you want to make money, Dersingham, _really_ make
money, pile up a big fortune, you’ve only to be like me and like Smeeth
here both together, two in one. Quite simple.”
Mr. Dersingham nodded vaguely. He was not interested in this talk and
did not like the sound of it, for Mr. Golspie’s voice had dropped into
a jeering tone. He caught Mr. Smeeth’s eye, and then began: “Look here,
Smeeth, Mr. Golspie and I have come to a new arrangement. I’ll just
explain it----”
“Oh, I’ll explain it,” Mr. Golspie broke in roughly. “It’s simple
enough. Up to now, I’ve been drawing commission on all this Baltic
stuff as soon as it’s delivered to your customers, haven’t I? That’s
right. Well, that’s too slow for me. I don’t want to have to wait for
my money like that. Some of these new orders are spread over months.”
“Yes, and don’t forget how long we’ll have to wait for our money,
Golspie,” said Mr. Dersingham, “or rather, I’ll have to wait for mine.”
“Quite so, sir,” said Mr. Smeeth, who knew how long it took to get
accounts settled better than they did.
“That’s up to you,” Mr. Golspie replied, in his hearty brutal way. “I
don’t want to point out again that if it hadn’t been for me there’d
have been no orders and no money to come in, whether it comes in this
year or next.”
“Yes, yes, that’s all right, Golspie. I agree. You needn’t harp on it,
needn’t rub it in.”
“Rub it in!” Golspie laughed. “You’re talking now as if you were sore
somewhere. There’s nothing to rub in but a lot of good new business.
Anyhow, Smeeth, this is the point. I can’t wait now for all this big
lot of orders to be delivered. I want my commission on the orders as
they stand. They’ve gone through; the stuff’s on the other side all
right, as you know; and your people are here all right; so I want my
cut now. I’m not as good as you at figures, but that’s what I make it,
right up to date.” He handed over a slip of paper. “That’s a rough
total, of course.”
It may have been a rough total, but what leaped to Mr. Smeeth’s eye was
the fact that it was a surprisingly large total.
“Pretty big, eh? Bigger than you thought, eh? That shows you the
business that’s come into this office just lately.”
“It does, Mr. Golspie,” said Smeeth, glancing down at the figure again.
“Yes, that’s true.” Mr. Dersingham’s face cleared at the thought.
“Jolly good. Of course, it’s--what-is-it?--phenomenal--a sudden rush,
y’know, because they’ve been booking this stuff of yours ahead as fast
as they can.”
“Don’t blame ’em,” said Mr. Golspie, looking at his cigar.
“You want me to check this, I suppose?” said Mr. Smeeth, glancing from
one to the other.
Mr. Golspie yawned. “That’s it. When can you have it done, with the
figures right bang up to date, Smeeth? By to-morrow morning, eh? All
right. And you’ll see how you can arrange the payment, Dersingham, eh?
Yes, yes, I know how it is--you told me--but if you can split it into
three, say, and let me have the first cheque this week and the other
two as soon as you can, that’ll do me. I’ll leave you to work it out.
I’ll be looking in this afternoon.”
They said nothing until they heard the outer door close behind him and
his footsteps die away on the landing. They seemed to be in a much
larger room now. Mr. Dersingham himself was much larger. “Get a chair,
Smeeth,” he said, and lit another cigarette. They looked at one another
through the sudden spurt of smoke from it.
Mr. Dersingham gave a short laugh. “Friend Golspie’s putting the screw
on this morning. My God! Smeeth--I’ll tell you candidly--and this is
very much between ourselves, you understand--that chap’s getting on
my nerves. He’s such a damned outsider, he really is. He’s brought
all this business here, it’s true, but--my God!--he doesn’t let you
forget it either. If we hadn’t been in such a rotten bad way before he
came, well--I don’t know--I think I’d have told him to take his stuff
somewhere else. Don’t repeat a word of this, Smeeth, for the love
of Mike! But that’s just how I feel, and I must let steam off for a
minute. He gets worse. Talk about rough riding or whatever they call
it! He’s the complete bouncing bounder. Business may be business, but
give me a gentleman to deal with in it, every time. Friend of mine,
Major Trape--we were at Worrell together--met the chap at my house,
just after he came and I asked him to dinner, the first _and_ the last
time, and Trape summed him up after half an hour, and several times
since he’s said to me that he wouldn’t have a chap like that working
with him, sharing the same office, not if he brought a quarter of a
million pounds’ worth of business in his pocket. He’s getting worse,
too. Ouf!”
“Well, Mr. Dersingham, you’ve got to meet all kinds in business,
haven’t you?” said Mr. Smeeth, astonished at this outburst.
“Looks like it,” replied Mr. Dersingham bitterly. He remained silent
for a minute, and his face gradually cleared. “Still, there’s no doubt
we’re doing the business. Golspie’s total--and I don’t suppose it’s far
out, even though it is rough--surprised me, and of course he’s drawn
a fair amount of commission, on the actual deliveries here, already,
hasn’t he?”
“I suppose this new arrangement’s all right,” said Mr. Smeeth dubiously.
“If you mean it’s a damned nuisance, I agree with you, Smeeth. It’s
that all right. Look what we’ve got to pay him, and he wants it all
these next two or three weeks--says he’s a lot of old debts to meet,
though God knows where they are. That’s what I want to talk to you
about. We’ll have to go into this pretty carefully. I don’t know how
much you expect to get in these next two weeks, but I imagine we’ll
have to ask the bank to help us out. That’ll be all right, of course,
because I can explain to Townley there how we stand.”
Mr. Smeeth nodded. “Well, I suppose it’s all right, sir,” he said once
more, still dubiously.
“What do you mean, Smeeth?” Mr. Dersingham was impatient.
“Well,” he hesitated, “I don’t quite know. I’m just wondering if it’s
all right.”
“Oh, don’t keep saying that,” cried Dersingham angrily. “Of course
it’s all right. I’m not a fool. It’s a nuisance, and I wouldn’t do it
if I could help it, but it’s all right. Plenty of fellows who work on
commission have this arrangement and get their money as soon as the
order goes through.”
“I suppose they do, Mr. Dersingham. But you’re thinking of ordinary
travellers, aren’t you, sir, chaps who just get a very small
commission, not like this?”
“No, I’m not. I’m thinking of other fellows who--er--work in a big
way,” said Mr. Dersingham rather vaguely.
“Suppose Mr. Golspie leaves us? I can’t help thinking about that, you
know, sir.”
“Why should he? My hat!--he’s doing well, isn’t he? He’s making more
out of this firm than I am, just now. No, I know what you’re thinking,
Smeeth, and I know what you’re going to say. You mean, there’s nothing
to prevent him walking over to some other firm in our business, if they
made it worth his while. Or another thing. He might sell out the whole
agency--he’s got a tight grip on that, y’know, Smeeth; I know that for
a fact--for this Baltic stuff to somebody else, and then clear out.”
“That’s right, sir. I thought of both those things.”
“And so did I, Smeeth. Don’t you worry about that. I don’t blame
you for being cautious--does you credit, and I know you’re a good
safe chap--but you mustn’t think I was born yesterday, you know. I
don’t pretend to be one of these born City men, the real old cunning
sharks--that’s not my style at all, Smeeth, and if I could afford it,
I’d be out of business to-morrow and be in some snug little country
place--but I’ve had some experience and I’m no fool, y’know. Oh no!”
he cried confidently to Mr. Smeeth and perhaps to the listening gods.
“I’ve thought about that for some time, and this morning, when he
brought up this commission idea and wanted to clear our account at one
swoop, for that’s what it amounts to--though he’s earned it fairly,
y’know, we must admit that--I tackled him on those points.”
“Oh, I’m glad about that, Mr. Dersingham,” said Mr. Smeeth, greatly
relieved.
“Yes, and he agreed to meet me half-way. I agree to pay this commission
over to him as soon as possible, and he’ll sign an agreement, promising
not to take the agency elsewhere and to see that we keep the agency
on here if he decides to clear out. That’s fair enough, isn’t it?
You can’t get away from that. In fact, we stand to gain by this new
arrangement, don’t we? We’re only paying out, a little in advance,
what’s due to him, and on the other hand, we make the business safe
for ourselves. If Golspie goes after he’s signed this agreement--and
I’m going over to my solicitors this afternoon to have it drafted out;
we’ll do it properly--then he leaves us with the new business in our
hands, and all I can say is, the sooner he goes the better. And I’ll
tell you another thing, Smeeth. When he’s signed this agreement, he’s
going to drop some of his little blighterish tricks, that nasty jeering
tone of his, because I’m not going to put up with it any longer. I
shan’t need to, after this. By George!” and Mr. Dersingham’s voice had
a triumphant ring now and he tried to look like a very crafty man of
affairs. “I’d never thought of that, not properly. It didn’t occur to
me that, after this, if he doesn’t like it, he can lump it, if you see
what I mean. He’ll have to change his tune, thank God!”
“Yes, I see, Mr. Dersingham,” said Mr. Smeeth slowly. “It’s funny he
didn’t think of that, too, isn’t it?”
“Oh, he wants his money in his pocket. That’s what he’s thinking about.
And then he probably imagines I like that nice cheerful manner of his,
and like to be told every day or so that if it hadn’t been for him the
firm wouldn’t be paying its way. I tell you, these loud bounders never
think what’s going on in other people’s minds.”
“I shouldn’t think Mr. Golspie cared very much, certainly,” said Mr.
Smeeth thoughtfully. “But I don’t know that I quite see him in that
light, though you know him better than I do, I’ll admit that, Mr.
Dersingham. But--I don’t know----”
“If you don’t mind my saying so, Smeeth,” said Mr. Dersingham, grinning
at him, “there are times when you’re just a bit of an old washerwoman,
and I’m not sure this isn’t one of them. No, no, don’t mind that--I
know you’re a good chap, and I can honestly say I wouldn’t like to run
this show without you. Now, look here, will you work out that total
properly, as soon as you can, and let me know what we’re likely to get
in these next two weeks, what we’ve got in hand, and so on, and then
we’ll settle the whole thing. Right you are.”
The latter part of this speech was all so friendly that Mr. Smeeth
could not take offence at the “bit of an old washerwoman.” He left
the room feeling that he ought to be convinced, and almost ashamed of
himself because he could not share Mr. Dersingham’s sudden burst of
confidence. The fact remained, though, that he still felt dubious.
There was something in Mr. Dersingham’s tone of voice that made him
wince. He did not like this easy dismissal of Mr. Golspie; there was
a catch in it somewhere; and he felt that Mr. Dersingham was taking
the wrong line with Mr. Golspie. What was it that Turgis had said,
reporting the daughter? He wondered if he ought to have mentioned that,
but then quickly dismissed the possibility. Mr. Dersingham knew what he
was doing. He talked as if he did. Indeed, he talked too much as if he
did. Mr. Smeeth, with his apprehensive mind, always felt a slight alarm
when anybody was triumphantly confident. You had to be careful.
He settled down at his desk, with the various books in front of him,
to work out the exact figures. For the next hour he was lost in them,
quite happy, at home in this familiar little world of unchanging
numerals and balancing columns, this world in which you had only to
have patience enough and everything worked out beautifully, perfectly.
V
“And how’s Mr. Benenden?” Mr. Smeeth asked. He had called in the shop
as he returned from lunch on Wednesday, and had found the plump niece
still behind the counter there.
She remembered him, and at once smiled at the prospect of a little
chat and then looked sad because the subject would be her stricken
uncle. After that, she compromised neatly between the two. “He’s not
as well as he might be, thank you,” she replied. “Now they’ve got him
in there and had a good look at him, they’ve found a lot of things
wrong with him. He never would go to a doctor himself, didn’t believe
in them, he said--you know--silly. No, it isn’t just with him being
knocked down like that, though that was bad enough, but they examined
him, you see, and now they say he’s not in a good way at all. They may
have to operate.”
“That’s bad, isn’t it? What’s wrong exactly?”
“Now I couldn’t tell you. You know what they are in these hospitals. If
they know themselves, they don’t let on. I went to see him on Sunday,
and I told him about the shop and who’d been in and all that. You’re
not Mr. Bromfield, are you?”
“No. My name’s Smeeth.”
“Mr. Smeeth. Yes, that’s right. He mentioned you as well.”
“Did he now?” Mr. Smeeth felt all the gratification of a person who has
been singled out, no matter by whom. “Asked if I’d been in, I suppose,
eh? Well, I wish you’d tell him how sorry I am to hear he’s laid up.
Tell him I say that Angel Pavement doesn’t seem the same place without
him. And I hope he’s stirring again soon.”
“Yes, I will.” The plump young woman hesitated a moment. “I’ll tell
you what, Mr. Smeeth, if you just happened to have a spare half-hour
this afternoon, perhaps you might like to go and see him. It’s visiting
day up there to-day, you know. Three to four. My mother’s going about
half-past three, but if you could have a look at him, just to give him
a word or two and pass the time of day, sometime before then, just
after three, he’d be ever so pleased. But perhaps you’re busy.”
“I don’t know.” Mr. Smeeth thought it over, then looked at his watch.
“I think I will, you know. It wouldn’t take me long to slip round to
Bart’s. Where shall I find him?”
She gave him elaborate directions. He remembered then that he had
wanted to have a word with Brown & Gorstein, whose place was just off
Old Street. He could go round to Bart’s first, and then up to Brown &
Gorstein’s. It did not look like being a very busy afternoon, and he
had still three-quarters of an hour in which to clear up a few odds and
ends of jobs in the office before he went.
At three o’clock he came out into Little Britain, beneath the
innumerable blue-curtained windows of Bart’s new building. As he
crossed the road, something huge in the sky, to the left, caught his
eye and made him stop and look that way when he reached the other
pavement. It was the dome of St. Paul’s, and never before had he
seen it look so massive and majestic; it was almost frightening. He
had never seen the dome from that distance and that particular angle
before, and it was as if he was seeing it for the first time. He
might have been in a strange city. For once his sense of wonder was
quickened, and after that, throughout the afternoon, until he returned
to the office, it never slept. The wide space between the main entrance
to the hospital and Smithfield Market was filled with carts coming
from the market, a very decided smell of meat, and a narrowing stream
of people, mostly women carrying paper bags and little bunches of
flowers, who were pouring into the hospital entrance. It was all very
strange to him, for he had not been near a hospital for years and had
never visited one of this size before. It was like walking into a
fantastic little town, a strange city within the city. He went through
an archway and found himself in a great courtyard or quadrangle with a
fountain in it. Here there was all the bustle of a market-place, but
not of any market-place he had ever seen before. Doctors in white coats
and bare-headed students ran in and out of the many doorways; nurses
fluttered snowily across the quadrangle; and now and then he caught a
glimpse of a patient, strapped and rigid on a stretcher, being wheeled
away to God knows where. One passed him close, and he saw a face cut
out of yellow bone and staring unfathomable eyes. It was terrifying.
The whole place, this little town of white uniforms and mysterious
silent traffic within the roaring city, terrified him. He could have
sworn that the little pain somewhere inside began tick-ticking again;
and for a moment or two it seemed to him astonishing that he should
still be one of the uneasy invaders swarming in here, one of the
workers, eaters, drinkers, smokers, pleasure lovers, movers about, from
outside. Any day now, he felt, he would be on one of those stretchers.
Somehow it had never occurred to him that he would see Benenden
actually in bed. He had vaguely imagined a hospital and had imagined
Benenden in it, but he had really thought of him as being still behind
a counter, the familiar half-length figure, beginning about the second
button of the waistcoat and then going on to the old-fashioned high
collar and stiff front (with no tie), the straggling sandy-grey beard
and the thick glasses. In all the time he had known him, Mr. Smeeth had
never once seen Benenden away from his counter; and for all he knew
to the contrary, Benenden might have had no legs at all. Now, as he
approached the white-enamelled iron bed, he saw less of Benenden than
ever, but what he did see gave him a shock. It was not that Benenden
looked very ill (for that matter, he had never looked very well), but
simply that he looked quite different. Mr. Smeeth wanted to laugh.
That head of Benenden’s above the sheet looked idiotic. It was as if
Benenden had taken to wild joking.
“Hello, Mr. Benenden. Your niece in the shop suggested I might call and
see you. How are you feeling now?”
The enormous eyes behind the glasses had slowly swivelled round, and
now there was a slow faint creasing of the face that did duty for a
smile. “Very pleased to see you, Mr. Smeeth. Very good of you to call.”
This came in tiny high explosions of sound, as if Benenden’s ordinary
tones had been raised an octave or two and only allowed to emerge in
separate little puffs.
Mr. Smeeth could see that he really was ill. Every movement of the face
and his speech were so slow, as if they had to be thought out first.
And though he had been away from his shop such a little time, he gave
the impression that he had been away for years and years, had gone
round and round the world, had even changed his nationality. He did
not belong any more to the workers and bustlers and movers about. He
was now a citizen of this inner city.
“Not a bit,” said Mr. Smeeth, wanting to be cheerful and hearty, but
not outrageously so, “not a bit. I’m only too glad. I’ve missed you at
the shop. Quite a shock to hear what had happened to you. How are you
feeling then?”
“Not good, Mr. Smeeth. No, not good. Baddish.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Benenden. I suppose that accident of yours
was a shock to the system, eh?”
“That was nothing, that wasn’t,” replied Benenden, speaking in a slow,
oracular fashion. “They say there’s all sorts o’ things wrong with me.
Heart bad. Kidneys bad. Inside all wrong. They don’t tell me much. When
they do, they think they’re teaching me something.” The eyes behind
the thick glasses seemed to gleam with pride. “They’re not teaching me
anything. I could have told ’em that, Mr. Smeeth. I could have told ’em
that--yes, and a bit more--a long time since. I’ve known all about it
for years, years and years.”
“You don’t say so!” Mr. Smeeth looked concerned.
“Yes, I’ve known it for years. They can’t tell me anything about that
heart of mine. It’s rotten. There’s many and many a man--and I’ve
known some of ’em--who’s dropped in the street with a heart not so
bad as mine. Been missing the beat for years, missing it all over the
place. Same with the kidneys. They’re rotten, too. But, mind you, Mr.
Smeeth, it’s not all the kidneys. There’s the liver to be taken into
consideration. They’re overlooking that, so far they are, but I’m just
waiting for ’em to come round to my opinion. I’m not saying anything.
I’m just letting ’em find out a few things for themselves. One of
these days, that young doctor’s going to notice my liver and then he’s
going to have another surprise. And that isn’t all, either.” Here the
astonishing image, after a little effort, produced something like a
chuckle. T. Benenden was exiled from his shop and his financial columns
and his chats with customers, but now he had discovered in his ailments
and dubious organs a new and absorbing interest, and, stretched out
there, he saw himself as a romantic and exciting figure. Within sight
of death, he was beginning life all over again.
Mr. Smeeth caught a fleeting glimpse of this fact, but he was in no
mood to appreciate it. The spectacle of Benenden, suddenly transformed
from a familiar Angel Pavement character, and comic at that, to this
infirm shadow of himself, filled him with dismay and foreboding. Try
as he might, he could not help believing that he would never see T.
Benenden behind that counter again. As he listened--for Benenden did
most of the talking, slowly boasting of the severity and complication
of his ailments--Mr. Smeeth told himself that never again would the
tobacconist bring out the canister of Benenden’s Own Mixture for him.
Yet there was no real evidence for this. “How is he?” he asked the
nurse who had first shown him the bed.
“Who? Seventy-five? Oh, getting along all right,” she replied briskly.
“We’re operating at the end of this week or early next week. He’ll be
all right.”
She sounded confident enough, but Mr. Smeeth did not know whether
to believe her or not. As he left the hospital, a clammy air of
dissolution and mortality clung to him. Barbican and Golden Lane,
through which he passed on his way to Old Street and Brown &
Gorstein’s, spoke to him only of decay. It was a curious afternoon,
belonging to one of those days that are in the very dead heart of
winter. The air was chilled and leaden. The sky above the City was a
low ceiling of tarnished brass. All the usual noises were there, and
the trams and carts that went along Old Street made as much din as
ever, yet it seemed as if every sound was besieged by a tremendous
thick silence. Cold as it was, it was not an afternoon that made a
man want to move sharply, to hurry about his business; there was
something about it, something slowed down and muffled in the heavy
air, the brooding yellowish sky, the stone buildings that seemed to be
retreating into their native rock again, that impelled a man to linger
and stare and lose himself in shadowy thought.
Mr. Smeeth found himself doing this, after he had left Brown &
Gorstein’s, and had turned down Bunhill Row on his way back to the
office. He halted opposite that large building boldly labelled _The
Star Works_, and wondered what was made there and whether it had
anything starry about it. Then he turned round, idly, and stared
through the iron railings at the old graves there. He had been this
way before, many a time, in fact, but he never remembered noticing
before that the earth of the burying-ground was high above the street.
The railings were fastened into a wall between two or three feet
high, and the ground of the cemetery was as high as the top of this
little wall. There was something very mournful about the sooty soil,
through which only a few miserable blades of grass found their way.
It was very untidy. There were bits of paper there, broken twigs,
rope ends, squashed cigarettes, dried orange peel, and a battered
tin that apparently had once contained Palm Chocolate Nougat. This
dingy litter at the foot of the grave-stones made him feel sad. It
was as if the paper and cigarette ends and the empty tin, there in
the old cemetery, only marked in their shabby fashion the passing of
a later life, as if the twentieth century was burying itself in there
too, and not even doing it decently. He moved a step or two, then
stopped near the open space, where there is a public path across the
burying-ground. He stared at the mouldering headstones. Many of them
were curiously bright, as if their stone were faintly luminous in the
gathering darkness, but it was hard to decipher their lettering. One of
them, which attracted his attention because it was not upright in the
ground but leaned over at a very decided angle, he found he could read:
_In Memory of Mr. John Willm. Hill, who died May 26th, 1790, in the
eighteenth year of his age._ That had been a poor look-out for somebody.
“’Aving a look at the good old graves, mister?” said a voice. It
belonged to an elderly and shabby idler, one of those dreamy and
dilapidated men who seem to haunt all such places in London, and
who will offer to guide you, if you are obviously a stranger and
well-to-do, but are quite prepared to pour out information for nothing
to a fellow-citizen.
“Yes, just having a look,” said Mr. Smeeth.
“Ar, there’s some pretty work ’ere, if yer know where to look for it,
mister. I know the Fields well, I do. Some big men’s buried ’ere. An’
I’ll tell yer one of ’em. Daniel Defow’s buried in ’ere, boy, and I
could take yer straight to the plice. Yers, the grite Daniel Defow.”
“Is that so? Now, let me see, who was he exactly?”
“Oo was ’e? Daniel Defow! Yer know Rawbinson Crusoe, doncher? Rawbinson
Crusoe on the island and Man Friday an’ all that? Thet’s ’im. Defow--’e
wrote that. Cor!--think ’e did! Known all over the world, that piece,
all over the wide world. Well, ’e’s in ’ere, Daniel Defow, and I
could take yer straight to the plice. Yers, that’s right. Monument,
too--ee-rected by the boys and girls of England to Daniel Defow ’cos ’e
wrote Rawbinson Crusoe--in ’ere. I tell yer, boy, there’s some big men
in there--what’s left of ’em.”
Mr. Smeeth nodded and continued to stare idly through the railings of
Bunhill Fields, where the old Nonconformists are buried in mouldering
eighteenth century elegance, to which they had at least conformed in
death if not in life; and where, among the divines and elders, not only
Defoe, but also Bunyan and Blake, the two God-haunted men, lie in the
sooty earth, while their dreams and ecstasies still light the world.
As Mr. Smeeth stared, something floated down, touched the crumbled
corner of the nearest headstone, and perished there. A moment later,
on the curved top of the little wall beside him was a fading white
crystal. He looked up and saw against the brassy sky a number of moving
dark spots. He looked down and saw the white flakes floating towards
the black pavement. In all his life, he had never been so surprised
by the appearance of snow, and for one absurd moment he found himself
wondering who had made it and who was responsible for tumbling it into
the City. He hurried away now, and as he went the snow came faster
and shook down larger and larger flakes upon the town. Before he had
reached Angel Pavement, not only had it whitened every cranny, but
it had stolen away, behind its soft curtains, half the noises of the
City, which only roared and hooted now through the white magic as if
in an uneasy dream. It was so thick that Mr. Smeeth was no longer
one of ten thousand hurrying little figures, but a man alone with the
whirling flakes. The snow was storming the City and all London. In
Twigg & Dersingham’s, they had turned on the lights, but they could
still see a queer dim scurrying through the windows. Mrs. Smeeth, in
her little dining-room up at Stoke Newlington, watched it with delight
and remembered her childhood, when they had cried, “Snow, snow faster,
White alabaster.” Mrs. Dersingham, who had been shopping in Kensington
High Street, had to shelter from it in a doorway, and was wondering
if it had caught the children. The Pearsons, secure in their warm
maisonette in Barkfield Gardens, stood at the window for quarter of an
hour, calling one another’s attention to the size of the flakes, for
there had never been anything like this in Singapore. Miss Verever,
who had missed her usual visit to the Italian Riviera, wrote another
angry little note to her solicitor, because it was he who had insisted
upon her staying in London. Lena Golspie, in Maida Vale, watched it
for a minute or two, then switched on one of the big shaded lights and
curled among the cushions, with a magazine, voluptuously, like a sleek
blonde cat. Mr. Pelumpton was just prevented in time from making a bid
of twelve and six for a marble clock (out of order), and stayed at
home, in Mrs. Pelumpton’s way. Benenden, having dozed off, never knew
it was there. For an hour it was unceasing, and all the open spaces on
the hills, from Hampstead Heath on one side to Wimbledon Common on the
other, were thickly carpeted, and everything in the city, except the
busier roadways and the gutters, was magically muffled and whitened
and plumed with winter, just as if it had been some old town in a
fairy-tale.
_Chapter Ten_: THE LAST ARABIAN NIGHT
I
The outward changes in Turgis, already noticed by Miss Matfield and
Mr. Smeeth, were only tiny scattered hints and clues, and by no means
in proportion to the changes within, for during these last seven
weeks, ever since that night when Lena Golspie had failed to keep her
appointment with him, his life had been like a bad dream. There are
some dreams, trembling on the edge of nightmare, in which the dreamer
goes rushing frantically through dismal reeling phantasmagoria of
familiar scenes and places trying to find a lost somebody or something.
This had been Turgis’s real life. He had got up as usual, bolted his
breakfast and exchanged a word or two with the Pelumptons, hurried
down to the Tube, climbed into the City, sent and received advice
notes, telephoned to this firm and that, fed variously in teashops
and dining-rooms, looked at newspapers, even gone to the pictures,
all as usual; but these customary activities had merely been a dream
within a dream, a shadowy routine of existence. His real life had been
this pursuit of Lena, and so far it had had all the urgency and dark
bewilderment of a bad dream.
He had been able to call again at the flat before her father had
returned, but she had only spent half an hour with him and had been
vague and shifty in her excuses. He had flung away his resentment,
had made the most abject apologies, and at last had made her promise
to meet him again. She had kept him waiting twenty minutes on this
occasion, and when she did come, she only turned the evening into a
misery. She had been cold, had criticized his appearance, his manners,
and had made him jealous. When he had tried to kiss her, she had
laughed at him and evaded him. Then her father had returned, Christmas
came, and the two of them had gone to Paris, leaving Turgis to imagine,
with a vividness and force that brought a curious mingling of pain and
pleasure, a host of scenes in which Lena went smiling in the arms of
rich and handsome Frenchmen and Americans. But at least he could not
see her, and so he was free for a few days to make what he could of
life by himself. He made nothing of it. He could not forget her for a
single minute. London was a jumble of silly meaningless faces. Before
he had met her he had spent most of his leisure looking for adventures
with girls and hardly ever finding them, but now, of course, they were
offered at every turn, thrust on him, and they had no interest at
all. He tried once--a girl outside one of the smaller picture houses
had smiled at him and he had taken her in--but it was merely dull and
savourless, like trying to eat sawdust. After that, he never bothered,
living entirely in his thought of Lena and in the memory of those two
first rapturous nights. He could not believe--how should he?--that
those two nights did not mean as much, or nearly as much, to her as
they meant to him, and so he was ready, was eager, to see in everything
she had done since merely so many mysterious feminine moods, a queenly
wilfulness and waywardness that would gradually be consumed in the
mounting fires of passion. He knew that this was what happened with
these wonderful creatures: he had seen it happen many a time on the
pictures.
At first, he had realized, with wonder and humility, that it was all
miraculous, that he was nobody in particular, with nothing very much to
offer. But she herself had changed that. She had kissed him into being
somebody, and now he had a great deal to offer--his love, his life.
Very soon, being a born lover and romantic, it seemed to him that no
girl could want more than that. Living over and over again as he did
that hour or so of passionate embraces and kisses, he could look back
on what appeared to him a long intimacy with her, far removed from
any casual encounter (for he knew all about them, and this was quite
different), so that he felt he had a claim, a right, and that when
she avoided him or in any way challenged that claim, she was trying
to escape from the very condition of life itself. Thus, if it was not
wilfulness and waywardness, then it was something abominably wicked
stirring in her to be regarded as a bigoted and militant priest would
regard a heresy. None of this, of course, moved on the surface of his
mind, but it coiled and uncoiled below that surface and obscurely
determined what did eventually move there or what at last came bursting
through, exploding beyond thought, into action.
When the Golspies came back, after Christmas, it took two imploring
letters and a final telephone call (he rang up from the nearest call
box to the office during a time when Mr. Golspie was safely away from
the flat) to induce her to agree to another meeting, and even then,
after all the crescendo of excitement, she never turned up. He was left
in a hot and salted misery of shame and resentment, but he could no
more turn his mind away from her than he could walk about with his eyes
closed. And now all London and every familiar way of life were like the
flickering background of a film, a film in which he pursued and she
evaded him. He could think of nothing, nobody, but Lena.
The sleep that would not come to him at night hovered perilously near
him during the morning at the office, when, heavy, drowsy, brooding, he
would lean forward, chin in hand, one elbow on the desk, and leave his
work untouched until his attention was called to it. He spoke little,
and hardly let his dull gaze rest for a moment on one of the others
there. They told one another that he seemed stupid, and stupid he was
too, in everything that did not concern Lena. In what did concern her,
he developed a wonderful acuteness and foresight. Thus, for example,
any telephone call from the private office could be overheard at the
receiver in the general office, if the little switchboard was rightly
manipulated; and it often happened that the Golspies talked over the
telephone to one another, usually with reference to what one or other
of them proposed doing during the evening; and Turgis became expert at
catching these talks while pretending to be at the receiver waiting
for some number to be given him. He was able, too, to work on the
least hint that might be dropped in Mr. Golspie’s casual talk. Then he
would wait hours, even on cold, sleety nights, in the neighbourhood of
4a, Carrington Villas; sometimes in time to see her come out, perhaps
with a young man, perhaps with her father and one of his friends, and
then to stalk her down the road to the bus or the taxi rank; sometimes
late enough to see her returning home, to hear her laughter suddenly
break the silence. Twice, he had watched her, with an escort, go into
a large expensive restaurant, where he could not possibly follow her.
Once he had been able to get to the same theatre, and had sat in the
corner of the gallery, looking down at her in the stalls. He had often
jeered at young Stanley and his “shaddering,” but now, inspired by his
jealous misery, he suddenly turned himself into a master shadower. Icy
winds pierced and smote him; his feet ached in the slush; his hands
grew numb and his eyes watered; he caught colds that ought to have sent
him to bed, but he never heeded them and somehow they disappeared; and
all this discomfort hardly troubled him at the time, for he carried a
fire inside him, a burning excitement. It was only afterwards, when
he trailed back to Nathaniel Street, sat in his little room pulling
off his wet boots, turned and tossed and coughed in his bed hour after
hour, dragged himself out in the leaden mornings, that he suffered in
the body.
His mind, however, lived as it had never lived before, knowing
exquisite agonies, finding pleasure and pain inextricably confused in
these hours of waiting and shadowing. Sometimes when he was returning
to his lodgings, cold, tired out, hopeless, or rose to meet another
heavy blank morning, he would tell himself that he had done with it
all, and then he might creep through a day or two trying to live a life
of his own, but everything would seem then so dull, so savourless, that
he hurried back to Carrington Villas, to the waiting and dodging and
hurrying round corners. He discovered, too, that when he knew where
Lena was, what she was actually doing, his jealous feelings were less
strong and sharply barbed than when he did not know where she was and
whom she was with: it was bad to realise that for the next two or three
hours she would be dancing with that tall fellow who sometimes brought
a car, but it was much worse to be miles away from her and to know
nothing. When he was pursuing her, though only in this strange, shadowy
fashion, Lena and he alone were real, the only real human beings in a
city that had been turned, with all its winter magnificence of lighted
lamps and shop windows, golden buses, glittering night signs, and
shining wet pavements, into an illuminated jungle. When he tried to put
her out of his mind, however, there was nothing in the whole city that
would let him forget. It had been tantalising, maddening enough before
he had met Lena, when he had gone wandering about the streets in an
amorous hunger, but now it was a hundred times worse. Everything he saw
spoke to him of women and love. The shops he passed were brilliant with
hats and clothes that Lena might wear; they showed him her stockings
and underclothes; they were piled high with her entrancing little
shoes; they invited him to look at her powder-bowls, her lipstick, her
scent bottles; there was nothing she wore, nothing she touched, they
did not thrust under their blazing electric lights. The theatres and
picture houses shouted to him their knowledge of girls and love. The
hoardings were covered with illustrations, nine feet high, of happy
romances. The very newspapers, under cover of a pretended interest in
Palm Beach or feminine athletics, gave him day by day photographs of
nearly naked girls with figures like Lena’s. And in and out of the
buses, tube trains, theatres, dance-halls, restaurants, teashops,
public-houses, taxis, villas, flats, went boys and their sweethearts,
girls and their lovers, men and their wives, smiling at one another,
laughing together, holding arms, clasping hands, kissing. Slinking
through this Venusberg, like a shabby young wolf, he could not forget.
It never gave him a chance. He had never given himself a chance. He
had nothing to put in the way, no ambition, no interests, no friends;
so far he had asked for little, merely food, shelter, and trifling
amusement, except love. In his heart of hearts, he did not want to
forget.
That first phase of unusual smartness, brushed hair, clean collars,
creased trousers, had passed; he could not bother with that any more;
if Lena wanted him to be smart again, well and good, she could tell
him so, but meanwhile, he was his old shabby self, indeed shabbier
than ever. Mr. Dersingham, Mr. Smeeth, Miss Matfield were beginning to
give him some queer glances at the office. Well, they could look; so
long as he kept the job at all (and that was certainly important), it
did not matter to him; he was careless of all that. He was careless of
most things these days. His finances, always difficult, had now drifted
into a very bad state, and he owed Mrs. Pelumpton a pound or two, and
even then he had to cut his ordinary expenses down to the lowest level,
which meant that he had to feed cheaply and scantily. That did not
matter either, for only now and then did he feel really hungry. Mr.
Pelumpton, the old fool, had told him several times he ought to see a
doctor, and even Mrs. Pelumpton was beginning to ask him if he hadn’t
a pain anywhere, he looked “that bad,” she said. He told her that he
hadn’t a pain, though this was not true, for very often now he had a
sort of pain, not easy to describe, but roughly amounting to a tender
hollowness, in his head. He tried one or two things at the chemist’s,
just to make him sleep, for the nights following these vigils were the
worst, when he turned and tossed and his eyes burned and the hollow
place in his head enlarged itself; but these things did not do him
much good, and what sleep he got, he paid for in the morning, when he
felt heavy and shivery, so that the scantiest wash and shave was a
hard drudgery. His work in the office was that too, though after Mr.
Smeeth had taken him into the “White Horse,” he tried to appear a bit
more energetic, for he knew very well that if he lost his job, he was
in a hopeless situation. All these things, however, were only on the
dream-like fringe of life. What was there in the centre, though this
was like a dream too, a very different dream, dark, urgent, and with
a terrible beauty, was his pursuit of Lena, the outward Lena who was
behaving so strangely to him, whom she had welcomed and kissed and held
so close. Even yet he believed that she was merely teasing him, holding
him off for a little space, and that soon all would be well.
At last, after seeing her several times in one week, at a distance
and never once alone, he made a desperate throw and spoke to her. It
was a queer night, unlike any other he had seen during the time he
had haunted Maida Vale, for during the afternoon, a Wednesday, there
had been a sudden heavy fall of snow, so sudden, so heavy, that for
once it had remained as snow and had not changed immediately into a
black slush. The roofs and gardens and privet hedges in Carrington
Villas were still white with it; even the gates and railings here and
there were snow lined; and the night was at once curiously light and
muffled. He did not pay any close attention to these details, did not
consciously observe the brilliance of the stars, the unusually solid
velvety black of the houses, the white-blanketed spaces, the sudden
crystal glitter now and again, the crunch of the trodden snow as the
night crispened; but nevertheless they stole into his consciousness and
worked obscurely there. He thought of his boyhood, which he had not
left behind him long, though usually it seemed a hundred years away, a
faded muddle. Now it returned to him vividly, evoked by the unfamiliar
sight of the snow. He had not had a very happy boyhood, but in this
hour, when it came back purged of its shame and distresses, it seemed
magical and the thought of it warmed and melted him, so that something
suspicious, something grudging, something in his mind that matched
a certain furtive look he had, shook itself free and then vanished.
It left him feeling confident, eager, a young man in a world full of
friends.
Then he saw her coming up the street, the tall fellow by her side.
He was not sure at first, but then he heard her voice. He hurried
forward to meet them before they could turn in the entrance to 4a, and
he contrived it so easily that he was able to slow up and then come
face to face with them before they had reached the gate. He stopped,
raised his hat, and cried: “Good evening.” He did not know whether to
add “Miss Golspie” or “Lena,” had no time to decide, but felt that
something must be added, so ended with a mumble that might have been
anything. His heart knocked painfully. She looked lovelier than ever in
the mysterious snowy half-light.
The tall young man stopped at once, raising his hat, too, and smiling.
“Oh!” Lena’s soft little cry was charged with meaning; there was
dismay, irritation, disgust in it. She hesitated a moment, threw him a
quick frowning glance, then said, coldly: “Oh--good evening,” and at
once moved away, leaving the tall young man staring after her for a
second or two. Then he gave Turgis a nod and hurried away.
Turgis saw them turn in at the gate. He heard the young man’s short
gruff laugh and then an exclamation of some sort followed by a little
trill from Lena. The door closed behind them, and it might have been
banged to in his face. For several minutes he never moved. Then he
slowly walked past the house, and, looking up, saw the light in the
window above, in that room where she had given him supper and danced
with him and kissed him. For a moment he thought wildly of marching
up there, striding in and demanding to know this and that; but he
knew there was no sense in that, for not only was the tall young man
there, but also Mr. Golspie himself might be there. He crossed the
road, turned to look at the lighted window again, stared at it until
at last it was nothing but a vague crimson blur, then walked away, his
shoulders humped in misery.
“Yersh,” said Mr. Pelumpton, as he shuffled into the conjugal bedroom,
three-quarters of an hour later, “e’sh jusht come in, proper blue look
on ’im, too. No, I didn’t arshk ’im where ’e’d been. I like ter get
a shivil arnsher when I arshksh a man a shivil queshen, I do. ‘Leave
you alone, boy,’ I shaysh to myshelf. ‘You go your way an’ I go mine.
Yersh.’ What you shay, Mother?”
“I say it’s a pity, too,” replied Mrs. Pelumpton, above the bedclothes.
“Worries me, it does, to see a quiet young feller goin’ the wrong
way like that. ’E’s got a nasty broodin’ look. And if you want _my_
opinion, ’e’s got ’imself into trouble with some girl--one of these
flappers, as they call ’em. My words, I’d give ’em flapper if I’d
anything to do with ’em!”
“Oh, I dare shay, I dare shay,” said Mr. Pelumpton, with philosophic
melancholy. “If it’sh bother yer want, that’sh where to find it,
that’sh my ecshperiensh. Oo, I got a narshty pain in my back to-night.
It’sh the cold, yer know.”