“Yes,” I said, “but if she saw, why didn’t she say something?”
“That’s for you to find out.”
And for the next three days I searched my mind for reasons for her
silence.
At last I began to see the glimmerings of a tale, the fifth that I had
constructed about this romantic couple. And this is what I saw: a shy
young man from the provinces comes up to London with an introduction to
some wealthy friends. There is a daughter whom he thinks very beautiful,
and with whom he thinks that he might in a short while find himself in
love. And he suggests very timidly that it would be nice if she would
show him “round the sights,” for he wants to see London, and has no
other friends in it. And, as these wealthy people have advanced views,
or perhaps because the daughter has succeeded in impressing her views
upon her parents, his suggestion is accepted; the result is a lunch at
the Criterion, a theatre, and tea afterwards. As they seem to be
getting on rather well together, he suggests a dinner-party. He would
like to see Soho.
“Oh, but I must go back and ask mother first,” she says.
“Really?”
“Of course; it’s very nice of her to let me out at all. I must go back
and ask her.”
And he admires this sense of duty, which is probably only an excuse for
a change of frock. And so she returns home to tell her mother how well
everything is going, while he goes to the little Soho restaurant to
engage a table; and then, while he is waiting for her, he makes a
horrible discovery. He has only a pound left; what is he to do? He picks
up the menu, and sees that it will be impossible for him to dine in
anything like the way he wishes for less than thirty shillings. He is a
stranger; the restaurant will not give him credit. There is no one to
whom he can go to for a loan; he cannot ask the girl, on their first day
together, to lend him money. And so, all through the dinner there hangs
over his head the menace of that piece of folded paper. What will happen
to him? He remembers seeing once in Manchester the proprietor pitch an
impecunious client headlong into the street. They could hardly do that
to him. He would be too big, but he will be disgraced in the girl’s
eyes. He has not the presence to carry off such a scene with honour. He
will stammer and mumble, and try to explain, and look foolish; probably
in the end he will leave his watch in bail, while the girl will stand
by him, ashamed of him and contemptuous.
He tries to make the meal last as long as possible; they have coffee and
two liqueurs and endless cigarettes; but the moment comes at last when
she begins to button on her gloves and collect her things.
“I really must go now,” she says, “and it has been such a lovely
evening. Thank you so much.”
And he looks in misery at the piece of folded paper. Then, just as he is
preparing to signal to the waiter and ask for an interview with the
patron, the temptation comes: her bag lies open facing him; she is
looking the other way. He sees money. Here is the way out; perhaps she
will not notice that she has lost it. She is rich. At any rate, he must
run the risk. And, as she tidies her hair in the glass, she sees him
take her money.
She is shocked, terribly shocked, but it is easy to understand her
silence; her curiosity is whetted, she is interested in the young man,
and guesses that one day it may very well be that she will feel more
than interest for him. Money is of no great concern to her.
Yes, I could see the scene clearly enough; it would provide me with
excellent opportunities for dramatic dialogue; the growing uneasiness of
the man with the girl’s gradual appreciation of it and wonder at the
cause of it, the hope, perhaps, that it is the beginning of love. A good
scene, but it would be impossible not to write a good scene with such a
setting and such an episode. But, even as I saw it, I knew that it would
be no good. To what climax would it work: to nothing but the old
_cliché_--“I knew it all along.” It would be kept as a surprise, of
course; the reader would not be told that the girl had seen the theft
reflected in the looking-glass. The story would describe the progress of
their courtship; the heart-searchings of the young man. “If I tell her,
will she despise me?” How the machinery would creak, how often it has
been done before; and at last the stage would be set for the confession.
“I have something terrible to tell you, dear.”
He would blurt it out and then hide his face in her lap for shame, and
she would stroke his hair softly and smile.
“Silly old dear,” she would say. “I knew it all along!”
How trite it would be, how banal! And the fact that it might be very
likely true would not in any way redeem it. We are plagiarists in life
as we are in books, and there are certain motives that are now
impossible in a story, although they occur in life. They have been used
too often. What a weariness overcomes us when we discover in a novel of
matrimonial dispute that the wife is about to become a mother, and that
in consequence the hero cannot run off with his secretary.
No doubt it is an affair of frequent occurrence; impending maternity
frustrates an impending honeymoon. Autumn lays waste the spring. But no
self-respecting novelist would allow “the little stranger” to extricate
him from a difficulty. And, in the same way, no self-respecting novelist
would allow a heroine “to know it all along.” It is a motive that has
served its purpose well enough in its time, but when a coin has passed
through many hands the signs and figures on it are worn away; it is
valueless and is returned to the Mint; which is the proper place for
“the little stranger” and “I knew it all along.”
And now, having attempted five different stories, all of them
unsatisfactory, I know that it is my duty to provide a conclusion that
shall be unexpected and that shall ridicule my previous conjectures. I
know that I ought to meet in the restaurant at a later date the hero or
heroine, or both of them together, and learn from them the true story;
there should be--I know it--a punch in the last paragraph; but that is
exactly what I cannot give, for I do not know the real end of the story
and have been unable to invent one. Unsatisfactory, perhaps, but
intriguing all the same. In a world where so much is ordered by the
inviolable laws of mathematics, it is pleasant to find something that is
truly incomplete. For the first time in my life I was the witness of a
dramatic episode, the sort of thing that one would not see again in a
thousand years. It was a fragment in the lives of two people, and it
must remain a fragment, a baffling, fascinating fragment. And, on the
whole, I am glad to have it so. Such another moment will never come to
me. When the voice of the lecturer begins to fade, when the sun beats
down upon the mound at Lord’s and the cricket becomes slow: at all times
when the mind detaches itself from its surroundings I shall return in my
imagination to that evening in the restaurant. It will be a treasure
for all time, a book in which I shall read for ever without weariness.
Perhaps one day I shall hit upon the meaning of it; but I hope not. I
prefer to keep it an enigma, to be able to shut my eyes and watch the
growing embarrassment of a young man who is planning an unnatural theft,
to see a young girl stand in the doorway of a restaurant, a fur cap
fitting tightly over her head, a gloved hand raised across her throat.