Poet's Pub

by Eric Linklater

  There was no bell in the room, but he had knocked long and loudly on the door and succeeded in attracting the attention of a maid, who listened for some minutes to his request for clothes and hot water and a razor and—if there happened to be a new one in the house—a toothbrush. But she was unimpressed and finally told him to “Bide whar ye are, ye auld blather, an’ haud y’ur wheesht.” This conveyed no meaning at all to Mr. Wesson, but when he heard her going down the turret stair again he realized that his captivity must still endure.

  About midday Joan and Quentin and Saturday met for breakfast, and in spite of Quentin’s anxiety about Nelly Bly there was definitely a holiday atmosphere in the room.

  “But I must telephone to father,” said Joan. “I meant to get up early and do it, but it’s so difficult to remember things where you’re asleep.”

  Sir Colin came in with Bran the deerhound at his heels. Bran endured with patience the examination of his iodine-insulted face, and Sir Colin sat down beside Joan.

  “I sent a telegram to your father a couple of hours ago,” he said, “saying that you were all here, perfectly well and safe, and that van Buren’s documents had been recovered. I asked him to repeat it to Lady Mercy. There should be an answer very soon.”

  “I’m going to put a trunk-call through to ‘The Pelican,’” said Saturday, and went out.

  “Have you seen the newspapers?” Colin asked. “You’ve become figures of national interest overnight.”

  The London papers had just arrived. The Daily Day was among them. “Comes to Castle and Cottage” was one of its well-known advertising mottoes.

  Joan and Quentin were visibly shocked when they saw it. The hugeness of the type daunted them. It was like a threat delivered in the presence of two million witnesses. The black, intolerably black, square letters thrust themselves forward with the brutality of branding-irons. Joan turned white and Quentin red. They looked at each other, like soldiers half panic-struck, to see if their weakness was a common one.

  “What shall we do?” whispered Joan. “We must go and hide somewhere.”

  Quentin held the paper in clenched fists. “‘Pretty Chambermaid Precedes Poet in Pursuit,’” he read. “Pretty chambermaid! Joan, I love her! You didn’t know—you don’t know yet—the truth about Nelly. But I love her. And now two million, five million, God knows how many million people in Britain think of my darling as a pretty chambermaid preceding poets in pursuit of pseudo-pundits!”

  “Why,” said Joan, “I never guessed that you were even interested in her.”

  “I hid my feelings,” said Quentin. “But didn’t Saturday tell you?”

  “Not a word. Does he know?”

  “I told him something about her.”

  “And did you want him to tell me?”

  “Of course I didn’t. What I told him was in the strictest confidence. I thought he might have dropped a hint to you. That’s all. But there’s no need to whisper now, with this foghorn blaring to the world.”

  “Poor Quentin! You’ll find her again.”

  “Not as she was before. This dreadful publicity may kill her. She was brought up in a convent, Joan.”

  Colin had listened to this conversation with some impatience.

  “I don’t think you should worry too much,” he said. “Advertisement doesn’t hurt people nowadays—except those who buy the pills. I expect this Nelly Bly will enjoy it all.”

  “You don’t know her,” said Quentin shortly.

  “Well, if she doesn’t, Saturday will.”

  “Saturday!” exclaimed Joan indignantly. “Do you think Saturday likes to have his name bandied about all over England? He’s the last person on earth to enjoy publicity of this kind.”

  “Have you seen what Mr. Solomon Pfennig says?” asked Colin.

  Joan read the paragraph which ended in a prophecy of large and remunerative sales for “Tellus Will Proceed.”

  “Of course, this may make a difference to his book,” she said in an altered voice.

  “I think they might have mentioned my novel too,” Quentin remarked. He had read the story over again and A Nettle Against May was unnoticed.

  “It certainly is a striking testimonial to his poem,” said Joan, “that anybody should want to steal it. Of course nobody did actually steal it, but the Daily Day creates that impression. Oh, Saturday, have you seen what the paper says about us?”

  Saturday was inured to publicity after his three calamitous boat-races, but even he appeared to shrink a little when he saw the terrible black and white banner which proclaimed their adventure to the world.

  “Did you get through to ‘The Pelican’?” asked Quentin.

  “Yes. There’s no news of Nelly Bly. Your father’s all right, Joan.”

  He read the history of “The Pelican” and the “Blue Bird” with a critical frown.

  “I suppose you hate all this,” he said to Joan.

  “It is rather trying,” she said. “But I’m glad they’ve mentioned your book.”

  “‘Mentioned’ is a frugal word,” said Colin.

  “It’s magnificent advertisement for ‘Tellus.’ Do you mind very much being mixed up in it, Joan? It’s going to make a tremendous difference to my sales. You see what Pfennig says. And they’ve actually got an editorial note about it.”

  “It will go into three editions in a week,” said Joan, “and father will give us his blessing with both hands.”

  “It seems a pity that the manuscript is lost,” Colin observed.

  A depressed silence followed his remark.

  “But it’s sure to turn up,” said Joan. “I expect Nelly Bly has it.”

  “Why do you think that?” asked Quentin.

  “She looked such a clever girl,” said Joan sweetly.

  “They had heard nothing from her at ‘The Pelican.’ She has simply disappeared. Your father and Holly got a car and followed us, Joan, but they were held up by engine trouble. Colin’s wire was opened and copies forwarded to him and Lady Mercy. George says there’s a large crowd outside ‘The Pelican’ and no room inside for anyone except reporters and policemen.”

  “I believe my mother has had something to do with all this,” said Quentin, “she has a genuine talent for creating an audience.”

  In the afternoon they walked down to the bridge and looked with interest at Quentin’s half-drowned car; and afterwards they sat and talked idly of returning to Downish. In front of them the lawn stretched green and smooth and then slid steeply down to the unseen river. Hills rose beyond, cup-shaped, giant hummocks pleasant with grass. Green hills as round as apples, and behind them dim ranges shading through olive and sage into tawny colour, into dove-greys and blue. There was still wind enough to bend the trees all one way, but the terrace where they sat was sheltered and warm in the sun.

  Lady Keith had been out all morning. “Just looking at things,” she said. “Little things like tits and finches. What shambling twilight horrors we human beings appear in comparison with birds!”

  Joan, triumphantly emerging from adventure, was not inclined to depreciate her species.

  “But there are such beautiful qualities in human nature,” she said; “courtesy, and constancy, and love—”

  “Those qualities are typically displayed by the widgeon and other ducks. From the marismas of Guadalquivir to the Arctic a widgeon and its mate fly side by side, hungry and steadfast and cheering each other on. I have seen flighting ducks shot. Always, if the shot bird is a female, its mate follows it down, attending the dead body with every appearance of distress and careless of its own danger. I assure you, my dear Joan, that you could find the germs of constancy and love in every duck’s egg that was ever laid.”

  She and Saturday, thought Joan, Saturday and she would love each other to the death.… Old people spoke of death. It might or might not be a reality. Old people were so often mistaken.… Hand-in-hand she pictured her lover and herself walking from the marshes of Guadalquivir to a flower-lit Arctic Spring. Loving and
constant and cheering each other on. Happily she sighed, and looked at the round hills beyond the river, grassy half-moons, green cantles vast and up-ended.

  “How is your prisoner to-day?” asked Lady Keith.

  They looked blankly at her till Saturday confessed, “I had forgotten all about him.”

  “When you were a little boy,” said Lady Keith, “I once let you keep a linnet in a cage, because you cried till you were sick when I at first refused. You were a very little boy and I was even more foolish then than I am now. And you are treating Mr. Wesson to-day exactly as you treated that wretched linnet twenty years ago. You caught him and now you have forgotten him. Unfortunately you’re too big for me to thrash you again, but I am very angry with you. Go and release Mr. Wesson at once.”

  Saturday obeyed.

  With a kind of soft indignation Lady Keith addressed the hills; or it may have been an invisible company of birds. “Children,” she said. “Naughty children. That’s all they ever are.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Joan.

  “Of course you’re sorry. Children are sorry at least one night in three. But they forget about it in the morning.”

  In a little while Mr. Wesson appeared, hastily dressed in a mixture of his own and borrowed clothes. He fingered his unshaven cheeks, and while some distance away could be heard complaining to Saturday about the manner of his imprisonment.

  “Mr. Wesson,” said Lady Keith. And Mr. Wesson was silent.

  “We have decided to let you go free. No one has suffered any serious loss as a result of your ill-considered action, and consequently I feel that to prosecute you would merely be an exhibition of petty spite. I am sure that I can speak for Mr.—Mr. van Buren, is it? Thank you—for Mr. van Buren also. You are both Americans, I understand, and naturally he would not want to send a fellow-countryman to prison. Have you enough money to pay for your passage home? In that case you had better get something to eat and then I will have you driven to the station. Does anyone want to add anything to what I have said?”

  Nobody did. Colin looked out over the valley with the contented smile of one who listens to a favourite tune. Saturday and Joan were slightly abashed. Quentin openly admired. And nobody showed any wish to speak except the prisoner. He cleared his throat significantly.

  “Your ladyship,” he began, “this is the gesture of a noble heart. As your great national poet Burns has so rightly said, ‘Ah, Freedom is a noble thing!’—”

  “It wasn’t Burns. It was Barbour,” said Lady Keith.

  The butler appeared.

  “A trunk call for Mr. Saturday,” he announced.

  Saturday got up hurriedly.

  “Take Mr. Wesson and see that he gets something to eat,” said Lady Keith.

  Mr. Wesson’s eyes had meanwhile fallen on a copy of the Daily Day which lay open on a chair. A glow of happiness suffused his features as the enormous type shouted to him. His shoulders straightened. He braced himself like an actor taking his call.

  “Your generosity has been so notable,” he said, “that I am emboldened to ask you a further favour. May I take this newspaper with me? My little exploit seems to have hit the editor precisely where he lives, and this page will be a proud addition to my press-cutting album.”

  “You are welcome to it,” said Lady Keith.

  “I thank your ladyship. Good-bye, your ladyship. Good-bye, Miss Benbow. I shall treasure the recollection of our little journey together. Sir Colin and Mr. Cotton, good-bye. I’m very pleased to have met you.”

  Not without dignity Mr. Wesson suffered the butler to lead him away.

  “Well!” said Joan.

  “They are a resilient people,” Colin observed.

  “And would consequently suffer great distress in prison,” said Lady Keith.

  Saturday returned with a look of ineffable content on his face and a slip of paper in his hand.

  “What’s the news?” they asked him.

  “Messages of congratulation from Lady Mercy, van Buren, and the professor,” he said. “They don’t matter for the moment. Listen to the important thing: ‘Led astray by false clue indicating Wesson intended embarking Liverpool. Now aboard ship Corybantic proceeding Madeira holiday cruise. Your manuscript safe with me. NELLY BLY.’”

  “Where did that come from?” Quentin demanded.

  “From the Corybantic by wireless. The telegram was handed in to ‘The Pelican’ less than an hour ago. They repeated it and I wrote it down. So now you know where Nelly is and I know where my poem is. Are you happy?”

  “I am,” said Joan.

  Quentin reached for the slip of paper on which Saturday had copied the message. He read it word by word, balancing each as if it might contain a hidden meaning that would fall apart under scrutiny. He was still a slave to the Russian heresy.

  “Why has that girl decided to go on a holiday cruise at such an awkward time?” asked Lady Keith.

  “She was led astray,” said Joan.

  Quentin stared tragically into space and saw as in a pageant Nelly attended by gigantic perils. A field of snow, a procession of dreary prisoners staggering under their gaolers’ whips, the cruel Oriental domes of Moscow; bright blue sea and a sunlit beach; palms; and over them, like a red phantom, the Sickle and Hammer of the Soviet.

  “How far away is the station?” he asked abruptly. “Lady Keith, will you excuse me if I go now?”

  He disappeared into the house with giant strides.

  According to their mood they commented on the manner of his departure and waited for him to return and explain what he meant to do. They discussed the telephone message from Downish and were glad that “Tellus Will Proceed” was safe. And then they heard from somewhere behind the house the racing-roar of a motor-engine. And round the corner, on to the drive beneath them—steps led down to it—came the battered “Blue Bird.” Mud-splashed, with sagging hood and a broken wing, the charabanc drove slowly past.

  Saturday started up and shouted, “Where are you going?”

  Quentin leaned out and shouted back: “Moscow!—I mean Madeira.”

  In a roaring crescendo of noise the “Blue Bird” leapt forward, a feather of gobelin-blue smoke flying under its mud-plastered azure stern.

  THE END