They went out into the garden where Harry with clean hands was awaiting the social occasion, and not welcoming it.
She said, “Harry, here is Mr. Scarsdale.”
She was aware of boy and man appraising each other, of Scarsdale’s hand going out, and of the sudden brightening of her brother’s face.
“Been hearing nice things about you, Harry.”
“Glad to meet you, sir.”
They smiled at each other. The garden became peopled with a feeling of friendliness. The pear tree was looked at and spoken to in a way that both boy and man understood.
“Well, you are a gorgeous old fellow. What about the afterwards?”
Harry laughed.
“Painful, sometimes, sir.”
“Rather green. One couldn’t wait, could one? Yes, I know.”
Two more chairs were brought out, but Julia did not sit down. There was tea to be got ready, and when help was offered she accepted it and the informality of Scarsdale’s invasion of the kitchen and his insistence upon carrying things. She had no reason to be ashamed of her kitchen. A collapsible card-table with a green-baize top was placed under the pear tree. Harry had views upon the inadequacies of the cake dish, and she did not reprove him.
“Well,—you can welsh my share.”
To Scarsdale her attitude towards the boy was motherly, and into his mind came the title—“The Madonna of the Pear Blossom.” The exquisite surface of her youth was flawless, and if he was falling in love with her youth and its deceptive softness, he was doing that which man the sentimentalist has always done. She was the Spring, fruit blossom, exquisite and virginal, the quintessence of youth, a creature who made a man like Scarsdale feel poignant and a little sad. The illusion of her enveloped him and his three and forty years.
It was a happy occasion because Scarsdale and the boy were merry with each other. Harry liked this new man; he had liked him at once and easily; there seemed to be some strange understanding between them. They were man and man, and boy and boy. Julia was interested, for Harry was quick with his likes and dislikes, and there seemed to be no shyness between Scarsdale and her brother. Scarsdale’s shyness was kept for her. He glanced at her with a kind of shimmery fearfulness.
He could rag Harry over the cake, but when speaking to the sister his voice had a careful seriousness. She was the Madonna, and his placing of her in the shrine of an illusion was not so easily understood. But she liked him, but not as she would have liked a younger man.
3
Scarsdale brought out his pipe, and while he was lighting it Harry disappeared without a why or a whither, and when Scarsdale realized the boy’s flitting he thought but little of it, for to Scarsdale Harry was Peter Pan. He had noticed the motoring magazine lying on the grass, and he picked it up, and after glancing at its highly coloured cover, he looked at Julia.
“Your brother I suppose?”
She was piling the crockery on the tray.
“No,—that’s me.”
He was surprised. She caught him looking at her with almost a shocked air. But why? She sat down and well back in her deck chair, and lit a cigarette.
“Cars. Well, one may be interested in a thing without being able to afford it. But then—there’s Harry.”
She looked serious and Scarsdale thought her seriousness adorable. He wanted her to talk, and to talk to her.
“That’s a very lovable child.”
She stared at the end of her cigarette.
“O, very. A good kid. And I’m rather responsible, you know. I have ideas for Harry.”
“Tell me.”
He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, and his lean face looked eager.
“One had to do the best one could. He’s at an hotel.”
“A clerk?”
“O, no, a page-boy.”
“I see. Circumstances. He can do much better.”
Her silence accepted his sympathy. She was not an explanatory person, but she could not help realizing Scarsdale as a man of some position and of some influence, and as a man who was interested, and his interest was her legitimate opportunity. Moreover, Harry was Harry, the one creature who had caused her hard young consciousness qualms of protective tenderness. It was for Harry’s sake that the unmentionable Robert had been extruded and sent to fend for himself. It was partly for Harry’s sake that she had quarrelled with their mother.
She glanced under her straight black brows at Scarsdale. How much did he know? How much had her father told him?
“The world’s so jolly crowded.”
“Opportunities.”
“Quite. I have to work from nine to six, and then there is the house. When father was away I had to do the best I could, and other things were not easy.”
He nodded. His eyes were very kind.
“Your father left you problems.”
She paused and considered. How much did he know? How much should she tell him?
“It is rather difficult to know what’s best. Father had reasons. He left me this house and the furniture and a little money. Yes, as I say—he had reasons.”
Scarsdale understood her better than she knew.
“Your father was very fond of a certain person. I know that.”
And then Harry reappeared with a little bowler hat and an air of well-washed responsibility, for on this particular Sunday he had to go on duty from six till nine.
“I shall have to say good-bye, sir.”
“What, going?”
“Yes, business, sir.”
Scarsdale stood up, and smiled down at the boy, and like men they shook hands.
“I hope we shall see you again, sir.”
“I hope so.”
In resuming his seat under the pear tree Scarsdale felt himself nearer to Julia Marwood, and more intimately concerned in her affairs. He noticed that her eyes followed the boy, and that when Harry had gone she continued to look at the open doorway through which he had passed.
And Scarsdale observed her with the freedom of a man who for the moment was a spectator, and able to take his fill of gazing at her as woman, yet as woman warmed by a tender illusion. Her lips looked more soft, her throat and forehead wise and compassionate.
She turned to him suddenly as though conscious of his stare.
“No need to worry about Harry’s collars. That’s an asset.”
Scarsdale’s glance withdrew itself.
“Yes, a clean lad.”
“Thank heaven. That’s why I had to be rather a beast to his brother. Some things one doesn’t—”
Scarsdale appeared interested in his pipe. He rubbed the bowl as though polishing it.
“I quite agree. Something ought to be found for Harry, an opportunity. I’ll keep my eyes open. May I?”
She looked him straight in the face.
“Would you? But it’s awfully decent of you. I don’t see why you should trouble.”
And Scarsdale smiled.
“But—I do.”
4
Afterwards he walked homewards across the park. He would pick up a bus somewhere, but he was in no hurry to board a bus. He wanted to be apart from the crowd, and to wonder and dream and feel. The park was a lover’s pleasance, and Narcissus was a flower, and the spring a chaplet of green. The outer world was both vivid and vague, a coloured tapestry, or a mirror in which he saw the reflection of life as it appeared to the lover in him. He felt both inexplicably happy and inexplicably sad. The elms might be towers of budding green, and the daffodils blurs of molten sunlight, and his heart was the heart of youth in the body of three and forty. He wandered. He did not look at any particular face or tree or flower. He was looking at the face of youth, of a beautiful illusion.
He thought, “She’s splendid! What courage! Confronting life alone like that.”
The picture seemed to shape itself. It had a bright foreground in which light fell upon the figures of the young woman and the boy, and out of the inner darkness the face of the dead Marwood seemed to
yearn. There were other figures, obscure, sinister, a young animal with haunches, and a female shape that was muffled in mystery.
Scarsdale dreamed.
“She’s splendid. I must do something for that boy.”
Chapter Nine
During the following fortnight Scarsdale went about hunting berths for Harry Marwood. It appeared to be his principal preoccupation, and he gave more enthusiasm and thought to it than he did to his own very hypothetical future. For he was the lover, the knight-errant, the happy warrior hoping to hasten to his dear lady with a trophy and the spoils of victory.
He attacked Mr. Taggart. He stood by Mr. Taggart’s window and shut off the light, and spoke impressively and with feeling.
“I suppose you might be able to find room for the son of an ex-service man? The father was killed, yes. A rather sad case. The daughter was left to support the boy.”
Mr. Taggart looked up at him over an impatient shoulder. Scarsdale was excluding the light, and during the past month he had been doing other things to Mr. Taggart. He had irritated Mr. Taggart, but in a way that had left the editor of the Sabbath unable to voice his irritation. For Scarsdale was so damned cheerful, and sanguine and head in air, a preposterous and exasperating optimist to have about the place, when gloom as black as printer’s ink trickled and oozed down the very stairs. Moreover, the fellow was so purblind. He did not appear to realize that he was irritating his chief, or to be conscious of the heavy loom on Mr. Taggart’s worried forehead.
Mr. Taggart opened his mouth to say something. He said things at night to his wife. “That fellow Scarsdale’s a damned fool. Always yapping about the new heaven and the new earth. The war seems to have softened more brains—” But before Taggart could get out his growl Scarsdale was off again.
“After all—we do owe something to the children of the men who were knocked out. This boy—for instance—”
Taggart heaved in his chair, yet the rumblings of his exasperated and worried soul were inaudible to the happy warrior.
“I’ve got boys of my own, two.”
“Quite so. I appreciate that, but—”
And then Mr. Taggart swung round on him almost like a heavy animal about to get up and charge.
“Look here, cut it out. This damned altruism’s all very well. It isn’t a question of finding jobs, it’s a question of keeping the old jobs—”
“Quite so, but—”
“There isn’t any but, man. Some of your gentlemen from France don’t seem to realize that the war hasn’t made things easier.”
“I quite understand that, but—”
Taggart gave him a murderous look, and swung round again to his desk.
“You’re in my light, and I’m busy.”
* * *
Yet Scarsdale could not read the signs of a murky horizon. For the first time in his life he was the devoted boy, finding life good and rich and poignant, a season of greenness and of song. He thought Taggart a curmudgeon. He ascribed Taggart’s moroseness to chronic dyspepsia, and to a war diet and to overwork, for there appeared to be so many people like Taggart in whom the war had planted a turgid pessimism. Probably Taggart was best left alone to come to conclusions with his medicine bottle. For had he not surprised his chief munching a charcoal biscuit after lunch, and with lips and teeth of a grotesque and unpleasant blackness! Scarsdale’s appetite for things tangible and intangible was excellent. It was as though youth, the youth of No. 53 Spellthorn Terrace had infected him with the urge to strut and sing. He was a little dazzled by the polish of youth, its exquisite, strange newness.
Also, his desire was to be impressive. He did not see himself before a mirror, but the mirror was there, and he, the sedulous bachelor, was patting his hair and adjusting his tie. He wanted to impress Marwood’s daughter, to prove to her that he could do gracious, tender, authoritative things. Her youth challenged him. It was an exquisite provocation.
He was a little light in the heart and the head. He carried himself like a young man of five and twenty. His confidence in himself and in the future was slightly pathetic. So gaillard was he those days that he could shrug off significant rebuffs.
His first post-war article had been returned to him by the editor of Harvest. The editor had written him a personal letter.
“Dear Scarsdale,
“I like this thing of yours, but it hasn’t quite the right atmosphere. There has been a change of atmosphere. No doubt you will soon tumble to it. May I suggest that we have become a little more snappy. And for God’s sake keep off the war.”
The letter had brought to Scarsdale’s lips and eyes a little, whimsical smile. It had not worried him. So, they wanted to put the war away in a cupboard! Idiots! That most insurgent, splendid, human affair! O, well, he might be able to show these editors a thing or two. He had put the rejected article away in a drawer, and resumed the writing of a short story for Mr. Butcher of The Babbler. He felt so full of life that he had no doubts as to his ability to write short stories. Was he not writing with his eyes on Julia Marwood?
2
Scarsdale’s second visit to No. 53 Spellthorn Terrace was not long delayed, though a younger and more arrogant man would have waited a week. He arrived on the doorstep with a box of chocolates and an air of gentle self-consciousness. In a moment of boldness he had put on a tie of some colour and of courage, and on the doorstep of No. 53 he was not quite so happy as to the fitness of that tie.
Harry opened the door to him, and Harry’s face opened like the door.
“Hallo, sir.”
“Hallo, my lad. I was round this way, and I thought I would drop this in.”
He dangled the neat parcel at the end of its loop of string, and made no swashbuckling attack on the defences of No. 53.
“What’s in it, sir?”
“Chocolates.”
“Ju is in the garden. She’ll be pleased.”
Harry saw Mr. Spenser Scarsdale blush.
“Perhaps just for five minutes. I shan’t be disturbing her, shall I?”
Harry’s eyes twinkled.
“O, rather not. It takes a lot to rattle Ju. My seeds are coming up like anything.”
“Splendid. You must show me.”
Julia was still in black, and Scarsdale thought her grave young dignity exquisite in black. It set off the glowing pallor of her skin. She met him under the pear tree where branches had shed their whiteness and were growing green. The shy, grizzled kindness of his face made her think him a year or two less old. He was holding out the parcel.
“Thought you might like these.”
“Thanks—awfully.”
“Chocolates, you know. I expect Harry will help.”
“You bet he will, sir,” said the boy.
Scarsdale had whispered of five minutes, and he stayed two hours. Again they had tea under the pear tree, but the gay colours of a motoring journal were absent, and its place had been taken by a novel. Scarsdale noticed the development. Also he was made aware of a change in Julia Marwood; she was less casual; her dark eyes had a watchfulness; she was quick to see when his cup needed refilling. She prompted her brother.
“Harry, Mr. Scarsdale’s cup.”
As before, young Harry disappeared, and there was an interlude of silence, during which they sat rather self-consciously under the shade of the tree, and Scarsdale had trouble with his pipe and used an extravagant number of matches. Being alone with this young thing caused him a kind of exquisite distress, emotional embarrassment. He felt that something was expected of him, something fortunate for Harry.
He said, “I have not had any luck yet. Things are still so disorganized. Transition—you know. Besides one wouldn’t be satisfied with a makeshift.”
She observed him as though wondering at his wordiness.
“You mean—about my brother?”
“Yes.”
“It’s awfully good of you.”
“O, not at all. I am looking round. I shall find something.”
“It i
s so useful to have influence.”
He gave a little shrug. He was flattered.
“O, in a small way, yes. But we want the right thing, don’t we? I’m energizing my various friends and people.”
She nodded.
“I expect you are one of those who can get things done.”
When he left her he carried with him a new consciousness of responsibility. He felt a little guilty, and incredulous and happy. She had crowned him with a sense of importance, and being the sensitive and conscientious creature that he was, he returned to Canonbury Square accusing himself of false pretences. Obviously she was very grateful to him, and he had done nothing. He was masquerading as a man of force and authority; and had given her assurances, and had talked boastfully. He felt guilty.
Most certainly something had to be done for Harry Marwood, and without delay. His lover’s conscience scourged him. He began to think of other people whom he might interview and interest on Harry’s behalf. On the Tuesday he happened to lunch at The Golden Cock in Fleet Street; he did not lunch there often; he could not afford it. And at a table in a corner he saw young Bagshaw of Cairns & Bagshaw faring sumptuously. That phrase expressed the fulness of young Bagshaw’s feeding, though the fare was nothing more than rump steak, fried potatoes, and grilled tomatoes, supplemented by a tankard of ale. Young Bagshaw was still known as young Bagshaw though he was three-and-thirty and prematurely swollen.
Scarsdale did not like young Bagshaw; few people did. He was one of those vigorous animals with very black hair, a rich ruddiness and clarity of skin, and hot brown eyes. He glowed. He had thick shoulders and thighs; he had been the strongest boy at his school, and he had enjoyed it; he was masterful. He sat there chewing steak with an air of turgid arrogance.
Scarsdale knew young Bagshaw; they were members of the same Fleet Street club, a congeries of journalists, authors, and publishers. Also, the publishing house of Cairns & Bagshaw was a big concern which had weathered the war very successfully in spite of the price of paper. It was the price of paper that was helping to crush the already moribund Sabbath, but Cairns & Bagshaw—like young Bagshaw—had stout shoulders.
Old Wine and New Page 10
