Scarsdale walked across to Bagshaw’s table. He had never asked a favour of this young man, and he would not have asked it now but for Julia Marwood and her brother. He smiled at Bagshaw, and young Bagshaw looked up at him from the midst of his feeding.
“Hallo, Scarsdale, how’s the Sabbatarian press? Wallowing rather deep in a mud hole, what!”
Scarsdale continued to smile. He possessed himself of a vacant chair, and sat down beside Bagshaw’s table.
“O, we are digging ourselves out. By the way—I am trying to get a boy placed, the son of a friend of mine who was knocked out over there. You’re a big concern.”
Bagshaw stared at him with his bull-like eyes, and went on eating.
“Why not try Taggart & Co. Most respectable firm.”
“No vacancies—just at present.”
“Why try me?”
Scarsdale looked whimsical. When young Bagshaw butted at you, a graceful, airy gesture was not of much use.
“Well you are a big concern, and I want the boy to have a chance.”
“Very nice of you, but there’s nothing doing.”
“Not at present? But supposing—? The kid’s a bright lad, and his sister has to keep him and herself.”
And suddenly young Bagshaw grinned. He broke off a big piece of household bread, and stuffed it in, and masticated.
“Sentimental reasons, my lad. Our house is simply wallowing in sentimental stuff. Widows and orphans and all that. We are booked up to the teeth with sentimental obligations. Sorry. Nothing doing.”
Scarsdale sat hesitant for a moment. Then he got up, and smiled at young Bagshaw, but young Bagshaw was in the act of applying the tankard to his face.
“Well, thanks all the same. Might I try you later?”
“Sorry, nothing doing.”
“But there might be.”
Young Bagshaw butted him.
“Look here, old man, father your own pups, and don’t try and farm ’em off on other people. I’m a business man. See.”
Scarsdale reddened. He felt like a very poor relation standing in front of the Bagshaw table.
He said, “I’m sorry. But I have a feeling that we all ought to try and help, especially those—”
But he stopped on the edge of the final accusation, for though young Bagshaw had eluded the war, nothing was to be gained by telling him so. But Bagshaw took him up; he looked truculent.
“Especially whom?”
“Especially those who have suffered.”
“Don’t you worry. We shall be taxed for them all right.”
Scarsdale turned away, feeling somehow that he had been browbeaten and worsted, and that he had not said to young Bagshaw the things that should have been said.
3
Julia Marwood’s fingers were much nearer to the elusive bunch of grapes, nor had she Scarsdale’s sensitiveness in the matter of standing on stools. If a girl constructed her own stool and made it solid and steady she considered that she had every right to climb upon it and reach up above the heads of the crowd. Julia was a rather unusual young woman, not because she had ambition, but because she set herself with ruthlessness and efficiency to qualify herself for those responsibilities which the facile people shirk. Were that halcyon age to materialize, when the less efficient many shall have succeeded in stealing the cash and the creations of the more efficient few, it is probable that Julia Marwood would continue to be unusual, an Amazon among the commissars. The knout, decorated with red ribbon, would still be applied to the shoulders of the crowd.
Her gaze was very direct. She saw a number of things with distinctness and understanding. She typified in some measure the youth of the post-war period, for while possessing youth’s elusive softness she was as hard as the steel of the motor-car she coveted. She was most intelligently selfish, and yet her very selfishness somehow included her almost fierce affection for her younger brother. Her ambition held Harry by the hand. She could not say why or how. Her love for Harry was the one thing she did not question, any more than she would have questioned the beating of her heart. She had been fond too of her father, but Marwood was dead, and the day was a day of realities.
The office in Martagon Terrace closed at six, and Julia never left it before six. She had a key, and other keys that could open the secret places of Messrs. Jimson & Stent. She knew all the tricks and turns of the game of selling and letting houses, how to apply the word bijou to some little stuffy box of a place, how to get the careless and confiding client to sign the back of a particular form, without letting him or her realize its conditions. People were such fools. They just grabbed a pen and scribbled a signature. And afterwards you drew a sort of perpetual fee from them largely for doing nothing. Mr. Jimson was an adept, so bright and oily, and always playing with that little gold cross.
But Julia had her fingers on Mr. Jimson’s collar. She felt rather sure about her grip, and that Mr. Jimson himself was uncomfortably sure about it. He was afraid of her, and that was all to the good.
One day toward the end of May she sat on late at the office and with a purpose. She had every appearance of being busy at her desk. She remained there until the spectacled devotion of her under-clerk simpered itself out into the street. She despised men who simpered. Mr. Jimson was still in his private room and she could hear the rustling of paper and his rhythmical sniffings. Her employer suffered from hay-fever.
She heard him get up out of his chair and come toward the door. She was ready for her crisis, and she was ready to handle it as she handled an imaginary car, with a feeling of tension and swift audacity. A voice in her said, “Now.”
Mr. Jimson came round the door and perked at her.
“What, still here, Miss Marwood!”
Her elbows were resting on the desk.
“Yes. May I have a few words with you, Mr. Jimson.”
Her employer twitched his eyebrows and showed the sudden restiveness of a man shy of such occasions.
“Rather late, Miss Marwood.”
“It won’t take three minutes. I should like to suggest that I have been in this office four years.”
Jimson looked at her slantwise.
“Not satisfied with the conditions, Miss Marwood?”
“That is so.”
“Your salary—”
She spoke distinctly and deliberately with her steady glance holding him as to the end of a string.
“It is not a question of salary. I want an interest in the business. I have made it worth while.”
Mr. Jimson pirouetted. He diverged toward the door, came back, and looked at her with an air of protest. His lips seemed about to utter the accusation—“A mere flapper,” but he did not utter it. He began to finger the gold cross on his watch chain, a sign of inward agitation.
“Really, Miss Marwood, really!”
She remained steadily gazing.
“Yes, really. It is a perfectly serious proposition. I’m worth it.”
Mr. Jimson closed the inner door.
“Do you mean to propose to me—?”
“A partnership. My name need not appear for a while.”
“But my dear young lady! Why—your father—”
She sat very still and gazed. Her glance seemed to say, “Yes, but you were not afraid of my father, and you are afraid of me. My father belonged to another generation. I know things. I’m something more than a flapper.”
She lowered her glance for a moment.
“I have been offered another post. It is a very good post, but I’m interested in this business. I know it pretty thoroughly.”
His annoyance was obvious.
“Quite out of the question. Really, Miss Marwood—”
“Why should it be?”
“I don’t require a partner.”
She smiled very faintly.
“Only a clerk,—someone without responsibility? But I am rather responsible. Besides—”
Her pause was challenging. It held him at the pistol-point.
“Besi
des, I know all the ins and outs of this office.”
He understood just what she meant. He was embarrassed, and very much irritated; he did not want to share his authority with a junior, and especially so when that junior happened to be a girl. And yet in many ways her proposal was reasonable; she was a very unusual young woman; she had tact, determination; she could be almost exasperatingly efficient.
He removed his pince-nez and polished them.
“You seem to be very serious, Miss Marwood.”
“I am.”
“But, one moment, at your age—there are other things to consider. Young women change their minds. Other things happen.”
“Just what things?”
“Marriage.”
She answered him decisively.
“I am not struck on marriage. I prefer to be independent. I am ready to agree not to marry.”
His mouth drooped.
“My dear young lady! Really—!”
“Is that so very surprising? I have seen something of marriage. Now, what about it?”
He readjusted his pince-nez. He wanted to temporize, clutch something that should ward off her attack. Yes, she was very useful, and she knew a great deal, a great deal too much. Ah,—that was it. Capital! He had her. He could take refuge behind her lack of capital.
He said, “One moment. Were I to take a partner I should expect that partner to put a substantial sum into the business.”
“How much?”
“At least—a thousand pounds.”
“That’s your figure?”
“Yes.”
He smirked to himself. Certainly she owned No. 53 Spellthorn Terrace, but he believed it to be mortgaged, and the house could not be worth more than four hundred to her. Marwood might have left an odd hundred or two, but the figure he had quoted ought to suppress her enthusiasm.
She was tapping her lower lip with the end of a pencil.
“That’s serious business, is it, Mr. Jimson?”
“Certainly.”
“A thousand pounds down, for how much?”
He fidgeted.
“A fifth share.”
“Not quite good enough. A quarter for three years, and after that—a third. And if the business expands—”
His little face assumed an embarrassed grin.
“Aren’t you a little previous, Miss Marwood?”
She put down the pencil.
“I’ll think it over. I shall be able to let you know in a month or so.”
And then she gave him a warning look.
“I’m quite serious. I should like you to realize that.”
4
After supper she sat out in the garden and reviewed the field of battle. Harry was busy with the grass shears, and the snip-snip of them reminded her of Mr. Jimson’s voice.
Yes, she supposed that she had startled Mr. Jimson, and he had begun by protesting as she had heard him protesting in the office to some client, “It can’t be done, madam; quite impossible,” but Julia knew that her employer’s protests had a way of melting like mist. He was a weak and talkative little man. Obviously he had counted on impressing her by stipulating that she should bring a thousand pounds into the business.
She faced the realities; she could not expect to obtain a share in the business without paying for it, and to her a thousand pounds represented a formidable sum. She could mortgage No. 53, but she did not suppose that she could count on getting more than five hundred on a mortgage. Meanwhile,—yes—meanwhile she would keep Mr. Jimson under observation. He was a tricky little person and she did not mean him to play tricks with her. She could make it dashed uncomfortable for him should he attempt to be circuitous.
Her purpose had other possibilities. Obviously, were she to become a partner she would be able to make a place for Harry at Martagon Terrace. She would remove the young man with the spectacles and introduce her brother. He was a bright child, and together they would possess themselves in time of the whole concern, expand it and modernize it.
But how could she put her hands on an additional five hundred pounds? Borrow it from the bank and pay eight per cent, should they consent to loan it to her? Or borrow from a friend? And what friend?
She thought of Scarsdale. He was a man of some position, and of some substance, or at least she supposed so, and he was a little touched.
And suddenly she became aware of Harry standing in front of her with the shears in one hand.
“Where’s the ghost, Ju?”
She smiled at him. Certainly she had been staring hard and far into the future.
Chapter Ten
On two successive mornings Scarsdale’s post mingled pain with pleasure. Mr. Butcher of The Babbler returned the first of the bright and snappy articles Scarsdale had submitted to him, it being obvious to Mr. Butcher that Scarsdale was not made for the writing of bright and snappy articles, but as a sop he sent Scarsdale three books to review. A week previously Scarsdale had posted a short story to the editor of Cheapside, and a few mornings following it came back to him with the editor’s regrets.
Scarsdale too felt regrets, and a little, unpleasant squirm of discouragement, but the moment of depression did not last. Your lover, and especially your romantic lover, is a flamboyant person, and Scarsdale was still full of the war’s inflation. It was the year of the boom, and an extravagant and adventurous restlessness vexed the soul of the multitude, and Scarsdale had become one of the multitude. Yes, much more so than he knew. For even the most separative of men cannot be pushed into the crowd and kept there for a number of years without absorbing some of the crowd’s mentality.
Scarsdale was writing a novel. The idea had come to him on the top of a bus, and it was of the same colour as the bus. It was to be a novel about the war, very sanguinary and muddy, and rather rhetorical. Scarsdale did not realize that his attitude to life had become rhetorical. Also, he had reviewed many novels, and had written—in his thirties—two very bad ones that still lay derelict in a bottom drawer. But he was full of his idea, and still more full of his post-war excitement, and for seven successive nights he had been sitting up till twelve o’clock putting his mind and his blood on paper. It pleased him, extravagantly so. The first chapter had the air of challenging the whole of civilization. Someone wept in it, and someone saw a son off at Victoria, and someone else had a head blown skywards like a star out of a Roman candle. The verve of the inspiration astonished Scarsdale. He went about thinking that he had discovered a great artist.
Miss Gall, creeping up carefully to bed at half-past ten, saw the light under Scarsdale’s door and was troubled about the cost of electricity. Life in Canonbury Square had to be measured out in thimblesful. And yet she was comforted. Mr. Scarsdale was very busy, and it was part of her daily prayer that her perfect patron should continue to be busy. She depended on it. The first floor remained unlet, and her margin was a fine line.
So, Scarsdale being full of the froth of his creation, was in a mood to shrug off Mr. Butcher and the editor of Cheapside. Those fellows could wait. After all there was no need for him to do pot-boiling, or to run up and down Fleet Street chattering brightly. He could do bigger things; he had life in him, humanity, the war, and the face of Julia Marwood. This novel of his was going to be a revelation, the lifting of a veil. He would teach England how to remember the war and to realize it. Almost he had a “cause”.
Carrying such secret lamps about with him, as lover and creator, he appeared to bear with him into the stuffy gloom of the offices of Messrs. Morley & Taggart an air of mystery. Almost he was the gaunt masquerader in plumed hat and Spanish cloak, gliding up narrow stairs and along dark passages. Another man seemed to look out of the eyes of Spenser Scarsdale, some whimsical and sombre grandee strolling disguised. Taggart might be gruff; Taggart might reverberate, but in Scarsdale’s eyes there would be a little sheen of mystery and compassion.
Nor was Taggart unaware of these rustlings. Dyspepsia and worry were making him acutely aware of all interruptions and dish
armonies, banging doors, the way people wasted paper, Scarsdale’s air of princeliness in disguise. That was how it affected Taggart. There was something funny and mysterious about Scarsdale, a sober elation, a loose-limbed yet restrained swagger. It annoyed Mr. Taggart, especially when both his medicine and his business were bitter. At night he said things to his wife.
“Can’t make the fellow out. Makes you think of an old fool poet floating about with a harp and a laurel wreath. The way he smiles at you—too.”
Yes, Scarsdale seemed full of some secret, inward glow. He was always smiling a shimmery kind of smile. He spoke quite gently to Taggart when Taggart growled irritably. It was exasperating. With business going to the dogs a man ought to drift about a grizzled dreamy demi-god in trousers.
Mr. Taggart munched charcoal biscuits. He glowered upon Scarsdale. He asked himself half a dozen times a day why had he been such a fool as to take Scarsdale back into the office. The fellow was no use; he was not wanted. He did not appear to realize that he was on the edge of unemployment, and that the circulation of Sabbath was sinking steadily. He had done nothing to help this moribund journal to survive by imparting to its pages a little brightness. Nobody laughed in the office of Messrs. Morley & Taggart, and that was the trouble. You could not edit a journal on charcoal biscuits, and Taggart, realizing his tiredness, had hoped to find in the returned soldier someone who had laughter and the audacity of laughter.
He had been disappointed. Scarsdale was no damned use, and all Taggart’s irritations began to crystallize about the person of Scarsdale. He disliked everything about Scarsdale, the way he dressed, the way he walked, his smile, his voice, his big nose, and his dreamy eyes. He raged inwardly against the man. He began to collect and cherish the material for an explosion.
And then, one morning, when there was thunder in the air, and Taggart’s room was insufferably airless and stuffy, Scarsdale allowed it to be known that he was writing a novel. He made the confession with an air of mystery and self-consciousness, almost like a shy man letting it be known that he was in love. Also, he was just a little sententious about it.
Old Wine and New Page 11
