On the Friday he wrapped his novel “Blood and Iron” in two new sheets of brown paper. He had bought them purposely at a shop in Upper Street so that the book should make a neat and self-respecting appearance at the doors of Messrs. Shelby & Drake. He had pinned a personal letter to Shelby on the title page.
“Dear Mr. Shelby,
“Here is the book. I hope and believe that you will like it.
“Yours truly,
“Spenser Scarsdale.”
He did not post the parcel. He delivered it in person at the house of Messrs. Shelby & Drake in Marietta Street, Covent Garden. It was received in the inquiry office by a bored little girl, who appeared to have a cold in the head.
“What name?”
“Scarsdale.”
“Spell it, please.”
Scarsdale spelt it, and she gave him a receipt for the parcel. He pointed out to her the name of Shelby upon the neat white label.
“You will see that this Mr. Shelby gets this at once. A personal affair. He expects it.”
The flapper blew her nose.
“I’ll have it sent up to Mr. Shelby’s secretary.”
“Thank you.”
Out again in Marietta Street it occurred to him that he ought to have seen Mr. Shelby in person. Should he go back and ask for an interview with the publisher? He hesitated; he retraced his steps, but when he found himself again on the publisher’s doorstep his self-confidence failed him. Mr. Shelby was a busy man, and busy men are best left alone. They do not bless the fussy people who push in and seek interviews. Scarsdale’s hat felt tight on his head, and he removed it, and glancing at the leather band of the lining he realized that he had been perspiring. Yes, one should not interview an important personage with a damp and anxious forehead. Scarsdale put on his hat and walked away.
On the Sunday he held himself in leash, and no bell rang at No. 53 Spellthorn Terrace. Julia was spared the impatience of an exclamatory, “Damn”. Scarsdale went to Hampstead Heath, and was one of the crowd, and yet very much apart from it. He sat on the grass under a young birch tree, and ate a banana and two buns. It was a dry and sticky meal, but he was adhering to a considered purpose. He would not go again to Spellthorn Terrace until his novel had been accepted, and he could meet his Julia, carrying the trophy in his hands. He wanted to impress Julia; he wanted to shine and to blow a romantic trumpet. Triumphant love could not propose marriage on a banana and two buns.
But during the week that followed an unhappy restlessness possessed him. He walked and walked. His long legs seemed in universal motion like the legs of a mechanical figure wound up and unable to run itself down. He did not write a line. Miss Gall observed his restlessness, and was troubled by it, and found it necessary to take another pair of Mr. Scarsdale’s shoes to the repairing shop in the Essex Road. She would cast little anxious glances at him as she laid the table or came in with the tray.
“Gentlemen don’t like to be fussed.”
One morning she heard him whistling in his bedroom. He was giving the world and himself selections from “Tales of Hofmann”, and though he did not whistle very well, Miss Gall felt relieved. The barometer was set at fair, and the sun shining. After breakfast she watched him set out, smoking a pipe, and swinging a stick. He disappeared down the square.
It was one of his good mornings, whereas yesterday had been a day of dejection and of strange lethargy. That little god Mr. Shelby sat enthroned in the heavens, and it seemed to Scarsdale that he had a benignant face and approving eyes. Hope chirped with the sparrows in Highbury Fields. The little god was reading his novel, or perhaps he had already read his novel, and was sitting down to dictate an enthusiastic letter.
“Dear Mr. Scarsdale, I have been much impressed by ‘Blood and Iron’. I think it is a remarkable piece of work. We should like to publish it. Perhaps you will call on me, and we can discuss terms—”
For a whole summer day Scarsdale was the optimist. The world seemed to him a good world. He liked the faces of the people in the streets; he liked the noise of the traffic. Life was not solitary, shabby and sad.
2
Julia Marwood’s desk had enlarged itself. It stood on the right of the door as you entered the office, and being new and well polished and with all its accessories crisply in order it created a good impression. For Mr. Jimson, after the first surrender, had allowed his junior partner to introduce other amenities. Mr. Jimson’s office had, like his personal outlook on life, grown rather careless and frowsy, but Julia, being young, understood the importance of appearances. She had had new linoleum put down, and she had scrapped the shabby old wire blinds and replaced them with white muslin screens fastened to green rods. The walls had been redistempered a soft buff colour. Thomson the clerk was brought under observation and control. He had a liking for bright pink ties and blue collars, and boots that were too loudly yellow. Julia took Thomson in hand.
“You will wear white collars and a black tie.”
He obeyed her. He was a sheepish young man. If his taste had gone astray he blushed for it when he found that Miss Marwood was offended.
Julia herself wore black, with buttons of cerise. She sat there sheathed in the sleekness of her young authority. She manicured her hands, and her bobbed head had a richness and a gloss. Her person exhaled a faint, sweet perfume.
From her desk she had a view of this Chelsea street. The muslin blinds softened it without blotting out the detail. On the other side of the street two little Georgian houses with white doors and fanlights stood stiffly shoulder to shoulder between a shop that sold antiques and the office of a coal-merchant. Two young plane trees, planted on the edge of the broad pavement fronting the terrace, enclosed the scene like the wings of a stage.
Julia was so placed that she could get a glimpse of the firm’s clients before they entered. She liked to be prepared, though nothing very unusual crossed the office threshold. There were the fussy gentlewomen with vanity-bags and small dogs. It was astonishing to Julia how many women traversed life with small dogs attached to them. She was very much on the alert when dealing with the owners of Pekingese. Experience had taught her that these ladies knew how to spin a coin.
The male was not a very frequent visitor, and when he did arrive he was unexciting. He was prone to wear a neat grey soft hat, and a black overcoat in winter. His trousers were what Julia described as “bags”. He attended to business. He read things carefully before affixing a signature. He looked at her as though questioning her age and her capacity.
August brought dullness. She sat at her desk tapping her chin with a pencil, and contemplating the fact that she had had no holiday. She had had no official holiday for four years. She yawned faintly. And then something slid into view beyond the muslin blinds, a streak of vivid redness. It came to rest at the edge of the pavement. Bits of it glittered.
Instantly she was interested. The long, low, rakish two-seater was so new and so unexpected. She saw a man get out of the car; he too was long and new; and loose and casual in his movements. His legs emerged before the rest of him, and showed to Julia fawn-coloured stockings and plus fours. His garters had red tassels. He was rather large. He had one of those round, juvenile faces that float through life with a kind of surprised and whimsical smile. His eyes were very blue.
He stood on the pavement and stared at the fascia board above Mr. Jimson’s office. He waggled his hands in the pockets of his brown knickers. He crossed the pavement with the casual and easy slouch of the young man who was at ease with himself and the world. And then Julia realized that he was heading for Mr. Jimson’s door.
She was conscious of sudden excitement. She moistened her lips and drew her chair in closer to the desk. She rested her elbows on the desk, and glanced at her finger-nails.
He entered. His face wore that half-impudent, half-deprecating smile. He glanced at Thomson the clerk, and then his blue eyes discovered Julia and remained with her. He closed the door and removed his hat.
“Excuse me, you let fl
ats?”
His voice had a pleasant laziness. She looked at him and saw the whole of him in one swift, comprehensive glance. Her eyes had been dull, but now they filled with little burrs of light. He excited her. She did not ask why or how.
She said, “Please sit down.”
He sat down! he looked at her; he placed his hat on her desk; he smiled. The whole of him seemed to smile; even his tweeds smelt of the sun on the heather. She noticed that his big hands were a little grimed, for they were the hands of a man who amused himself with motor-cars.
“I want a flat.”
“What sort of flat?”
“O, not quite any sort of old thing. Bit unusual. I want a flat with a garage.”
She observed him deeply.
“A garage? But—you know—”
“Quite so. I want room for three cars.”
She pouted at him.
“Three! Well,—really—Would it do, if—?”
“Something approximate.”
“What about three lock-ups in a mews? If they were not too far off?”
“Quite O.K.”
She reached for a list and a ledger, but even while her eyes were lowered and she was running a finger down the list she was acutely aware of him and his suddenness. He sat quite still, looking at the top of her head; there was something easy and unfretful about him, and yet his very stillness disturbed her.
“Things are rather difficult just at present.”
“Yes,—I know. Same with cars.”
“What sort of price do you wish to pay?”
“Well, I’m rather vague. I want your advice.”
“We have nothing under a hundred and twenty, except—of course—”
She raised her eyes to his.
“Places that would be no use to you.”
He smiled at her. She attracted him just as he attracted her.
“O, do I look like that! Well, something about a hundred and fifty.”
“Yes, we have two or three on our list. They are not service flats.”
“Doesn’t matter. Besides I don’t want anything too big. I’m a bachelor.”
She felt herself flush, though the flush did not show on her firm, clear skin. She filled in three orders to view.
“O, by the way, what name?”
“Flood.”
“Initials?”
“Thomas.”
She wrote down “Thomas Flood, Esq.”, and then handed him the pink slips.
“Supposing you go and look at these flats. If you find anything to suit you, we can take up the garage question. O, by the way, I haven’t your address.”
“Staying at my club. Oxford and Cambridge. That will find me.”
“Thank you.”
He rose and picked up his hat.
“I’ll come back here and report. Thanks so much.”
“It’s our job, you know.”
He smiled, and giving her a friendly nod, went out with his easy, loping slouch. She watched him through the muslin blind. She saw him insert himself into one of the bucket seats, and drive away. The red machine seemed to shoot suddenly out of her field of vision. She wondered whether he would come back. Most certainly she wanted him to come back.
3
The postman delivered the parcel at No. 24A Canonbury Square while Scarsdale was out walking. Miss Gall took the parcel in and carried it upstairs and laid it on Scarsdale’s desk. A white label attached to the brown paper bore the name and address of Messrs. Shelby & Drake.
Miss Gall rubbed her long, thin hands together, and held her head on one side. She could assume that the parcel contained the typescript of Mr. Scarsdale’s book, and that it had been returned to him by the publishers. And she thought, “Poor man! As though anyone would pay him for that!” She was beginning to be very disturbed about Mr. Scarsdale.
Scarsdale found the brown-paper parcel lying there when he came in to tea, and suddenly he went cold. A kind of numbness seemed to spread from his heart. He cut the string with a penknife, and unfolded the brown paper, and his hands were trembling. He uncovered the title page of his novel—“Blood and Iron”.
An envelope lay on the title page with his name and address typed upon it. He still hoped as he extracted the letter that Shelby might have sent the book back for excisions and alterations. But the letter left him without the flicker of an illusion. It was kind but final.
Scarsdale laid it on the table. He felt an emptiness at the pit of his stomach. He took the typescript into his hands; yes, it had been read, for some of the pages were dog-eared and crumpled. And suddenly he heard Miss Gall coming up the stairs with the tea-tray, and he pulled a drawer open and with shamed and concealing hands hurriedly hid the book away. When Miss Gall entered the room he was standing by the window, pretending to watch some children playing in the square.
Chapter Sixteen
The tea-tray had been carried off by Miss Gall, and Scarsdale’s thoughts and eyes fell into a stare. He sat at his desk, smoking his pipe, and looking at the little gilded ball and spike on the arbour in the garden. A hawker was trundling a barrow of pot flowers round the square, and his melancholy, old-world cry seemed to echo in the deep well of the past.
“All a’growin’, all a’blowin’.”
The sentimentalist in Scarsdale revived. Had a barrel organ begun playing in the square, his Sweet Nell of Old Drury mood would have strutted to music. After June came Julia, yes in spite of purblind publishers who could not appreciate a live, red-blooded book, and who were so desperately afraid of offending the public. He got upon his feet, the mild, highbrow hack protesting against the daily amble and the uncreative round. He would show these people! There were other publishers in London. And in imagination he ruffled his hat and cocked his sword under his soul’s coat-tails like the tail of an adventurous dog. He went forth posing as a romantic reality, he—one of those futile, nicely cultured people who sit in chairs and feel the mild glow of an aesthetic superiority. He was as pot-bound as the geraniums in the hawker’s barrow and he did not know it, and as yet no one had given the little pseudo-literary pot of him an adequate kick.
He made for Chelsea. He took a tram as far as Westminster Bridge, and walked along the embankment. He turned up Church Street. It was a serene, summer evening, with little flocculent clouds afloat in a mild, blue sky. He was going to sit at the feet of his Madonna of the Pear Blossom, and allow her to re-inspire him while he fixed his eyes on the figure of her youth. He would maintain a noble and a secret silence. Undoubtedly he had been posing before Julia Marwood; he had wanted to impress her, and his pose had to adapt itself to the changed situation. He could not appear before her as the author of a very notable novel, a novel that would be advertised as “great” by enthusiastic publishers, but he could appear before her feeling himself to be a secret Conrad in disguise. Almost he felt himself to be a Conrad in disguise, he,—who with a precise pen, had spent his life tickling other men’s creations, a Fleet Street highbrow who had always been afraid to admire anything too eagerly lest he should be found out.
He arrived at the end of Spellthorn Terrace. He had about another hundred yards to go when a car passed him like Apollo’s chariot. It carried both god and man, but Scarsdale paid no attention to it until he happened to realize that the car was stopping somewhere near the gate of No. 53. It was a red car, a rather presumptuous and young fellow-my-lad of a car, the kind of vehicle that said “Woosh” or “Prr-ump” to sesquipedalian people like Scarsdale. A young man in brown got out of it. He entered a gate, climbed steps, and stood outside a door. He had an air of being meant to be outside that particular door.
Scarsdale, drawing near on long, shy legs, discovered the reality. The car had stopped outside No. 53, and the young man was on Julia’s doorstep. He stood there, casually expectant, half-turned, waiting for the door to open.
Scarsdale’s long legs suddenly quickened their stride. All profile, he hurried past the gate of No. 53. An abrupt and self-conscious heat seemed to trick
le down his shoulders and loins. He felt that he had to get by and out of focus before that door opened. He did get by.
He seemed to hear voices.
“Hallo!”
“Yes, sure as fate. I say,—it’s a topping evening.”
Scarsdale walked fast. His neck was like a cast-iron rod; he could not look back, but at the end of Spellthorn Terrace a passage led to a small court or diverticulum, and Scarsdale inserted himself into the end of the passage. Like a man in a trench he peered over the top of a brick wall. He felt hot and uncomfortable, and absurdly ashamed of being a Peeping Tom, but peep he did.
The young man was still on the doorstep. He appeared to be waiting for someone, his hands in his pockets, youth self-possessed and in possession. Then, another figure joined his. They descended the steps together, passed out through the gate, and the young man closed it. They climbed into the car, the engine of which had been left running. There was the quickened reverberations of the “exhaust”, and the red machine came down past Scarsdale’s passage. He saw that the two in the car were looking at each other and smiling.
2
It was growing dusk when Scarsdale returned to Canonbury Square. He was tired and more than tired. He let himself into the house and closed the door gently, and went slowly up the dark stairs. Miss Gall had gone out, and he had a feeling for the house’s emptiness and its silence, and he stood on the landing and listened. He could hear nothing but the steady tick-tock of the grandfather clock in Miss Gall’s sitting-room below stairs, and in the silence the sound was like the beating of a heart.
He opened the door of his room. He saw the two windows strangely bright after the darkness of the stairs, and filled with the green silk of the sky above the roofs of the houses opposite. A little wisp of cloud glowed transiently, and he watched it fade to a smoky greyness. Something in him felt wounded.
Old Wine and New Page 17
