2
It was a May morning, and a Saturday, and on Saturdays and Sundays Mrs. Richmond allowed herself to breakfast at half-past eight. Saturday morning was given to the home; and rooms were turned out, ornaments cleaned, and floors scrubbed. She was very much the woman with the apron, sleeves rolled up, a blue and white handkerchief pinned over her dark hair.
But on Saturday mornings Mr. Scarsdale had to be turned out as well as the furniture, and on this particular May morning she had a comprehensive campaign in view when chairs and rugs and cushions were carried into the front garden and castigated and hung upon the privet bushes. It was her Spring festa, and she warned Scarsdale when she brought him his breakfast.
“Afraid I shall have to turn you out this morning.”
He looked frightened. It was as though in his innocence he thought that she was getting rid of him.
“You mean, I—?”
“Spring cleaning, or part of it. I am going to do this room. If you like you can take a chair out into the garden.”
For there was one corner of the small garden, which, when the leaves were out, had some claim to secrecy. An old cherry tree, a strange denizen, and still a cherry in spite of many loppings, threw a patch of shade, and privet bushes and the dark, glabrous green of a holly made a screen. The sun was shining, and Scarsdale, having lit his pipe, carried one of the kitchen chairs out into the garden, and sat down under the cherry tree.
He watched Mrs. Richmond open the window wide and loop back the lace curtains. The little room was a dark cellar in which the mysteries of her ritual were being performed. The front door stood open and he saw her appear at the top of the steps with two of the sitting-room chairs, one upturned upon the other. The sunlight touched her white arms.
He drew in his legs and removed his pipe from his mouth. Was she going to carry all that furniture out into the garden, and if so was he going to sit and watch her without offering to help? His impulse was to help. In Astey’s Row it was not necessary to stand too stiffly upon your dignity.
He got up.
“Can’t I be of some use?”
She placed the two chairs on the path. Yes, obviously he could be of some use if his attitude to the realities was sufficiently natural. She turned up a black sleeve that had slipped.
“There’s the sofa. I can’t manage it alone.”
He looked quite excited.
“Let me—”
Her dark eyes surveyed him.
“You had better take off your coat. It will get dusty.”
“Oh,—of course.”
He took off his coat, and she saw his right elbow showing through a hole in the shirt sleeve. He was unconscious of it, for he had forgotten it, but she made a mental note of the default. Meanwhile he had folded up his coat and balanced it on a privet bush, and was rolling up his shirt-sleeves. His forearms were white and lean, and marked with veins.
He smiled at her.
“Ought to have a green baize apron, oughtn’t I?”
She smiled back.
“Never mind.”
They went in and extracted the sofa, though she proved herself much more an adept in the handling of furniture than Scarsdale. He was apt to bump things, while trying to be meticulously careful. An armchair, and four other chairs followed the sofa. To Scarsdale it was most palpably an adventure.
“What happens next?”
“The carpet.”
“We get it out and beat it?”
“Yes, but the sofa and chairs have to be beaten first, and carried in and put at the end of the passage.”
He looked about him, but he did not see where the carpet was going to be beaten. There was nowhere to spread it. She explained.
“I put a line up between the cherry tree and that post.”
“And hang the carpet on it.”
“Yes.”
How admirably did she simplify life. He knocked out his pipe and put it in a trouser pocket. His trousers had a shininess.
“Can I beat the chairs?”
“You might. But first we’ll roll up the carpet and get it out. I’m going to scrub the floor.”
They went in and rolled up the carpet.
“Leave it in the passage. No, this side. That’s right.”
“I see. What do I beat the chairs with?”
She disappeared into the back room and returned with a cane beater.
“This.”
“Splendid.”
Scarsdale set to work on the chairs and the sofa, and as he knocked the dust out of them and saw it drift away in the sunlight, it occurred to him to wonder what Miss Gall would think were she to traverse Astey’s Row and see him beating furniture. Thwack, thwack, and the dust flew. Or the men who had known him in literary back-streets? Yes, they would say that poor old Scarsdale had come down in the world, and yet—after all—it was because he was doing the thing in public, and without the protection of a high, garden wall. Thwack, thwack. He was rather enjoying it. A passing male stood to watch him.
“Knocking the moth out, mate!”
Scarsdale nodded, and the man grinned at him, and continued upon his way, and his place was taken by half a dozen children. They mocked at this Elisha, though Scarsdale was not bald, and while ignoring them, he yet reflected that some of those thwacks might not have been wasted upon their little posteriors. Argumentum a posteriori. But the children, finding him a dull fellow, rushed on suddenly, screaming. Scarsdale’s arm began to ache a little; he was not used to such exercise. He felt hot, pleasantly and actively warm, and sitting down for half a minute on the chair under the cherry tree, he meditated. After all, this was not a bad spot, and for London, rich in trees and becoming increasingly green. The bole of the great plane was like a vast pipe spouting a cloud of green leaves.
From the front room came moist sounds, and the rattle of a bucket handle. Mrs. Richmond was at work, and every now and again her dark head and handsome face rose above the level of the window-sill. She retained her mystery for him even when she was scrubbing a floor.
But the sofa and the armchair remained to be beaten. He had been told to be more gentle with them because of the springs, and he rose and began a gentle tap-tap upon the upholstery. Mrs. Richmond, transferring herself and her kneeler to another part of the floor, knelt for a moment to watch him. The unusualness of him, and his obvious and happy absorption in that original part brought a little shimmer into her eyes.
She was about to resume her scrubbing and swabbing when she saw a man’s figure appear beyond the railings. The man paused at the gate. He stood with his hands in his trouser pockets, his bowler hat well back on his head. He was observing Scarsdale. And suddenly Mrs. Richmond let her head sink below the level of the window-sill. She sat sideways, supporting herself on one arm. She listened.
3
Someone was watching Scarsdale from the gate, a shortish, thick-set man in navy blue who wore his bowler hat pressed down upon his ears. The sub-conscious in Scarsdale reacted to that scrutiny, he glanced over his shoulder and met the man’s eyes. They were curious eyes, sleepy, dissipated and edged with insolence. They regarded Scarsdale with cynical hostility. He stood there with his feet apart, and his fists bulging out his trouser pockets; his eyes stared.
He had nothing to say, and Scarsdale resumed his beating of the sofa. He supposed that this impertinent and unpleasant-looking fellow would pass away, especially if no notice were taken of him, and Scarsdale kept his back to the gate, but he had a feeling that the man was there. After giving about twenty taps to the sofa, curiosity made him turn his head.
The man had not moved. He was in exactly the same position as before, and in exactly the same attitude. And Scarsdale was annoyed. He did not like the look of the fellow, and he did not like the way the fellow looked at him. What the devil did the chap mean by standing there and staring!
He said, “Good morning, sir. Nice morning for loitering.”
The man at the gate did not respond to Scarsdale’s irony. He cont
inued to stare. His sallowness was both impassive and challenging, and Scarsdale was beginning to feel more seriously annoyed. Was it possible that the fellow was behaving like this on purpose?
He turned his back on him and proceeded to deal with the armchair. He whacked it with more energy than was necessary. Dust flew, and suddenly he heard a queer ventral squawk of laughter, one cawing note. He faced about sharply. He saw the man moving off in the direction of the Canonbury Road. Like many shortish men he lifted his heels when he walked; he had a haunchy, oily swagger, and Scarsdale watched him go. He felt both relieved, and angry, and a little puzzled.
“Plenty of damned fools in the world.”
For it did occur to him that the man in navy blue had discovered in Mrs. Richmond’s garden a figure of fun, a long, lanky, studious person busy in his shirt-sleeves with a cane carpet-beater. His activity knew a moment’s pause. He stood with the end of the carpet-beater resting on the back of the chair; his eyes looked through and beyond the magenta coloured upholstery. If he happened to be a figure of fun, did it matter? Did a little, oily, insolent cad like that fellow in a bowler—?
“Are you ready for the carpet?”
He came to life with a little, startled smile. Mrs. Richmond was on the steps. She looked pleasantly warm and alive; there was a fragrance about her, an inevitableness. Her blue and white handkerchief had slipped back and lay about her throat and neck. Her movements had an easy, liquid rightness.
He smiled.
“This job seems to amuse people.”
She put into words the thing he had said to himself.
“Plenty of fools in the world. I have brought the line.”
She threw him one end of it; he went to fasten it to the cherry tree while she carried her end to the blue post near a lilac bush. Each made an end fast, and to Scarsdale the rope became a suggestive link between them. Almost he felt that he could send her a message along that line. A little, pleasant, secret tremor passed through him. He was ready to forget the cad in the bowler hat.
“How’s that?”
“Just right.”
He saw her with her arms still up, and her head thrown back. The attitude pleased him. He thought how good she was to look at, and he was caught staring. He was aware of a sudden seriousness, a something about her face, and then she smiled.
“I—am—making use of you.”
“Not at all. I’m enjoying it.”
She stood for a moment, readjusting her handkerchief. She appeared, deliberate,—thoughtful.
“Are you going to do the carpet?”
“Of course!”
They went in for the carpet, and carried out the roll, and slung it on the line. Its pattern was blurred and worn, it had been turned; the grey of the fabric showed where feet had passed to and from the door. Scarsdale picked up his beater, and gave it a tentative rap. A cloud of dust flew.
She said, “One ought to have a Hoover. So much more practical.”
He did not know what a “Hoover” was.
“What is a Hoover?”
She looked at him with an air of quiet amusement.
“An electric sweeper. Expensive. Besides we’re not wired.”
He nodded his head.
“O,—that’s it. I see. Well,—I’ll deputise for the Hoover,” and he gave the carpet a cheerful but pensive smack.
4
Scarsdale did not go out for his lunch, for from Mrs. Richmond’s air of purposefulness he assumed that this business of spring cleaning was to continue during the day. He remained there to help her in this good deed, and for his lunch she gave him bread and cheese and a cup of tea, and he carried a small tray out into the garden and sat under the cherry tree. The clothes-line was still attached to the blue post by the lilac bush, and though the lilac had no blossom, some of the chestnut trees by the old New River had lit their candles of white wax. Sunlight sifting through the foliage of the cherry tree, made a pattering of light and shadow on the path. Spring, lilac-time, and into Scarsdale’s head drifted one of Schubert’s songs.
Assuredly, it had been a day of adventure, and as he ate his bread and cheese he sat and reflected that adventure was to be found in a little patch of garden in Astey’s Row, with a carpet-beater to be wielded instead of a sword. And was a carpet-beater more symbolical, and also more essential to the hand of man, than was the sword? He understood that operations were to be continued. His bedroom was to be attacked, and the soul of him consented.
It consented until six in the evening. He helped to carry things down and to carry them up again. He was bidden to remove all his books into the lower passage, and to clap them together like cymbals, and to dust their tops. He beat his bedroom carpet on the line between the blue post and the cherry tree, and as the dust departed and was blessed by the sunlight, he felt that the day was sacred to woman. Her presence pervaded it. She remained mysterious even in the midst of her simple activities.
About six o’clock she met him on the stairs. He was ascending with a last pile of books. She carried a dust-pan and brush.
“That’s the last lot?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes seemed to express some strange, inward satisfaction.
“I think we’ve done enough.”
He stood aside to let her pass.
“You must be tired?”
Tired? No, she was not tired, at least—not so tired as he was, and as she went down the stairs she spoke of supper. She had an air of suggesting that they had earned their supper, and that the preparing of it would be her concern and her pleasure. She paused at the foot of the stairs; he had remained with the pile of books slanting against his chest, her voice came up to him. She said, that if he did not mind he could have supper with her in the kitchen; it would save time, and the carrying of things into the sitting-room. Did he mind? He minded so much, and with so surprising a sincerity, that the topmost book slipped from the pile and fell to the floor.
“No, very good of you. I shan’t be intruding?”
The falling of that book seemed to have a sudden significance for her. It was like Newton’s apple, demonstrating to her how the force of gravity exerted itself up above there on the first floor.
“I shan’t be ready just yet.”
She understood him to say that he had to put his books in order, and that he was going to change his clothes. His remarks had a naïveté, a sort of boyishness, and she smiled and passed on into the kitchen where Thomas the cat had remained entrenched against all the upheavals of the day. She put the dust-pan and brush away, and bent down to caress the cat, who got up, and with tail erect, rubbed himself against her. She too had breathed in more than dust. The day had been an unexpectedness, a kind of wide-eyed, laughing innocence. She went and washed herself at the sink, face, throat, arms and hands; she looked to her hair, using the small mirror that hung on the scullery door.
Meanwhile, the man was keeping very quiet. He had put his books away; he was sitting on his bed, and looking as though he too were some obscure astronomer meditating upon the appearance of a strange planet. His face had a haggard, tired gentleness, and presently he got up and opened drawers and wardrobe, and became busy. He changed his shirt and collar. Had he been going to dine at Claridge’s the occasion could not have been more exalted.
5
The bell rang. It was growing dusk, and their eyes met across the kitchen table. They had been talking, and in talking to her Scarsdale had found strange, self-revelations emerging, for somehow she seemed to have made him talk about things in a way that was new to him, and yet she herself had said so little.
She looked at him. Her eyes had a wideness. It was as though they reflected both him and some imminent invasion, some otherness from the outer world. She rose.
“Who’s that?”
He pushed his chair back.
“Shall I go?”
“No, I’ll see.”
There was deliberation in her movements. She went out, closing the door after her. She opened the
front door, and then Scarsdale heard voices. He had struck a match to relight his pipe, but a moment later he had blown out the match. He was listening. These two voices were not happy together, and one of them was a man’s. He listened. It struck him that the man’s voice was turgid and threatening; the sort of ugly and menacing voice that can be heard outside a public house when some alcoholic row is brewing.
He laid his unlit pipe on the table, and suddenly he heard Mrs. Richmond calling him.
“Mr. Scarsdale,—Mr. Scarsdale.”
He got up quickly and opened the door. He found himself close to her in the half darkness of the passage.
“Mr. Scarsdale,—would you see that man outside the gate.”
That was all. She brushed past him and entering the kitchen, she half closed the door, and sitting down, waited upon this strange occasion. She heard Scarsdale’s voice, and the sound of a scuffle, and it appeared to her that the sound diminished in the direction of the garden gate. She drew a deep breath and remained very still.
A few seconds later she heard the front door closed. Scarsdale came down the passage and into the kitchen, looking pleased and surprised. It was too dark for him to see his face distinctly, but obviously the man in the bowler hat and the navy blue suit had been extruded.
She said, “I’m so sorry. You managed—?”
There was a touch of gaiety in his voice. It was as though he had found the accomplishing of such a labor astonishingly good.
“I settled him. He was rather drunk. I’m awfully glad I was here.”
“So am I. Drunken little beast.”
She rose and taking a box of matches from the mantelpiece, seemed about to light the gas, but she did not light it. She sat down again in her chair.
“I have had trouble with him before. A friend of my dead husband’s. He’s a steward on a ship. Little blackguard.”
Old Wine and New Page 25
