He was thankful for the sound of heavily retreating footsteps, and then a pattering sound which must be Celia coming downstairs “like the rush of wings,” thought Dicky, as angelically fatuous as any bewhiskered young man of the early sixties had he had the good fortune to listen to his inamorata on the ’phone. And then the stabbing, intoxicating thrill of Celia’s voice saying “Hullo” in an indifferent and rather weary tone, and changing when he spoke to an alert, surprised, and rather frightened “Hullo!” And then a guarded “Just hold on a minute,” and the sound of a door softly closed.
“What is it?” said Celia’s voice, now quite cool again and rather severe.
But she wouldn’t have needed to close that door if she had intended only to be severe. So Dicky said unabashed, “When are you coming to see me?”
“I don’t think I can.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I don’t know. After last time.”
“Did I offend you last time?”
“You know you didn’t.”
“Then why can’t you come to see me?”
“I don’t think it’s quite playing the game. Do you?”
“I am not English. I have not your holy veneration for the game. I want you. And you are being hypocritical. Why don’t you say that you are afraid of what Ronny will say?”
“I’m not. That’s just where you’re wrong about him. He wouldn’t say anything. He lets me be absolutely free. He hasn’t even mentioned you since that night, and for all he knows I might have been going on seeing you every day.”
“Then why haven’t you?”
“Dicky, you’re impossible. If you were trusted like that wouldn’t it make you feel rather uncomfortable?”
“Not a bit. People haven’t any right to trust one so that it feels uncomfortable. If they will thrust their beastly trust on me, then I’d see they don’t do it for nothing, that’s all. Besides, since he trusts you to see me, am I to assume that you don’t trust yourself? This admission, Celia, is dangerously flattering. Celia, listen to me. I promise you I will not be impertinent, but purely poetical. Do you know that spring is here? Spring, that the poets celebrate, and——”
“Who are you? “came in an unknown voice.
“A lover.”
“What? Are you Kensington double one three——”
“No, damn you, I am not Kensington double one three. Get off the line. Spring, Celia, did you hear? I have already counted three girls with straw hats. I mean to write to The Times about it before they get in with their cuckoos. The bank at the end of the road is being painted, the whipping-top season has begun on all the best pavements, and the caretakers are beating carpets in the back-yards. Can you alone resist this appeal to our primeval instincts? Remember that ‘In the spring a young man’s fancy——’”
“Look here, Exchange, you’ve put me on to someone who does nothing but sing foxtrots down the ’phone. I want Kensington double one——”
“My good sir, that may be a foxtrot tune but the words are Tennyson. Your education at Borstal seems to have stopped short at the Great Victorians. Celia, for God’s sake, are you there?”
“Yes. I wish he’d get off our line. I want to hear about spring in Rainbow Road.”
“Come and see it then.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps if——”
“I want double one three Ken——”
“Go to hell!”
“I will not go to hell. I want double one——”
“You are interrupting a conversation of the most delicate and private nature. I am asking a lady to marry me.”
“Do you want to go on? “came a sudden squeak.
“Of course I do. Are you listening in too? I call it highly indel——”
“Time’s up. Two more pennies if you want to go on.”
“Is that the Exchange? I want Kensington double one——
“Exchange, don’t cut me off. I haven’t had my three minutes. This ass has been butting in all the time. Give him his number while I find my pennies. Damn ’em, where are they?”
By the time he had found them he was cut off. By the time he had tried again the number was engaged. He flung himself out of the call-box and out of the shop and kicked a top into the gutter. It was raining. There was a hard grey light over the houses and a cruel wind that blew the chimney-smoke into thin and tortured shapes. A girl came towards him with a cold blue nose and wisps of straight hair blown out from under her hat.” That is how I would paint the Primavera,” he thought.” All artists lie about the spring, which is of all seasons the shrewdest and most sordid.”
He felt a pitiful desire to cry. Not because Celia would not come and see him—good God, no ; he did not care now whether she came or not. She was going to marry Ronny and become chill and common-place all through, and his passionate dream would be nothing but an episode in both their lives. Then why should it have happened? “Where does it all lead to?” he asked, and wondered bitterly if it had only been sent to him for the good of his work. If only one knew what was the most important thing and could hang on to that.
Old Mo’s shop-window across the street looked like a magpie’s hoard. He was attracted across to it and stood staring down at the jumble of old jewellery and china and enamelled watches and high Spanish combs and massive inlaid tea-caddies and silver spoons. It looked the perfect pawnshop, but everything was good and by no means cheap.
He saw a small painted bottle with a rose crystal stopper which would make a pretty brooch for Celia either with her pastel blue or her lavender frock. He went in and asked the price and it was more than he could afford. But it would be that even if it were half a crown. It was a Chinese snuff bottle, Mr. Morris told him, and showed him how the stopper had a minute flat spoon attached to it. The bottle was of opaque white soapstone, and there was some Chinese writing on one side, and on the other a little scene of some figures going over a bridge and a snow mountain in the distance.
He must bring Celia to look at it; she would love that scene, especially the bridge which went up in a high curve like a rainbow. The moment he thought that, he knew he must get the bottle whatever it cost ; it was their bridge, the rainbow bridge to good fortune that they had talked of together. He looked into the scene as into a magic mirror and saw it transformed, saw himself astride on the rainbow bridge and the cities of the world at his feet.
He went out of the shop with the bottle in his pocket, but the immediate result of it was depression, for there was so little else left in his pocket and he did not know how he would hang on till next month ; and if Celia did not come and see him, how could he give her the bottle? and if she did, wasn’t it a silly, useless sort of present to give her? What would she do with a snuff bottle? He would like to give her something exquisitely appropriate ; perhaps if he had it filled with scent—— But no, that was not right either. He would keep it until he could think of the perfect use for it, and until the perfect moment came to give it. “I may wait for ever,” he thought despondently.
He stood on the kerb and watched a bus go by and wondered if he should get on it and go to Wanstead, for Wanstead was a new country, he had no idea what he might find there, and on the seat beside him there might be a funny little girl with a red tam-o’-shanter and a roguish eye and he would take her to the pictures, and she would restore his belief in his attractions, possibly even in his genius. But it was much more likely that he would go all the way to Wanstead and back and encounter nobody but workmen who puffed vile tobacco smoke in his face, and haughty ladies who got out at Harrods. And it would probably come to one and tenpence both ways, which was a lot to spend on the mere chance of an adventure. “For nothing happens, nothing ever happens—that is the tragedy of my life,” said Dicky to himself.
He saw that fellow down the road come out of Le Coche’s, putting a paper bag into his pocket and proceeding to cross through the traffic with the leisurely and watchful air that always detached him from the surrounding crowd, whether it were in
a room or a street.
A horrible, an extraordinary fancy flashed through Dicky’s mind. “Perhaps it’s his story after all, not mine. Perhaps I’m not the central figure in the road.”
He clutched the bottle ; it gave him reassurance ; it had been made long years ago to lead him to luck in love and life ; of course it was his story and the story of a winner.
He followed Chance and did not immediately catch him up because he was turning over in his mind how he should begin to speak to him, a thing he very rarely did. Presently he quickened his pace and said, “I say, I’ve never returned that book you lent me.”
“Have you finished it?” asked the other.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I haven’t.”
“Then why return it?”
Dicky felt idle, futile, chattering, and several sizes too small. But his companion seemed quite unaware of his effect. He turned at his gate in the railings and said, “Will you come in?”, not kindly, but as though he wished it, and assumed that Dicky wished it too.
Dicky came into a room on the ground floor which had books all over the walls and on the floor too in some corners. They were as different from his as a pathless forest is from a well ordered city that has been built all at the same time. He would never find his way among these books ; they were unwelcoming, concealing their titles and estates in the tattered splendour of old bindings, shabby aristocrats clad in nothing less than leather and sometimes vellum, worn brown giants gleaming here and there with only a trace of gilded scrolls and lettering, and tiny squat dwarfs no bigger than his thumb, glowing like dull rubies in faded red morocco. He thought of his neat rows of smart new cloth-bound books with a faint taste of discontent. It cheered him to find that here also were plenty of modern books but disgracefully shabby, evidently bought secondhand from the libraries.
His host was brewing coffee on the gas-ring from the parcel he had brought out of his pocket. It gave Dicky time to think of something to say about the books, but he could think of nothing that might not sound idle, futile, and chattering, so he said, “Useful fellow, Le Coche, especially on Thursdays,” as he drank the coffee, which was made in a small saucepan, Turkish fashion, very strong and sweet, and thought that he was rather an uncomfortable fellow, this fellow down the road, probably conceited, though what had he to be conceited about, living in two rooms in Rainbow Road at his age?
He wished he hadn’t come in with this unsociable fellow ; they had never had any talk together, except that once in Le Coche’s shop. But perhaps he could only talk when waiting for a tin of sardines. He lit the cigarette that had been offered him and looked at his host who was sitting in the window, puffing at a pipe, and seemed to have forgotten him. His eyes were extraordinarily clear. They appeared to have no colour, and though watchful, they were indifferent.
He was wasting his time as usual just when he might be beginning his masterpiece. Whatever you did you missed doing something else, and it was all a toss-up as to what was the most important thing. If he had gone on that bus he might have met someone who would alter the whole course of his life. You could not tell. You could try to grab at everything as Leila did, and in consequence let everything fall to the ground. It was no good having the gift of the grab if you had nothing else.
“What do you want to do?” asked the other.
“That’s funny that you should have asked that just then. But it isn’t always a case of what one wants to do.”
“I think so.”
“Do you mean to say you’ve always done what you want?”
“Yes.”
Dicky suppressed the wish to smile and say that in that case he couldn’t have wanted much. He modified it to a question in a polite tone.
“Then do you like being here?”
“That wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to write. I could do it as well here as anywhere, and it’s cheaper here.”
“Oh, I see. Well, I want to write too, but I want to get out of Rainbow Road as a result of my writing. I want it to be good too, of course. I don’t believe all this about good stuff not selling.”
“Nor do I. But what has that got to do with it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You must have one aim, not two. You can’t shoot at two marks at once.”
“Plenty of people mix their intentions.”
“Not those who succeed.”
“So that I’ve got to choose?”
“If you haven’t already done so. What do you want to write?”
“I haven’t got a message to the world, if that’s what you mean. It would be rather absurd when I’m just twenty-one.”
“One can have a passion at twenty-one.”
“As the word passion means suffering,” said Dicky, quietly triumphant, “I take it that you mean anything that one cares about enough to suffer for. I have left a comfortable home in Birmingham with three good meals a day to come to London and live on ninety pounds a year.”
“Well, what is it you are suffering for?”
A persistent fellow. What did he want to know for? Nothing. His curiosity was impersonal, and the gregarious Dicky felt that inquisitive gossip was much to be preferred to abstract truth. It was a genuine and human interest, whereas this Socratic inquiry made him feel chill and desolate as if he were a specimen under a microscope.
The cool gaze of his interrogator was not fixed on him but on the single picture on his walls, a snow scene with the dark forms of huntsmen and dogs going over a hillside. He must see that picture every day of his life. Why did he want to look at it now? When all his attention should be reserved for the rather pathetic and heroic figure of the aspiring youth whom he had brought into his rooms merely for the purpose of asking tiresome questions.
“I don’t suppose I have any one burning passion,” he said unwillingly, for Celia’s face had flashed on his mind, throwing no clear light on the subject, but a baffling and disturbing glow, an appeal, a question. “Except perhaps beauty.”
He pursued this clue. He described the house he wanted to have, its courtyard and fountain, its Moorish bathroom ; he babbled of alabaster and porphyry and painted ceilings, of the parroquet that would strike an amusing note of garish colour in the grey hall, and, at this point, he stammered and lost the thread of his description for it had occurred to him that his house was a wealthy extension of Leila’s sitting-room. He had suddenly known what that looked like in his companion’s eyes. And in Celia’s too?
“Luxury rather than beauty, I suppose,” he amended, and wondered if he stood convicted, and on what charge ; but the other only asked how he proposed to win luxury, and at that moment Dicky discovered that it was of no use for him to do so if Celia did not approve and share it. His gorgeous house stood empty in his mind ; no one watched the falling drops of the fountain, and the screech of the parroquet echoed desolately through the expensive but doubtful beauty of the hall. He must make money in order to marry Celia, and now again and doubly so, life became grand and simple and full of one great purpose.
He spoke with eloquent and candid ardour of the methods he would pursue when he had the chance. The writing, he said, was the least part about it. The thing was to acquire a reputation for knowing what he wrote about. To be seen with the right people at the right place by the right journalist who will mention it in a chatty column in the right way, this, he said, would do more to sell one’s books than the longest reviews headed “Nearly great” or “Almost a masterpiece.” Here he became embarrassed, because these were the sort of reviews that Chance would be likely to have. He hurried on to the next item on his programme.
“Never,” he said, “see an editor in his own quarters where he has the advantage. Always take him out for a drink, pay rather more than you can afford, and then refuse his terms. He thinks of a number, you double it. He suggests a subject for an article, you don’t like it. It always pays.”
“You have found so?”
“Never. My clothes alone would prevent my carrying it through, an
d I have neither cash nor credit to get any. The moment my father heard of my getting into debt, he’d stop even the miserable allowance I’ve got. I know the door to wealth, power, and happiness, but I can’t afford the key.”
He was dissatisfied with his imagery. He could not recapture that exultant mood which had painted success to him in the terms of world conquest. His schemes to discomfort Kensington and acquire Paris as a province no longer struck him as pure poetry. They shrank as he spoke them, as though the small room were too large for them. To divert attention from them he spoke of the ingredients he would choose, a well spiced blend of passion, snobbishness and irony. Irony was the only way now to produce an effect of subtlety, and every “good” writer must wear a perpetual indulgent smile. To be heavy and ornate does not go with the glossy simplicity of modern tailoring and hairdressing.
“Look at the neatness, the false sincerity of the Eton shingle,” proclaimed Dicky, “and then at the prose of Lytton Strachey and David Garnett. Which started which?”
He saw that Chance’s eyes were on him ; he was no longer casting his words on barren ground. Something in the room was starting life, beginning to grow. He did not know if it were interest, dislike, perhaps mere amusement. But he was no longer an object capering behind a pane of glass, twisting his face in soundless movements like the man he had watched in the telephone-box. The point of contact made his opponent vulnerable. He rushed on him in attack.
“And what,” said he arrogantly, “have you got in the way of a burning passion?”
He was conscious of the insolence in his manner, and expected, half pleasurably, to be snubbed and turned out as soon as it was inconspicuous to do so.
Chance, still looking at him, said, “I have had different ones until they burned out. One was gambling. That ended ten years ago. Another was writing, and now I am at an end of what I wanted to say. I don’t know what the next will be.”
Dicky had not expected to be met as an equal, and was disconcerted, paying so much attention to this fact that he neglected the actual words until belatedly their meaning flashed on him, and he gaped at Chance in sudden astonishment, repeating the word “gambling,” which refused to fit in with his idea of this room and the man who sat in it. Was his present poverty the result of that cold and impersonal passion? The second too was as aloof as the first, since he did not write to establish contact with others. He said what he wanted to say, and if no one listened it did not appear to matter to him.
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