by A. A. Milne
‘Quite a demand for it . . . And four’s six,’ he adds, slapping down fourpence on his left.
‘Ah!’ says Reginald.
Now then, he says to himself, if I turn it down after this, what will the clerk think? Hopeless to try and get a Wellard off. They take one look at him, and then buy an umbrella-ring. Much better stick to Wallace. But if I buy it . . . I must buy it. The whole future of Bindweed hangs on this moment.
‘Ah, well, I must try it,’ says Reginald, handing over three half-crowns. ‘It looks pretty good.’
‘Thank you, sir. Wrap it up for you?’
‘No, thanks.’
Now he is in a hurry to be gone.
‘And five’s six, and six is a shilling,’ says the clerk to a new acquaintance, and Reginald, realizing reluctantly that there is to be no more talk about Bindweed, goes.
But what on earth is he going to do with the dashed thing? Well, one thing is certain. He can’t walk through St. James’s Park now. Authors don’t promenade the parks of London with copies of their latest works held conspicuously in their hands. Or perhaps they do. If so, he wasn’t an author. He was just up from the country for the day, and had written a book by accident, and had had a copy of the dashed thing forced on him, and objected strongly to carrying it about in London. He would have a taxi. He waved his stick, got into a taxi and gave the address of his club. At his club he would hide the dashed thing under his hat.
III
Reginald’s club was political. In order to belong to it, you had first to belong to one of the great political parties. It didn’t seem to matter which one. Perhaps, though, that is to do the club an injustice; it might be more true to say that it didn’t matter what your political opinions were, so long as in your own mind you associated your opinions with the one particular party. It is obvious that, if you write to The Times (as most of the club did) and sign your letter Disgusted Liberal, you may find yourself saying the same sort of things about Mr. Lloyd George or Free Trade or Land Policy, as is the man in the club over the way who is signing his letter True Conservative, but the fact remains that you are as widely removed from him in politics as is Disgusted Conservative from True Liberal. In other words, Liberals are Liberals and Conservatives are Conservatives, and to turn a man out of his club because he remains constant to the opinions which his Party has basely forsworn is no way to treat a fellow-voter, always supposing that he is still good for the twenty-guinea subscription.
Reginald had no politics. There are at least a million voters who have no politics. This makes them entirely unprejudiced when they vote Conservative. They can quote themselves in an unprejudiced way as an example to waverers. Here am I. I don’t belong to any party. Never have. But if you ask me how I’m going to vote, I tell you frankly . . . Very effective it sounds. Some overdo it and add that they are really Liberals, but that the time has come when all honest men . . .
Reginald, however, was not one of these. A belief in the comfort of the club was all the politics he had. He never voted. Hildersham, who did everything which a man should do, asked him once what he thought would happen if nobody voted.
‘I don’t know,’ said Reginald frankly. ‘What do you think?’
Hildersham, who had never thought, replied indignantly that civilization, as such, would come to an end.
‘So it would’, said Reginald, ‘if nobody made roads. But I’m dashed’, he added, ‘if I’m going to be a road-mender.’
Hildersham wavered between saying that that was different and pointing out once more that Wellard really ought to do something about his own road, even if it didn’t actually belong to him. The local problem seeming the more pressing, he settled down to it. A couple of cart-loads of rubble——
Sylvia was also going to be a voter, so it was said. She had asked Reginald what she ought to do with her vote when she had it. Reginald said, ‘Pair with me,’ and Sylvia, who had seen many pretty things pair in the spring-time, and thought that Reginald was just being loving, gave him her eyes for a moment and nodded. So the question of the vote stood over, or was settled, whichever you please.
Reginald went into his club, looking as much like a man who was not carrying a copy of Bindweed as was possible to a man who undoubtedly was. Once in the cloak-room, he balanced it on a peg and put his hat over it. Then he went in to lunch. He was doing tricks with spaghetti when his solitude was disturbed.
‘Hallo, Wellard. Mind if we join you? Rather crowded to-day.’
Not very well put, thought Reginald. But with a neck that thick, what could you do? He nodded.
‘D’you know Raglan?’
By name, of course; who didn’t? Not otherwise. Introductions were made. . . .
Any hope?
None. They began talking about Raglan.
‘I’m a countryman’, said Reginald, ‘and know nothing of these things. What’s the difference between an edition and an impression, and how many copies are there in each?’
Raglan explained that in the slovenly mind of the average publisher there was no difference, but that technically a new edition should contain new matter, or anyhow be a new setting-up of type, but that a new impression was just a re-printing of the old type.
‘I see. Then if a book was, say, in its third impression, how many copies would have been sold? Roughly.’
Lord Ormsby laughed in his thick-necked way. Damn him. Raglan, who liked explaining things in his slow cultured voice, explained that it depended on the author, my dear fellow.
‘I see,’ said Reginald again, feeling that this was hardly worth coming to London for.
‘What did they give Holland this time?’ asked Ormsby, with an air of saying to Wellard, ‘Now you listen to this.’
‘Twenty thousand,’ said Raglan, trying to say it modestly but knowing that it was hopeless, since it was he who had made Holland.
‘First edition?’ asked Reginald.
‘Yes. But then, you see, he happens to be the fashion just for the moment. With an unknown writer it would only be a thousand, possibly five hundred. Clearly it’s safer to keep well below what you think you’re going to sell. You can always print more afterwards.’
‘I see.’
‘In itself it all means nothing. A swindler and a bloodsucker like Pump, for instance’—(Reginald bent down to his spaghetti again)—‘he advertises “Sixth Large Impression”. Probably what’s happened is that he started printing a thousand which he called First and Second Impression—five hundred each. He unloaded that on the booksellers, and has since had one or two inquiries from the trade. So he prints another thousand, two more impressions, and binds half of them. That takes him to the fourth impression. As for the other fifth and sixth he may have asked the printers to stand by in case he wanted another thousand or he may just be lying. And as for the “large”, well, it’s a matter of opinion, isn’t it? In fact “Sixth Large Impression” may mean that he has sold just over a thousand to the booksellers—and perhaps that the booksellers have sold no more than a hundred to the public.’
‘I see,’ said Reginald. ‘Well, I must be getting on.’ He added a careless good-bye, and went to the desk to pay.
What a detestable man Raglan was! Was there ever a more loathsome fellow than Ormsby? Why had he ever come to London? Oh, of course, to get his hair cut. He’d a good mind now not to get it cut. Just to annoy Raglan. Only Raglan wouldn’t know. Well, anyhow he wouldn’t read Raglan’s next book. He paid his bill, he clapped his hat on his head, Bindweed fell into the place reserved for umbrellas, and he left it there. Damn all books. Let’s have our hair cut and get back to Sylvia.
It was very restful at Alderson’s. Either this Alderson, or an earlier one, had cut either Dr. Johnson’s hair or the Duke of Wellington’s, as you guessed at once when you saw the bow-fronted window. If anybody else—Kipling or Mr. Baldwin—was having his hair cut when you arrived, you did
not see him. You saw nobody but Mr. Alderson, who seemed surprised that you wanted your hair cut, but thought he could manage it. He had a room somewhere upstairs if he could find it. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind coming with him and helping him to look? Somewhere this way, he thought. Ah, here’s a room, but there doesn’t seem to be a chair. Wait a bit, we shall find another room directly with a chair. Here we are.
Reginald sat down, happily, sleepily. Damn all books. Let’s have our hair cut.
Wait a moment, says Mr. Alderson. Scissors. I knew there was something. Now where did I see a pair of scissors? Ah! Now then, Mr. Wellard, you like it short at the back, but not too short in front. Precisely.
He clips. Snip, snip, snip. Very peaceful. Reginald wonders what will happen when the first man says that he does want his hair too short in front. Snip, snip, snip. Very quiet and cool and peaceful. And Sylvia meeting the 3.10. Westaways and Sylvia. Between them what a ridiculous place they made London seem, what a ridiculous business writing. Sylvia, still and lovely, waiting for him on the platform.
IV
Reginald had ten minutes to himself at Victoria; time enough to buy all the women’s papers for Sylvia. How to be Beautiful—How to look Beautiful—How to keep Beautiful. How to get thinner—How to get plumper. How to remove hair—How to make it grow. What nonsense was talked about woman’s craving for beauty! What but the craving for beauty distinguished us from the animals? Why, if not to seek beauty, were we alive? Leonardo painted Mona Lisa, and the world bowed down to him in homage. Yet was not Sylvia’s achievement greater? She was Beauty itself, not a copy of it. And if you said, as the clergyman on his right, who was trying to read a leading article in the Spectator without paying for it, would certainly say, ‘God gave your wife her beauty, and it is no cause of pride to her, whereas da Vinci devoted years of labour——’ why, damn it, sir, you aren’t a clergyman at all if you deny that Leonardo’s genius came also from God. And as for ‘years of labour’, isn’t that just what I’m saying? Years of labour women spend on trying to be as beautiful as Sylvia, and who’s to blame them? Not I, to whom Sylvia has given her beauty.
At this point in his reflections, the bookstall clerk slapped a book in front of him with the words, ‘Seen that, sir? Reading very well just now,’ and left Reginald face to face with a copy of Bindweed. Damn! He’d forgotten about the beastly thing.
‘Going well, is it?’ he asked automatically.
‘Won’t be the first copy I’ve sold to-day,’ said the clerk truthfully, and feeling that a little romance was excusable on this delightful May day, added, ‘Not by a long chalk.’
It looked like another seven-and-six. No, not seven-and-six, because ten per cent of it would come back to him. Ninepence. That settles it. You can’t throw away ninepence like that.
‘Well, I’ll try it,’ said Reginald, handing over a note. ‘And these.’
‘Thank you, sir, and six is thirteen, and seven’s twenty.’
Surely, thought Reginald, as he started his search for the 3.10, that fellow’s faith in Wellards is now a living thing, and it is I who have made it so.
The 3.10, knowing that Sylvia was to meet it, and feeling friendly to everybody in consequence, had arranged to start close to the bookstall, and to have an empty first-class smoker waiting for Reginald just where he wanted it. He stacked his Perfect Ladies and Complete Gentlewomen on the seat beside him, and opened Bindweed. He was a stockbroker going down to his beastly mansion in Surrey, all gables and white balconies and glass, and the bookstall clerk had pushed a copy of Bindweed into his hand, and he was taking it home to the missus. Might as well have a look at it on the way. . . .
Ha! Damn clever that. Who’s the fellow? Reginald Wellard. Never heard of him. . . .
Reginald read on, forgetting that he was a stockbroker; absorbed in his own work. How on earth had he done it?
But at Chapter V he put the book down, and went back into his thoughts again. Can we separate the physical from the spiritual so completely? If Sylvia were less imperceptive, would she not be less beautiful? If he could share all his jokes with her, knowing that this May day would be lived twice, once as he had lived it in London, once again in the telling of it to her—no, doubly in the sharing of it with her—would she be Sylvia, the lovely, the unfathomable, the aloof? And who could say that there was nothing to fathom? Even if her mind was shallow, he had not fathomed the shallowness of it. Of one thing he was certain. In marriage, anyhow, you could not disentangle the physical from the spiritual. They were inextricably wound together. The loveliness of Sylvia was a perpetual comfort to him. They had different roots, but they had met and twined. He was the bindweed—well, call it convolvulus, it would sound better—and he lived on her beauty . . .
There seemed to be a lot of bindweed about. This fellow Pump, what did Raglan say about him? Bloodsucker! All right, let him try. Oh, but damn the book, he had decided not to think about that any more. Here, you have it!
He picked it up and tossed it on to the rack. Then he lit his pipe, let down the window and waited for Little Mailing.
V
Sylvia was on the platform. He had watched her, his head out of the window, from the moment when they came through the bridge. She had her back to him, her little head held up to one side, as if she were thinking; her thoughts (how trivial? how profound?) undisturbed by the rattle of the train.
But as soon as he was out of the carriage she was up to him, and had given him her cool hand. She blushed a little, as if even this touch of him after his long absence were an intimacy for themselves alone. He wanted to kiss her, but her eyes said, ‘Wait. The whole world is getting out at this station. Wait till we are together.’
‘So it did stop here,’ said Reginald. ‘I knew it would.’
‘You never remember about the trains, do you, darling? The 3.10 stops here altogether.’
‘Altogether? I didn’t know we were so important.’
‘It isn’t importance, darling. It always does.’
(You are right, Sylvia, it isn’t importance, it always does. But I don’t care what you say, I adore you.)
He gave up his ticket to the handy-man of the station, and told him it was a lovely day.
‘Bit warm in London, too, sir, I dare say?’
‘Well, depends what you’re doing,’ said Reginald.
‘That’s so, sir.’
Good Heavens, could anything be more futile than that? And yet he despised Sylvia. No, he didn’t. He was going home to tea with her.
They came to the car.
‘Will you drive, or shall I?’ said Sylvia.
‘I’ll drive, and you shall give me a lesson.’
‘Darling, don’t be silly. You drive just as well as I do.’
‘Sylvia, how can you say that?’
‘Well, I mean it’s only because you can’t give your mind to it. Naturally you’re thinking of something else all the time.’
‘That’s just what I’m not doing. My mind is glued on the gears from the moment that I see a hill in the distance. I have an absolute picture in my mind of steel teeth snapping and growling at each other and refusing to get interlocked. My mind is utterly convinced that I shall stampede the cattle, and it’s always right.’
‘Well, that’s what I mean,’ said Sylvia. ‘You think about it too much.’
But just now she said—oh, well, never mind.
‘Very well then,’ said Reginald. ‘You shall hold my hand, and I shan’t be able to think about it at all.’
But before he got out of neutral, he turned to her, and she to him, and they looked at each other, happily, almost shyly again, and smiled and kissed.
Down a hill out of the station and up a hill which you rushed . . . no, not quite . . . very well, then, noiselessly into second. . . .
‘I’m terribly sorry, Sylvia.’
‘It’s all right
, darling.’
‘A 5.9 exploding in the Lesser Cat House at the Zoo would give just that effect, but more expensively. What shall we do about it?’
‘You’ll be better next time.’
‘Well, you must tell me.’
Across the main road, down a long winding hill—carefully now, because of the narrow bridge over the stream at the bottom, through the village—then all out so as to get a flying start for the long climb up on to the common. . . .
‘Now,’ said Sylvia, ‘clutch out.’
‘It is.’
‘Into neutral.’
‘But I always—oh, all right.’
‘Just touch the accelerator.’
‘Done.’
‘Now right down with the clutch, and feel your way back into second.’
‘Gosh, this is—Sylvia, you’re a——’
‘Accelerate, quick. There! It’s quite easy, isn’t it?’
‘If you’re here.’
‘Of course you could do it if you tried, darling.’
They sailed up on to the common, over the common, along the top of the world, where wild cherry, wild plum and blackthorn hung daintily white against the blue beyond, through a beech-wood so delicately green, so fresh and young and fragrant and unattainable that one thought in whispers as one went past; out and to the left, through the broken gate, past the cottage, and so easily down through long rolling sheep-cropped fields to where the little walled island of Westaways raised three stiff chimneys above a ruffle of orchard.
Reginald stopped the car, and took a deep breath. How he loved Westaways! How he loved it! Oh God, thank you for thinking of Westaways, and thank you for letting me have it.
‘I expect you want your tea,’ said Sylvia. ‘I’ll put the car away if you like.’
‘Sorry. What did you say, sweetheart? Oh!’ Reginald woke up. ‘I’ll let you put it away if you’ll do it backwards and let me watch you.’
‘You are silly, darling.’
‘No, I’m not, I want to learn.’
‘Well, it’s quite easy.’
