by Hugh Walpole
A quarter of an hour before supper he went down to say good-bye to Miss Monogue. She was sitting quietly reading and he thought suddenly, as he came upon her, there under the light of her candles in the grey room, that she did not look well. He had never during their seven years’ friendship, noticed anything before, and now he could not have said what it was that he saw except perhaps that her cheeks were flushed and that there were heavy dark lines beneath her eyes. But she seemed to him, as he took her, thus unprepared, with her untidy hair and her white cheap evening dress that showed her thin fragile arms, to be something that he was leaving to face the world alone, something very delicate that he ought not to leave.
Then she looked up and saw him and put her book down and smiled at him and was the old cheerful Norah Monogue whom he had always known.
He stood with his legs apart facing her and told her:
“I’ve come to say good-bye.”
“Good-bye?”
“Yes — I’m going to-night. What I’ve been expecting for so long has happened at last. There’s been a blow up at the bookshop and I’ve got to go.”
For an instant the colour left her face; her book fell to the ground and she put her hand back on the arm of the chair to steady herself.
“Oh! how silly of me ... never mind picking it up.... Oh thank you, Peter. You gave me quite a shock, telling me like that. We shall all miss you dreadfully.”
His affection for her was strong enough to break in upon the great overwhelming excited exultation that had held him all the evening. He was dreadfully sorry to leave her!... dear Norah Monogue, what a pal she’d been!
“I shall miss you horribly,” he said with that note in his voice that showed that, above all things, he wished to avoid a scene. “We’ve been such tremendous pals all this time — you’ve been such a brick — I don’t know what I should have done....” He pulled himself up. “But it’s got to be. I’ve felt it coming you know and it’s time I really lashed out for myself.”
“Where are you going?”
“Ah! I must keep that dark for a bit. There’s been trouble at the bookshop. It’ll be all right I expect but I don’t want Mother Brockett to stand any chance of being mixed up in it. I shall just disappear for a week or two and then I’ll be back again.”
She smiled at him bravely: “Well, I won’t ask what’s happened, if you don’t want to tell me, but of course — I shall miss you. After seven years it seems so abrupt. And, Peter, do take care of yourself.”
“Oh, I shall be all right.” He was very gruff. He felt now a furious angry reluctance at leaving her behind. He stormed at himself as a fool; one of the things that the strong man must learn of life is to be ruthless in these partings and breaking of relations. He stood further away from her and spoke as though he hated being there.
She understood him with wonderful tenderness.
“Well,” she said cheerfully, “I daresay it will be better for you to try for a little and see what you can make of it all. And then if you want anything you’ll come back to us, won’t you?... You promise that?”
“Of course.”
“And then there’s the book. I know that man in Heriot and Lord’s that I told you about. I’ll send it to them right away, if you like.”
“Aren’t they rather tremendous people for me to begin with? Oughtn’t I to begin with some one smaller?”
“Oh! there’s no harm in starting at the top. They can’t do more than refuse it. But I don’t think they will. I believe in it. But how shall I let you know what they say?”
“Oh, I’ll come in a week or two and see what’s happening — I’ll be on a paper by then probably. I say, I don’t want the others to know. I’ll have supper with them as usual and just tell Mother Brockett afterwards. I don’t want to have to say good-bye lots of times. Well” — he moved off awkwardly towards the door— “You’ve been most tremendously good to me.”
“Rot, Peter: Don’t forget me!”
“Forget you! The best pal I’ve ever had.” They clasped hands for a moment. There was a pause and then Peter said: “I say — there is a thing you can do if you like—”
“Yes? — anything—”
“Well — about Miss Rossiter — you’ll be seeing her I suppose?”
“Oh yes, often—”
“Well, you might just keep her in mind of me. I know it sounds silly but — just a word or two, sometimes.”
He felt that he was blushing — their hands separated. She moved back from him and pushed at her hair in the nervous way that she had.
“Why, of course — she was awfully interested. She won’t forget you. Well, we’ll meet at supper.” She moved back with a last little nod at him and he went awkwardly out of the room with a curious little sense of sudden dismissal. Would she rather he didn’t know Miss Rossiter, he vaguely wondered. Women were such queer creatures.
As he went downstairs he wondered with a sudden almost shameful confusion whether he was responsible in some way for the awkwardness that the scene had had. He had noticed lately that she had not been quite herself when he had been with her — that she would stop in the middle of a sentence, that she would be, for instance, vexed at something he said, that she would look at him sometimes as though ...
He pulled himself up. He was angry with himself for imagining such a thing — as though ... Well, women were strange creatures....
And then supper was more difficult than he had expected. They would show him, the silly things, that they were fond of him just when he would much rather have persuaded himself that they hated him. It was almost, as he told himself furiously, as though they knew that he was going; Norah Monogue was the only person who chattered and laughed in a natural way; he was rather relieved that after all she seemed to care so little.
He found that he couldn’t eat. There was a silly lump in his throat and he looked at the marble pillars and the heavy curtains through a kind of mist.... Especially was there Robin....
Mrs. Tressiter told him that Robin had something very important to say to him and that he was going to stay awake until he, Peter, came up to him.
“I told him,” she said, “that he must lie down and go to sleep like a good boy and that his father would punish him if he didn’t. But there! What’s the use of it? He isn’t afraid of his father the slightest. He would go on — something about a lion....”
At any rate this gave Peter an excuse to escape from the table and it was, indeed, time, for they had all settled, like a clatter of hens, on to the subject of the bomb, and they all had a great deal to say about it and a great many questions to ask Peter.
“It’s these Foreigners... of course our Police are entirely inadequate.”
“Yes — that’s what I say — the Police are really absurdly inadequate—”
“If they will allow these foreigners—”
“Yes, what can you expect — and the Police really can’t—”
Peter escaped to Robin. He glowered down at the child who was sitting up in his cot counting the flowers on the old wall-paper to keep himself awake.
“I always am so muddled after fourteen,” he said. “Never mind, I’m not sleeping—”
Peter frowned at him. “You ought to have been asleep long ago,” he said. He wished the boy hadn’t got his hair tousled in that absurdly fascinating way and that his cheeks weren’t flushed so beautiful a red — also his nightgown had lost a button at the top and showed a very white little neck. Peter blinked his eyes— “Look here, kid, you must go to sleep right away at once. What do you want?”
“It’s that lion — the one the lady had — I want it.”
“You can’t have it — the lady’s got it.”
“Well — take me to see them — the real ones — there are lots somewhere Mother says.” Robin inserted his very small hand into Peter’s large one.
“All right, one day — we’ll go to the ‘Zoo.”
Robin sighed with satisfaction — he lay down and murmured sleepily t
o himself, “I love Mister Peter and lions and Mother and God,” and was suddenly asleep.
Peter bent down over the cot and kissed him. He felt miserably wretched. He had known nothing like it since that day when he had said good-bye to his mother. He wondered that he could ever have felt any exultation; he wondered that writing and glory and ambition could ever have seemed worth anything to him at all. Could he have had his prayer granted he would have prayed that he might always stay in Brockett’s, always have these same friends, watch over Robin as he grew up, talk to Norah Monogue — and then all the others ... and Mr. Zanti. He felt fourteen years old ... more miserable than he had ever been.
He kissed Robin again — then he went down to find Mrs. Brockett. Here, too, he was faced with an unexpected difficulty. The good lady, listening to him sternly in her grim little sitting-room, refused to hear of his departure. She sat upright in her stiff chair, her thin black dress in folds about her, the gas-light shining on her neatly parted hair.
“You see, Mrs. Brockett,” he explained to her, “I’m no longer in the same position. I can’t be sure of my two pounds a week any more and so it wouldn’t be right for me to live in a place like this.”
“If it’s expense that you’re thinking about,” she answered him grimly, “you’re perfectly welcome to stay on here and pay me when you can. I’m sure that one day with so clever a young man—”
“That’s awfully good of you, Mrs. Brockett, but of course I couldn’t hear of anything like that.” For the third time that evening he had to fight against a disposition to blow his nose and be absurd. They were, both of them, increasingly grim with every word that they spoke and any outside observer would have supposed that they were the deadliest of enemies.
“Of course,” she began again, “there’s a room that I could let you have at the back of the house that’s only four shillings a week and really you’d be doing me a kindness in taking it off my hands. I’m sure—”
“No, there’s more in it than that,” he answered. “I’ve got to go away — right away. It’s time I had a change of scene. It’s good for me to get along a bit by myself. You’ve all been too kind to me, spoilt me—”
She stood up and faced him sternly. “In all my years,” she said, “I’ve never spoilt anybody yet and I’m not likely to be going to begin now. Spoilt you! Bah!” She almost snorted at him — but there were tears in her eyes.
“I’m not a philanthropist,” she went on more dryly than ever, “but I like to have you about the house — you keep the lodgers contented and the babies quiet. I’m sure,” and the little break in her voice was the first sign of submission, “that we’ve been very good friends these seven years and it isn’t everywhere that one can pick up friends for the asking—”
“You’ve been splendid to me,” he answered. “But it isn’t as though I were going away altogether — you’ll see me back in a week or two. And — and — I say I shall make a fool of myself if I go on talking like this—”
He suddenly gripped her hand and wrung it again and again — then he burst away from her, leaving her standing there in the middle of the room.
The old black bag was very soon packed, his possessions had not greatly increased during these seven years, and soon he was creeping down the stairs softly so that no one should hear.
The hall was empty. He gave it one last friendly look, the door had closed behind him and he was in the street.
II
In its exuberance and high spirits and general lack of self-control London was similar to a small child taken to the Drury Lane Pantomime for the first time. Of the numbers of young men who, with hats on the back of their heads, passed arm-in-arm down the main thoroughfares announcing it as their definite opinion that “Britons never shall be slaves,” of the numbers of young women who, armed with feathers and the sharpest of tongues, showed conclusively the superiority of their sex and personal attractions, of the numbers of old men and old women who had no right whatever to be out on a night like this but couldn’t help themselves, and enjoyed it just as much as their sons and daughters did, there is here no room to tell. The houses were ablaze with light, the very lamp-posts seemed to rock up and down with delight at the spirit of the whole affair and the Feast of the Glorification of the Bomb that Didn’t Come Off was being celebrated with all the honours.
Peter was very soon in the thick of it. The grey silences of Bennett Square and Bloomsbury were left behind and with them the emotions of those tender partings. After all, it would only be a very few weeks before he would be back again among them all, telling them of his success on some paper and going back perhaps to live with them all when his income was assured.
And, anyhow, here he was, out to seek his fortune and with Stephen to help him! He battled with the crowd dragging the black bag with him and shouting sometimes in sheer excitement and good spirits. Young women tickled him with feathers, once some one linked arms with him and dragged him along, always he was surrounded with this sea of shouting, exultant humanity — this was life!
By the lion Stephen was waiting for him, standing huge and solemn as the crowd surged past. He pressed Peter’s arm to show that he was pleased to see him and then, without speaking, they pushed through, past Charing Cross station, and down the hill to the Underground.
Here, once again, there was startling silence. No one seemed to be using the trains at all.
“I’m afraid it ain’t much of a place that I’m taking yer to,” Stephen said. “We can’t pick and choose yer know and I was there before and she’s a good woman.”
A chill seemed to come with them into the carriage. Suddenly to Peter the comforts of Brockett’s stretched out alluring arms, then he pulled himself together.
“I’m sure it will be splendid,” he said, “and it will be just lovely being with you after all this time.”
They got out and plunged into a city of black night. Around them, on every side there was silence — even the broad central thoroughfare seemed to be deserted and on either side of it, to right and left, black grim roads like open mouths, lay waiting for the unwary traveller.
Down one of these they plunged; Peter was conscious of faces watching them. “Bucket Lane” was the street’s title to fame. Windows showed dim candles, in the distance a sharp cry broke the silence and then fell away again. The street was very narrow and from the running gutters there stole into the air the odour of stale cabbage.
“This is the ‘ouse.” Stephen stopped. Somewhere, above their heads, a child was crying.
CHAPTER VI
THE WORLD AND BUCKET LANE
I
A light flashed in the upper windows, stayed for a moment, and disappeared. There was a pause and then the door slowly opened and a woman’s head protruded.
She stared at them without speaking.
“Mr. Brant,” Stephen said. “I’m come back, Mrs. Williams ‘oping you might ‘ave that same room me and my friend might use if it’s agreeable.”
She stepped forward then and looked at them more carefully. She was a stout red-faced woman, her hair hanging about her face, her dirty bodice drawn tightly over her enormous bosom and her skirt pulled up in front and hanging, draggled behind her. Her long, dirty fingers went up to her face continually; she had a way of pushing at her teeth with them.
She seemed, however, pleased to see Stephen.
“Well, Mr. Brant,” she said, “come in. It’s a surprise I must say but Lord! as I’m always telling Mrs. Griggs oo’s on the bottom floor when she can afford ‘er rent which ‘asn’t been often lately, poor thing, owing to ‘aving ‘er tenth only three weeks back, quite unexpected, and ‘er man being turned off ’is ‘ouse-painting business what ‘e’s been at this ten year and more — well come along in, I’m sure—”
They were in by this time having been urged by their hostess into the very narrowest, darkest and smelliest passage that Peter had ever encountered. Somewhere behind the walls, the world was moving. On every side of him above and
below, children were crying, voices swearing, murmuring, complaining, arguing; Peter could feel Mrs. Williams’ breath hot against his cheek. Up the wheezy stairs she panted, they following her. Peter had never heard such loquacity. It poured from her as though she meant nothing whatever by it and was scarcely aware indeed of the things that she was saying. “And it’s a long time, Mr. Brant, since we ‘ad the pleasure of seeing you. My last ‘usband’s left me since yer was ’ere — indeed ’e ‘av — all along of a fight ’e ‘ad with old Colly Moles down Three Barrer walk — penal servitude, poor feller and all along of ’is nasty temper as I was always tellin’ ’im. Why the very morning before it ‘appened I remember sayin’ to ’im when ’e up and threw a knife at me for contradictin’ ’is words I remember sayin’ to ’im that ’is temper would be the settlin’ of me but ’e wouldn’t listen, not ’e. Obstinate! Lord! that simply isn’t the word for it ... but ‘ere’s the room and nobody been in it since Sairy Grace and she was always bringin’ men along with ‘er, dirty slut and that’s a month since she’s been and gone and I always like ‘aving yer, Mr. Brant, for you’re quiet enough and no trouble at all — and your friend looks pleasant I must say.”
The room was, indeed, remarkably respectable — not blessed with much furniture in addition to two beds and two chairs but roomy and with a large and moderately clean window.