William Ridley stood quietly in Fleet Street, leaning forward on his stick, and listened to the silence. He was far from being displeased with a world in which he saw innumerable splendid chances for a man like himself to make good. Yet even in him something had changed. He was not always at ease; now and again he had felt an impulse to hide, to sink himself in the nameless ranks from which he had emerged. So now he surrendered himself to a useless emotion. It seemed useless. Later he began to see that it might have more than one use. But now he stared, with the frank serious look of a child, at the motionless buses, at the boy leaning restlessly against his bicycle, at a sparrow which had lost its head and was trying to balance on nothing. When the guns went off, and the wretched shabby man standing outside the public house began to play the Last Post, weakly and badly, and only the first notes of it could be heard at all, the rest was drowned, Ridley felt tears in his eyes.
He hurried into the doorway of the Daily Post and up the far from imposing stairs to the editorial office. He had an appointment with Cohen and yet he did not feel safe about it until, after waiting ten minutes in a dark narrow room, no better than an angle of the passage, he was summoned to Cohen’s room. To give himself confidence he assumed a rude bluff manner. He sat well at his ease in an armchair, straddling his legs out, and said :
‘I can’t say I’m impressed by your waiting-room, Cohen.’
‘It wasn’t intended to impress you,’ Cohen said.
‘I’m glad to hear that,’ Ridley said. He covered his embarrassment under a sly wide smile. ‘Well now, you asked me to come and here I am—and I don’t mind telling you I don’t waste much time running about in a morning. What do you want?’
‘Have you looked at the paper this morning?’ Cohen asked. He spread a copy of the Daily Post over the table and showed Ridley his own name on the left centre page, under the title of an Armistice Day article he had supplied. ‘I like that article,’ Cohen said, ‘it has the right sound, good-hearted, sensible, friendly without being vulgar. Was it an accident or could you write one a week in the same voice? I thought you might care to run about—you needn’t do it in the mornings—looking at crowds, a fight, a football match, a popular café, the fish market, a fair—choose your own themes and write about them in a broad, jovial, straightforward style. Catch hold of your readers by the arm. Make’em stare and chuckle, but once in a while don’t forget the lump in the throat. I want literature, my dear fellow, something you’re not ashamed of writing, but it will have to please a million readers.’
‘Like Shakespeare,’ Ridley said, grinning. ‘He was another William.’
‘Exactly.’
‘No one can do that as well as I can,’ Ridley said. ‘There’s nothing niggling about me. I have unlimited fun and imagination, absolutely unlimited, and I don’t want to write exquisite polished trifles. Literature without guts bores me. I’ll tell you something, Cohen, if Shakespeare was alive now he’d have to write prose like mine.’ He looked into Cohen’s face with an impudent stare. Assurance sat awkwardly on him. ‘All you have to do, Cohen, is to tell my agent what you’re willing to pay for them and if it’s right I’ll turn you in the best articles you ever printed.’ He saw a chance to use up an essay he had once sent to The Week. It had been returned to him with a curt letter, and an impulse of spite drove him to say:
‘Do you ever see a rag calling itself The Week?’
‘I always read it carefully,’ Cohen answered. ‘I like to know what the smaller rats are busy with.’ He smiled, his sharp fine infinitely knowing smile, which expressed contempt for what it had first degraded. ‘A friend of ours, Miss Russell, is the assistant editor.’
‘That girl’s sly and unreliable,’ Ridley exclaimed.
‘Unreliable perhaps yes,’ Cohen said. ‘I know her grandmother. You can’t trust a woman or a man who is as honest as that; they’re like Liberals, they’ll give away the pass, any pass, for the sake of an idea. But no she’s not sly’ Hervey’s round face, with the too big forehead and heavy jaw, came before him; it wore a childishly morose air. Involuntarily he smiled.
Ridley left the place in great good humour. He had expected nothing so fine to come of his visit. He went home, wrote an article, making first use now of his feelings during the silence; and towards four o’clock ran out in search of his novel. He crossed Vauxhall Bridge and walked on slowly. The river was like dulled metal. He heard an aeroplane and stood looking into the sky, but darkness had thickened over the lighted streets and he saw nothing. The lights entering the darkness turned it to a reddish brown fog which stretched its arms over London. He walked under this canopy, through wide streets and past shops stuffed to bursting with clothes, brass bedsteads, tins of food, and through streets as dark and narrow as canals. In the lighted streets girls strolled with linked arms, women filled market bags, old men peddled matches, boys raged up and down, there was some laughter and an unceasing babble of voices, yet he could never catch anyone in the act of speaking. All the faces, smooth, staring, vacant, intent, lewd, innocent, bold, were silent. At last he saw a girl speaking in a telephone booth and he went into the one next to it to listen. She was young and thin, shabby, wearing a wide hat, a short buttoned jacket, and a narrow skirt. Her hat had slipped backwards, and the line of her pregnant body was visible under her skirt. She was so thin that it was very ugly. Despair, anger, and bewilderment wrote themselves on her face, where nothing else had been written during her few years. ‘You aren’t coming?’ Ridley heard. ‘What? Oh but you said. It’s the fourth time you haven’t.’ This was followed by a moment in which she laid her hand over her mouth and listened. ‘Jim, I want you so,’ she said. ‘Jim, you said you——’ A start ran through her body and he felt certain that the listener at the other end had gone. It was so. She spoke again, listened, spoke once more, in the voice of a child, and gave it up. He watched her pull her jacket down and go away.
Next he followed a stout woman wearing a man’s yellow waistcoat. She showed it to her friend, looking at it herself with eyes as bold and hard as brass, but they were merry. ‘Armistice Day last year put his light out. He went and no mistake, and I kept it as you might say when this you see remember me. Lord, he was lively. After m’first I said, I’ll have no thinkers or thonkers, give me sister a doer of or what d’you call the word. Be that as it may, I’ve never been better satisfied. Well, what d’you get married for? Please God I’ll find another soon.’ He followed this pair into a saloon bar where, by some trick of the lights, the flesh even on fat rosy faces appeared dissolving, so that he saw the bones. This was not pleasant. He went out and saw a boy and girl leaning against a wall: the girl was smooth-faced and aware of herself but the boy expressed bewilderment and agony in the way he lifted his hand and touched her face. The girl watched Ridley as he went by slowly. He went as slowly as he could. The boy was blind and trembling and saw no one.
Next he came to the arches of a railway and saw two men asleep there. They lay with knees drawn up. He turned back and went into a cinema. It was full and he had to stand at one side, close to the screen. From here he could see the organist and the faces of the worshippers. Their eyes were turned slightly upward. They were adoring a half-clothed young woman reclined in a room of inexplicable splendour, where like Aholah in the scriptures she doted on her lovers. This finished better than anyone could have hoped. The organ then rose several feet into full view, luminous, changing from rose to green to blue, and afterwards sank again, to the delight of the people. You don’t see miracles every day, not to notice them. Ridley went out. There were now so many walking up and down in the thickish light which revealed forms but not colours that you could think the houses bred them. Some had faces without eyes and others were all eyes. They crowded together. They walked this way and that. The fog was torn in a few places and he saw a sky neither dark nor light. He remembered the airman.
In the Albert Hall 1,104,896 scarlet poppies fell from the roof—a poppy for every British and Colonial soldier who fel
l in the War. The trumpeters of the Royal Horse Guards sounded the Reveille, a cue for the man operating the spot lights.
The airman had gone north, taking his way by known markings, the lights of a railway junction, of a city. He crossed the Humber at no height, picking up a strong light placed at the end of a jetty, and flew on by the coast. Here were old lights, for ships. He passed over Danesacre without seeing it, all that which had been from time gone a landmark for way and seafarers invisible to him.
Chapter XXVI
A Man of Business
The year after, in July, Renn brought The Week to a quick end. It had lasted two years. He had enough money to pay all debts and after paying them he had left twenty pounds, of which he gave Hervey ten. The nine hundred and ninety-four subscribers to this honest paper, all of whom had a slate loose somewhere, missed it; one of them wrote to ask whether a hundred pounds would be any use to keep life in it.
Hervey was now at a loss. She had saved close on fifty pounds and had finished her novel, which was appointed to come out in August. But it never entered her head that she could live by writing novels.
She was in this state when Marcel Cohen told her to call on Mrs Harben. ‘She wants,’ he said, ‘a secretary to write a personal sort of letters. For that you won’t need the shorthand you haven’t learned. What possessed you to learn Latin and no shorthand? She has two secretaries of the usual kind. She wants to be able to say to you : Explain that I am devoted to her but can’t see her. On that you compose the letter and she signs it. I’ve told her about you that you have, which is true, the head of an old diplomat on your young shoulders.’
Hervey looked at him, not certain that she was pleased. She thanked him and went home. She tried to see herself entering Mrs Harben’s room with a fine confident air. Actually she would stalk in looking—but what do I look like? she cried. She ran to the glass and staring, thought: That gaunt simple face is me. As always she was confused by the thought of calling on a stranger. It offended and frightened her.
She did not tell Penn what she was thinking. It might be a failure. Then it would humiliate her to have talked about it.
When the day came she put on a newly bought hat. This was a mistake. Her head, as round as an apple, offered nothing for an inexperienced hat to cling to. As she walked she felt a familiar sensation in the pit of her stomach. She tried, to overcome it by walking slowly. I shall stand as if I were looking not smiling watching to see whether I am to shake hands. My friend Mr Cohen. I think I could do what you want. I think I. Five pounds. Two hundred and fifty pounds a year is less than I. I read French perfectly. And Anglo-Saxon and Latin, but of course you (an amused smile), still perhaps you, I type very quickly I taught myself; I think I have enough experience. I have experience. Here she caught sight of herself in a shop window in Mount Street and straightened her hat. It is easy to imagine that you are a success; it is not so easy to imagine that your hat is on straight when it is in fact over one ear.
So dreaming, she walked past Mrs Harben’s house, turned back, rang the bell, and the instant the door opened she said in a loud voice: ‘I wish to see Mrs Harben.’ While she waited she stared round the room to convince herself that she was not anxious. Mrs Harben came in. She spoke to Hervey with so much kindness that the girl felt for her a passionate gratitude. She smiled suddenly, and Mrs Harben said, also smiling: ‘It’s agreed then, and my secretary shall write you a formal letter at once.’
Outside the house Hervey drew a deep breath ; she could not believe that she had made so good an impression: her cheeks burned and she felt confused and vexed. She could not remember what she had said. She went home. Penn was still out and she could not tell him that she was safe. A warm feeling of relief and happiness overwhelmed her.
The letter came by the last post. It said simply that Mrs Harben had changed her mind and did not wish to avail herself of Miss Russell’s services. She was reading it when she heard Penn’s hand on the door. Without thinking she thrust the letter out of sight under the tablecloth. Her heart beat violently but her face did not give anything away. She could only think of one time in her childhood when she let a shilling drop in the street; it vanished instantly through a grating, and she stood stock still and in agony that someone had seen and would laugh or be sorry for her.
She had William Ridley to thank. He was in Mrs Harben’s house when she was seeing Hervey. She had had to leave him and go into another room to see Hervey, whom she liked at once. She liked a simplicity and a distance which Hervey had by not caring for people. She was explaining this to Ridley and he said, simply: ‘Do you remember my asking Evelyn who it was wrote that sneering article in the London Review about you and it was this same Hervey Russell? I told you at the time.’
‘I had forgotten it,’ Mrs Harben cried.
Ridley had the delicacy not to say another word.
On this occasion he had no foolish impulse to be generous. Hervey irritated him and he felt that she might become a rival, and since he had said nothing but what he thought true his conscience did not trouble him. After all, what had he done? He prided himself strongly on being a good man of business and it was in accordance with business ethics that he had pressed an advantage against a weaker rival. So he felt satisfied with his morning’s work. A feeling of pleasure and well-being possessed him. He felt almost kindly towards Hervey, as if she had been the obscure means of making him know his strength.
Chapter XXVII
Penn is Not Responsible
As soon as Penn came into the room he said :
‘Shaw-Thomas sent for me this evening and gave me a week’s notice.’ He looked at her the whole time as he said it. He was pale.
Hervey’s first thought was, I must keep quiet and seem not to be startled or anxious. She said in a low voice: ‘Why, Penn, what had happened? Tell me about it.’
‘There’s nothing to tell,’ Penn said. He sat down on the sofa. ‘I thought something was wrong. When I wanted to see him last week he made excuses for not seeing me. This evening he said he had orders to cut down the staff. I happen to know he’s engaged two new men, so he’s a liar. If I hadn’t felt so knocked down by it I’d have told him to his face.’
Hervey could not bear the sight of him hurt and humbled. She went quickly across the room and stood close to him, not touching him because that would have made it seem too like pity. ‘One of the others must have made mischief,’ she said, in a firm voice.
‘I thought so at the time. But when I was coming home I thought it over, and I realised that I’d made a mess of everything. These last months I’ve had all the stuffing knocked out of me. I’ve made a failure of copywriting, I failed to get a teaching job, I’ve failed as a husband—though God knows I’ve tried to make that up to you. It’s been no good, though. I realised it to-night. I’m just useless’
‘You’re not useless,’ Hervey said.
Penn turned his face quickly aside. ‘Everything I’ve done is no use. I’ve been walking about for hours, trying to make up my mind to tell you. I feel miserable, Hervey. I feel so sorry for you. Please comfort me.’
She felt her heart ache for him. She flung her arms round him and rocked him against her body, as if he were a child. He was very quiet, accepting it all. She felt she could bear anything for him. In the same moment she remembered that he had had the other woman. If I had known nothing about it he would have gone to her this evening to be comforted, she thought. She trembled and felt that she despised him. Then again she was ashamed, and drew him closer to her, stroking his face. She tried cleverly and subtly to make him feel that whatever he was he was not a failure. It was the kind of work, she said. He was much too intelligent to do it well; it needed a mind more like hers, coarser and less scrupulous, to carry out work of that sort. ‘And you see even I could not stand it for long,’ she cried.
‘I’ve let you down pretty badly,’ Penn said, but he was less wretched.
‘All that worries me is I have no work myself.’
&
nbsp; ‘I’ll ask my mother to help us.’ He frowned. He hated to ask his mother for money, not only because she had so little now, but because she would reproach him and Hervey for living what she called a light life.
Hervey remembered her fifty pounds. Should she offer it? She closed her eyes—but I may need it for Richard, she thought. She said nothing.
‘You are sure you still want me, Hervey?’ Penn asked.
‘You know I do,’ she said. It is true, she thought. I’m still fastened to him, and now more than ever.
‘I’m a poor sort of husband.’
‘You’re my husband.’
‘Do you still feel like that?’
‘Yes.’ Hervey said.
‘Will you let me come to you now?’
‘You are all I want,’ Hervey sighed.
When he went off to his own room she felt that she had no strength. She remembered that she had pushed Mrs Harben’s letter out of sight under the cloth. Feeling for it with one hand she swept it out and without looking at it tore it in pieces and threw them out.
The next day Penn went off early to see his mother. Hervey waited for him with impatience. She was too restless to work or write. She thought of Richard, of her unmanageable desires and her unabateable ambitions, and again of Richard. My life is in pieces, I am nothing, I have achieved nothing; yet I will, she thought.
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