* * *
And then, suddenly, he rose to get some papers and looked at her fixedly.
“Where have I seen you before?”
She went on with her dusting, taking out book after book, and flicking it with her feather duster.
“Have you seen me before, sir?”
“Sure of it.”
“Where?”
“For the life of me I can’t remember. I have been worrying about it for days.”
“Surely there is no need to worry, sir.”
“But I have seen you somewhere else. Where was it?”
“How should I know, Mr. Main?”
“Then you don’t know?”
“How should I?”
He stared at her, and his stare was a little embarrassing.
“Yours is not the sort of face one forgets.”
“It is a very ordinary sort of face, Mr. Main. I’m quite familiar with it.”
“Oh, possibly. But I have seen you somewhere.”
He was very persistent, and she continued busy with the books.
“Is this your usual job?”
“What, sir?”
“Domestic service.”
She looked down at him with a whimsical smile.
“Well—I have done other things.”
“What things?”
“I have worked in a factory.”
“Indeed!”
“I have been a Lyons girl.”
“A Nippy! Rather extraordinary.”
“Not a bit, sir. Then I was in a shop—two shops.”
“Your experience seems to have been rather varied.”
“Doesn’t it? Perhaps you saw me in a shop.”
“What kind of shop?”
“A draper’s at Clapham. Do you know Clapham, Mr. Main?”
“Never been there in my life.”
“It could not have been there, then, could it?”
But there were voices in the hall, and Main turned again to his desk, and she went on with her dusting.
* * *
For the rest of that particular week-end Mr. Main and Miss Smith were kept apart by circumstances over which neither of them chose to exercise control, and on Monday Mr. Main returned to town with Mr. Crasswell. He left behind him in his bedroom a quantity of socks and shirts and etceteras that needed attention, and also the typescript of a novel.
Miss Smith contrived to do Mr. Main’s mending, and also to read a portion of his novel. She smuggled whole chapters of it to her room, and was surprised to find that it was a remarkable novel, for of all the secret novels that are written probably but one in a thousand is worth even the most casual attention.
Mr. Crasswell and his secretary came down to Barbury Place on the following Saturday. There was tension between them, which meant that Mr. Crasswell had mislaid his temper and that Mr. Main had to preserve his.
Mr. Main, when proceeding to unpack, found his novel where he had left it, under a pair of pale cotton pyjamas. But he was an observant person. Something had been done to the pyjamas, and also to the neat piles of vests and socks and shirts.
At half-past six Miss Smith brought him a can of hot water.
“Good evening, sir.”
He confronted her.
“Someone has been at my things.”
“Oh, sir?”
“Yes—I’m—I’m much obliged. It was awfully decent of you.”
“Of me, sir? Perhaps it was Mrs. Mills.”
He said looking at her fixedly:
“I’m quite sure it wasn’t Mrs. Mills.”
Now, on the Sunday, God spoke. He spoke to Mr. Main in the library, and he spoke loudly and with passion, and Rachel happened to be Eve, an innocent and coincidental Eve listening outside a door.
Mr. Crasswell held forth.
“Look here, what do I pay you for? Damn it—I can’t look into everything. I’ve told you over and over again that you are to be responsible for all the accounts down here. It’s perfectly monstrous. Petrol! Look at that bill. Seven new tyres in a month.”
“Well, sir, the cars are used a good deal.”
“Yes; but, damn it, I’m being done, and it’s your business to see that I’m not done. Then—the garden. Thirty loads of cow manure! Do they eat manure?”
“I should hardly think so, sir.”
“Look here, I don’t want you to be facetious. If this sort of thing isn’t stopped, I’ll fire you. Understand that. Now you go and have it out with the chaps in the garage. Check all the speedometers. See?”
“I see, sir.”
“Well, get on with it.”
Mr. Main, emerging from the library with a face of whiteness and of silent fury, found Rachel leaning against an oak table. She was playing with her feather duster. She did not look directly at him, for she knew that he did not wish to be looked at, with his pride thrashed into rags.
She said:
“Mr. Main, I am leaving to-morrow. Do I give you notice? I’d rather prefer to give it to Mr. Crasswell personally.”
“Leaving?”
She looked at him.
“Why don’t you do it, too?”
He reddened. He glanced fiercely out of the window.
“That’s my business.”
“Of course. But when you can write a short story like ‘City Smoke,’ why stay here?”
His head gave a jerk. He went and stood over her.
“Look here, who are you? What the devil do you mean——?”
She caressed the feathers of the duster.
“My name is Rachel Smith North.”
His face expressed astonishment, sudden illumination.
“Good Lord! Of course—I remember now. It was the Authors’ Club dinner. But what the devil are you doing here, a best seller, a——?”
She said:
“I’m a rather thorough person, Mr. Main. I like reality. I like to write about reality, and when I want to know about reality, I live it for a couple of months.” He stared.
“Well—I’m——!”
“And that’s a rather remarkable novel of yours, too.”
“What d’you mean?”
“I did your mending while you were away, and so I didn’t see why I shouldn’t have some pleasure out of it. I got it out of your novel.”
For a moment he was mute.
“But—I say—you know——”
“Why not send that novel to my agent? I shall be seeing him to-morrow.”
“It’s most awfully——”
“Not a bit.”
“You see, I’ve had to stick this. My mater, left without a halfpenny. She’s a——”
The feather duster gave a suggestive flick.
“Well, what about it? I’ll go in first. I suggest that we go to-day; there’s a train at 12.30. I think I can get that story of yours placed in three days. Risk it?”
“By George—I will.”
She smiled, waved the duster, and passed into the room. He heard her voice.
“Excuse me, Mr. Crasswell, but I am giving notice.”
“What! Who are you? Oh, yes——”
“I find that the atmosphere of this house does not agree with me. It’s too—too—shall we say—uncultivated.”
“What! Here—you—— Clear out; go and be rude to my secretary.”
The door opened and Main stood there.
“Did you call, sir?”
“Here, Main, this young woman——”
“Excuse me, sir, but I have come to tell you that I am leaving this morning. I find that the atmosphere of this house does not agree with me. It is too—uncultivated.”
Mr. Crasswell’s jaw fell.
“Well—I’m—— What’s the game?”
Mr. Main bowed to him.
“Good morning, sir.”
He turned to Miss Smith and smiled, and Mr. Crasswell saw his secretary and the housemaid go out arm-in-arm.
RIDICULE
There were few things that Martin Isherwood had not done s
uccessfully. By the age of forty-seven he had experienced only one considerable failure, but having married the wrong woman he had been spared the full consequences of this one failure, for his wife had run away with his worst enemy, and Isherwood, after settling a thousand a year on her for life, had said:
“Thank God!”
He sat in the bow window of a very famous club in St. James’s Street, with one of the faded puce-coloured curtains drawn to keep off the afternoon sunlight. The world went by beneath him—his world, the world in which he cut no inconsiderable figure. Bald heads reposed about him. Panter, one of the club waiters, was discreetly removing empty coffee-cups.
Isherwood beckoned to Panter.
“Yes, sir?”
“Bring me ‘Who’s Who.’ ”
“Yes, sir.”
Panter brought Martin Isherwood “Who’s Who,” and delivered it with the impressiveness of a local mayor presenting a casket to royalty, and Isherwood opened the book and looked himself up in it.
Yes, there he was, with all his successes. The whole social pattern of his life was nicely woven in a column of some twenty lines. Anybody could look up Martin Isherwood and discover that he had a town house in Clarges Street and that his country place was Isherwood Court. The garlands of his many accomplishments hung about him.
He had rowed in the Oxford boat; for five years he had sat in the “House,” for a Hampshire constituency; he had explored the Amazon; he had shot in the English team at Bisley; he had owned racehorses and had won races with them. He was something of an authority on English water-colour art and on Chinese lacquer. His publications included a treatise on “Rural Education,” and a “Fisherman’s Log off Florida.” He hunted; he played golf; and his clubs were the Carlton and Jerrys. His age was forty-seven. He had no children. Unofficially it was known that he was a very marriageable man.
Isherwood closed the book and placed it on the mahogany table beside him. He meditated. He had arrived at one of those moments when the ordered level of life’s road bored him. He was so secure. He had nothing to fear.
Yet he was aware of a sense of unreality. His mood was tending towards irony.
How easy life was—like the routine of this club, where you rang a bell and a polite servant came to satisfy your desires. But was life so easy? Could he not ascribe this seeming easiness to the fact that he was so well protected by circumstances?
Yes; and by the conventions. He behaved in a certain way; he dressed in a particular style; he did—in the main—all that these bald-headed gentlemen did, and so ordered his life that he was nicely inconspicuous.
Yes, the conventional atmosphere of his class, its habits of thought and of behaviour. Provided you did nothing eccentric!
And supposing—supposing he were to rise from his chair with a yell and pitch “Who’s Who,” at one of these bald heads? No, there would be no scene. Jerrys did not countenance scenes. There would be dignified surprise. Isherwood could picture Gurney, the secretary, being sent for, also Howarth, that monumental porter. “Mr. Isherwood is not quite himself.” His case would be considered as either mental or alcoholic.
The voice of his own restlessness accused him, the murmur of a vague dissatisfaction.
“Yes, you are afraid. And ridicule is the thing you are afraid of. Your success depends on your tailor. Ridicule, ridicule that is more terrible than Mrs. Grundy.”
Isherwood reflected. His fresh-coloured face assumed a combative expression.
“Now—supposing—for instance—that you were to appear in public without your tie?”
The inward and mocking voice now challenged him.
“You daren’t do it. You have shot tigers, but you haven’t the courage to walk down Piccadilly without a tie.”
It became obvious from his inward and immediate reaction that Isherwood was less of the social beast than the world imagined. There was a strain of Puckishness in him, and at the age of forty-seven, when a man is rather alone in the world and has lost nine-tenths of his illusions, his sense of humour may become mischievously grim. An ironical playfulness is apt to grimace at the world.
“You dare not do it,” said the voice.
“Confound you, but—I—will do it,” the Puck in Isherwood retorted.
He left Jerrys and returned to Clarges Street. He had been wearing a grey lounge suit, and Verity, his valet, following him upstairs, and needing no suggestions, laid out a morning coat and vest and pair of dark striped trousers.
“Right, you need not wait, Verity.”
Half an hour later Verity met his master on the lower landing. Verity had the impressive face of a Chinaman, but he received the shock of his life.
“Excuse me, sir——”
Isherwood’s eyes conveyed a casual interrogation.
“You are not—quite—dressed, sir.”
“Oh?”
“Your tie, sir.”
Isherwood continued calmly down the stairs towards the hall.
“I have given up ties, Verity.”
He went out into Clarges Street, leaving his valet a problem that was far knottier and more urgent than anything that Einstein had evolved.
Isherwood returned to St. James’s Street, conscious of being the inspirer of occasional surprise and amusement. Piccadilly had been too busy with its own affairs to trouble to observe the fact that a well-dressed man had forgotten his tie.
Twenty yards down St. James’s Street he met the Hon. Sylvia Curmody, a woman with a high colour and a hard blue roving eye. Her glance went instantly to that tieless expanse of shirt and collar. She nodded unsmilingly, and Isherwood raised his hat.
“I have met my publicity agent,” he thought, “and by to-morrow night it will be known everywhere that Martin Isherwood has been seen in St. James’s Street without a tie.”
Would they say that he was in love or approaching a sudden senility?
And, after all, did it matter?
At Jerrys he turned aside to the little glass-fronted holy of holies where Howarth, the hall porter, sat on a leather-topped stool. Howarth and Jerrys had lived a symbolic life for thirty years, and there were people to whom the bald, round-faced, massive porter was a greater man than any member of the club.
“Any letters, Howarth?”
Howarth might have been doorkeeper to the gods. Nothing flurried him. He looked straight at you through his gold-rimmed spectacles. He was polite, but with that air of superior and tolerant politeness that one associates with police sergeants.
“No, sir.”
Of course he had observed the monstrous lapse. Only on one other occasion had Howarth had to exercise his immense sagacity in dealing with such a problem, and that had been when old Sir Hercules Crutchet had forgotten a certain detail of his toilet. As the writers of the active school put it, Howarth did some rapid thinking.
“One moment, sir. Do you mind looking in the glass behind you.”
“What’s the matter, Howarth?”
“Well, sir, something has fallen off, unless——”
It was inconceivable that a member of Jerrys should wear a ready-made bow-tie.
Isherwood dealt with the insinuation.
“Howarth, do you really suggest, man, that I buy my ties made up?”
“No, sir.”
“Right. I think you said there were no letters?”
“No letters, sir.”
Isherwood ascended the steps to the pillared lobby, and Howarth removed his spectacles and polished the lenses with a very clean handkerchief. Had Mr. Isherwood really forgotten to put on a tie? If so——
Well, it might be a “wager.” A sporting challenge might justify a gentleman’s parading in St. James’s Street in a suit of pyjamas. Perhaps it had been tactless of him to refer to the detail? Howarth felt ruffled, and when one of the club pages appeared giggling in the lobby doorway, Howarth dealt with him as irresponsible urchins should be dealt with.
Isherwood strolled into the smoking-room. He had made the first plunge and over
come the terror that seizes upon the social man when he discovers himself to be differing conspicuously from his fellows. He was conscious of a sense of adventure. And how absurd that one should be able to capture the spirit of adventure by omitting to put on a tie!
He nodded to several acquaintances, and stood for a moment by Peter Blunt’s chair and discussed with him the imminent political crisis. Blunt had observed the lapse, but he treated Isherwood as a creature of sanity. Still, the lapse was there, and in the back of his mind Blunt was asking questions concerning the Isherwood family history. And had Isherwood’s youth been what it should have been?
“It’s a matter of suggestion, my dear chap; everything is suggestion.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” said Isherwood, strolling across to the table where the daily papers were kept.
He had sighted the club bore standing by the newspaper table—one General Crackenthorn—who had a fatal passion for seizing the obvious and holding it under his fellows’ noses. Isherwood wished to try the effect of his tielessness upon Crackenthorn.
The general put up his eye-glass. He became immensely solemn. He tapped Isherwood quite confidentially upon the shoulder.
He whispered the horrid truth.
“My dear Isherwood—one moment—your tie—my dear fellow.”
Isherwood stared.
“My tie, general? What about it?”
Crackenthorn’s whisper grew more pontifical.
“You haven’t got a tie.”
Isherwood smiled brightly.
“Is that so? Well, it’s the first original thing that has happened in this club since old Trelawney died while he was writing that hundred and first letter of his to The Times.”
Crackenthorn looked greatly shocked. A man did not wax facetious when he had committed such a solecism unless he was a rather vulgar person or touched in the head. Crackenthorn had expected Isherwood to disappear instantly into some secret refuge, and to remain there until the great Howarth had despatched an urgent message to Clarges Street.
In the general’s mind Isherwood was from that moment a man to be watched—a suspect.
His tielessness was to have been the self-mockery of a day, but Isherwood found the experiment so intriguing that he continued to go about offending against the normal prejudices of his fellows. Also, it must be confessed, that he discovered a mischievous pleasure in being different. He enjoyed the self-conscious smirk of the nonconformist. His pose was not quite forgetful of mirrors.
The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping Page 34