Miss Gall, with a little austere and awesome pointing of the lips, could not refrain from whispering to herself—“Girls.” The very suggestion of such frailty shocked her, though the new world was full of such seismic disturbances. Sex and all that. But Mr. Scarsdale! Surely he did not go hunting in the garish streets with that new, feverish, short-skirted crowd? Or was it matrimony? Miss Gall felt very depressed. Her one and perfect celibate blossoming like that pot of tulips, and getting a wife, and going elsewhere, because another woman in the house was not according to Miss Gall’s tradition!
“O, drat the war!”
She knew that—always—she had managed to make Mr. Scarsdale very comfortable, and he was what she had called a comfortable man. You had known just what he would do in those black-booted, sober, Sabbatarian pre-war days. And somehow she had the feeling that Mr. Scarsdale was less comfortable, and less comfortable with himself. He looked restless, as though he were searching for something, and had not found it.
4
Mr. Taggart and Sabbath were but a part of the post-war plan, and Scarsdale remembered that it would be necessary for him to call on Jewell the literary editor of the Sunday Standard and on Snape of the Scrutator. But some part of him had loitered and procrastinated, and, like a boy let out of school, he had found himself in no hurry to return to the desk. There had been a four years’ interlude, and the familiar routine had been broken, and now that he was at liberty to sit on the same stool he was not so eager to sit on it.
For the war had inflated other things besides the currency, and in Scarsdale’s pot of tulips there burned a little flame of symbolism. Romance! Like many other men he had a feeling that he could do other things and that he could do them differently, and perform more eminent and gallant deeds, and despise the dull old sesquipedalian tramping. The Spring of 1919 invited man to dance, to play games, and to go out as he pleased into God’s own country. He felt himself a more lordly creature, with fairy gold in his pocket, and that woman was woman and never more desirable and disturbing.
Scarsdale crossed the passage to the door of Taggart’s room, and opened the door as though it represented no sacred screen. In the old days Mr. Taggart had taken himself and the Sabbath very seriously, but Scarsdale was taking neither of them too seriously. He had his hat on.
He said—“I am just going round to see Jewell.”
Mr. Taggart, hunched morosely before a new medicine bottle, looked over a black shoulder.
“Jewell?”
“Yes. He will be wanting me to take up some of the books.”
Mr. Taggart’s wet pink mouth opened to say something, but before he could say it Scarsdale closed the door. And Taggart sat staring at the closed door; he frowned at it, but the frown changed into a cynical, sombre smirk. He jabbed at a proof with a stumpy blue pencil, and supposed that old Scarsdale was just like the rest of the returning warriors, a little hyperborean, and full of pink flushes and barbaric self-importance. They were so young and dramatic—these ex-service men; they had lost touch with peaceful reality; they seemed to be a little contemptuous of the oily and smutty business of being civilized. They had strange misconceptions about money and work and their market value.
Mr. Taggart’s inner man reverberated. He heaved in his chair, and was aware of his breakfast. He grunted cynically to his inward soul. Well, Scarsdale could stroll out in search of Jewell. Like other men from France and Palestine and Macedonia, Scarsdale could find things out for himself. Some of those precious stones had dropped from their setting. Mr. Taggart, in the presence of his medicine bottle, doubted the validity of things precious and otherwise.
5
About an hour later Mr. Taggart heard Scarsdale return. His understudy went into his own room and closed the door, and Taggart’s cynicism wedded itself to curiosity. He had been irritated by Scarsdale’s cheerfulness, his air of sanguine self-confidence, just as though the world had been waiting for these warriors to return, and would hurry to embrace them and prepare beds of roses. Scarsdale was a little inflated; almost he indulged in gentle swaggering; he had made Mr. Taggart feel very much alone with his medicine bottle.
Mr. Taggart got up, and going out into the passage, opened Scarsdale’s door. He surprised his junior in the most unexpected of attitudes. Scarsdale was standing in front of a small mirror, and adjusting the wings of his bow tie.
Mr. Taggart’s bitterness and his breakfast sought self-expression.
“What about article for the next number?”
“I’m doing it. Have it to-morrow.”
“Find Jewell in?”
“No. There’s a new man. Jewell has been scrapped.”
Mr. Taggart smiled, and was moved to say, “I could have told you that if you hadn’t bolted like a rabbit.”
But Scarsdale did not appear depressed. He had felt sorry for Jewell, but he did not associate himself with discarded stones. He turned to his table by the window, and sat down, and began to sort out some proofs.
“Well, they retired Jewell. He was over fifty, you know. The new man seems very decent.”
“Giving you books to do, is he?”
“Probably. He has given me an introduction to Butcher of The Babbler. New wine, Taggart.”
Mr. Taggart said something about new wine being rather raw, and with an air of sombre displeasure left Scarsdale to his proof-reading. Obviously Scarsdale had not realized the significance of Jewell’s disappearance, or suspected that the new man had fobbed him off with an easy introduction. Mr. Taggart returned to his room, glanced at his watch, and then poured himself out a dose of medicine.
He held the glass to his lips.
“The Babbler! Good Lord! Does the fellow think he can babble?”
Chapter Eight
It was Sunday, and Scarsdale sat at his desk in the window and looked down into Canonbury Square. He had breakfasted at nine, and at nine-thirty the house had sunk into solicitous stillness, for Miss Gall knew when not to disturb Mr. Scarsdale, and that the bedrooms could be left till later. She put on felt slippers. Yet, in spite of this encouraging silence, Mr. Scarsdale’s pen lay idle on the desk, while he sat with his elbows at rest, smoking a pipe. The sun was shining, and the grass and the young foliage in the garden of the square had a burnished newness, the gloss of youth. Yet another pot of tulips—“Cottage Maid”, rose and white, had succeeded to red “Artus”. Mr. Scarsdale had opened the right-hand top drawer of the desk, and in it the white manuscript paper waited to be taken out and covered with the symbols of creation.
It waited, and so did Spenser Scarsdale’s mood. It waited upon the green of the young year, and upon the flowering tulips, and upon his own feeling for the newness of things and upon the newness within himself. For he too had caught the swagger of the Spring and of the post-war streets; he had discovered his second youth, a thrill of adventurousness, the romance of reality. The new age had infected him.
He sat and savoured it. He deliberated. Life was very challenging; he accepted the challenge, and almost like a sanguine boy he lay and stared at the blue sky and dreamed of conquests. Why was it that he had never felt like this before, but had allowed himself to stagnate in the office of Morley & Taggart, helping to boil up bilious stuff for a world that was rebelling? How was it that the old pre-war Scarsdale had slipped into such a groove, a rut of routine which led from nowhere to nowhere? He had been a dull dog.
But now! Yes, the war had taught him many things. It had not been Sabbatarian, and on this Spring morning he sat and allowed himself to feel full of the to-morrow. He was going to write and to write differently. He would create. He would write about the war and the war’s realities; he would write about man, and about woman. Instead of waxing pompous over other fellow’s books he would produce books and short stories of his own. All that paper was waiting to be turned into life.
But there was no hurry. He sat and dreamed a little and smoked his pipe, and was most strangely young and confident. Of course, for the time being he would remain w
ith Taggart and continue to review books and produce articles, but gradually as the new work prospered he would abandon the old. He would cease to be an unimpressive hack. He would be free. He would make sufficient money to be able to be impressive.
Yes, he felt gaillard and young. Yes, quite like young Prosper le Gai in Hewlett’s inimitable romance—“The Forest Lovers”. The colour, and the mystery and the passion of life! But how extraordinary that it should have taken him all these years to discover that he had been living in slippers, a sort of literary pantaloon. Yes, he supposed that the war had blown a trumpet, and that he had started up to discover such things as horses and spears and women and castles upon hills and dim old forests. He was awake, alive.
Old Taggart and his medicine bottle!
He looked down into the square and saw a young man come out of a house, glance at the creased rightness of his trousers, and set off briskly in search of,—what?
Scarsdale smiled. He felt just like that.
2
Sunday at No. 53 Spellthorn Terrace was very much a day of ease, especially so on those Sundays when Harry unbuttoned and was off duty. No clamorous bells could coerce Julia into getting up early, and the blinds would remain down until nine o’clock, for to be in bed late on these Sabbath mornings was the one weekly relaxation that she allowed herself.
Though Julia Marwood was not a young woman of dreams. Her duskiness might appear mysterious and perplexing to such a man as Scarsdale, but when she lay abed late on these Sunday mornings she allowed her strong young body to enjoy its laziness. Practical and purposeful she might be, but there was a feminine element that sleeked itself between the sheets, and watched the sunlight on the window blind, and vaguely coveted things. It was her one natural and sensuous hour when she detached herself from practical affairs and became almost subconsciously herself, though hardly aware of that self’s significance, for during the rest of the week she was so very wide awake.
She had to be wide awake. She was responsible for so many realities, for Harry, the domestic problems of No. 53, finance, beds, breakfasts, the woman who came in twice a week to scrub and dust and clean, the fussinesses of Mr. Jimson and Mr. Jimson’s inevitable inexactitudes. Mr. Jimson was growing more perplexingly inefficient. Almost he appeared to be the victim of a premature senility; he would talk for ever but to no good purpose. He irritated people.
Julia had noticed that clients edged away from Mr. Jimson, and gravitated towards her desk.
“O, Miss Marwood understands the situation.”
She did. And daily at Martagon Terrace she was reaching out to recapture lost opportunities, for people wanted houses and more and more houses, and houses were not to be had, while Mr. Jimson stood and fiddled, and searched the cavities of his teeth with the tip of a restless tongue. There were days when she could have assassinated Mr. Jimson. He was so brightly and fussily futile.
For she was extraordinarily self-confident. She had had to fight and to overcome difficulties, and she had succeeded, nor was she hampered by sentimental illusions. She knew that the Jimson business depended on her, and that it might be made a much more live and prosperous concern, and that Mr. Jimson was afraid of her. Already she had her plans for a partnership, and she wanted capital.
She had her eyes on other realities, a berth somewhere for Harry, and an efficient little flat for them both in place of No. 53, and its exactions. She was ambitious; she had a healthy appetite for material success; she meant to get things. She was very much the new age, without being weakened by the new age’s mere passion for play, and its urge toward easiness. She did not expect something for nothing. But the post-war ideals, or rather—its cravings, did appeal to her. She wanted tangible things, not such abstractions as beauty or books or days in the country, the old, sweet, sentimental moonshine. She asked for results, hard cash, and its authority, handsome clothes, satisfying sensations, her hair in perfect order, silk, good seats at the theatre, a car. Yes, most strangely and yet most characteristically she coveted a car, her own car, and to drive herself; it was the supreme toy in her shop window. She wanted speed, and the imagined excitement of speed; to rush along the road, passing other people. The passion for it somehow expressed her, and her youth, and her generation.
She would look at cars in the street, but the shabby old war hacks did not appeal to her. Soon there would be a glut of newness; she divined it and exulted in it and lusted for it. She read about cars, and with a queer, mechanical flair for the inwardness of cars. A certain type of car thrilled her, low and long and rakish, with its swift nose thrusting its way through the traffic. She saw herself in such a car, sweeping past and through the crowd with a kind of merciless, cold exultation.
But there was Harry, and on this spring day Harry had asked for tea in the garden. He had been cutting the grass with a pair of old shears while his sister sat and read a motoring magazine. The pear tree was in blossom, and the Virginia creeper on the back of No. 53 had begun to stipple the brickwork with reddish green shoots. Julia had no gardening in her; she was not made that way.
Harry had bought some penny packets of flower seed, and a week ago he had sown them in the two borders between the grass and the brick walls separating the garden of 53 from other gardens. He ran out every morning to see if the seeds were showing, for he was fair haired and pink skinned, and should have been a country child.
“The Virginia stock’s showing, Ju.”
She allowed him his enthusiasms, his bright eyes and his flushes. The boy had a queer passion for flowers, and she was in the act of watching him bending over his miraculous seedlings when the door-bell rang. Both of them heard it, and both of them exclaimed.
“O,—bother!”
“Who can it be?”
She was getting out of her chair when he made a dash toward the back door.
“I’ll go, Ju.”
But she had other plans for him. Always she knew that a ring or a knock might mean young Bob or her mother, and she kept the front door locked. Also there was yet another possibility, and she sent Harry in to wash his hands at the sink, and went herself to the front door of No. 53. She opened it silently and suddenly with the intention of surprising the person upon the doorstep, and she uncovered the breadth of a man’s back. It was Scarsdale’s.
He turned and raised his hat. He was shy, a little apologetic, and his eyes looked at her as though they wanted to look at her at their leisure, but were prevented from doing so by their owner’s self-consciousness. She noticed that he was well dressed, and that his collar was new. He spoke rather hurriedly, as though to justify his invasion of her doorstep.
“Afraid I have taken you at your word, Miss Marwood. I happened to be in Chelsea.”
She had met the unexpectedness of him with impassive gravity, but suddenly she smiled.
“Well, we happen to be in.”
She stood back and met his eyes, and she knew at once why he had come, and it surprised her. She was not given to thinking of men in that particular way, and as yet no man had disturbed her dark young seriousness. But this man—! She had no adjective to apply to the sudden occasion, nor was she caught up by her conjectures and moved to a little burst of inward laughter. She was not moved so cheaply. She felt alert and attentive and a little puzzled.
“My brother’s here. No—not that other one.”
He was smiling, and she noticed the fine wrinkles at the outer angles of his eyes. Yes, he was quite old.
“This time—I should have been ready. But I’m not intruding? You are sure?”
Her white teeth showed.
“We were going to have tea in the garden. Sunday’s a rather informal day.”
“Splendid. I’m not a formal person. At least—I hope I’m not.”
She made way for him, and through the open door at the end of the passage Scarsdale saw a vivid strip of grass, and the grey trunk of the old pear tree and its lower branches pendant with white blossom. It was like a little, brilliant picture hanging at the end o
f a long, dark room, and Scarsdale was moved by the beauty of it. He was in a mood to be touched by such swift impressions.
“How charming!”
She was standing aside to let him pass before she closed the door, and she looked up at him and was made to wonder at the expression of his face. It had a sheen, a tenderness. He looked at that green grass and white blossom almost as he had looked at her, with a kind of ardent timidity. She did not know that to such a man as Scarsdale all that was near to her, beauty, strangeness even in a London back garden, belonged to her.
She closed the door.
“Yes, quite pretty.”
But she was puzzled. She supposed that if he had friends in Chelsea he was one of those artistic people who became excited about bits of china and a bowl of flowers. The whole of him had a strangeness, his tall—thin figure, his big nose, and gently prominent brown eyes, his grizzled smile. In her young, bright, determined way she had learnt to make mental pictures of the people who came to the office in Martagon Terrace, and to place them in their necessary frames. She had learnt to recognize the fussy and the suspicious, the capable and the irresolute, but Scarsdale did not fit into any of her frames. He was both too vague and too vivid.
Old Wine and New Page 9