“Of course. I have been here before.”
“Have you?”
“But they wouldn’t let me see you.”
He looked astonished. He glanced at the hand that held his. Almost he had the eyes of a child. And then he noticed that her other hand held flowers. Were they for him? How wonderful! She had brought him flowers.
She noticed his glance. She placed the flowers on the bed.
“I bought them in the Essex Road, Spen.”
He smiled, as though the thing was not credible.
“Did you? Are they for me—really?”
“Of course.”
His face had a thin and timid gladness.
“I’d like to smell them.”
“Chrysanthemums haven’t much smell.”
But she held them for him to smell. Her eyes were deep and strange. She noticed that his nose looked huge, and that his cheeks were sunken. His poor neck was like a cord, and over these failings of the flesh her love bowed itself.
She said, “I have had a talk to the matron. She thinks that you will be able to come out in a fortnight.”
The change in him was instant. His face clouded over. His eyes looked afraid.
“Shall I?”
She spoke softly but swiftly.
“Yes. You will have to be careful. I’m having a gas stove put in your bedroom.”
He stared at her. His forehead was all puckered up.
“But,—Eleanor, I have nowhere to go to. Of course—I shall find some place.”
She repeated her words as though he had failed to hear her.
“You will have to be careful, Spen. I was saying—I have had a stove put in your bedroom.”
He looked tragic.
“But, Eleanor, I haven’t any money. I can’t—”
He felt the touch of her hand.
“That will come later. O, yes, it will. I shall have to look after you, Spen.”
His eyes grew dim. The ward and its inmates were blurred to him. He was not conscious of anything but her face, and that too was blurred.
He said, “Do you mean, you will let me come back, just for a little while? I’ll try again, Eleanor! I’ll try so hard.”
“Of course—you are coming back. I want you to come back.”
He drew her hands toward his face, and kissed her fingers.
Chapter Thirty
Some things are not done, but when they are done successfully and with an air of inevitableness the world closes both eyes. Arthur Raymond had a visitor. She sat in the chair that was used by authors and illustrators and other fry, and extracting from her handbag the two halves of a letter, she passed them across the desk to Raymond. It was his own letter to Scarsdale, rescued from the waste-paper basket, and cherished against some critical occasion.
She observed the man while he glanced at it. She watched his eyes and his mouth, and her examination of him pleased her. She did not say to herself, “This man is good” or “This man is persuadable”, but the colour and the texture of him were to her liking.
“But this is my own letter.”
She explained the case at once, and in a few simple words, and then sat silent and attentive.
“You see, sir,—if there is something for him to hope for.”
The face on the other side of the desk had a stillness. He looked again at the letter, and then he glanced at her, and his eyes seemed to widen. It was as though her presence made the raising of blinds possible.
“But this letter is hopeful. In it I say that the work has vividness and appeal.”
“I think he had hoped so much, sir.”
Raymond waited.
“He had no money left, or very little money. It is very kind of you to see me. I only wanted to ask if you—”
She paused and he smiled at her.
“If I meant what I wrote?”
“Not now. But if he were to improve the end of the story.”
“I should accept it.”
Her eyes held his for a moment. She consented; she was satisfied.
“That is what I wanted to know. I’ll persuade him to rewrite the end of it. I’m so very grateful to you.”
She rose, and he rose with her.
“Remember,—I haven’t accepted it yet.”
“No. You have to fill that chair.”
“Quite. But if he can better the ending, there should be many other stories.”
He opened the door for her. They shook hands, and she passed out leaving him wondering, and with a feeling of refreshment. A woman of the people and yet how singular, how deep and deliberate and apart. She had promised not to waste his time, and she had not wasted it. And he thought, “How easy”. For so many people were like tangles of twine that came to untwine themselves in his presence, and got themselves into worse tangles. Circuitous, plausible, unsure people who wanted to impress, or to pick the end of a favour. They had made that editorial chair of his uneasy, but this woman was different.
“Profoundly simple,” he thought, “but then simplicity is profound.”
Back in his chair he followed the incident into further human possibilities. She had asked him to treat this visit of hers as a secret affair, but in remembering Scarsdale—and he remembered him very well—he was moved to kindness. He called in his secretary and dictated a letter.
“Dear Mr. Scarsdale,
“I am wondering whether you have humoured me and re-modelled the ending of the long short story you submitted. If so, I should very much like to re-read it with a view to publication. Your work has a quality of its own.
Yours truly,”
The typed copy of the letter was laid on his desk, and he read it through, and in choosing to make that human gesture he was more than the man in the office chair. Was he exaggerating? Perhaps—a little, but he remembered Scarsdale’s eyes and his anguished and perspiring forehead, and the risk seemed worth taking. He saw it as a critical moment in the life of a poor devil whose flame was faltering for lack of oil, and if oil could be supplied the lamp might go on burning. He signed the letter. He rang for his secretary.
“Look up Mr. Scarsdale’s address. You have it, I suppose?”
“Yes, Mr. Raymond.”
“Have this letter posted to him.”
The coincidence was a happy one, for Raymond’s letter arrived in Astey’s Row on the day before Scarsdale’s return, and Mrs. Richmond placed it on the sitting-room table.
2
The taxi carried them up the Pentonville Road, and into Upper Street, and as it diverged to enter the Essex Road, Scarsdale seemed moved by some spasm of emotion. He had been sitting very still beside her, his eyes pretending to watch the life of the world to which he was returning, while realizing that his world—the world that mattered to him—was here at his elbow.
“Not much change, Eleanor.”
“The Essex Road doesn’t change.”
She had been aware of his stillness and his rigidity. He was shy of her, but with a shyness that expressed deep matters. He wanted to say things to her, and no words seemed to him adequate, for his wonder at life and at her was steeped in humility. She was miraculous and yet somehow so exquisitely real. She remembered. He had gone to the hospital without a hat, and she had come to the hospital to take him home, bringing with her a suitcase that had contained a hat, clean underclothing, a shirt and collar. How could so wonderful a creature remember such trivial things? But perhaps that was why she was what she was, and like Raymond he divined her profound simplicity, a subtlety of rhythm that was so right that it had the appearance of being elemental.
He smiled.
“That—astonished me.”
“What astonished you, Spen?”
“The hat. That you should remember. I wonder who found the other hat? But I didn’t tell you, did I?”
“How you lost it.”
“I left it in an empty van. Couldn’t go back to fetch it, somehow. What an idiot!”
She was looking at his thin, white hands.
And suddenly they realized that they had arrived, and that the taxi had stopped at the end of Astey’s Row. She got out first, and paid the taximan, and reached for the suitcase, and for a moment there was mute argument between them, for he wanted to carry the suitcase and she would not allow him to carry it. They entered the Row. The bare branches of the old plane tree curved over them, and Scarsdale, with cheeks that were faintly flushed, threw quick and sensitive glances right and left.
“Same old tree. Seems years—somehow.”
“Just a month.”
They came to the gate and she opened it, but he paused inside the gate, and looked about him. Almost he was like a man returning from the ends of the earth to a corner of life beyond the edge of dreams. There was the cherry tree and the blue post and the holly bush, and the two green boxes with their shrubs, and the privet hedge, and the steps and the door. Of course these things were here, but how strange they seemed, strange yet beautifully familiar. His eyes felt hot. He wanted to say things to her, gracious, tender, humble things, and just two words came.
“Home, Eleanor.”
She understood.
A bright fire was burning in the kitchen, for she had arranged with a neighbour to come in and mend it while she was out, and Thomas waited for them on the hearthrug. He looked at Scarsdale with yellow eyes that appeared searching and unfriendly, and then came rubbing round the man-thing’s legs.
“Hallo, Tom, remember me?”
“Of course he remembers you.”
She carried his suitcase upstairs, and lit the new gas-stove which she had had fitted in his bedroom. She went to take off her hat and coat, while Scarsdale stood on the hearthrug, nursing the cat, and listening to her footsteps overhead. Tea was laid, with the familiar blue and white china, and the brown teapot, and the hot-water jug with pink roses on it. He noticed a plum cake, and four squares of bread that had been cut ready for toasting. He noticed everything, her sewing-machine, the shelf of books, the towel and apron hanging on the scullery door. Considered æsthetically the room was a little, shabby, commonplace apartment full of ugly things, but to Scarsdale it had beauty. It was like the life of some working man or woman, crude in its externals, but possessing an inward fineness, secrets of courage and patience and compassion. He felt that there was no other room in the world like it. It was full of a presence.
She came down to him.
“I have lit your stove. I don’t want you to go up till the room is warm.”
He caressed the cat.
“Some things can’t be said, Eleanor.”
“Well, never mind.”
“But I do mind. I haven’t the right to say the things that I want to say. You have been too wonderfully good to me.”
“That may be because I like it, Spen.”
She lit the gas, and turning to the fire, put the kettle in its place. She lowered the flap of the grate, and the glow played upon her hands. She mused a moment.
“Shall we make toast?”
“I’d love to. May I?”
“That won’t hurt you. I’ll get the fork.”
She fetched it for him, and he put down the cat, and adjusted a slice of bread on the fork, and knelt down. She drew up a chair; she was very close to him, and his consciousness was divided. He was responsible for the toast, but also he was responsible for himself and for her.
He said, “It’s so good to be here. You don’t know what it means.”
She leant forward.
“Why shouldn’t I know?”
“You couldn’t. Because—I’m—”
The fork was a little unsteady and he appeared to concentrate all his attention upon it. His hair was all grizzled above his hollow temples, and his eyes seemed to have grown bigger. The hand that held the fork looked all knuckles.
His lips moved. “I’ve been a wretched failure. Give me one more chance, Eleanor.”
She laid a hand on his shoulder.
“What is failure, Spen? You might have made a lot of money, and grown fat, and yet been horrible. People don’t understand what life is—I mean—not the living of it. There is such a thing as being worth while.”
He glanced up at her devotedly.
“How—worth while?”
“In our selves. You haven’t failed yet. Perhaps—you haven’t begun.”
“My dear, I’ll try. I’ll try so desperately hard.”
Hesitantly he let his head rest for a moment against her arm, and her arm was warm and soft and consenting.
“Eleanor, I can’t say the things I want to say. But perhaps—some day—you’ll let me say them. I’ve got to get work. I must get it.”
“Yes, you’ll get it. Don’t worry, Spen. Look, the toast’s smoking.”
It was she who buttered the toast, and she was generous with the butter, for this was a special occasion, and the ways and means of life could be left till to-morrow. She had figured things out; she could manage, she could give to him space to breathe in and time to find himself his opportunity. He had to be taught to believe in himself. Meanwhile, there was that letter of Raymond’s lying on the sitting-room table, and though that letter might be the making of his to-morrow, it belonged to to-day.
“O, by the way a letter came for you yesterday. It’s on the sitting-room table.”
But he showed no live interest in the letter. He was not expecting to hear from anyone. The post had never been kind to him.
“I don’t suppose it is anything important.”
She agreed.
“It looks rather like a circular. I’ll fetch it for you.”
“No, I’m capable of that.”
She waited. She believed that the letter was from Arthur Raymond, for on the upper left-hand corner of the envelope was printed “Golden Magazine”, but how much helpfulness there might be in the letter she could not say. Scarsdale came back to her. His face expressed excitement, but at the same time he was trying to restrain and to conceal it. His effort was to appear casual.
“It’s not a circular.”
“Isn’t it? I just put it on your table.”
She was willing him to open it. She watched him open it, using a knife to slit the flap of the envelope. She bent down to take the plate of hot toast that was keeping itself warm in front of the fire; she heard the crackle of paper. If his fingers trembled a little she could sympathize.
“Eleanor—”
“Yes?”
“It’s from Raymond. He wants to know if I have written the end of that story. He wants to see it.”
“Why, that’s splendid.”
“He sounds quite keen.”
“Then, you’ll rewrite it, Spen?”
“I’ll begin work on it to-morrow.”
3
She let him have his way, but it was by no means an easy way, for when he lit his first pipe, and sat down at his table, his stomach refused to tolerate tobacco. The week nauseated him; it made him feel faint, and he was constrained to lie down on the sofa. At midday Mrs. Richmond came back from her work at Highbury Terrace, and found him depressed and the colour of vellum.
She had to be told what had happened, and gently she scolded him.
“Of course—you can’t begin just where you left off. You mustn’t be in such a hurry, Spen.”
He looked at her sorrowfully.
“I’ll give up smoking. Besides, I can’t afford it. But I have always been used to a pipe when I’m writing.”
“Well, go on smoking, but half a pipe to begin with. Remember you have been very ill.”
“Yes, Eleanor.”
He displayed the docility of a sick child.
“In future you will have your breakfast in bed. I can manage it before I go out. Also, the doctor said that you were to get as much fresh air as possible.”
“Yes, Eleanor. But I want to begin—”
“But not all at once. You can’t expect it.”
He obeyed her.
He allowed her her wisdom, though his impatience to justify himself was like a pain. Almost he could not bear it, this procrastination, this hurt to his pride. He felt like a parasite. He was eating her food and using her house. She worked, while he pottered and planned, and loathed his own ineptitude. His very love was ashamed. He watched her go out and he watched her come in, and sometimes he was afraid, for he could not believe that she could bear so generously with the poor, broken thing that was Spenser Scarsdale. And yet he consented. He accepted her wise tyranny. He suffered her to bring him his breakfast before she went to work; he made himself eat; he ate as though he were performing some sacred act. He went out and walked, and each day he walked a little farther, and returned feeling less tired. He did not smoke. He was like a man hardening himself for a race.
He suffered, and was silent, and she, calm and capable and kind, understood much more of him than he knew. She kept emotion out of the house. She made this season of his reprieve seem right and natural.
“You are looking ever so much better, Spen.”
He was. Moreover, the great urge was banking up in him, like a furnace fed by her wise and quiet hands. It was more than courage and desire. It had the inevitableness of a new manhood, devotion, will force, self knowledge, the strength of humility. He ate and walked and slept in order that he might justify himself to her.
One evening she took a packet of tobacco out of her bag.
“You haven’t smoked for a week, Spen.”
“No. But I’m going to smoke only when I work. Just a little to begin with. I’m going to try to-morrow.”
“I think you might.”
“I’d like to come down to breakfast, Eleanor.”
“Well, try.”
“It hurts me,—your doing all this—”
She looked down at him, and her eyes were deep.
“Does it? But—some men—”
“I didn’t realize, somehow, Eleanor, how a woman—”
She put the kettle on the fire.
“If you understand that—well—that’s half life.”
4
At a dusty little stationery shop in the Essex Road Scarsdale had bought two penny bottles of ink, one blue-black and one red, though red ink should have been a superfluity. Its colour attracted him, and when he sat down at his table on that December morning, he dipped a new nib into the red ink, and tried it on the back of an old envelope. This whimsical adventure in colour pleased him. It had a newness. For years he had scribbled in black, and his mood was for colour, new means and methods of self-expression, a more virile fancifulness. Red ink was to him more than red ink. It seemed to transmute itself into wine, blood, nectar.
Old Wine and New Page 32