4
To Scarsdale his marriage was an extraordinary event. He was very innocent about it. The mild highbrow, the precise and prosy person had disappeared to re-emerge as a rather boyish creature. He had very little vanity. He was surprised at things, at his creating of “Smith”, at the acceptance of “Smith”, at Eleanor, at the wonder of Eleanor, at the supreme wonder of her wishing to marry him. It was not that he had the makings of an eager and uxorious ass, but—rather—he was the rabbit of Martinsell released from the snare, and finding every clover leaf and grass blade marvellous.
They travelled down to those same uplands, after being married unsacramentally at a Register Office. The thing in itself was a sufficient sacrament. The little house in Astey’s Row was locked up for a week.
Scarsdale put his wife into the corner of a third-class carriage. In a sense she allowed herself to be put there, and to remain there while he went off on some secret adventure. The whole of life had become an adventure to Spenser Scarsdale.
He returned with two monthly magazines, one of which contained a story by him, a copy of a weekly journal, and half a pound of chocolates. He got into the carriage and looked at his wife as though to convince himself of the astonishing reality that she was his wife and that she had not melted into air. He placed the magazines and the carton of chocolates in her lap.
“Something to read, Eleanor.”
She smiled at him.
“Mustn’t spoil me, Spen.”
“Impossible.”
She was wise as to his innocence. She had more than a feeling that she was going to be happy with it, and that his very innocence made him real. Strange he might be, and she liked him strange, his hare’s eyes and his big nose and his grizzled temples, and his sensitive and rather ineffectual hands, She preferred him to the very obvious he-man with his cut-from-the-joint views upon everything, and his shiny masculine chin and his conviction that nothing mattered like trousers. It is possible that she found in Scarsdale a pleasant picturesqueness, outlines that were both vague and vivid, an eternal surprise, quaint and lovable oddities, a sensitive and growing joy in life. Always he was so surprised. She liked his air of surprise and of wonder. It was not mere silliness. Almost it was reverence, or the wonder of the child.
She tried one of the chocolates, and then offered him the carton.
“You must have bought the most expensive ones, Spen.”
Almost he looked sly.
“Well, for you—of course. I should like it to be that way—always—Nellie. The best I can do,—you know.”
And suddenly he became a little sad.
“Two hundred a year, not much, dear. Wish it were more.”
They were alone in the carriage, and she reached out and touched his knee.
“Nothing to worry about, Spen. What you give—is you. I don’t happen to be greedy.”
They were bound for the “George” at Avebury, Scarsdale having written and arranged for rooms. A car met them at Marlborough station, and the undulations of the downland road carried them toward a September sunset, grey gossamer hills in a larger web of gold. Scarsdale pointed out the round borrows on Overton Hill.
“You see those.”
He was surprised to find that she knew what they were, but—then she was a Dorset woman. He was always discovering something fresh in Eleanor, and at the George Inn at Avebury he discovered her normality. They had the front bedroom overlooking the road and a sector of the green vallum, and for the first two evenings the parlour below was theirs, and Eleanor made friends with the cats, and with the Wiltshire girl who waited, and with the very pleasant wife of the padrone. She was Wessex as well as Astey’s Row.
Her normality rested upon the virtue of a healthy body. She enjoyed things, the country food, the bed, her husband’s shyness, his shyness in loving her, her hot bath, the hills, the beech trees, tea and home-made jam. She brushed her fine black lustrous hair as though she enjoyed brushing it, which she did. She enjoyed his almost boyish embraces.
The weather was kind to them, as kind as the George Inn. On Silbury Hill, which reduced both of them to breathlessness, they lay on the flat top of the great cone of the turf and chalk, and watched the clouds, and their shadows. Scarsdale, who had read all that he could find upon Silbury, explained the various theories, that it was a “sun hill”, or a fire-hill, or a pyramid, and that—obviously—it had its relation to the great stone circle. Eleanor christened it The Tower of Babel.
“Besides,” as she said, “it seems rather strange, Spen, that they should have taken so much trouble to pile up this hill when there were so many bigger hills ready made.”
Scarsdale had his moment of humour.
“Man and his molehill. If you take a child down to the sea-shore, Nellie—”
“Oh,—I know. He digs a hole or makes a mound.”
“While mother looks on. Probably Stone Age man assumed that the great earth-mother or sky-mother was looking on. I say, it is half-past twelve! We ought to be getting back.”
He scrambled up and gave his wife a hand.
“This air makes me jolly hungry. Hungry, Eleanor?”
“O,—yes.”
He put an arm round her, and for half a minute they stood like some mystic two in one upon the top of Silbury, a silhouette against the sky-line for all the world to see. Adam and Eve on Silbury Hill. But a big car had pulled up on the main road below, and other invaders were storming the hill. Eleanor and Scarsdale passed them as they descended. A lanky and sallow youth, with flopping grey flannel trousers and gaudy scarf, and his bare head very much in the wind, was facetious at Silbury’s expense.
“I say,—this is some pimple! Wonder what the old jossers were at. Sort of primitive wireless station, what!”
Farther down the slope middle-age had paused to get its breath. It eyed Eleanor appreciatively. Yes, somehow, Silbury was woman, a breast, a provocation, a mystic thing conceived against reason.
Scarsdale made a remark.
“How that old bounder stared at you.”
They laughed.
5
On the last day but one of the honeymoon Scarsdale arranged for them to be driven to Oare village. He wanted to revisit Martinsell and to take Eleanor with him. They would walk back.
They climbed Martinsell. It was much more approachable from the high ground on the north, but on that previous occasion Scarsdale had attacked it from Oare, and the effort of climbing the steep turf slope had its rewards. It was a breathless business, more breathless than the ascent of Silbury, but when they reached the solitary thorn bush and the scattered pit dwellings on the brow of the hill, they felt triumphant.
“Spen, my heart’s thumping.”
He looked at her anxiously.
“You don’t feel faint, Nellie?”
She laughed.
“Nothing quite so steep in Canonbury. But isn’t it lovely. Are we going to have lunch here?”
Scarsdale was blown, but he was not going to say so. He was carrying their lunch, sandwiches and fruit and two bottles of stone ginger in a little old attaché-case.
“No, farther on. Old thorn trees and bracken, you know.”
They passed the long barrow and came to the spot where Scarsdale had found the rabbit of Martinsell in its snare and had released it. A little smile came into his eyes. That symbolical act remained with him, and it had gathered a peculiar significance. Now, who would have dreamed that he would walk past this very spot with Eleanor?
He said, “I found a rabbit in a snare here once. I’m afraid I let it go.”
He pointed to a grass tussock under the wire fence.
“It might have been just there. Its eyes were all bloodshot and starting out of its head.”
She glanced consideringly at his face. Yes, he was just the man to let a rabbit out of a snare. She loved him for it, though he had sinned against reason.
“Poor Bunny. He must have been glad.”
“Oh—I suppose so. I suppose rabbits have j
oys and sorrows of their own. He was a little bit weak on his legs—to begin with.”
They arrived at Scarsdale’s chosen spot, a little island of velvet turf in the midst of thorns and bracken, but open to steep fall of the hill and to the south. A few flints lay about like the bones of some very ancient world. The attaché-case was opened. A green yaffle went past them, laughing, rising and falling with characteristic flight.
Eleanor watched the green shape disappear.
“I haven’t seen one for years.”
Meanwhile, Scarsdale had made a discovery.
“Eleanor, we haven’t any glasses. Bottles—!”
His shocked voice delighted her.
“Bottles! Well, does it matter?”
In the midst of that rather silent meal on Martinsell, Scarsdale, after applying a handkerchief to his chin and wondering how it was that she did the thing so much more gracefully, made a seemingly irrelevant remark.
“I have felt like a rabbit, Eleanor.”
She smiled at his absorbed and pensive head. Dear, funny, old thing!
“A rabbit, Spen.”
“Yes, like the rabbit I found in the snare. Horrible feeling, something round your neck, throttling. You can’t run, you can’t breathe.”
“When was that, Spen?”
“Oh, in London. Down and out. Feeling very hopeless. Fact is—I was a rabbit, Eleanor.”
“My dear—!”
“And you slipped the noose off. Yes, you did. Sort of prophetic act, my doing the thing to the other rabbit. Bread coming back. Damn this bottle, it will bubble!”
Chapter Thirty-four
“Smith” was published on October 10, Messrs. Makin & Malcolm issuing a first edition of 500 copies and waiting cynically for something or nothing to happen. They had distributed review copies generously, and had spent more money upon advertising the book than was usual in the case of a first novel. Malcolm believed in “Smith”, but he knew that a publisher might just as well believe in God and find his faith lost upon indifferent press and public.
During the first week “Smith” sold one hundred and seven copies.
During the second week it sold sixty-three.
Scarsdale, who had subscribed to a press-cutting agency, received two minute reviews, one of them in the Newcastle Observer, the other in the Puddleton Herald. The north-country reviewer described “Smith” as “A nice story.”
That adjective jabbed Scarsdale’s soul. It made him angry, even in the thick of a deepening depression, and even while he was accepting the conviction that “Smith” had been moribund at birth. He smoked furiously during those critical days. He said nothing to Eleanor about his disappointment and his dread; he pretended to be cheerful, and his face was like a frosty morning with a fogbound and feeble sun shining somewhere in the sky.
His helplessness exasperated him. Here was his book bleeding to death, and nobody paid any attention. In another week or two “Smith” would be dead, dead as old Marley, and Malcolm would print no more copies and ask for no more books. Moreover,—he—Scarsdale—might not feel the urge in him to write another book.
In a mood of desperation he took a bus and went to see Malcolm. He was admitted to Malcolm’s presence. He found his publisher strangely busy and cheerful, and apparently quite pleased to see him. But then—of course—Malcolm had other books.
Scarsdale winced under this cheerfulness.
“We’re not doing very great things, are we?”
Malcolm smiled a little, crinkled smile.
“Wait a bit. I have been putting in some private spade-work on ‘Smith’. You may see results in a day or two.”
“O,—how? Notices?”
Malcolm was reticent. He appeared to be enjoying some inward joke, but he did not share it with Scarsdale.
He said, “I told you, I believed in ‘Smith’. A book with some big human stuff in it doesn’t snuff out. Besides, there are men in London, my lad, who are approachable.”
“Approachable? You don’t mean—?”
“I mean that we aren’t all cynics and jackals. There are men who will shout when they think a thing is worth shouting about. Just you sit tight and pray.”
On the Wednesday one of the big penny dailies gave “Smith” a paragraph, and “Smith” was in the news, and not mere literary bric-à-brac. The paragraph had for its title “Hats off to Smith”. It went on to say with emphasis and enthusiasm that everybody should read “Smith”, because Smith was a great little shabby person, the child of his generation. Most certainly “Smith” was the book of the year. On the Thursday the Daily Gazette had half a column on “Smith”. Eleanor saw it; she fell upon it by chance while waiting for the kettle to boil.
“Spen.”
Scarsdale was upstairs putting on his collar. He came to the bedroom door.
“Hallo.”
“Come down at once. Something to show you.”
He arrived, still settling the knot of his tie, and he saw the paper in her hands.
“What is it?”
She passed him the paper.
“Read that, Spen. Isn’t it splendid?”
On the following morning Scarsdale received a letter from Malcolm enclosing these two notices. He wrote, “They have let off the fireworks. Buy the Observer or Sunday Times on Sunday, and look at the advertisements.” Scarsdale bought the Sunday Times; he went out and found a man selling papers in the Essex Road. He stood with his back to the shuttered window of a shop, and spread the pages, and searched. He found “Smith”, and “Smith” was easily found, for he stood there in big black letters.
SMITH
by
Spenser Scarsdale
read what the reviewers have to say about “smith”.
Scarsdale read these half-dozen sentences. They were incredibly kind and flattering. Their adjectives were iridescent. Smith was “A gorgeous person.” Mr. Mackinder of Faith—the great Mr. Mackinder—found Smith—“The most human and moving thing I have read for many years.” J. J. of The Sunday Swift said, “Here—at last—is the epic of the ex-serviceman.” Scarsdale leant against the shuttered windows of the shop, and knew that he was in the Essex Road on a Sunday morning and that the Essex Road suggested emptiness and early bottles of milk and cats and orange peel and “Smith.” He did not feel quite real. Nothing was quite real on that October morning.
He folded up the Sunday Times and walked back to Astey’s Row. “The most human and moving thing I have read for years.”—“An epic of the ex-serviceman.” It was amazing. He felt a little exultant, and a little bewildered, but not at all puffed up. Almost, he was a little frightened. Besides, after all, it might be nothing but a momentary pyrotechnic display, an ebullition of words. The advertisement had nothing to say about the sales of “Smith”, and without sales all this wind would be wasted.
He went in and found breakfast ready, and Eleanor waiting. He handed her the paper. He tried to appear casual.
“Rather a good advertisement.”
He watched her out of the corner of an eye as she read it. What would she make of it? Would it convince her?
And suddenly she got up and kissed him.
“I always believed it would happen, Spen. You are going to be a great man.”
2
“Smith” became the creature of one of those strange crowd crazes; a boom. The book was talked about; it was preached about. In some mysterious way it developed mass suggestion, and over bridge-tables and tea-tables and dinner-tables people were asking, “Have you read ‘Smith’?” It was “Trilby” and “Main Street” and “If Winter Comes”. Malcolm was able to advertise that seven thousand copies of “Smith” had been sold in one week. As the boom developed “Smith” in its yellow and green jacket was to be seen in bookshop windows all over the kingdom. There were wads of “Smith” on sale, chunks of it. Malcolm advertised edition after edition.
Scarsdale remained innocent. He was excited, astonished, but still the child of simplicity. He scribbled figures on th
e backs of envelopes. He was able to say to Eleanor—“We’ve made over a thousand in royalties. Extraordinary, isn’t it?” They looked at each other across the kitchen table, and were mutually aware of the strangeness of such a sum, though the sum was to be much more strange and perplexing in the not very distant future. Astey’s Row boggled at it. Such arithmetic was out of all proportion.
Things began to happen.
Letters arrived, forwarded through Scarsdale’s publishers. Every photographer of note in London seemed to be in dire need of Scarsdale’s face. Rhapsodical young women wrote for autographs. People wanted to borrow money. Charities thrust their necessities upon him. Other people sought to interview him. Editors of papers were eager to hear his views upon God and marriage and Chelsea buns. He was asked to answer questions. Was he a Vegetarian? Did he believe in the gramophone as an instrument of culture?
He received abusive letters. “I have read your beastly book, and I have burnt it. God has given you great powers, and you have abused them.” Scarsdale came to know that when a large “God” appeared early on the written page the letter would be from a lady and an abusive one. Paul Verulam attacked him in the English Observer. The article appeared under the title of “Slum Literature”. Paul Verulam flashed his yellow teeth at Scarsdale, and displayed the bishop’s apron. It was a disgusting book; already it had sold more than twenty thousand copies. Paul Verulam had never sold more than seven.
But amid all this froth other solidities floated. Scarsdale received an urgent letter from Mr. Cassidy, the literary agent.
“I can place your novel ‘Smith’ in America. If the rights are still available, I shall be very glad to handle this book.”
Scarsdale knew nothing about Mr. Cassidy, but that was because Scarsdale was ignorant. His education was taken in hand. He went to see Mr. Cassidy, and found him at the top of a big building, a large, eupeptic person, with two very bright little dark eyes. Mr. Cassidy was polite to Scarsdale. He took him out to lunch at the Grosvenor Club.
Old Wine and New Page 36