He said, “You are only at the beginning of things. If this book succeeds in America as it has done over here, you may sell a quarter of a million copies. Perhaps more, perhaps less. Now, what about it?”
Scarsdale succumbed to Mr. Cassidy, for Mr. Cassidy was overwhelming. He began to talk about the film rights of “Smith”, and the dramatic rights, and Scarsdale’s next book. “Keep it human. Give it the same heart-beat.” He talked about articles and short stories. The price? O, well, it was probable that Mr. Scarsdale would be able to command big prices if this boom developed and continued. Sixty guineas for a short story. O, certainly. And Scarsdale accepted a liqueur and a cigar, and felt a little fuddled.
He said, “It’s all rather—disconcerting. It rather puts one off one’s perch.”
Mr. Cassidy smiled upon him. He was a very shrewd person.
“You’ll grow used to it. Don’t get rattled.”
Returning to Astey’s Row after that lunch, and remaining rather full of wine and cigar and the voluminosities of Mr. Cassidy, Scarsdale confronted the little house in which he and Eleanor lived. But, on the other hand, the house confronted him rather like a cat with two enigmatic eyes, and almost he spoke to it gently and reassuringly. “Yes, I’m all right, very much all right. I’m not too big to get inside you. I’m satisfied, thank you.” And he was. He had become attached to this queer, shabby, decaying little place. It was home; it was Eleanor; it was “Smith”, and as such he felt at home in it.
He opened the gate and went in. He hung up his hat and coat in the passage.
“You back, Nell?”
“Yes.”
He found her in the sitting-room, sewing. They had a fire in the sitting-room every day now, and when Eleanor lit it she addressed it as “Smith”. She went to Highbury Terrace three days instead of five, and Scarsdale was always suggesting that there was no need for her to go there at all.
She looked at him.
“Well,—what’s Mr. Cassidy like?”
Scarsdale went and kissed her, and he smelt of the Grosvenor Club.
“O, rather large and important, rather like a big drum. He took me out to lunch.”
Eleanor had gathered as much. Her eyes were considering her husband’s clothes and his tie.
“What about America?”
“I expect to hear to-morrow. It seems to be a certainty. There’s an American publisher in London.”
She rethreaded her needle.
“Spen, I think you might buy a new suit.”
He looked surprised.
“But what’s wrong, Nellie, with this one?”
“It’s all right for Astey’s Row, Spen. But you are not all Astey’s Row. West End clubs,—and other men. You’re a celebrity.”
He sat down. He looked very serious.
“All right,—I’ll go to a tailor, Eleanor, but only on one condition.”
“Bargaining, are you?”
“Yes, if you’ll give up Highbury Terrace.”
She sat sewing. She was a quietist, and yet behind her tranquillity a multitude of possibilities were as active as motes in a sunbeam. Smith was proving a very revolutionary person, and she was thinking very seriously about Smith and his implications.
“You really want me to, Spen? You know, I’m a working woman.”
He got up suddenly and stood over her. He looked down at her bowed head.
“Yes. Not because I’m a snob, Nellie. I don’t think there’s much of the snob in me. For instance,—I’d like to stay here.”
She went on sewing.
“Sure?”
“Quite. But—of course—that depends on you.”
She allowed a little silence to elapse.
“Yes, we’ve got to know each other here, Spen. I’m not one for chopping and changing, unless—Well, there’s no hurry, is there? I don’t believe in being fussed out of myself by things—”
He kissed the crown of her head, and added—
“By things like Smith.”
3
The little gossips became busy with Scarsdale. Some of his old acquaintances remembered him, and tried to resuscitate old memories, but Scarsdale was shy. He was a poor diner-out. Meanwhile, a bright young fellow in search of copy, had produced a character study of Scarsdale, a mildly sensational caricature. This young gentleman started a number of superstitions about Scarsdale; he christened him “The English Tolstoy”, and hailed him as the author who lived among his characters in their natural and shabby surroundings. Scarsdale was the Slum Magician. And so, a number of quaint rumours circulated concerning the eccentricities of the creator of “Smith”. He lived in a slum, and dressed to the part; he had married a woman of the people; he refused to be photographed; he consorted with cab-washers and cocottes and Covent Garden porters. He wore a blue scarf instead of a collar. Also, it was whispered by the wise that “Smith” was auto-biographical, and that Scarsdale was a man of one book, and that he would never write anything else worth reading.
Malcolm did not object to the patchwork publicity that was foisted upon Scarsdale. It amused him; it was intimate and picturesque, the kind of thing the public liked, but when the quidnuncs put it about that Scarsdale’s one explosion was solitary and final, Malcolm had to take up the challenge.
He asked Scarsdale to lunch, and afterwards from the depths of a big chair in the club smoking-room he put to Scarsdale that most pregnant question.
“What about the next book?”
Scarsdale had been waiting for that question. The problem of his next book was worrying him considerably, if secretly, for—as yet—there was no successor to “Smith” either on paper or in the air. He had been hunting about for themes, and he had not been able to capture a theme that convinced and inspired him.
He bluffed.
“I don’t want to be hurried.”
“We must publish something in the autumn—at the latest. You’re for it, my lad. That is going to be your critical period.”
“Quite so. Everybody will be ready to say that my second book is not a patch on ‘Smith’.”
“That’s the supposition. A lot of people are sure to say it, even though you produce something far better than ‘Smith’. I suppose you are working on a book?”
Scarsdale allowed Mr. Malcolm to assume that he had a book in being, and when Malcolm pressed him to let him see it as soon as possible, Scarsdale became conscious of a queer, empty feeling inside him. He repeated the statement that he did not wish to be hurried. He was even a little peevish about it, possibly he was not feeling comfortable about this unborn book, nor was he showing Mr. Malcolm the candour of complete confidence.
His publisher was more candid.
“Well, it’s up to you. The ball’s at your feet. Don’t be surprised if you are attacked and abused, or if they try to ignore you. People like to make a discovery and to pat the discovery on the back, but when it grows rather too big for their pattings—they are apt to get peevish. Besides, some of the attacks won’t be meant for you, they will be aimed at me through you. I’m rather too successful.”
But Mr. Malcolm had quickened an impulse to panic in Scarsdale. He walked all the way back to Astey’s Row and he walked almost as he had walked in the old days when he had been the victim of his crowd-phobia. His long legs hurried, but the conscious part of Scarsdale seemed to have been stricken with sudden paralysis. A large, white surface loomed in front of him, the blankness that was a book, four hundred odd pages to be packed with words. And he had not captured his idea, some moving, inevitable, human theme. He had been hunting it for weeks, following elusive inspirations into blind alleys. No clap-trap, melodrama, unconvincing stuff. He knew that he had to discover some human creature like Smith, and that without his particular and sacred Smith no book would materialize.
He was frightened.
He foresaw catastrophic failure following upon sensational success. He heard all the knowing people declaring, “O, yes, ‘Smith’ was a sheer blind bunk. The fellow had just one so
rt of emotional kick in him, and after that he was finished. Just a squib.”
But Scarsdale did not liken himself to a squib. Deep down in him was the conviction that he could write other books like “Smith”, but the noisy success of “Smith” had made him hypersensitive and self-conscious. He was too conscious of his public, of a vast crowd-face looming up against him like a “close-up” on the screen. It goggled its eyes at him. “Now—then—for the sob-stuff.” It was as though he suffered from a form of aphasia, an inability to think in words, or to conceive happenings that were convincing and real.
He arrived in Astey’s Row. He entered the little house, feeling strangely like an impostor, a dog whose tail should have been crisply curled, and not between his legs. It was tea-time. He hung up his hat and coat, and in attaching his coat to the peg he was moved to the fantastic thought that he was hanging up the husk of himself, the absurd repute of Spenser Scarsdale. Or was it the ghost of a dead and departed Smith? He dawdled in the passage. Almost, he was afraid to face his wife.
But directly he entered the room any fear of the hypothetical and unknown woman in Eleanor vanished. She continued to be mysterious while remaining exquisitely calculable. She burned steadily like the fire; she had a serenity; she was as refreshing as grapefruit treated with just that sufficiency of sugar. Besides, she enjoyed life; her appetites were normal.
Scarsdale sat down. She had brought in the teapot, and she poured out his tea. He looked tired, and a little more than tired, for already she had begun to regard “Smith” as an exhausting gentleman. Not only did people rave about “Smith”, but they quarrelled about him, and wrote letters to Scarsdale and tried to quarrel with the creator of “Smith”. Scarsdale passed over all these letters to his wife, and her sense of humour had been increased at the expense of the writers. Eleanor was inclined to classify the epistolary public under the headings of “Fools”—“Nice Fools”—“Nasty Fools” and lastly but inexorably, “Good Women.”
For one letter would come to say that in the opinion of the writer the ending of “Smith” was equal to anything in English literature.
Another letter would arrive to inform Scarsdale that his final scene was bathetic and vulgar. The last chapter should never have been written.
One letter would hail the climax as beautiful; the next, foam over its blasphemy.
And they were so very patronizing, many of these people, who wrote complacently from Tooting, and Croydon, and Golder’s Green. They appeared to know exactly what Scarsdale should have done or should not have done with Smith. Often, they had all the impertinence of ignorance, and Eleanor, with a calm and smooth movement of the hand would deposit the letters in the fire. She kept a few, the very few from people who had suffered and who understood.
Meanwhile, Spenser had finished his tea, and was filling his pipe with those little jerky movements of the fingers which had become associated in her mind with worry. He was vague and distraught, and he had been so for days, and with a gentle inevitableness she made her suggestion.
“You are worrying about the book, Spen.”
He glanced at her sharply.
“About ‘Smith’?”
“No, the next book.”
He lit his pipe and sucked at it with a sudden air of relief.
“You’re a bit of a witch, Eleanor. Fact is,—I haven’t got the next book. They are worrying me about it.”
“You mean—it won’t come?”
“That’s it. I can’t get the idea, the one, right, inevitable thing that seems to set one off.”
“The story?”
“Well, in a sense—just that. I want someone like Smith, a person, a character, a vivid bit of life.”
She turned to poke the fire.
“I see. Something to set you alight. I could tell you a tale. I have never told you about Molly Redhead have I?”
“No. Real person?”
“Very much so.”
“Tell me.”
So Eleanor told him the tale of Molly Redhead, and as he listened the look of worried, vacant searching for something disappeared from Scarsdale’s face. His eyes were seeing things, Molly and her shop and her struggles, and the toss of her head, and her sturdy little storms and her triumphs.
He exclaimed, “Great! What a setting! Why it’s—it’s the very thing,—what I’ve been digging for. Yes, like a dog scratching in a rabbit-hole. Molly. There’s the inevitable title.”
He got up and kissed his wife.
“Your book, Nellie. Sleeping partner in the firm of Scarsdale and Scarsdale.”
She laughed.
“I sleep very well, Spen. I enjoy sleeping.”
Chapter Thirty-five
“Smith” was published in the United States by the New York firm of Duggan & Muller, and for the first two months “Smith” exhibited an elusive slowness, but this deliberation was that of the stranger exploring new worlds. In a little while “Smith” was multiplying himself at an astonishing rate. He was English and national, and yet he had a universality, the red earth of Adam. For three successive months in a number of States “Smith” headed the list as a best seller.
Astey’s Row had seriously to consider the effects produced by the growth of this enormous child, and the size and the extent of his reactions. For the ideal of Astey’s Row, so far as the Scarsdales were concerned, was tranquillity. Someone was to describe the Scarsdales as an absurd pair of budgerigars in a cage, though—obviously—the bright young person who exercised his wit upon the couple knew nothing of the inwardness of Eleanor. She was one of those souls who are quick to realize that it is possible to have too much of everything, and that the curse of modern life is that there is too much of everything, too many Ministries of This and That, too much Legislating, too many new Fox-Trots, too much Chelsea Show, too many new roses and narcissi, too many buses and motor-cars. Each day had its new gadget. The scientific gentlemen were always providing the public with some new toy. Everything old had to be pulled down. Even the cut of God’s trousers had to be altered yearly. The Prayer Book needed plus-fours. Hoardings shouted at you, “Buy a refrigerator”—“Visit Spain”. Even beer was bewildering. Walking was out of date, and hurtling upon wheels becoming so. It was your duty—in the course of progress to fly to Paris and to be sick into a sponge-bag instead of into a basin. The voice of the announcer hunted you into your home. “Try a little Bach to-night—” Or “Professor So and So will give you a little talk on Vitamin B in relation to the weekly budget”. London calling, Paris calling, Berlin calling! The Shouties! Rush here, rush there, listen to a chaotic splurge of information even in your armchair. Bewilderment, a sense of something heavy on the stomach, mental dyspepsia, a voice singing—“I want to be happy”.
Eleanor’s impulse was to simplify. She liked doing simple things, and feeling herself the mistress of her activities. Like the Georgians she wished to control her environment, to produce repose, to cultivate texture and polish. She liked polishing furniture, and sewing, and arranging flowers, and cooking, though she could not pretend to like washing up, but in contrast to the new youth she faced her realities. The new youth is apt to demand its flowers, while refusing to do the digging. It expects to be presented with a car, but does not concern itself with cleaning that car. And, in a sense, man has lost control of his car. Or he is like an ant perpetually picking up a new fragment of something or other, and trying to lug it through a jungle of grass. At the moment there is rather too much grass for him, and too many objective things lying about.
Now, “Smith” in his innocent yet monstrous growth was threatening to do to Scarsdale what “progress” has threatened to do to the soul of man. It was proposing to overwhelm the essential “I” of him in a splurge of trivialities, of complex fuss and fluster. Scarsdale’s own public were conspiring to make of him a sort of monkey, to put him in a cage and cart him round, and to make the creature chatter.
He was creating “Molly”. He was making every effort to concentrate upon that most cri
tical book, and the little world of his cult, instead of leaving him peacefully at his table, kept tweaking him by the hair.
Editors suggested that he should write them articles.
People wrote and asked him to lecture. They wrote from Glasgow and Newcastle and Brighton. He was invited to lecture on sociology and politics and vivisection, and secondary education, and on the Jews, and on the modern mind in literature, and on factory hygiene, on the sex contract, and upon diet.
Mr. Cassidy was trying to persuade him to broadcast a series of talks upon Smith and the Suburbs.
People were asking him to dine and make speeches. Rarely had he made a public speech, and he hated oratory, his own as much as other people’s.
The American letters were arriving. They came in wads. They expected to be answered. They came with books to be autographed, books that had to be done up and returned. They came with or without stamps for a reply, and when stamps were sent they were American. A school posted fifty neat slips of paper upon each of which Scarsdale was to write his name.
There were the strenuous, culture-craving ladies. “I am leading at the New Sparta Women’s Literary Club on Saturday—May 5, and your great novel ‘Smith’ has been selected for discussion. I shall be much obliged if you will send me complete biographical details, and a précis of your philosophical point of view.” Scarsdale received dozens of such challenges.
Then there were the people who attempted to inveigle him into lengthy debates on paper upon the morality of “Smith”, or the social significance of “Smith”.
There were the young things who wrote for free photographs at half a guinea apiece. “Dear Mr. Scarsdale, oh—I do want to see your face. There was a picture of you in the Oklahoma Post, but it looked as though bees had stung it.”
To begin with, Scarsdale was a little excited about these letters. He had had so much failure that success had a pleasant perfume, but when the incense was burnt daily and in clouds, he became oppressed by it. The letters bothered him; they wasted his time; they were like assertive flies buzzing in his mind when he wanted to keep his consciousness clear for “Molly”.
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