Chapter VI: Part 6

This was Mrs. Dersingham’s chance, but she did not take it. She might have accepted the apology if her husband had not been so ready to accept it and make an excuse for the girl. But now she turned her back on Mr. Golspie and his terrible daughter, and said to Mrs. Pearson: “Must you _really_ go? It’s quite early, you know. Oh, Mrs. Trape, _you’re_ not going, are you? Why?” And it was well done, bravely done, but it was a mistake, perhaps the biggest mistake she ever made.

Mr. Golspie’s face changed its expression, all the good-humour dying out of it at once. “All right,” he said shortly. “Come on, Lena, shake yourself up a bit. We’re going now. Good-night, all. See you in the morning, Dersingham. Good-night.” And immediately he marched himself and his daughter out of the room, and, a minute later, before Dersingham had followed him up, out of the house.

Half an hour later, the Dersinghams were alone, and Mrs. Dersingham was curled up in the largest chair, crying. “I don’t care, I don’t care,” she sobbed. “They were _awful_, both of them. The man was nearly as bad as his terrible daughter. They were ghastly, and I hope to Heaven I never see either of them again. Or any of those people, except Mrs. Pearson. Oh, what a horrible, ghastly evening!”

“I know, I know, my dear,” said her husband, hovering about vaguely and trying to be consoling. “Everything went wrong. I know.”

“No, you don’t, you can’t possibly know how awful it was for me. No, don’t touch me, leave me _alone_. I just want to go miles and miles away, and never see anybody for months. Don’t ever let me see those vile Golspies again. And I don’t care what I said or did. It couldn’t be too bad for them. Next time, if you want to invite anybody from Angel Pavement, invite the clerks and the typists, anybody before those awful Golspies.”

“There, there,” said Mr. Dersingham, “there, there, there.” And when dialogue is reduced to this, it is time we quitted the scene.

Lena, in the taxi that carried them away from Barkfield Gardens, had stopped crying and was now fiercely resentful, like the spoilt child she was. “Well, they _were_ rotten snobs. And it wasn’t _my_ fault that half her beastly dinner had been dropped outside the door; I didn’t even know until you told me; and it was probably a good job for you, it _was_ dropped, for I’ll bet it was the most awful muck. But there wasn’t one of those old cats who gave me a decent look or spoke a decent word to me. You ought to have seen that long thin bony one when I asked her what she was looking so funny about! And you needn’t think it was only _me_ they didn’t like, either. They didn’t like you, I could see that. They weren’t real friends, any of them.”

“Who said they were, young woman?” her father demanded. “Don’t make such a palaver about it. I know all about ’em. The best of the lot was that chap with the long neck and the wobbly cheeks--Pearson, the chap from Singapore--and he was only half-baked. If Dersingham’s wife doesn’t think we’re good enough for them, let her go on thinking so. I’ll bet she thinks I’m good enough to keep on putting some ginger in that half dead concern of theirs. After what I’ve seen of the Dersingham end of Twigg and Dersingham, all I can say is that Twigg, whoever he was, must have been a dam’ smart chap to have got the firm going at all.”

“You don’t mean to say you’re making money for those blighters?” cried Lena, winding an arm round his.

“The people I’m going to make money for,” replied Mr. Golspie grimly, at the same time squeezing the arm, “are these people, these two here. Just you keep quiet and leave it to me, Miss Golspie.”

_Chapter Four_: TURGIS SEES HER

I

Turgis was not lazy and while he was in the office he preferred doing something to doing nothing, but he did not share Mr. Smeeth’s enthusiasm for office work and never regarded himself as one of the firm. It was all very well for Twigg & Dersingham to be suddenly busy again, indeed much busier than they had ever been before, but Turgis did not see the fun of going hard at it all day and every day and frequently having to stay an hour later. No doubt somebody was doing well out of it, but he, Turgis, was getting nothing out of it but a great deal more work. He grumbled about this to Mr. Smeeth. It was Saturday morning; he had just received his fortnight’s pay, six pound notes, one ten-shilling note, and two florins; and it was a time for such confidences.

“All right, all right,” said Mr. Smeeth, with the manner of a person who knew a great deal. “That’s your point of view, isn’t it?”

Turgis, a little diffidently now, for he had a considerable respect for Mr. Smeeth if no particular liking for him, replied that it was.

“Now let me tell you something, my boy,” Mr. Smeeth continued gravely. “Just a week or two ago--I’ll tell you exactly what day it was; it was the day Mr. Golspie first called here--Mr. Dersingham was talking things over with me, in that room there. I’m telling you this in confidence, mind. And Mr. Dersingham said the office expenses were too big and somebody would have to go. And it looked as if that somebody would be you.”

“Me!” Turgis’s mouth, always open a little, was now wide open, for his jaw suddenly dropped.

“You, Turgis,” said Mr. Smeeth, with the satisfied air of a man who has produced the desired effect. “It was touch and go whether I told you that very day. I’m glad I didn’t because you might have got a fright for nothing. Now it’s all right, of course. We’re busy, and we need everybody. But when you want to start grumbling about a bit of extra work, my boy, just you remember that. You might have been looking for work now, and I’ll bet you wouldn’t have liked that, would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t, Mr. Smeeth,” replied Turgis, humbly enough.

“And I don’t blame you.” Feeling fairly confident, for once, about his own job, Mr. Smeeth had a great desire to enlarge upon this topic, which had for him a terrible fascination. “Jobs aren’t easy to get, are they?”

“Not if you haven’t influence and you’re not in the know, Mr. Smeeth,” said Turgis, who was a great believer in the mysterious power of influence and being in the know, and realised only too well that there were few people in London who had less influence or were further from the know than himself. “That’s the trouble. I seen it myself. You can’t get a look in. I’d a packet--my words, I’d a packet--before I got taken on here. Trailin’ round, queueing up, round again--oh, dear! You know what it’s like.”

“No, I don’t,” Mr. Smeeth returned, sharply.

“Beg your pardon, Mr. Smeeth. Of course, you don’t. I do, though. Oo, it’s sorful,” cried Turgis earnestly. “’S’not getting any better either. Well I’m glad you told me, Mr. Smeeth. I’d better keep my mouth shut a bit, hadn’t I? It is all right now, isn’t it?”

“Quite all right. You do your best for us,” Mr. Smeeth added sententiously, “and we’ll do our best for you.”

Turgis came nearer, and lowered his voice when he spoke. “D’you think, Mr. Smeeth, there’ll be any chance of a rise, now I’m getting all this extra work? Ought to be, oughtn’t there? I mean, I’m not getting a lot really, am I?”

“You leave it alone a bit, Turgis, and just do your best, and then I’ll see what I can do for you.”

“I wish you would, Mr. Smeeth. You see, it’s not as if I’d got anybody helping me with my work, ’cos this new typist doesn’t really help me out much, does she? And if you could--just--you know--say something to Mr. Golspie or Mr. Dersingham, because, you know, Mr. Smeeth, I am doing my best, and you mustn’t think I want to grumble, ’cos I don’t.”

The new typist had been a great disappointment to Turgis, not because she was of no assistance to him in his work but because she was not the attractive young creature his heated fancy had conjured up to fill the post. Miss Poppy Sellers, with her unfortunate Oriental effect which merely resulted in dinginess and untidiness, did not seem to him at all pretty. At the end of the first morning, though he was flattered by her awe of him, he had dismissed her as a very poor bit of girl stuff. When he had heard that the firm was advertising for another typist, a younger girl to help Miss Matfield, he had had instant visions of working side by side with one of those really pretty ones he often noticed making their way about the City. There were one or two good ones in Angel Pavement itself: quite a pretty piece downstairs with the _Kwik-Work Razor Blade Co._; another not so dusty who went up the stairs next door to _C. Warstein: Tailors’ Trimmings_; and a real beauty--one to make your mouth water, a peach--at _Dunbury & Co.: Incandescent Gas Fittings_, at the end of the street. And there were two or three worth looking at, the flashy young Jewessy type, at _Chase & Cohen’s Carnival Novelties_ place at the end. Any one of these girls, walking into Twigg & Dersingham’s, would have lit up the place for him, and the day’s routine would have become an adventure. But they must go and choose this dreary-looking kid with the fringe. It was just his luck. Two girls working in the same office, and neither of them any good. Miss Matfield was all right in her way, of course, but then she was too big, too old, and far too “posh” and bossy for him, even if she had ever showed any sign--and, so far, she hadn’t--of being really interested in his existence. This other one, Polly Sellers, was interested enough, quite ready to be friends, but then, well--look at her.

The maddening thing about it--and it really was maddening to Turgis--was that all these other ripe and adorable girls (he thought of them as “fine bits”) were all over the place, walking in and out of offices, sitting in corners of teashops, elbowing him sometimes (and he was always there to be elbowed) in buses and tube trains, so that you might have thought they worked for everybody in the City but Twigg & Dersingham. And it was no better, perhaps it was worse, when he was roaming about for pleasure and not simply going to and from the office. Everywhere he saw them, never missed seeing them. His mind was for ever busy with their images, for ever troubled by them. No matter where he went, he was tantalised, the path underneath his feet a narrow dusty track of wilderness but all hung about with rich forbidden clusters of feminine fruit, shrinking, withering, vanishing, at a touch.

Turgis was by temperament a lover. His thoughts never left the other sex long; happiness had for him a feminine shape; the real world was illuminated by the bright glances of girls; and at any moment, one of them might reveal to him an enchanted life they could share together. It would be easy to see him as a lonely lad seeking sympathy in that crowd in which he was lost. It would be just as easy to see him as a figure of furtive lusts, whose mind descended and there lived eagerly in an underworld of tiny mean contacts, seemingly accidental pressures of the arm and the foot. Yet behind both these figures was the lover. And this, in spite of his shabbiness and unprepossessing looks, the shiny baggy suit, and the frayed tie, the open mouth, that slight pastiness and spottiness, that faint grey film which seemed to cover and subdue his physical self. He was no dapper lady-killer. But then if Turgis, even with his scanty means, did not try very hard to make himself superficially attractive to the sex that despises crumpled clothes, matted hair, pasty cheeks, youth that has lost all vividness and glow, it was because he believed that the cry from within, urgent, never ceasing, must receive an answer. He knew that he had little to offer on the surface, was nothing to look at, nobody in particular, but he felt that inside he was different, he was wonderful, and that sooner or later a girl, a beautiful and passionate girl, caring nothing for the outside show, would recognise this difference, this wonder, within, would cry, “Oh, it’s you,” and love would immediately follow. Then life would really begin. So far it had not begun; in the tangle, blather, jumble of mere existence, of eating, sleeping, working, journeying and staring, it had only made a number of false starts. In other words, Turgis had had his little adventures but was not yet in love, or rather--for he was perpetually in love--had not yet found the single outlet for all this flood, the one girl.

After returning to his own desk, Turgis thought about these other girls who might so easily have come to work by his side instead of continuing with the _Kwik-Work Razor Blade_ or _Dunbury & Co._, and then, dismissing them reluctantly, he began to tidy up his desk and finish off the week’s work. It was after twelve and the week-end was in sight. He leaned forward on his high stool, and breathed hard over communications from the London and North Eastern Railway and the City Transport Company. There was a girl at the City Transport--he had never seen her but she often answered the telephone--who sounded nice, lovely voice she had, and once or twice he had made her laugh. If he had been in the office by himself, he would have talked to her properly, perhaps suggested an appointment--on the pictures they called it a “date” but Turgis thought of it as a “point”--but he was never alone, and even if there was only that silly kid, Stanley, there, it would spoil it. But it was fine to hear her laugh down the telephone. Silvery, that was it--silvery laughter--her silvery laughter--just like in a book.

He was interrupted by a touch on his arm, and he looked round to find the new typist at his elbow, looking up at him with her biggish brown eyes. She had a lot of powder on one side of her nose, and none at all, just shiny skin, on the other side. No good.

“Please,” said Miss Sellers in her chirpy little Cockney voice, “please, have you written to the Anglo-What’s-It Shipping?”

“No, I haven’t,” he replied.

She merely stared.

“I haven’t written to the Anglo-What’s-It Shipping,” he continued severely, “because I’ve never heard of the Anglo-What’s-It Shipping. Don’t know them--see?”

“Oo, I’m sorry,” though she did not sound very sorry. “Have I said something wrong? I can’t remember all these names yet. Give me a chance. You know who I mean, don’t you? It is Anglo-something, isn’t it?”

“If it’s the Anglo-Baltic Shipping Co. you’re talking about,” said Turgis with dignity, “then I have written to them. Wrote yesterday, ’s’matter of fact. But to the Anglo-Baltic, mind you. There’s no what’s-it about it.”

The girl looked at him for a moment. “Oo!” she cried softly, “squashed!” And then she promptly walked away.

Turgis glanced after her with distaste. “Getting cheeky now,” he told himself. “That’s the latest--getting cheeky. And just because she can’t make up to me. All right, Miss Dirty Fringe, you’ll have to be told off soon, you will. Try it again, that’s all, just try it again.” And he was filled with a righteous indignation, pointing out to himself that these girls didn’t know their place in an office, wouldn’t get on with their work properly, and were always trying their little tricks on men who wanted to do their job with no nonsense about it.

There was a familiar scurrying, as of some small animal of the undergrowth that had got itself shod with leather and iron tips; the door burst open; Stanley had returned.

“Come on, boy, come on,” said Mr. Smeeth, looking over his eyeglasses. “Get those letters copied, sharp as you can. Don’t want us to be here all day, waiting for you, do you?”

“I want to get the one-five from London Bridge, if I can, Mr. Smeeth,” said Miss Matfield. “I’m spending the week-end in the country, thank God.”

“You’ll get it all right, Miss Matfield,” Mr. Smeeth told her. “Plenty of time. Now then, Stanley--bustle about. Sharp’s the world, my boy.”

“Oo, Miss Matfield,” Miss Sellers began, staring at her, “d’you reely like the country this weather? I don’t know how you can bear it. I couldn’t, not now, when it’s winter. It’s not as if it was summer, is it?”

“Like it best in winter, if it’s not raining too hard. Jolly good! Nothing like so filthy as London is in winter.”

“Well, I’m sure it would give me the ’ump,” Miss Sellers declared. “But I do like it in summer. It’s lovely in summer, I think.” You could almost see her looking at the buttercups and daisies. “I like the seaside best, though. Don’t you, Miss Matfield? It’s lovely at the seaside in summer, I think. I’ve never been in winter. It’s nice in summer even when it rains at the seaside, isn’t it?”

Miss Matfield replied, shortly but amiably, that it was, and then began clearing up her papers.

“Here,” cried Stanley, in the middle of his copying, “I seen a smash right in Moorgate.” He looked round triumphantly.

“I’ll bet you didn’t,” said Turgis.

“I did, and I bet you I did. Anyhow, if I didn’t see it, I was there just after, when the bobby was taking names. Oh, what a crowd! I got right to the front. Car and a lorry it was. The lorry was all right, but you oughter seen the car. Oh, no, it wasn’t a mess--oh, no!”

“And how many hours did you stand there, eh?” Mr. Smeeth inquired. “That’s what takes your time, my boy--doing your bit of nosy-parkering.”

“I had to go that way and I couldn’t get past, Mr. Smeeth,” Stanley cried indignantly. “So I had to see what was up, couldn’t help it. I thought the bobby might take my name as a witness, but he didn’t. I wish he had done,” he added wistfully. “I’d like to be a witness.”

“If you don’t finish those letters in ten minutes,” said Mr. Smeeth, wagging a finger at him, “you’ll be in the dock, and never mind being a witness. How are you getting on, Turgis?”

“Nearly finished, Mr. Smeeth,” Turgis replied. “I’ll just give the City Transport a ring to see if they’ve heard anything about that lot we sent to Norwich.” And he promptly went to the telephone.

There was no silvery laughter this time from the City Transport Company. The voice that answered him was not only a masculine voice but also an irritated, badgered, weary, despairing voice, that of a man who was rapidly coming to the conclusion that he would be spending all Saturday afternoon answering idiotic inquiries. “Yes, I know, I know,” it barked. “You rang me up before about it. Well, we’re doing our best. We’ve got the matter in hand. Yes, yes, yes, I’ve told our Norwich people. I’ll let you know on Monday. The first thing, the very first thing, on Monday, I’ll let you know.” It was pleading now. “Can’t do more than that, can I?” And now it was tired of pleading. “All right, all ri-ight, we’re doing what we ca-a-an. Ring you on Mo-o-onday.”

“They’ve got through to Norwich about it, Mr. Smeeth,” said Turgis, “but they say it’ll have to stand over till Monday.”

“That’s all right then, Turgis. Give them a ring on Monday.”

There was now a feeling throughout the office that all manner of things would have to stand over until Monday. This feeling was not confined to Twigg & Dersingham, but could have been discovered operating upstairs at the _Universal Hosiery Co._ and the _London and Counties Supply Stores_, and downstairs at the _Kwik-Work Razor Blade Co._, and at _Chase & Cohen: Carnival Novelties_ on the one side and at _Dunbury & Co.: Incandescent Gas Fittings_ on the other side, in fact, all up and down Angel Pavement, and far beyond Angel Pavement, in all the banks and offices and showrooms and warehouses of the City. Very soon the City itself would be standing over until Monday: the crowds of brokers and cashiers and clerks and typists and hawkers would have vanished from its pavements, the bars would be forlorn, the teashops nearly empty or closed; its trams and buses, no longer clamouring for a few more yards of space, would come gliding easily through misty blue vacancies like ships going down London River; and the whole place, populated only by caretakers and policemen among the living, would sink slowly into quietness; the very bank-rate would be forgotten; and it would be left to drown itself in reverie, with a drift of smoke and light fog across its old stones like the return of an army of ghosts. Until--with a clatter, a clang, a sudden raw awakening--Monday.

Papers were swept into drawers, letters were stamped in rows, blotters were shut, turned over, put away, ledgers and petty cash boxes were locked up, typewriters were covered, noses were powdered, cigarettes and pipes were lit, doors were banged, and stairs were noisy with hasty feet. The week was done. Out they came in their thousands into Angel Pavement, London Wall, Moorgate Street, Cornhill and Cheapside. They were so thick along Finsbury Pavement that the Moorgate Tube Station seemed like a monster sucking them down into its hot rank inside. Among these vanishing mites was one with a large but not masterful nose, full brown eyes, a slightly open mouth, and a drooping chin. This was Turgis going home.

He had to stand all the way, and though there were at least five nice-looking girls in the same compartment--and one was very close to him, and two of the others he had noticed several times before--not one of them showed the slightest interest in him.

II

When Turgis returned again to the earth’s surface, he plunged at once into the noise and litter of High Street, Camden Town, and then turned up the Kentish Town Road, for he lodged in Nathaniel Street, which lies in that conglomeration of short streets between the Kentish Town Road and York Road. He was rather later than usual, for this new Golspie business was having its effect even on Saturday morning, and so he walked quickly for once. He was ready for dinner and he knew that dinner would be ready for him. On Saturdays and Sundays, his landlady provided dinner as well as breakfast, and, indeed, was not averse to laying out a bit of tea, too, if that should be called for, Turgis having been with her now for eighteen months and having proved himself to be--by Nathaniel Street standards, which are based on a bitter knowledge of this world--a good quiet lodger, sober, and punctual in his payments. During the week, he had, officially, nothing but breakfast in the house, and had to shift for himself for his other meals, which followed a descending scale of luxury every fortnight, beginning with the alternate week-ends when he was paid. Thus, every other Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Turgis was well fed, and every other Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, he was comparatively half starved. At a pinch, however, his landlady would always give him a little supper. They were all friendly together. They had to be, for they all used the same back room for meals. The bed-sitting-room that Turgis had at the top of the house, so small that the iron bedstead, the yellow washstand, the three deal drawers, the lopsided and groaning basket chair, and the little old gas-fire, a genuine antique among gas-fires, made it seem uncomfortably crowded with furniture and fittings, was no place in which to feed. It did not like being sat in, resented the sight of a cup of tea and a biscuit, and the presence of one good plateful of roast beef, potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and gravy, would have completely finished it.

Number 9, like all the other houses in Nathaniel Street, was small and dark, and its gloomy little hall was haunted by a mixed smell of cabbage, camphor, and old newspapers. Turgis never noticed this smell, but on the very rare occasions when he visited some other and less odorous house, then he noticed the absence of it, his nose declaring at once that it had found itself in an unfamiliar atmosphere. Now he hung up his hat and coat and marched straight into the back room. There he discovered his landlady, who, having finished dinner, was enjoying a cup of tea by the fire. She was not enjoying this cup of tea, however, in an easy leisurely fashion; she was sitting, almost tense, on the very edge of the chair; and she had something of the air of a cavalry general between two phases of a battle.

Mrs. Pelumpton had every right to such an air. She was a short and very broad woman, with a mop of untidy grey hair and a withered apple face, and it was easy to see that all her adult life had been one long struggle, and that unless she suffered a paralytic stroke or was driven out of her wits, she would die fighting. In her presence, progress seemed the most absurd myth. If Mrs. Pelumpton could have been turned into the wife of a marauding viking or one of the women following Attila’s horde, she would have felt she had been given a well-earned rest and would have been astonished at, perhaps horrified by, the sudden colour and gaiety of life.

As soon as she saw Turgis she put down her cup and, as it were, jumped into the saddle again. She placed on the table two covered plates, her lodger’s dinner, meat and vegetables under one cover, pudding under the other.

“I’m a bit late to-day, Mrs. Pelumpton,” said Turgis, settling down.

“Well, I said to myself you might have been or you might not, according to whether that clock’s gone and got fast again, and it might well have done that, the way he’s been playing about with it.”

“About quarter of an hour fast, I make it--might be twenty minutes.”

“And that,” said Mrs. Pelumpton very decisively, “is what comes of messing about with it. ‘Leave it alone,’ I told him. ‘Clocks isn’t in your line.’ Not that quarter of an hour’s going to hurt anybody in this house--except Edgar, and he’s got his own watch with proper railway time on it.” Edgar, her son, who also lived in the house, worked on the railway down at King’s Cross. Turgis rarely saw him.

“That’s a nice bit o’ meat you’re having there, Mr. Turgis, isn’t it?” Mrs. Pelumpton continued, after taking a noisy sip of tea and then staring over the cup at him. “Chilled, that is. You’d have thought that was English if I hadn’t told you, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, I would, Mrs. Pelumpton.”

“Well, I won’t deceive you. It isn’t. It’s chilled. And it all depends on the picking. Take what they offer, and you don’t know where you are. You’ve got to look about a bit and pick it yourself. They know me now.” And here Mrs. Pelumpton produced a short triumphant laugh. “They know me all right. ‘Pick where you like, Ma,’ he always says to me. ‘Oh, I’ll watch it,’ I tells him. ‘I’ll watch it.’ And I do.”

“That’s the style. It’s a very nice dinner, Mrs. Pelumpton.”

A certain shuffling noise indicated that the master of the house, the messer-about with clocks, Mr. Pelumpton, was now approaching. Mr. Pelumpton moved very slowly, partly because he suffered from rheumatism, and partly because he was a man of great dignity. To look at him, at his slack and dingy figure, at his watery eyes, bottle nose, ragged and drooping grey moustache, to mark his leisurely air, was to imagine at once that Mr. Pelumpton was one of those men who do not work themselves but merely see that their wives and children work for them. But this was not the truth. Mr. Pelumpton did work, as his talk would quickly inform you. He was a dealer. He had no shop of his own, but he had some vague connection with a shop, where an astonishing variety of second, third, or fourth hand goods were sold, owned by a friend of his. He passed his time in a dusty underworld in which battered chests of drawers and broken gramophones changed hands and the deals were in shillings and the commission in pence. He interviewed parties who had for sale a cracked toilet set or an old bicycle or five mildewed volumes of _The Stately Homes of England_. He could sometimes be found in the humblest auction rooms, ready to bid up to half a crown for the odds and ends. Every Friday he became a _bona-fide_ merchant by making an appearance in Caledonian Market, where, on that grey and windy height, he stood beside a small but very varied stock, consisting perhaps of a Banjo Tutor, two chipped pink vases, a silk underskirt, a large photograph of General Buller, five dirty tennis balls, a zither with most of the strings missing, and the _Letters of Charles Kingsley_. Dealing thus in things that were only one remove from the dustbin, Mr. Pelumpton did not contrive to make much money, and indeed he had been dependent for some time on Mrs. Pelumpton and Edgar; but, on the other hand, you could not say he did not work. He was in the second-hand trade, in the buying and selling line, a legitimate dealer, and took himself and his mysterious business with enormous seriousness. If he was not doing very well, that was because trade was so bad. Mr. Pelumpton had all the deliberation and dignity of an antique merchant prince. He smoked a foul little pipe, liked a glass of beer, was a great reader of newspapers, and always talked in a very solemn and confidential manner. Like many dealers and Caledonian Market men, who have drooping moustaches, very few teeth, and a confidential manner, he softened all the sibilants, putting an “h” behind every “s.” There is no doubt that a dealer who can only say “Yes” is not in such a strong position as the dealer who can draw it out into a mysterious “Yersh.” Mr. Pelumpton was essentially a “Yersh” man.

He now advanced very slowly into the room, carefully seated himself by the fire, took out his evil little pipe, looked at Turgis in a watery fashion, nodded solemnly, put back his pipe, and waited for somebody to ask him something.

“Well, did you catch him in?” his wife inquired. Mr. Pelumpton was always having to slip round the corner to catch somebody in, even if he had only just finished his own dinner.

“Out till five,” replied Mr. Pelumpton. “And a shaushy ansher for me trouble.”

“Who’s bin giving you a saucy answer?”

“Hish mishish,” said Mr. Pelumpton, “if it ish hish mishish. ‘Can’t expect to find ’im in on Shaturday arfternoon,’ she shaysh to me. ‘You’ll excuse me, mishish,’ I told her, ‘but in my bishnish, you’ve got to work Shaturday arfternoon shame ash any other arfternoon. Yersh,’ I told her, ‘an’ Shunday arfternoon too, if you’re not careful.’ Jusht telling her politely, shee? All right, what doesh she shay to that? She shaysh, ‘Well, we’re diff’rent ’ere, shee?’ and then shlamsh the door in me faysh.”

“The cheeky monkey!” cried Mrs. Pelumpton indignantly. “I’d slam it in _her_ face if I’d anything to do with her. It’s downright ignorance, that’s what it is. There’s people round here has no more idea ’ow to behave than a--a--a parrot.”

“Ar, well,” Mr. Pelumpton continued, philosophically, “we’ve got a lot to put with in our bishnish. And you can take that from me, Mishter Turgish. But if the shtuff’sh there, we don’t mind. All in the day’sh work, shee?”

“After something good, Mr. Pelumpton?” Turgis inquired.

“That’sh right. A lovely piesh he’sh got to shell--a shideboard--oh, a lovely piesh, it ish--only wantsh a bit of polishing and it’sh good enough for anybody, that piesh ish, fit for a palash. I can’t ’andle it myshelf, not ash trade ish now, but I know who can. It’sh a commission job.”

“That’s the idea,” said Turgis, with vague approval. He was a youth who liked to agree with his company, not because he felt kindly disposed towards other people, but simply because it was less trouble to agree and applaud. He really thought Mr. Pelumpton a ridiculous old bore.

“Now that’s one thing I’ve always wanted,” cried Mrs. Pelumpton. “A sideboard, a proper nice sideboard, cupboards and all, and room for everything. Mahogany, I’d like.”

“Ah, that’sh what a lot o’ people would like. They’re fetching good money them thingsh are. Show me a good shideboard, a sholid piesh--not sho much of your shtuff about it, Mishter Turgish----”

“What’s his stuff, for Heaven’s sake?” Mrs. Pelumpton demanded. “He hasn’t got any stuff, have you, Mr. Turgis? What you talking about, Dad?”

Mr. Pelumpton took out his pipe for this, and looked very reproachfully at his wife. “What am I talking about? I’m talking about what I know, that’sh what I’m talking about. ’Ow many pieshesh of furnisher have been through my handsh? Thoushandsh. All right then. Don’t I know the trade? Ho, no! Ho, no! I don’t know the trade.” Then he pointed his pipe at Turgis, who was very busy with his treacle pudding, and then said very slowly, very solemnly: “Veneersh. You know what them are. Well, that’sh hish shtuff. Am I right, Mishter Turgish?”

“That’s right,” said Turgis. “That’s what we sell at our place, Mrs. Pelumpton. Veneers for furniture, and inlays, and all that. ’S’matter of fact, I don’t have anything to do with ’em personally, ’cos it isn’t my particular job, but that’s what we sell all right.”

“Well, I never did!” Mrs. Pelumpton was filled with honest wonder at a world in which so many different things were bought and sold. “And I never knew that. Thought you was in an office, down in the City, y’know--a clurk.”

“Sho he ish,” her husband assured her, “but that’sh what hish firm shellsh. He told me long shinsh, didn’t you, Mishter Turgish. Well, ash I wash shaying, show me a good shideboard, a sholid piesh, and I’ll get you what you like for it--in reashon, in reashon, y’know. Trade may be bad. Trade _ish_ bad. But for shome thingsh you ’ave a shteady demand, that’sh what you ’ave--a shteady demand. Where we’re feeling it in our bishnish ish in the shmall thingsh----”

Mr. Pelumpton was now settling down to a good long monologue, but he reckoned without his audience, both of whom knew these monologues too well. His wife, seeing that Turgis had finished, pounced upon his used plates and bore them off, with a bustle and clatter that brought a frown to her husband’s face. He now tried to buttonhole Turgis, who was lighting a cigarette. “Now you take me, Mishter Turgish,” he began.

But Turgis refused to take him; he had taken him too often before; and now he promptly escaped upstairs, to his own room. It is difficult for a room to be both stuffy and cold, but this room contrived it somehow, and offered you the choice, if you chose to interfere with it, of being still stuffier or still colder. Turgis, who preferred stuffiness to cold, lit the gas-fire, that tiny antique, which so deeply resented being called into service again that it exploded with an indignant bang and then wheezily complained every other second. After the last breath of raw November had been driven out of the room, Turgis took off his collar and his shoes and stretched himself out on the bed. First, he read all the advertisements in his newspaper, which specialised on Saturdays in the mail-order business. There was a whole page of these advertisements, offering everything from Orientally perfumed cigarettes to electric belts for rheumatism, and Turgis carefully read them all. In public he pretended to be very knowing and cynical about advertisements, but in private he was still their willing victim, and nearly every shilling he spent, whether on clothes, drink, tobacco, or amusement, was conjured out of his pocket by the richest and most artful advertising managers. Perhaps that is why his suits bagged so soon, his shoes soaked up the rain, his cigarettes shredded and split, and his amusements failed to amuse.

When he had done with the newspaper, he took from the mantelpiece (and he could do this without getting up from the bed) the latest issue of a twopenny periodical that was devoted to the films, though more especially to the film actors with the longest eyelashes and the actresses with the largest eyes. He spent the next half-hour staring at the photographs in this paper and reading its scrappy paragraphs, not with any particular enthusiasm. Turgis was not really a film enthusiast. He knew nothing about camera angles and “cutting” and all the intricacies of crowd work, and never in his life had he seriously compared one film with another. He could laugh at the comic men with the rest, but he did not fully appreciate the clowning on the screen, simply because he had not a very strong sense of humour. No, what drew him to the films was the fact that he and they had a common enthusiasm, they had both a passionate interest in sex. In those dim sensuous palaces, filled with throbbing music and shifting coloured lights, Turgis the lover entered his dream kingdom. You could say that the money he paid at their doors was silver tribute to Aphrodite, to whose worship the Phœnicians of the Californian coast have built more temples than ever the old Phœnicians of Cyprus did; and for a few moments, as he sat in the steep darkened galleries, Turgis would be shaken and then intoxicated by the golden presence of the goddess as she flashed through with her train, Eros and the Hours and the Graces, though of all that retinue only two remained with him, to see him home, Pothos and Himeros, shapes of longing and yearning.

The paper slipped from his fingers. His eyes closed; his jaw dropped a little; and his head turned on the pillow, so that the light of the gas-fire, now coming to life in the dwindling daylight, for the window was no brighter than a slate, played faintly but rosily on his features, the pleasant width of the brow, the nose that had missed masterfulness, the round chin that fell away, and as his breathing grew more regular and he slipped into unconsciousness, that light brought something at once grotesque and sad, the red gleam and deep shadow of some Gothic tragedy, into the little room. And for an hour or so Turgis slept, while Saturday went rattling and roaring on, gathering momentum, through the dark little abysses of brick and smoke outside, the streets of London.

III

The Turgis who came out of 9, Nathaniel Street, later that Saturday afternoon, was quite different from the youth we have already met. He was washed, brushed, conscientiously shaved, and he moved briskly. This was for him the best time of all the week. Saturday sang in his heart. If the Great Something ever happened, it would happen on Saturday. The trams, buses, shops, bars, theatres, and picture palaces, they all gleamed and glittered through the rich murk to-day for him. Even now, Adventure--in high heels and silk stockings--might be moving his way. He was making for the West End, for on Saturdays, especially the alternate Saturdays when he received his pay, he despised Camden Town and Islington and Finsbury Park, those little centres that broke the desert of North London with oases of flashing lights and places of entertainment. These were good enough in their way, but if you had a few shillings to spend, the West was a great deal better, offering you the real thing in giant teashops and picture theatres. For this was his usual Saturday night programme, if he had the money: first, tea at one of the big teashops, which were always crowded with girls and always offered a chance of a pick-up; then a visit to one of the great West End cinemas, in which, once inside, he could spin out the whole evening, perhaps on the edge of adventure all the time. And this was his programme for this night, too, though, of course, he was always ready to modify it if anything happened in the teashop, if he found the right sort of girl there and she wanted to do something else.

At the very time he was setting out, hundreds and hundreds of girls, girls with little powdered snub noses, wet crimson mouths, shrill voices, and gleaming calves, were also setting out--nearly all of them, unfortunately, in pairs--to carry out the very same programme. Turgis knew this, or perhaps only a hunter’s instinct led him to where the game were thickest; but he did not visualise them, luckily for him, for the tantalising image would have driven him nearly to madness. But there they were, tripping down innumerable dark steps, chirping and laughing together in buses and trams without end, and making for the same small area, the very same buildings, perhaps to jostle him as they passed. It would have been easier for Turgis, as he knew only too well, if he too had had a companion, to match all these pairs of girls, but he had only a few acquaintances, no friends, and, in any event, he preferred to hunt in solitude, to thread his way through the brilliant jungle alone with his hunger and his dream.

A bus took him to the West End, where, among the crazy coloured fountains of illumination, shattering the blue dusk with green and crimson fire, he found the café of his choice, a teashop that had gone mad and turned Babylonian, a white palace with ten thousand lights. It towered above the older buildings like a citadel, which indeed it was, the outpost of a new age, perhaps a new civilisation, perhaps a new barbarism; and behind the thin marble front were concrete and steel, just as behind the careless profusion of luxury were millions of pence, balanced to the last halfpenny. Somewhere in the background, hidden away, behind the ten thousand lights and acres of white napery and bewildering glittering rows of teapots, behind the thousand waitresses and cashbox girls and black-coated floor managers and temperamental long-haired violinists, behind the mounds of shimmering bonbons and multi-coloured Viennese pastries, the cauldrons of stewed steak, the vanloads of harlequin ices, were a few men who went to work juggling with fractions of a farthing, who knew how many units of electricity it took to finish a steak-and-kidney pudding and how many minutes and seconds a waitress (five feet four in height and in average health) would need to carry a tray of given weight from the kitchen lift to the table in the far corner. In short, there was a warm, sensuous, vulgar life flowering in the upper stories, and cold science working in the basement. Such was the gigantic teashop into which Turgis marched, in search not of mere refreshment but of all the enchantment of unfamiliar luxury. Perhaps he knew in his heart that men have conquered half the known world, looted whole kingdoms, and never arrived at such luxury. The place was built for him.

It was built for a great many other people too, and, as usual, they were all there. It steamed with humanity. The marble entrance hall, piled dizzily with bonbons and cakes, was as crowded and bustling as a railway station. The gloom and grime of the streets, the raw air, all November, were at once left behind, forgotten: the atmosphere inside was golden, tropical, belonging to some high midsummer of confectionery. Disdaining the lifts, Turgis, once more excited by the sight, sound, and smell of it all, climbed the wide staircase until he reached his favourite floor, where an orchestra, led by a young Jewish violinist with wandering lustrous eyes and a passion for tremolo effects, acted as a magnet to a thousand girls. The door was swung open for him by a page; there burst, like a sugary bomb, the clatter of cups, the shrill chatter of white-and-vermilion girls, and, cleaving the golden, scented air, the sensuous clamour of the strings; and, as he stood hesitating a moment, half dazed, there came, bowing, a sleek grave man, older than he was and far more distinguished than he could ever hope to be, who murmured deferentially: “For one, sir? This way, please.” Shyly, yet proudly, Turgis followed him.

That was the snag really, though. This place was so crowded that you had to take the seat they offered you; there was no picking and choosing your company at the table. And, as usual, Turgis was not lucky. The vacant seat he was shown, and which he dare not refuse, was at a table already occupied by three people, and not one of them remotely resembled a nice-looking girl. There were two stout middle-aged women, voluble, perspiring, and happy over cream buns, and a middle-aged man, who no doubt had been of no great size even before this expedition started, but was now very small and huddled, and gave the impression that if the party stayed there much longer, he would shrink to nothing but spectacles, a nose, a collar, and a pair of boots. For the first few minutes, Turgis was so disappointed that he was quite angry with these people, hated them. And of course it was impossible to get hold of a waitress. After five minutes or so of glaring and waiting, he began to wish he had gone somewhere else. There was a pretty girl at the next table, but she was obviously with her young man, and so fond of him that every now and then she clutched his arm and held it tight, just as if the young man might be thinking of running away. At another table, not far away, were three girls together, two of whom looked very interesting, with saucy eyes and wide smiling mouths, but they were too busy whispering and giggling to take any notice of him. So Turgis suddenly stopped being a bright youth, shooting amorous glances, and became a stern youth who wanted some tea, who had gone there for no other purpose than to obtain some tea, who was surprised and indignant because no tea was forthcoming.

“And mindjew,” cried one of the middle-aged women to the other, “I don’t bear malice ’cos it isn’t in my nature, as you’ll be the first to agree, my dear. But when she let fly with that, I thought to meself, ‘All right, my lady, now this time you’ve gone a bit _too_ far. It’s my turn.’ But mindjew, even then I didn’t say what I _could_ have said. Not one word about Gravesend crossed my lips to her, though it was there on the tip of my tongue.”

Turgis looked at her with disgust. Silly old geezer!

At last the waitress came. She was a girl with a nose so long and so thickly powdered that a great deal of it looked as if it did not belong to her, and she was tired, exasperated, and ready at any moment to be snappy. She took the order--and it was for plaice and chips, tea, bread and butter, and cakes: the great tea of the whole fortnight--without any enthusiasm, but she returned in time to prevent Turgis from losing any more temper. For the next twenty minutes, happily engaged in grappling with this feast, he forgot all about girls, and when the food was done and he was lingering over his third cup of tea and a cigarette, though no possible girls came within sight, he felt dreamily content. His mind swayed vaguely to the tune the orchestra was playing. Adventure would come; and for the moment he was at ease, lingering on its threshold.

From this tropical plateau of tea and cakes, he descended into the street, where the harsh night air suddenly smote him. The pavements were all eyes and thick jostling bodies; at every corner, the newspaper sellers cried out their football editions in wailing voices of the doomed; cars went grinding and snarling and roaring past; and the illuminated signs glittered and rocketed beneath the forgotten faded stars. He arrived at his second destination, the Sovereign Picture Theatre, which towered at the corner like a vast spangled wedding-cake in stone. It might have been a twin of that great teashop he had just left; and indeed it was; another frontier outpost of the new age. Two Jews, born in Poland but now American citizens, had talked over cigars and coffee on the loggia of a crazy Spanish-Italian-American villa, within sight of the Pacific, and out of that talk (a very quiet talk, for one of the two men was in considerable pain and knew that he was dying inch by inch) there had sprouted this monster, together with other monsters that had suddenly appeared in New York, Paris, and Berlin. Across ten thousand miles, those two men had seen the one-and-sixpence in Turgis’s pocket, and, with a swift gesture, resolving itself magically into steel and concrete and carpets and velvet-covered seats and pay-boxes, had set it in motion and diverted it to themselves.

He waited now to pay his one-and-sixpence, standing in the queue at the balcony entrance. It was only a little after six and the Saturday night rush had hardly begun, but soon there were at least a hundred of them standing there. Near Turgis, on either side, the sexes were neatly paired off. There were one or two middle-aged women but no unaccompanied girl in sight in the whole queue. The evening was not beginning too well.

When at last they were admitted, they first walked through an enormous entrance hall, richly tricked out in chocolate and gold, illuminated by a huge central candelabra, a vast bunch of russet gold globes. Footmen in chocolate and gold waved them towards the two great marble balustrades, the wide staircases lit with more russet gold globes, the prodigiously thick and opulent chocolate carpets, into which their feet sank as if they were the feet of archdukes and duchesses. Up they went, passing a chocolate and gold platoon or two and a portrait gallery of film stars, whose eyelashes seemed to stand out from the walls like stout black wires, until they reached a door that led them to the dim summit of the balcony, which fell dizzily away in a scree of little heads. It was an interval between pictures. Several searchlights were focussed on an organ keyboard that looked like a tiny gilded box, far below, and the organ itself was shaking out cascades of treacly sound, so that the whole place trembled with sugary ecstasies. But while they waited in the gangway, the lights faded out, the gilded box dimmed and sank, the curtains parted to reveal the screen again, and an enormous voice, as inhuman as that of a genie, announced that it would bring the world’s news not only to their eyes but to their ears.

“One? This way, sir,” and the attendant went down, flashing his light. This was always an exciting moment for Turgis. He might find himself next to some wonderful girl, as lonely as he was, who would talk to him, squeeze his hand, let him take her home, and kiss him in the darkness of some mysterious suburb. The great adventure might begin at the end of that pointing pencil of light. On the other hand, he might find himself miserably wedged in between two fat middle-aged people. It was all a gamble, with the odds heavily against the wonderful girl, as he knew too well. But still, there was always a chance, and he never walked down these dark steps behind the electric torch without feeling a mounting excitement.