Chapter IV

Somehow Bultishaw could not bring himself to ask Mrs. Clarke about Daphne, and Gladys, whom he always suspected of laughing at him, he would certainly not question. He eventually got her address from a potman, who had carried some of her things home for her.

When he did get her address, it took him over a week to make up his mind to visit her. He thumbed the envelope and breathed heavily on it, put it back in his pocket and took it out again, and tried to dismiss it from his mind, but the very touch of it seemed to burn his body. At length, on the following Saturday night, he tucked it finally into his waistcoat pocket, and set out in the direction of Kilburn.

It was very dark when he found the obscure street. And the number of the address was a gaunt house of four stories above a low-class restaurant where sausages and slabs of fish were frying in the window, to tempt hungry passers-by. He stumbled up the dark stairs, and was told by two children whom he could not see that “Miss Allen” lived on the third floor. He rang the wrong bell on the third floor (there were two lots of inhabitants) and was told by a lady that “she liked his bleeding cheek waking her in her first sleep, ringing the wrong bell,” and the door was slammed in his face.

He tried the other bell, and the door was opened immediately by a gaunt woman who said:

“Who’s that? Oh, I thought it was the doctor!”

Bultishaw asked if Miss Daphne Allen lived there, and gave his own name.

The woman stared at him and then said:

“Wait a minute.”

She shut the door and left him outside. After a time she came back and said:

“What do you want?”

Bultishaw said, “I just want to speak to her for a few minutes.”

The woman again retired, and left him for nearly five minutes. He stood there shivering with cold on the stone stairs, and listening to the strange mixture of noises: children quarreling in the street below, and in the room opposite some one playing a mouth organ. At last the woman came back. She said:

“Come in.”

He followed her into a poky room, dimly lighted by a tin paraffin lamp with a pink glass. In the corner of the room was a bed on which a woman was lying, feeding a baby. Her face looked white and thin and her hair was bound up in a shawl. It was Daphne. She looked at him listlessly, and said:

“Well, have you brought any money from him?”

Bultishaw stood blinking at her, unable to comprehend. Whom did she mean by “him”? He coughed, and tried to formulate some sympathetic enquiry, when suddenly the gaunt woman who had shown him in turned on him and cried:

“Well, what the hell are you standing there like that for? You’ve come from him, I suppose? You’re ’is greatest pal, ain’t yer? We’ve never seen a farthing of ’is money yet since the dirty blackguard did ’er in. What ’ave you come slobbering up ’ere for, if it ain’t to bring some money? The b--y ’ound! If it ’adn’t been for ’im, she might be the wife of a respectable sowljer, and gettin’ ’er maintenance and pension, and all that.”

There was a mild sob from the bed, and a pleading voice that cried:

“Aunty! Aunty!”

And the baby started to cry. While these little things were happening, the slow-moving mind of Bultishaw for once worked rapidly, came to a conclusion, and formed a resolution. He moved ponderously to the lamp, and took out his purse. He looked across the lamp at Daphne and said:

“He sends you this. He’s sorry not to have sent before. He....”

The elder woman dashed toward the table, and looked at the money.

“How much is it?” she said, and then turning to Daphne, she rasped: “It’s two quid. That’s better than nothing. Is there any more to come?”

Bultishaw again looked at Daphne. She was bending over the child. She seemed indifferent. A strand of her hair had broken loose beneath the shawl. Bultishaw stammered:

“Yes--er--of course. There’ll be--er--the same again.”

“’Ow often?” whined the elder woman.

“Er--two pounds--every fortnight. Er--I’ll bring it myself.”

The big man blew his nose, and shuffled from one foot to another.

“Are you getting better? Is there anything else?” he mumbled.

“Oh, no,” whined the elder woman. “We’re living in the lap of luxury. Everything we could want. Ain’t we, Cissy?”

The woman on the bed did not answer, and Bultishaw fumbled his way out of the room.

That night Bultishaw had a mild return of his illness. He was very feverish. His mind became occupied with visions of Percy. Percy, the gay, the debonair. There was a long line of poplars by a canal, and some low buildings of a factory on the left. The earth was seamed with jagged cuts and holes. Men were burrowing their way underground like moles. The thing was like a torn fringe of humanity, wildly insane. It was very dark, but one was conscious that vast numbers of men were scratching their way toward each other, zigzagging in a drunken, frenzied manner. There was a stench of decaying matter, and of some chemical even more penetrating. There were millions and millions of men, but they were all invisible, silently scratching and listening. Suddenly amidst the dead silence there was the loud burst of Percy’s laughter--just as he had laughed in the bar of “The Duchess of Teck”--and his voice rang through the night:

“Hullo! hullo! HULLO! So here we all are!”

And this challenge seemed to awaken the lurking passions of the night. Bultishaw groaned, and started up in bed, and cried out:

“O God! a thousand tons of mud! a thousand tons of mud!”

On the following day Bultishaw made a grievous mistake in his accounts. He was severely hauled over the coals by the directors. As the weeks proceeded he made other mistakes. He became morose and abstracted. He drank his whisky with less and less soda, till he was drinking it almost neat.

“Old Bulky-chops’s brain’s going,” said some of the other salesmen.

He would lean up against the bar, and stare at Ticknett. Their old conversational relationship became reversed. It was Bultishaw who listened, and Ticknett who did the talking. The soft goods manager appeared to be in excellent trim at the time. He seemed more light-hearted than he had been for years. He spoke in his quiet voice about the tactics of Russian generals, and the need for general compulsion in this country for everybody up to the age of forty-five (Ticknett was forty-seven). At Christmas-time he sent Bultishaw a case of old port wine. His position in the firm became more assured. It was said that Ticknett had bought a large block of shares in Cotterway’s, Limited, and that he stood a good chance of being put on the board of directorship.

And Bultishaw watched his upward progress with a curious intentness. He himself was blundering down the hill. He had made a large inroad into his capital, and the day could not be far distant when he would be dismissed. Every fortnight he went out to Kilburn and took two sovereigns, and he never spoke of this to Ticknett.