Part 17

“But what I was about to say is this. I want you to use your influence with my little girl to persuade her to come with her old father and join her life with mine. There’s some ridiculous talk,” he continued hurriedly and more naturally, “of her joining her mother in some wild-cat scheme for selling old furniture and broken crockery and silly knick-knacks down in the country somewhere. You know the sort of place. Ye oldy antique shoppy! Faked warming pans! Rubbish! Even if she won’t come with me, I’d fifty times rather see the child staying here and doing her typewriting than embarking on such a gim-crack, nonsensical scheme. Trying to sell faked warming pans to a lot of cads and old women!”

At this moment the door flew open and Evelyn joined them, breathless. The little room was completely full now, and Miss Matfield wanted to escape, to let them talk it out together, but she could not manage it unless she pushed Evelyn out of the way.

“I’ve been talking to mother,” Evelyn began.

The Major jumped up. “Don’t tell me she’s still trying to persuade you to bury yourself among her fenders and warming pans and go smirking behind a counter. It’s the most preposterous idea I ever heard of. It won’t even pay. All good money thrown away.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that, father,” Evelyn protested. “Mother really does know a lot about antiques. I know that. I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t make quite a lot out of it.”

Neither of them took any notice of Miss Matfield, but nevertheless she could not very well leave the room until she had a good opportunity to push past Evelyn.

“Your mother may or may not know a good deal about antiques,” said the Major very impressively, “though I seem to remember her being taken in every day or so by some piece of faked-up rubbish. But she knows nothing whatever about human nature and has no head for business. And if you’re going to keep a shop, my child, you have to know something about human nature and business. Now I could keep a shop and make a success out of it, if I wanted to, because I understand people and know how to organise. Your mother knows no more about organisation than a--a prize rabbit.”

“Well, listen to me, father, and never mind about that. I’ve been talking it over with mother, and I’ll tell you what I’ve decided to do. I’m coming with you on this trip--and, by the way, you’ll have to give me some money for clothes, I haven’t a thing--and then afterwards, if I don’t like it, I shall try mother’s scheme, if the shop’s still in existence.”

“It won’t be. But that doesn’t matter. This is good news, Evelyn. Just the two of us, side by side----”

It looked as if a magnificent parental embrace were arriving. Miss Matfield, murmuring something about letters, slipped out. The Ansdells were absurd, all three of them, but she could not help envying Evelyn. Major Ansdell might be ridiculous, but if he had asked _her_ to go roaming round the Empire with him, she would have accepted like a shot. As it was, she stayed on in Angel Pavement and at the Burpenfield, and would soon have lost an amusing Club neighbour too, almost the only one left with whom she could be friendly and confidential. Foul.

The late post had arrived and there were two letters for her. One was from her mother and was merely the regular hasty bulletin. Dad was working too hard as usual, looking after everybody for miles around except himself, and not looking at all well. The Wesleys’ little girl was down with pneumonia. Those new people, the Milfords, the elderly people who had taken Rogerson’s old house, had a son and his wife home from India, quite nice. There was no chance of her getting up to town this next month but Dad said he might have to come up and would let her know in good time. And when did Lilian think she could manage another week-end at home? Oh--and Mary Fernhill, the quite plain one who went out to South Africa last year and came back so suddenly, well, she was engaged. There was nothing very exciting in all that. Just the usual stuff. Poor mother, poor dad! He did work too hard, and he was beginning to have a terribly pinched look. That was the trouble about being a doctor, you never bothered, went on until you dropped. That was pretty foul too. There didn’t seem to be much good luck going in life, and what there was completely escaped the Matfield family.

The other letter was more interesting, and she kept it until she reached her own room again. It was dated from the Chestervern Agricultural College:

_Dear Lilian,_

_I have to be in London to-morrow (the 16th) and am wondering if you would care to spend the evening with me, have dinner and then go somewhere. It would be a great treat for me. I’m sorry the notice is so short, but couldn’t help that. Will you let me know at once--c/o Holborn Palace Hotel--and tell me what time to call for you if you are free._

_Yours sincerely, Norman Birtley._

So Norman Birtley hadn’t forgotten her existence. She sent a dashing note to him at his rather ghastly Holborn Palace Hotel, telling him she was free and could be called for at the Burpenfield at seven o’clock. And after slipping out to post it, she felt slightly better.

Ansdell looked in, having disposed of her father, not without first making him promise her a new outfit. “And we sail in a fortnight, my dear,” she crowed. “And to-morrow I give those beastly people the sack, after which I hand out the same to Tatters _in person too_. Yes, I am. That will probably close the dear old Burp to me for ever, and not a bad thing too. Except I shall be very sorry to leave you, Mattie. I will really. After all, we’ve had some great conferences in these queer little dens, haven’t we? I’ll have to tell father he must have two secretaries, and then we’ll both go out, slip away and marry big brown men from the West and the great open spaces. What do you say?”

“I’d love it,” said Miss Matfield, forcing a smile. “I’m terribly sorry you’re going. They’ll put some awful creature into your room, either one of the old hot water brigade or some devastatingly bright young person from the lounge set. I suppose it’s nearly time I joined the hot water school, the kettle fillers----”

“Don’t be absurd. You’re one of the very few people here who are really alive--and look it. Let’s change the subject. I believe it’s depressing you. Had any letters?”

“One from mother, very dull, and one from a man I’ve known off and on for years. He’s coming up to town to-morrow and wants me to spend the evening with him, seeing the sights.”

“A-ha! Is he a big brown man? Do you like him?”

“He’s not bad,” Miss Matfield replied, indifferently. “A bit feeble. He’s from my part of the world and used to hang about a lot at one time, but we haven’t seen much of one another for ages.”

“I scent a roam-a-ance,” cried Miss Ansdell. “His sweetheart when a boy. And you have cared all these yee-ars and I never knew----”

“Don’t be an ape. You’re making me feel sick.”

“But seriously, Mattie. Is he going to ask you to marry him, after the coffee has been served in a shaded corner?”

Miss Matfield smiled, but thought this over. “He might, you know,” she admitted, staring into nothing, her eyes growing sombre. “And if I thought I was doomed to stay in this place much longer, spending my evenings washing stockings and pattering round with kettles, I’d marry him next week. But I haven’t the least desire to marry him. He’s quite decent, but--oh--he’s just rather feeble. Most young men seem rather feeble, these days. I suppose most of the other sort were killed in the war. I hate feeble men, don’t you? I mean, I like a man to have plenty of character, a solid lump of it, and I don’t even care if it isn’t a terribly good character so long as there’s plenty of it. There’s a man in my office----”

“You don’t mean Mr. Dirty--Dersy--what’s it?” Miss Ansdell asked.

“No. He’s rather sloppy too. Not a bit amusing. But there’s a man who’s just come lately, Golspie----”

“I know. But you said he was awful.”

“So he is,” Miss Matfield admitted hastily. “I told you about him, didn’t I? I don’t say I like him. He’s rather a brute, and looks it, or at any rate looks weird. But he has got some character, and could do something without asking everybody’s permission. That’s all I meant. Of course, from every other point of view, even poor Norman Birtley, who really isn’t so bad, is worth fifty of him. Imagine going out to dinner with Golspie!” And she laughed aloud at the thought.

They talked of other things, yawned, stared, talked again, more idly, yawned again, and then went to bed.

III

Miss Matfield awoke next morning with a vague feeling that something pleasant and rather exciting was about to happen. Norman Birtley. So that was it. She could think of nothing else, and was rather disappointed, slightly cross with herself, when it all dwindled to Norman. That showed the sort of existence she led, these days. There had been a time when Norman Birtley was only a joke. When he became serious she had brushed him aside. After that, when he turned into the attentive admirer, popping up at odd intervals and popping down again wistfully, it is true she had liked him better. But now, the very thought of an evening with him could bring her out of sleep in a vague sense of excitement. It was absurd. It was pathetic. No, it was simply revolting.

Before she reached the office, she had completely reversed this judgment. There was nothing revolting about it. Perfectly right and natural. Norman Birtley was quite decent; he liked her, admired her, perhaps was in love with her; and she had every right to look forward to an evening with him, to an evening out with anybody (except girls from the Club, sharing Pit seats and sandwiches), for that matter. The 13 bus, grinding away through the slight fog, agreed with this conclusion, hinted that she was too proud, and seemed to say that for its part it took all it could get, like the stout-hearted Cockney it was. There was some fog too in the City, and it was a raw yellow morning for Angel Pavement. Everybody in the office yawned a good deal and was rather irritable for the first two hours. It was that sort of morning. The rest of the day was more comfortable, but dull and slow, lumbering towards five-thirty like a stupefied elephant. Miss Matfield had not much to do. Mr. Golspie was out all day, and it was he who usually kept her busy. Mr. Dersingham, who found himself getting pink and flustered when Miss Matfield coolly stared at him and waited, with a kind of ironic resignation, for his next halting sentence, preferred to dictate his letters, whenever possible, to little Poppy Sellers, in whose eyes, as he rightly suspected, he was a large fine gentleman. The only amusing thing that happened in the afternoon was that poor Mr. Smeeth, returning importantly and fussily from the bank, tried to tell them a funny story he had heard there and completely failed to bring out the point. He was rather pathetic, Mr. Smeeth. After that there were huge blank spaces, during which yellow wisps of fog seemed to creep into one’s mind. But she was able to get away early and have a really good Burpenfield bath, tons of hot water, before changing.

She was quite ready when the message came that Mr. Birtley was waiting below. In the corridor she ran into Kersey, one of the depressing old inhabitants who, as usual, was trailing along with a kettle. She meant well--poor old thing--but she had a horrid trick of saying things that depressed you at once.

“Hello, Matfield,” she droned damply. “Going out, are you? That’s the way. You have to enjoy yourself sometimes, haven’t you? That’s right, dee-ar.”

This was Kersey’s usual speech if she saw that you were dressed to go out. She had another speech ready for you if she saw you were not dressed. “Not going out to-night, eh, Matfield? No, I thought not. Well, you can’t expect to go out every night, can you, dee-ar?” And you left her drooping there, with her kettle, but not before she had set your spirits drooping too, whether you were staying in or going out. It was as if the horrible future addressed a few remarks to you.

Norman Birtley was waiting in the lounge, looking very tall, very awkward, very uncomfortable. Round the fire was the usual set, two or three of the bright young ones with Ingleton-Dodd lounging in the middle of them. Ingleton-Dodd was a large woman, about forty, with a curious white face, her hair plastered back, severe mannish clothes, and a bass voice. She seemed to have more money than anybody else in the Club, and owned quite a good little car, about which she talked a great deal. She was talking about it, or about some car, when Miss Matfield walked in.

“Oh, the man was a complete fool,” she was saying, in that deep bass voice of hers. “I told him to have a look at the mag. ‘Put the mag right,’ I told him, ‘and the whole thing will be right. Clean those points a bit, to start with.’ By this time, he’d taken the mag out and was staring at it like a stuck pig.”

“Marvellous!” cried one of the bright children. They all thought Ingleton-Dodd “the very last word.”

“‘Oh, give it to me,’ I said, and snatched it out of his hand. Then I sent for the manager. ‘Look here,’ I said to him, ‘does anybody in this place know how to time a mag?’ You should have seen his face.”

Awful creature! _She_ ought to have seen Norman Birtley’s face. He was looking at Ingleton-Dodd with fascinated repulsion written clearly on his simple and expressive features. He greeted Miss Matfield confusedly, dropping his hat when he shook hands. His hands were hot and damp, and there was a glint of perspiration on his pink forehead. He had not changed at all, except that he now wore rimless eyeglasses and his sandy moustache was a trifle more in evidence. He was only a year or so older than Miss Matfield and, as he was far less sophisticated than she was, not at all at home in London, which he only visited at long intervals, she felt the older of the two.

“How are you, Lilian?” he inquired, smiling nervously. “You’re looking very well.”

“Am I? I don’t feel it. I’m feeling pretty foul.”

“You’re not, are you?” He looked at her anxiously. “What’s wrong? You haven’t got anything the matter with you, have you? Are you seeing a doctor?”

This obvious concern ought to have pleased her, for it was very flattering. But these questions, demanding as they did a definite answer, a disease or two, only irritated her. It was understood at the Burpenfield that you were nearly always pretty foul, with nothing exactly wrong with you perhaps, but nevertheless in a fairly permanent state of being worn out, nerve-racked, tottering on the brink of something ghastly. Miss Matfield had forgotten that this simple visitor from the country knew nothing of this convention.

“Oh, I’m all right really, I suppose,” she replied, dismissing the subject. “Shall we go now? Where do you propose to take me, Norman? Have you any plans?” She moved to the door.

“Well, I didn’t know exactly what to do. I suppose I ought to have asked you first, but there wasn’t time. There seems to be a rather good show on at the Colladium this week, so I got two seats for that, second house. Do you like music halls?”

“Not bad. It all depends.”

“A fellow I was talking to at the hotel said it was a very good show, so I thought that would be all right. But if you don’t want to go, I suppose I can get rid of the tickets, can’t I?”

“No, that will be all right. I’d like to go,” she told him. They were walking down the hill now, towards Finchley Road.

“Good. And about dinner,” he continued, struggling laboriously with his duties as host. “I thought we might go to a place in Soho. Old Warwick--he’s our principal at the Chestervern Agricultural, and he’s been here a good deal--told me there was a good little place, one of those French or Italian places, you know, a bit bohemian but very good cooking--I’ve got the name and address in my book and I’ll find it in a minute. Anyhow, I thought, if you didn’t mind, we might go there.”

“All right,” she replied, not very enthusiastically. Some of those little Soho places were rather foul, and old Warwick of the Chestervern Agricultural might not be a very good judge. “Let’s go there, and you can dig out the name and address on the way. We’ll hurry and catch a bus.”

“Oh, will a bus be all right?” he cried, obviously relieved. “I thought perhaps we might have to take a taxi.”

“No, a bus will do,” she told him. A taxi, though, would have done a great deal better. She loved riding in taxis. Perhaps--who knows?--if Mr. Birtley had insisted upon their having a taxi, the whole evening might have been different.

Once again she went jogging down the long hill, past the sudden sparkle of Swiss Cottage, the genteel gloom of St. John’s Wood, and a Baker Street that was now like a series of captivating peepshows. They did not talk much inside the bus, which was full and uncommonly noisy, but he shouted a few questions about the Club and Ingleton-Dodd (whom he regarded with horror) and the office and her father and mother, and she screamed fairly adequate if brief replies. Her spirits rose when they actually arrived in Soho, for though she had some mournful memories of its _table d’hôte_ and had been in London long enough to be sceptical about its romantic bohemianism, she could not resist the place itself, the glimpses of foreign interiors, the windows filled with outlandish foodstuffs, chianti flasks, and bundles of long cheroots, the happy foolish little decorations, the strange speech, the dark faces, the girls leaning out of the first-floor windows. It was quite a long time since she had last walked along Old Compton Street. It made her sigh for an adventure. Meanwhile, that very evening took on a faint colouring of adventure while they were still searching for old Warwick’s restaurant, though, with all the good will in the world, she could not transform Norman Birtley, fresh from the Chestervern Agricultural College, into a romantic and adventurous companion.

At last, they found old Warwick’s restaurant. It might have been French or Italian or even Spanish or Hungarian; there was no telling; but it was determinedly foreign in a de-nationalised fashion, rather as if the League of Nations had invented it. No sooner was Norman’s hand on the door than a very fierce-looking, moustachioed, square-jawed Latin flung it open very quickly and with a great flourish, so that they were almost sucked in. The place was very small, rather warm, and smelt of oil. The lights were shaded with coloured crinkly paper. There were only four other people there, two oldish tired girls masticating rather hopelessly in the far corner, and a queer middle-aged couple sitting almost in the window. The fierce Latin swept them across to a tiny table, thrust menus into their hands, rubbed his hands, changed all the cutlery round and then put it all back again, rubbed his hands once more and then suddenly lost all interest in them, as if his business was simply to drag people in and then, having got them seated, to create a momentary illusion of brisk service before they had time to change their minds.

“You can have the whole dinner for three and sixpence,” said Norman, looking up from his menu. “Wonderful how they do it in these places, isn’t it? I mean to say, what would you get in an English restaurant for that? Nothing worth eating, I’ll bet. But these foreigners can do it. Of course, it’s their job. They know how to cook. Shall we have the dinner?”

Miss Matfield thought that they might, and looked about her, not very hopefully, while Norman gave the order to a waitress, a very tall fat girl with a chalky face and no features, who had just appeared. The queer middle-aged couple looked queerer still now, for the man appeared to be dyed and the woman enamelled and it was incredible that they should ever eat food at all. You felt they ought to feed on wood and paint.

Having given the order, Mr. Birtley was now looking about him too, and when he had finished doing this and had obviously noted the more picturesque details for the benefit of the other members of the staff of the Chestervern Agricultural College, he beamed at her through his rimless eyeglasses. “Nothing I enjoy better than studying these queer types,” he whispered. “A place like this is a treat to me, if only for that reason. Old Warwick told me I’d enjoy that part of it. He’s had some very funny experiences in his time. I must try to remember some of the yarns he’s told me, once or twice when I’ve been sitting up with him over a pipe at the Chestervern.”

While Miss Matfield was asking idly what sort of man Mr. Warwick was and Norman was telling her, the waitress had brought them the two halves of a grapefruit, the juice of which had apparently been used some time before. They had not finished with old Warwick, who seemed to Miss Matfield a silly old man, when the waitress returned to give them some mysterious thick soup, which looked like gum but had a rather less pronounced flavour.

Miss Matfield tried three spoonfuls and then looked with horror at her plate. Something was there, something small, dark, squashed. There were legs. She pushed the plate away.

“What’s the matter, Lilian? Don’t you like the soup?”

She pointed with her spoon at the alien body.

Mr. Birtley leaned across and peered at it through his glasses. “No, by George, it isn’t, is it? Is it really? Oh, I say, that’s not good enough, is it? That’s the worst of these foreigners. Do you think I ought to tell them about it?”

“If you don’t, I will,” said Miss Matfield indignantly. “Absolutely revolting!”

But there was nobody to tell. Even the fierce Latin had disappeared. It seemed as if when soup was served, the whole staff hid in the kitchen. Miss Matfield was sure now that her first instinctive disapproval had been right, as usual. This was a foul little place. Unfortunately, she was really hungry, having had a very small lunch.

The next member of the staff they did see obviously could not be blamed for the soup, for he was the wine waiter, an ancient gloomy foreigner. He padded across to Mr. Birtley, who was trying not very successfully to explain a very funny thing that had happened last term at the College, held out a wine list decorated with dirty thumb marks, and waited apathetically.

“A-ha!” cried Mr. Birtley jovially. “Let’s have something to drink, shall we? Do you think we could manage a whole bottle? I think we could. Yes, let’s have a whole bottle. Now then, what is there? Will you have red or white wine, Lilian? It’s all the same to me.”

“I’d like red, I think,” she replied. “Burgundy perhaps.” It was more sustaining. After all, with bread and butter and some burgundy, it might be possible to stun one’s appetite. She had no hopes of the dinner.

“Burgundy it is,” cried Mr. Birtley, with the air of a reckless musketeer. “All right, then. A bottle of Number Eleven. Beaune.”

“You geef me moanay,” murmured the ancient foreigner.

“Righto. Money. There you are.” And then he gave Miss Matfield a wink and smiled at her. She smiled back, softening towards him a little, for he was so obviously enjoying himself and thinking it all so wonderful. Poor Norman!