Part 24

And yet, of course, this was not entirely true. There were innumerable people in London who were not only ready to make the acquaintance of Turgis, but were actually longing for him. There were Park’s comrades, the communists, who would be only too glad to obtain another recruit; possibly the Socialists; and certainly the Anti-Socialists, who would have been delighted to show him how to mount a soap-box. There were clergymen of all denominations and sects on the prowl for him, willing to lead him in prayer, to instruct him in the Scriptures, to teach him anthems, to show him lantern slides of the Norfolk Broads, to smoke a manly pipe at him, to play a game of chess, draughts, dominoes, bagatelle, or billiards with him, to give him a right hook and then a straight left with the gloves on, according to their varied tastes and dispositions. There were men who were not clergymen, but had the habits and outlook of clergymen, leaders of ethical societies and the like, who would be pleased to talk to him about their own particular universes, lend him a few books, and welcome him twice a week at their philosophical-literary-musical services. No doubt there were criminals who could have made good use of a youth with such a guileless air. There were thousands of other young men in lodgings and offices, young men who were not very clever or strong or handsome or brave or artful, young men who were for ever packing themselves into tubes and buses, eating hastily in corners of crowded teashops, and then using the music-halls, picture theatres, saloon bars, and lighted streets as their drawing-rooms, studies, and clubs, who would soon have been overjoyed, once the mumbling preliminaries were passed, to spend their evenings with Turgis.

But then he did not really want any of these people, did not want company for company’s sake. What he really wanted was Love, Romance, a Wonderful Girl of His Own. And these had lately all been assuming the same shape in his mind, that of Miss Lena Golspie. He had never spoken to her, had never seen her except once, at a distance, since that day she appeared at the office, but he had thought a great deal about her. To say that he had fallen in love with her at sight would be to exaggerate. If an attractive girl--and she need not have been anything like so pretty as Miss Golspie--had turned up and had been kind to him, no doubt he would soon have forgotten all about Lena. But no such girl turned up; indeed no girl of any kind appeared. If Lena Golspie was not the prettiest girl he had ever seen (and he could not remember a prettier, not even if he included the beautiful shadow people, Lulu Castellar and the other film stars), she was certainly the prettiest girl he had ever spoken to, and the fact that she had actually made her appearance at the office door in Angel Pavement somehow brought her definitely into his own world. That she was not really a creature of that world only made her more fascinating, mysterious, romantic, like the beautiful heroine of a love story of the films. She was a lovely bird of passage. He imagined her against a background of strange places and fantastic luxuries. It was as if Lulu Castellar had stepped out of the screen, taken on colour and solid shape, and had actually spoken to him, smiled at him. And yet, there it was, her father worked in the very same business, in the very same office, with him. No wonder he could not get the girl out of his head, which for a long time now had been haunted by a vague but infinitely desirable feminine shape. It was vague no longer; it had definite form and features; it had a name.

It had also an address, and Turgis, his wits suddenly sharpened, had contrived to learn it at the office. The Golspies lived at 4a, Carrington Villas, Maida Vale, W. 9. He had seen the very house, or rather the upper half of the house, in which they lived. He had, in fact, seen it several times, and had actually been watching when lights were being turned on and off there. Before this, Maida Vale had been for him a mere name, but now he was rapidly becoming familiar with the district, and it had for him a most curious fascination. He had never really decided what he would do if he was lucky enough to run into Miss Golspie. She had been friendly that day she came to the office, though condescending to him, of course, as she had every right to do; but on the strength of that, he did not see how he could very well stop her, perhaps in one of the darkest parts of Carrington Villas, and say: “Do you remember me. I’m Turgis and I’m the clerk at Twigg and Dersingham’s. And how are you, Miss Golspie?” And if he wasn’t to do that, what was he to do? He did not know, and so left it to the inspiration of the moment. That moment never arrived. He was not very surprised or disappointed. He went across to Maida Vale several nights, not so much because he felt he had a good chance of meeting her there or even of seeing her, but because on these particular evenings every other part of London seemed terribly dreary, and Maida Vale drew him across these desolated spaces like a magnet. He only went when it was fine, and then he took a turn or two up and down Carrington Villas, sometimes stopping near the house to see if anything was happening there (it was a detached house with two pillars before the door and three steps leading up to it, and there was a broken statue in the dingy bit of garden in front), perhaps walked along the street at the top a little way, towards the main road, then did the same at the bottom, had a last saunter along Carrington Villas, perhaps ended up with a glass of bitter at the high-class little pub just round the corner at the top, and went home. The first few evenings he had spent like that he had enjoyed; there was to him something enchantingly mysterious and romantic in the winter-evening gloom of this Maida Vale; as he moved about the quiet streets, a shadow among shadows, he became aware of an intense secret inner life of his own; but the pleasure rapidly decreased. Too often the upper half of the house was all dark, and then of course the whole neighbourhood lost its charm, which was transferred to some other, unknown, part of the city, where she was spending the evening. Probably in the West End, that brilliant jungle, where you might meet anybody, the last person in the world you expected to meet, and where you might miss for ever the one person you wanted to meet. It was in the West End he caught sight of her. He had been to a picture theatre and it was late, and he saw her with her father and another man. Mr. Golspie was shouting for a taxi, and in another moment he had got one and they were gone. But he saw her distinctly, and it was strange seeing her, for though he had thought so much about her, she had almost stopped being real.

He was beginning to mope now, for he was tired of going over to Maida Vale, and yet could not settle down to spend his evenings in the old way, and that was why the Pelumptons, seeing him hanging about and looking vaguely miserable, had begun to give him advice about hobbies. They did not understand, he told himself gloomily, that he wasn’t simply another Edgar or Park. But he admitted once again that it was decent of them to take an interest in him, even if they missed the great fact about him--namely, that he was entirely different from Edgar or Park or anybody else they knew. The innermost self of Turgis was always being surprised and hurt by the general ignorance of this simple fact. Having reached his little room, he now did what he had done many hundreds of times before: he examined his face carefully in the tiny cracked mirror to see if there were any signs of this difference written there; and once again he came to the conclusion that there were, only you had to look closely and sympathetically at him, not just give a hard stare and then march off, to notice them.

For once, the little gas-fire did not explode when the match came near and then wheezily complain. It gave only a soft pop and then merely murmured. Its master knew that that meant that the meter demanded another shilling, and as he had not got a shilling and was too lazy to return to the back room for possible change, he let it murmur and sink, until its flames were like tiny blue flowers. Then he did something he had not done hundreds of times before. He began brushing his clothes. Mr. Smeeth had already noticed, as we saw, that Turgis had smartened himself up. We are now behind the scenes of this smartening. It had occurred to Turgis that his next meeting with Lena Golspie, if there ever was one, might easily take place in the office, like the first meeting, and then he realised at once that he would have to take some trouble with his appearance during the day. He went to the length of spending one-and-three-pence on a clothes brush of his own. A day or two later, he went to the further length of buying a few collars, very smart soft collars with long points on them, and was quite surprised at the difference they made. Then he had taken to folding his trousers and putting them under the mattress, and had even taken his better pair downstairs once and ironed them. Now, after brushing the coat and waistcoat and doing a little scratching here and there with his penknife, he took these trousers from under the mattress and thoroughly examined them.

He sat down on the edge of his bed, the trousers over his arm, staring at the large hole in the old rug. But he was not looking at the hole, but through it, into Angel Pavement, into the office. Mr. Golspie had just gone away, and now Turgis suddenly realised that that fact was tremendously important. It might mean that there was no chance whatever of Lena coming near the office, now that her father was not there. On the other hand, it might mean just the opposite, that there was a very good chance of her visiting the office, just because her father _was_ away. She might want something; she might be in trouble; and Mr. Golspie might easily have told her to come to the office. And now he remembered hearing _something_, something that Mr. Golspie, at the outer door, had shouted to Mr. Dersingham sitting in the private office, a something that had to do with Lena and “you people here,” as Mr. Golspie had called them. Turgis knew definitely that Lena was being left behind. Well then, she might call at the office any day. There was quite a chance, anyhow. So there and then, he decided that for the next twelve days or so, while Mr. Golspie was away, he would shave carefully every morning, put on his better suit and wear a clean collar, and have his hair cut at lunch time on the following day. Having thus made up his mind, he felt quite excited, and, as people do, if they have drifted for a long time and then suddenly come to a decision and adopted a programme, he found himself visited obscurely by a conviction that something was bound to happen, just as if by drawing a firm straight line he could compel circumstance to come and toe it.

The gas-fire retired from service with a very sad little pop. He moved and the bed immediately gave a groan. (Everything in the room creaked and groaned and constantly complained. It was tired of people, that little room.) Very carefully he raised the mattress and replaced the trousers underneath. Then, with something like an air of sheer dandyism, he put out an absolutely clean collar for the morning. He went to the little dormer window and stared through the few inches of open space at the dark and the faint glimmer of the town. Here he was, high up above Camden Town, in his own little room. There she was, Lena Golspie, perhaps in _her_ little room in Maida Vale, perhaps just above those two pillars he had seen, peering through the open gate, perhaps looking down on that broken statue in the front garden. It made his eyes water, staring there like that, but still he remained. His lips moved. “Listen, Lena,” he began; but then stopped. “Listen, Miss Golspie, Miss Lena Golspie. Listen. Do come to the office, do come to the office. And make it something I can do. Turgis, you know, the one you saw that day. Do come to the office.”

As soon as he stepped back into the little room, it told him, in its various creaky voices, not to be a damned fool.

“Oh!--you!” he said to it, aloud, and then made haste to undress and get the light out.

II

Turgis kept his word to himself. Every day he appeared at the office all shaved and brushed and as spruce as it was possible for him to be. The others congratulated him and chaffed him and invented the most elaborate reasons for the change. Sandycroft, the tall traveller with the small head, the inquisitive nose, and the extraordinary number of teeth, paid one of his flying visits to headquarters and pretended, possibly at the instigation of Mr. Smeeth, not to know Turgis.

“I say, Smeeth,” Sandycroft barked--and he really did bark; it was like having an enormous terrier about the place when Sandycroft arrived--“what’s become of that other chap--you know, what’s his name--that chap who used to wear the dark brown collars----?”

“Now who was that, Sandycroft?” said Smeeth, frowning and putting his head on one side. Smeeth was as conscientious and painstaking a wag as he was a cashier. It was not often that he joined in a joke, but when he did he was almost alarmingly thorough.

“You _know_ the chap I mean, Smeeth,” replied Sandycroft, sniffing with that queer little nose of his. “Never had his hair cut--wore a beard--looked like a Spring Poet in the autumn. Sat at the desk over there,” he continued, lowering his voice, “where that smart young feller is. Oh, what _was_ his name?”

Here Stanley gurgled and spluttered, not perhaps because he thought this was very brilliant humour, but because he thought comic relief in any form should be encouraged. Miss Poppy Sellers was giggling a little, too, and Miss Matfield smiled at them, not without condescension.

“Oh, don’t be so funny,” Turgis mumbled, giving Stanley a ferocious scowl.

“That’s queer, Smeeth. The same voice--the very same voice.”

“I believe you’re right, Sandycroft. I believe you’re right,” said Mr. Smeeth, with the air of a dutiful cross-talk comedian.

“Sure I am,” the other barked. Then he stepped forward, with a large polite smile on his face, displaying at least a hundred teeth. “Not Mr. Turgis? Surely it can’t be Mr. Turgis?”

“No,” said Turgis, who was not very good at this sort of thing, “it’s Charlie Chaplin.”

“Well, Mr. Charlie Chaplin Turgis,” said Sandycroft, “I must congratulate you, I really must. All in favour, show in the usual way. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.” And he turned away, grinning.

“Ah, well,” said Mr. Smeeth, settling down to his books again, rather as if he had just come to the end of some great gusty epic of humour, “a bit of fun won’t do any of us any harm now and again. Here, Stanley, slip round to Nickman and Sons with this and say it’s for Mr. Broadhurst--for Mr. Broadhurst, mind. And hurry up, don’t take all morning about it. Don’t go shadowing somebody all round London.”

A week had passed, and though news of Mr. Golspie himself had trickled through into the general office, Turgis had heard nothing about Lena. It seemed as if he was making a fool of himself--and being laughed at by the others for his pains--and he was beginning to feel very disheartened. On two evenings, he had returned to Maida Vale and had hung about the neighbourhood of 4a, Carrington Villas, but had been rewarded by nothing more than a glimpse of a shadow on a curtain. He had been tempted then to walk boldly up to 4a and offer some wild excuse for trying to see Miss Golspie. But he could think of nothing that did not sound insane, and, realising that this crazy step might spoil everything and get him into trouble at the office, he dismissed the notion. The other evenings went very heavily. He had begun to tell himself that he was silly to bother his head about the girl at all, but it was one thing to tell himself that and quite another thing to stop bothering.

Stanley returned, and was sent out again. Mr. Smeeth departed for the bank. Turgis and the two girls worked away quietly; there was not a lot to do that morning. Then Poppy Sellers came over to Turgis with some advice notes she had just typed.

“Are these all right?” she asked.

He looked them over. “Yes, they’re all right. You’ve got into it now, haven’t you?” he added, deciding to give her a good word for once. She wasn’t a bad kid, really. “Wish I could type as neat as that. I used to have to do it sometimes, before you came, but I used to make a nasty mess of it, I did.”

Her sallow little face brightened at once at such praise. But her manner was as perky as ever. “My word! we are coming on, aren’t we! What have I done to deserve this? But I say,” and here she became more confidential in tone, “you didn’t mind what they said--y’know when they were trying to pull your leg. I had to laugh, and I thought you looked a bit mad.”

“If it amuses ’em, I don’t care,” replied Turgis loftily. “Bit silly, I call it, all the same. I don’t go round making personal remarks about other people. Matter of fact, I don’t mind what old Smeethy says, ’cos he’s a decent sort and anyhow it isn’t often _he_ breaks loose. But I don’t like that chap Sandycroft. He’s a cocky devil, he is. And, anyhow, he’s only just come here--what does he want to be trying to be funny for?”

“That’s right,” said Poppy, nodding her head. “I don’t think much of him, either. Not my style at all, he isn’t. Too many teeth, if you ask me. And I don’t like them noses that turn up the way his does. If he worked here all the time, he’d have that nose and teeth into everything. I know that sort.”

“So do I. We’d a school teacher the very image of him when I was a kid, and he used to try it on with us--oh, what a hope!”

“Mind you,” Poppy continued, looking at him a little uncertainly, “you do look diff’rent--smarter, y’know.”

“Well, that’s nobody else’s business but mine,” Turgis declared. “What’s it got to do with anybody else?”

“Oo, all right, don’t jump at me. I only meant--well, you look a lot nicer now. In fact, I think you look very nice.”

Turgis did not know what reply to make to this, so he merely grunted.

“You don’t mind me saying so, I hope?”

“No, ’s’all right,” he replied awkwardly.

“I say, listen. Are you going anywhere to-night?” She stopped for a moment, but then, before he had time to answer, went on with a rush. “’Cos if you aren’t--well, it’s like this, my friend--her father’s a policeman--and she got two tickets given for the Police Minstrels to-night and now she can’t go ’cos she’s in bed with the flu and I’ve got the tickets and I wondered if you’d like to come with me.” And she drew a deep breath.

“Well, thanks very much,” he stammered, “but--I don’t know--you see----”

“Have you fixed up already to go somewhere?”

“Well, I have--_really_----”

“Oh, sorry.” Her face fell. She was silent for a moment, then looked up--rather cheekily, he thought--and said, “Going out with your girl, p’raps?”

This annoyed him, just as if she had jabbed at some sore place. “Well, that’s my business, isn’t it?”

“Oo, sorry, sorry, sorry! Squashed again. I’d better shut up.” And she marched away, a compact little figure, and began typing with great vigour and noise. Miss Matfield threw a curious glance at her.

Turgis wondered if he had been foolish to pretend that he wasn’t free to go to that entertainment. It would be a lot better than doing nothing. He supposed it was too late to change his mind, particularly now that she had walked off in a huff. He would wish, when the evening did come and he had nothing to do but mope about, that he had accepted her offer. She really hadn’t a bad face when you took a good look at it. Yes, perhaps he’d been silly not to accept.

But when the evening did come and he suddenly remembered how he had refused this other engagement, how glad he was! It seemed like fate. And afterwards, when he suddenly remembered yet again how he had refused this other engagement, how sorry he was! And still it seemed like fate.

He and Miss Matfield came back from lunch at the same time that afternoon (Miss Matfield had gone out first, but then she always took quarter of an hour longer than anybody else), running into one another in Angel Pavement, near T. Benenden’s. “You know, Turgis,” she announced, in that clear hard voice of hers which always rather frightened him, “I do think you’re beastly rude to little Miss Sellers.”

“Why, what have I done to her?” he demanded.

“I saw this morning you’d hurt her feelings again,” Miss Matfield continued. “And why you should, I can’t imagine. She’s quite a nice child, really, underneath that silly perky manner of hers, and I think she’s rather lonely, and you could be quite good friends. You see, she happens to think you’re rather marvellous.”

“And you don’t, Miss Matfield,” said Turgis, bold for once with her. “Go on, you might as well put that in properly. I could hear it in your tone of voice.”

“I certainly don’t think you’re at all marvellous,” she said coolly. “Why should I? What I do think is that you’re being very rude to somebody who is prepared to like you a good deal. And when people really like you,” she added severely, “you ought to be specially nice to them and not rude. Now don’t say anything to her about what I’ve just said or I shall be really annoyed.”

“All right,” said Turgis sulkily, wondering why he couldn’t say something sharp to her, for her cool cheek. “But I don’t see what I’ve done to her. She takes offence too quickly, that’s it. And whose fault’s that? And for that matter, who’s ever considered _my_ feelings in the office?”

“You’re different,” she said airily, “or if you’re not, you ought to be. You’re a man.”

Turgis, pleased by this statement that he was a man, but still labouring under a grievance, could do nothing but mumble and mutter, and Miss Matfield, taking no further notice of him, led the way upstairs. The next time he saw Miss Sellers, Turgis looked curiously at her. So she thought he was “rather marvellous,” did she? He found himself returning to this, and to her, several times during the afternoon.

But then something happened, something so important that it promptly blew away all thought of Miss Sellers or anybody or anything in that office. Mr. Dersingham, who had only been there long enough in the morning to go through the first post, returned about four to examine the later posts, and he had not been in ten minutes before he sent for Mr. Smeeth. After a short interval, during which one of them telephoned to somebody from the private office, Mr. Smeeth came out, looking fussy, as he always did when he had something special to do.

“Let’s see,” he said, looking round the office, “does anybody here live Maida Vale way?”

What was this? Turgis’s heart jumped and knocked.

“Well, I live in Hampstead and that’s roughly the same way,” Miss Matfield began, dubiously.

“What is it, Mr. Smeeth?” cried Turgis eagerly. “I know Maida Vale very well.”

“Thought you lived Camden Town way?” said Mr. Smeeth.

“Yes, I do, but--er--I know somebody in Maida Vale, often go there. Is it anything I can do, Mr. Smeeth?”

“Yes, I think you’d better have the job, Turgis,” said the unconscious Mr. Smeeth, little knowing what effect his words were having. “You see, Mr. Golspie’s got a daughter living with him--well, you know that, because she came here one day, didn’t she?”

Oh, my gosh!--didn’t she!