Part 26

“Have another then. We’ll just have one more and then we’ll eat.” After the second one, he felt larger and more important and even happier than he had done before. He insisted upon showing her a trick with three pennies. He knew three tricks, one with the pennies and the other two with cards. The other two could wait; it would not do to show her everything at once. She thought the trick with pennies very smart, and they postponed eating until he had shown her how to do it and she had practised it several times. They were better friends than ever when they sat down to eat the sardines and the two salads in the cardboard jars and the sliced veal loaf and the fruit salad and chocolate cake. Lena ate very quickly and left things and started again on them and pushed them aside and altogether dined in a delightfully fussy extravagant fashion that was quite new to Turgis, who was used to seeing people walk through a meal at a good round pace.

When she had finished eating, Lena lit a cigarette and then darted to the large gramophone in the corner. Having wound it up, she could not find the record she wanted (there seemed to be records all up and down the room), and he had to help her, when she had told him half the name and tried to whistle a bit of it at him. At last they found it, and the gramophone came gloriously to life, filling the room with the lilt and throb of this fashionable tune.

“Can you dance?” she asked him, gliding and twirling to the music.

“Not much,” he mumbled, ashamed of himself.

“Well, let’s see. Shove that rug back, there. That’s enough. Now then.” And she came up to him. “Not that way. Like this. That’s it. Go on, you can hold me tighter than that.”

He could, and he did. If they had been standing still, it would have been a rapturous moment, but though he was delightedly conscious of the body against one arm and of the hand that gripped his, he had to try and dance, and he was very awkward.

“You’re ghastly,” she told him, with lips that were not four inches from his, “but you’ll improve. I’ve known worse. You’ve got some idea of the rhythm, and some men never even get that. Now--left--right--left--that’s better. Only you’re so stiff--put some pep into it. Oh, hell!--the gramophone’s stopped. Shove another dance record on and we’ll try again.”

They tried several times, with an interval during which they had another cocktail each, and Turgis improved considerably, and towards the end was holding her as she wanted to be held, close to him, and had time to enjoy the situation. When they stopped, his arm left her waist reluctantly and she did not seem to resent it. She told him all about the dances she had been to in Paris, and then, having come to the end of them, suddenly yawned. He glanced at the clock.

“Well,” he said slowly, “I suppose I’d better be going now.”

“All right,” she replied, yawning again. “I suppose you had. I’m tired all at once--must be this rotten heavy weather.”

“What about all this stuff?” He pointed to the little table.

“Oh, they don’t matter. The maid will clear them in the morning. She’ll be in soon--unless her sailor boy’s persuaded her to stay out all night. And that would be nice for _me_, wouldn’t it?--here all night by myself. No, she’ll be in soon. I thought I heard her then.”

Very slowly, reluctantly, Turgis put on his coat, carefully buttoning it and lingering over every button. While he did this, he stared at her, wondering how he could possibly say what was in his mind.

She, too, had been thoughtful. “Look here,” she cried at last. “Have you been to the Colladium this week? Well, I haven’t either, and I want to go, and I hate going by myself. If I can get two seats for the first house to-morrow night, will you come with me? I might go down and get them to-morrow afternoon if I feel like it. I want to spend some of that twelve pounds, anyhow.”

Would he go? Oh, my gosh!

“All right then,” she continued, walking towards the door with him. “Listen. I’ll telephone to you at the office some time in the afternoon if it’s all right. I’ll tell you where to meet me and all that then.”

They were standing at the door now, and he was still holding her hand, as if he were about to shake it, but was at the moment too busy trying to stammer out a few adequate phrases. Nor was he merely holding the hand, for, involuntarily, he was pulling it too, so that there was less and less space between them as his little speech floundered on. This made Lena impatient.

“I don’t know what on earth you’re trying to say,” she told him, “so don’t bother. And you might as well go now before the girl does get back. And I’ll telephone to-morrow. Oh, don’t dither so much, silly. There!” And with that she leaned against him, putting a hand on each shoulder, kissed him swiftly on the mouth, drew back, laughed, and then shut the door on him.

Turgis stared at the door, drew a long breath, and then wandered down the stairs and through the hall below like a man drifting drunkenly out of some Arabian Night. He walked up to Kilburn, where he caught a 31 bus that took him most of the way home. The fog was not very thick, but it was wretchedly cold damp stuff that made people shiver and cough and wipe their eyes and blow their noses and look miserable. But Turgis did not care. As he sat gazing at nothing in the bus or marched along the blackened pavements, he was warmed by the fire inside him and cheered by a host of coloured fancies that were rocketing in his mind.

IV

When he awoke next morning, he knew at once that he was in possession of an exquisite secret and was quite different from the Turgis who had rubbed his eyes so often in that little room. He was the chap who had been kissed by Miss Lena Golspie the night before. He was also the chap she was going to telephone to this very day and take to the Colladium this very night. He jumped out of bed and then jumped into the part of this new and splendid chap. The fact that he still looked like the old Turgis, to whom nothing wonderful had ever happened, only made it all the more amusing.

“Another raw morning, my word,” said Mrs. Pelumpton, as she handed him his breakfast. “Them’s best off this morning who has to stay in. Edgar’s been gone these two hours, and a nasty cold job it must be in that station this morning.”

“Yes, it must, Mrs. Pelumpton,” said Turgis heartily. “I’m sorry for Edgar.” And so he was. Edgar would never be kissed by a girl like Lena Golspie, not if he lived to be a thousand. Poor dreary devil!

Old Pelumpton shuffled in, unwashed, blue about the nose, and wearing a greasy muffler. Turgis had seen him like that many times before, but this morning he resented the appearance of this dirty apparition. If Lena Golspie knew that he had to eat his breakfast looking at that nasty old mess, who might have just crawled out of the dustbin, she would probably never speak to him again.

“No letter, I shee,” said Mr. Pelumpton, going to the fire and warming his hands. “That meansh he doeshn’t want me to go and shee the shtuff thish morning. I’ll go round jusht before dinner and catch ’im in then. That’sh the idear.”

“Yes, that is the idea,” said his wife sharply, as she bustled about. “Wait till the pubs is open and then catch him in. I know that idea. It’s a good idea, that is. If it wasn’t for that idea, I don’t know why the pubs ’ud ever open at dinner time, ’cos they wouldn’t have any custom.”

“You hear that,” Mr. Pelumpton said to Turgis, who was putting away his breakfast as fast as he could. “Deary me, they’ve got pubsh on the brain, the women ’ave. If a man shtops in a bit, they want to know when he’sh going to do a bit o’ work, an’ if he goesh out, then it’sh the pubsh.”

“And you don’t go in the pubs, do you, Mr. Pelumpton?” said Turgis, with a very marked ironical inflection.

“Oh no! He ’ates them, he does,” cried Mrs. Pelumpton. “You couldn’t get him to go near one.”

“What shome o’ you people don’t realishe,” retorted Mr. Pelumpton with dignity, “ish that the pub may be nesheshary in bishnish. And until you’ve been in bishnish--a bishnish like mine, I mean--it’sh shomething you don’t undershtand. The amount of bishnish transhacted in pubsh, my wordsh----”

“’Morning, Mrs. Pelumpton,” cried Turgis, wiping his mouth and dashing out. What a life the Pelumptons had! It seemed incredible that anybody could find so dingy an existence worth living. Hurrying down to the Camden Town Tube Station, cramming himself into the lift, waiting for a City train, swaying near the doors among a mass of elbows, newspapers and parcels all the way to Moorgate, he hugged his grand secret. When he arrived at the office, he swelled exultantly, for this was where Mr. Golspie gave his orders, and they all knew Mr. Golspie and they had heard about his daughter, but they did not know what Turgis knew. It was a delightful feeling. He wanted to laugh out loud every time one of the others spoke to him or even looked at him. Ah, little did they know!

“You got that receipt all right, did you, Turgis?” said Mr. Smeeth.

It was extraordinary. He had forgotten all about the money and the receipt. But he had the receipt in his pocket, nevertheless, and when he handed it over he found himself swelling again inside, nearly bursting with secret knowledge and happiness.

“Did you go inside?” said Mr. Smeeth casually.

“Yes,” replied Turgis. Did he go inside!

“Oo, did you?” cried Poppy Sellers, who missed nothing. “Tell us what it was like? What did you say to his daughter? Is she nice? Tell us all about it--go on.”

Not a bad kid, really, though that fringe effect was a distinct mess. And she thought him--what was it?--rather marvellous. (And so _she_ ought. Why, if Lena Golspie--oh, well, I-mean-to-say!) Poor kid--a bit pathetic, when you came to consider it. And she had wanted him to go with her to the Police Minstrels last night! And he had half thought of going! Dear, dear, dear!

“Well, Miss Sellers, if you really want to know,” he said, “I’ll tell you.”

“My words, aren’t we getting grand!” cried Poppy. “Go on. Very good of your lordship, I’m sure.”

“They live in the top half of a detached house,” said Turgis, “and the room I went into was a large room, bigger than this office here, and it had all sorts of things in it, and shaded lights and a big gramophone and dozens of cushions all over the room----”

“Did it look like a furnished flat?” asked Miss Matfield.

“I suppose so. I don’t know. I don’t know anything about furnished flats.”

“Well, what about his daughter?” Miss Sellers enquired. “What’s she like?”

“I’ve seen her--for a minute,” said Miss Matfield. “She’s rather pretty, isn’t she?”

“Yes, she is,” replied Turgis, keeping a hold on himself. He was bubbling inside.

“Yes, but what’s she _like_?” Miss Sellers persisted, staring at him. And when he made no reply, but turned away and pretended to be suddenly busy with some work, she gave him a curious look before she herself turned away too. He never saw it, and if he had seen it, he would not have been interested.

Fortunately, both for him and for Twigg & Dersingham, he was not very busy that afternoon. Otherwise, he might have muddled every consignment of veneers and inlays, and so confused the whole trade that it might not have recovered for a fortnight. The disadvantage of pinning your whole afternoon on a possible telephone call in an office is that the telephone is ringing every few minutes and you are for ever on the jump. Up to three-thirty, Turgis was comparatively calm; from three-thirty to four, he was on the tiptoe of expectation; from four to four-fifteen he was desperate; from four-fifteen to four-thirty he was swaying on the brink of a vast abyss of misery, only to be plucked back by every ring of the bell and then hurled forward again by each unwelcome voice (“And if you ask me,” said the girl at Brown & Gorstein’s, after making one of these calls, “I think it’s time Twigg and Dersinghams just veneered a few manners on. The way they snap your head off!”); and, at four-thirty-five he was sitting staring at a desk in hell, all hope gone, and at four-forty-five he was breathing heavily down a telephone receiver in heaven. Yes, she had got the tickets and would he meet her just inside the entrance to the Colladium at twenty-five past six.

Even now, there was no peace for him. The instant he had put down the receiver he had realized that it would not be easy for him to be at the Colladium at twenty-five past six. Sometimes they did not finish until nearly that time, and indeed, on really busy nights, it was often considerably later. He had to get from Angel Pavement to the Colladium, and if possible he had to have some tea.

“What time do you think we’ll be finishing to-night, Mr. Smeeth?” he enquired respectfully.

Mr. Smeeth looked up from his neat little wonderland of figures. “Oh, I dunno, Turgis. Just after six, I suppose. Why, have you got something special on?”

“I’ve got to be up in the West End at twenty-five past six,” said Turgis. (“And if you knew who I’m going to meet, Smeethy, old man, you’d have a fit.”) Then he thought for a moment. “Would you mind if I sent Stanley out for some tea for me, Mr. Smeeth?”

“Well, as long as you do it now, before he’s busy copying the letters, it’ll be all right.”

So Stanley was dispatched to the Pavement Dining Rooms for one pot of tea, one buttered teacake, and a bun--total eightpence. “And do I keep the change?” asked Stanley, who had been given a shilling.

“I should think you don’t, my lad!” cried Turgis, whose finances were now in a desperate state. The pictures last night had left him with three and threepence; the bus going home had cost him twopence; lunch had been ninepence (it cost him nothing travelling to the office because he had a pass on the Underground); and now, after paying out this eightpence, he would be left with one and eight. On that one and eight, he would have to travel to the Colladium and get home afterwards, and then exist all the next day, Friday. And he had only two cigarettes left. If Lena wanted anything in the Colladium--and he could imagine her asking for chocolates and cigarettes and ices--he was in a hole.

He got away at five minutes past six, after having a very thorough wash-and-brush-up in the little office lavatory, hurled himself into the flood of west-bound travellers, and arrived, breathless and triumphant, under the red glare of the Colladium entrance exactly on time. He had ten minutes in which to cool off before Miss Golspie appeared, wearing a handsome coat with a huge fur collar and cuffs and looking so rich and beautiful that he was almost too shy to talk to her. Their seats were down at the front--Turgis had never sat in such seats before--and it would all have been perfect if it had not been for two little incidents. The first occurred when Lena, during the second turn, a silent juggling affair, announced that she would like some chocolates. “Can you get hold of that girl there,” she said. “She always has some nice boxes.”

Nice boxes! “How much are they?” he asked her, miserably.

“Well, you are a mean pig! How much are they? I like that, and after I’ve paid for the seats, too!”

“I’m sorry,” he stammered, “but--you see--I’ve only got one and sixpence.” He had paid tuppence on the bus, getting there.

“One and six!” Lena laughed. It was not an unfriendly laugh, but it was not a very sympathetic one either. “That’s worse than I was, before you brought that money, yesterday. It doesn’t matter, though. I don’t know that I do want any chocolates. But would you spend your wonderful one and six if I asked you to?”

“Yes, I would. Of course I would. If I’d,” he added, as the curtains swept down on the smiling jugglers, “if I’d hundreds and hundreds of pounds, I’d spend them all if you asked me to. I would, honestly.”

“Oh, it’s easy to say that,” said Lena, not displeased, however, at his fervent tone. She gave him a brilliant glance, and no doubt remarked that his face was flushed and his eyes were at once hot and moist, as if he stared through a steam of embarrassed adoration.

Unfortunately, not all her brilliant glances were reserved for him, and that fact formed the basis of the second disturbing incident. There was a young man, a rather tall handsome chap with wavy hair, who was sitting with a girl in the row in front of them and a little to their right. Turgis had noticed that this fellow was turning round a good deal whenever the lights went up and that every time he did so his glance always came to rest finally on Lena. After this had happened several times he noticed that she was returning this glance. At last, during the interval, he caught her smiling, yes, actually smiling, at the chap. Instantly, he felt miserable, then angry, then miserable again.

He could stand it no longer. “Do you know that chap there?” he asked, trying to appear light and easy.

“Which one? What are you talking about?”

“Well, you keep smiling at him--I mean, that one there, the chap who’s just had a permanent wave, by the look of him.”

“Oh, the one who keeps looking round. He seems to think he knows me, doesn’t he? He’s rather attractive, as a matter of fact.”

“Well, I suppose as long as you think so, it’s all right, isn’t it?” said Turgis bitterly. He could feel a pain, a real pain, as bad as toothache, somewhere inside him. “He doesn’t attract me,” he mumbled. “If you ask me, he looks a rotten twister--bit of a crook or something.” But in his heart he knew that the chap was taller and stronger and better-looking and better-dressed and altogether more important than he was, and he could have killed him for it.

“He doesn’t at all,” said Lena. Then she laughed and made a face at him. “You’re jealous, that’s all. And you oughtn’t to be jealous, it isn’t nice. I’ll smile at him again now. I think he’s lovely.”

When she said that and looked so determinedly in that fellow’s direction, Turgis was filled with a desire to take hold of her there and then, dig his nails into her soft flesh, and hurt her until she screamed. He was suddenly shaken with the force of this desire, which was like nothing he had known before. But at that moment this little game of glancing and smiling came to an end, and the person who put a stop to it was the girl with the other man. She turned round too--and good luck to her, thought Turgis--then frowned and said something to her companion, and after that there was no more turning round and Lena divided her attention between the stage and Turgis, who was left in a queer state of mind and body.

“You can come and have some supper again, if you like,” said Lena, when it was all over. “The maid wanted to go out again, so I said she could, and if you’d like to come and help me again, you can.”

“I should think I would like to,” he cried enthusiastically. “And I’m sorry if I was silly--y’know, in there.”

“Jealous boy,” she said, smiling. “That’s what you are, aren’t you? Oh, it’s cold out here, isn’t it. Let’s get a taxi. Oh, never mind about your precious one and six--I’ll pay. I want to get home quick, out of the cold. Come on. Stop that one, there.”

Turgis had only been in a taxi once before in all his life. As he sat close to Lena in the dark leathery interior and saw the familiar crowded streets go reeling past the window, this effortless journeying seemed magical. They were in Maida Vale in no time. It made life seem at once wonderfully rich and simple. When they entered the house, they heard a tremendous babble of talk coming from the lower flat. It sounded as if that fantastic old foreign woman had summoned all her relations and friends and all their friends and relations to discuss her “troble.” In the room above, there appeared to be even more cushions, gramophone records, boxes and bottles than there were the day before. Once more, Lena mixed some cocktails, and Turgis encountered the queer flavour, sweet at first, then slightly bitter, and ending with a sudden glow. Once more, he had a second and bigger one, and found everything enlarged, including himself. Once more, they sat down to supper at the little table in front of the fire, though this time there was more luxurious food and it all seemed to come out of little cardboard containers. They were very friendly over the cocktails and the food, and Lena, dressed in bright green, a colour that seemed to throw her red-gold hair and light brown eyes, her scarlet mouth and white neck, into brilliant relief, was lovelier than ever. It was wonderful.

“Do you know Mrs. Dersingham?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “She came to the office once, and I just saw her, that’s all.”

“She’s not as pretty as I am, is she? Or do you think she is?”

“Pretty as you!” Turgis gave a gasp, and meant it. “Why, there’s no comparison. She’s just ordinary--and you’re lovely. Yes, you are, really.”

“You don’t mean it. You’re just teasing me.”

“I’m not,” he said, solemnly. Teasing her indeed! A fat chance he would ever have of teasing _her_. “I’ve never known any girl as pretty as you--never seen one--in all my life before--and I never shall, never, never.”

She rewarded him with a smile. Then she frowned. “I don’t like Mrs. Dersingham. I met her once. I loathe her. She’s a snob and a rotten cat.”

“Is she?” Turgis didn’t care what Mrs. Dersingham was.

“Yes, she is. I hate her. My father doesn’t like her either. He doesn’t like Mr. Dersingham much either. He thinks he’s a fool.”

“I don’t think he’s a bad chap though,” said Turgis thoughtfully. “I’ve never really had much to do with him. But I don’t believe he’s much good at business. I know the business was in a rotten state just before your father came. Good job for us he did come. I don’t pretend to know much about it, but I do know that. Mr. Golspie’s clever, isn’t he?”

She nodded. “He’s always making a lot of money, but he usually spends it all or loses it in some mad scheme. He hates staying in one place long, and if it wasn’t for that, he could have made a lot more money and been really rich. But he doesn’t care about that. When he wrote to tell me he was coming to London, he said I’d have to come, too, because he was going to stay a long time and make a proper home for us, but now he’s here, he says he doesn’t like London, and he’s going away again soon.”

“Is he?” Turgis stared at her. “What--how do you mean ‘soon’?”

“Oh, quite soon,” she replied carelessly. Then she remembered something. “Look here, I may be wrong, though. And you mustn’t say anything to anybody, will you? Promise you won’t.”

“All right, I won’t. But if he went,” Turgis continued, regarding her earnestly, “would you go too?”

“Oh, that’s it, is it?”

“Yes, it is. You wouldn’t be going, would you?”

“I might--pass me a cigarette, will you?--and then again, I might not. It all depends. But, look here, if my father knew I’d been saying anything, he’d be furious, and though he usually lets me have my own way, when he’s really furious, he’s hellish, I can tell you.”

“I’ll bet he is,” said Turgis, who had never had any doubts about that. “I wouldn’t like to see him in a temper.”

“What a dreary depressing conversation!” she cried, getting up. “Let’s have another drink. Have you ever been tight? I expect you have. I got tight once or twice in Paris, with some Americans. We were drinking champagne and liqueurs all night. I fell on the floor once and rolled under a table and went to sleep for hours and hours. Shove the gramophone on, with something decent on. Then come and have this drink and I’ll see if you can dance yet.”