Part 28

Miss Matfield said she had no intention of doing so, and then hurried into her room, where she came to the conclusion, as she tidied herself for dinner, that it was really Tatters who made the Burpenfield endurable for people like Kersey, for she gave their lives a colouring of danger and drama, poor old things. At dinner, she had to share a table with Isabel Cadnam, the languid Morrison, and a recent arrival who had taken Evelyn Ansdell’s old room, and annoyed Miss Matfield just because she was not Evelyn Ansdell. But, apart from that, this new girl was an irritating creature. Her name was Snaresbrook; she had untidy dark hair, huge staring eyes (heavily made up), and white, flabby, sagging cheeks; and she was soulful, gushing and psychic. So far she had been a great success because she went round talking to people about themselves very sympathetically, offering to tell their fortunes, and going in tremendously for this heart-to-heart business. Miss Matfield, a tougher subject than most, refused to be taken in. When she sat down the other three were already there, and were talking about work.

“I’ll bet you’ll agree, Mattie,” said Miss Cadnam.

“What’s that?” inquired Miss Matfield.

“I was just saying that it’s part of the cussedness of everything that nearly every girl here has the wrong job, I mean, if you like _one_ kind of thing, then it’s ten to one you have to work in a place where it’s all another kind of thing. I’ve just discovered that Snaresbrook here works for a film renting show, and she loathes it----”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Miss Snaresbrook put in softly in her soulful contralto, “because I don’t loathe anybody. I don’t think one ought to----”

“I do,” said Miss Morrison. “I loathe nearly everybody. I think the world’s full of people who are absolutely foul.”

“No, I don’t loathe these film people. But I do feel they’re not my own kind. I don’t feel really sympathetic towards them, and I feel there is work of a better kind waiting for me.” And Miss Snaresbrook turned her huge staring eyes, like the headlights of a car, round the table.

“That’s just what I’m saying,” cried the excitable Caddie. “Now I’d adore to work at a film place; just my style. And here I am, assistant secretary to the League of the Divine Lotus, and I’m sure you’d adore that, wouldn’t you, Snaresbrook? Whereas, if you don’t mind my saying so, I think these Divine Lotus people are all too sloppy to live, and the minute they begin to talk now, they get on my nerves. If I stay there much longer I’ll go potty too and break out into robes and mystic stars and Wisdom from the East. If anybody mentions the East now, I want to scream. A lot of fat film men smoking cigars would be a marvellous change. And to go to trade shows if you want to--marvellous!”

“You two ought to swop jobs,” said Miss Matfield. “Then you’d both be satisfied. What about that, Caddie?”

“That’s just where the cussedness comes in. They’d never have the right ones. It’s the same with nearly everybody here. If you’re heavily West End, you’re landed with a job at a wholesale cheap milliner’s somewhere in the City----”

“Revolting!” murmured Miss Morrison.

“And if you’re a wild Socialist or something, like that Colenberg girl, you find yourself secretary to Lady Thomson-Greggs in Berkeley Square and grumble like anything because the place is stiff with footmen. I told Ivor about that, the other night, and he said I ought to write an article about it for the papers.”

“Why don’t you?” said Miss Snaresbrook. “I’m sure you could write. You have the gift of expression. I don’t think I’ve looked at your hand yet, have I? I’m sure it’s written in your hand.”

Miss Matfield looked across the table in time to catch a disgusted glance from Morrison, whose grey eyes had also the gift of expression and announced quite clearly that Snaresbrook was revolting. “Well, I don’t think much of my job,” said Miss Matfield, “but I don’t know that I particularly want anybody else’s here. The fact is, they’re all pretty rotten, and that’s the real trouble. We don’t any of us get a chance to do anything really important. They’re all silly little mechanical jobs. If we were men, we’d be doing something decent now. What chance has a girl? The rot they talk about women working! The men jolly well see where all the decent jobs go to. And you know it.”

“True, Miss Matfield,” said Miss Snaresbrook, turning on all the sympathetic stops. “I feel it’s particularly unjust in your case. A girl with a strong character like you is entitled to an important, responsible post. We have a long way to go yet. Men are still trying to hold women back, to keep them in inferior places. And their attitude! The things some of those film men have said to me!” She sighed, then switched on the headlights.

“Yes, I’ll bet they’re a tough crowd,” said Caddie cheerfully, “but that ought to make it amusing. Men are easy enough to handle. It’s women who are so awful. There are some frightful old cats among those Lotus creatures. They come swarming and drooping all over you, and all the time they’re poking their long noses into your affairs and making up the most fiendish lies. Give me men. I wish there were some in this club.”

“Miss Cadnam, you don’t really,” said Miss Snaresbrook reproachfully.

“Yes, she does, and so do I,” said Miss Morrison, roused for once from her languid disgust, “and so will you when you’ve been here as long as we have. I’m not so terribly keen on men--most of them are pretty foul, so far as I can see--but a few here would be a pleasant change. The ones we do get as visitors are usually fairly hopeless, but even then I like to see them down here, trying to pretend they don’t mind the foul food. There are too many girls here. Ugh! Too much feminine slush and slop. Too much powder and lipstick and cold cream. Too many stockings and silk jumpers. Too many hot-water bottles and bedroom slippers. Too much messiness and brightness and depressingness and sympathy. Every time I hear some man clumping about here, and see him sit down, all solid and thick, I’m delighted--I don’t care how terrible he is. Too many women about. Revolting!”

“Whoops!” cried Caddie. “Go on, my dear. Don’t stop now.”

“Talk about girls living their own independent lives!” Miss Morrison continued, pink and defiant. “It’s a marvel to me that after living here a year or two and being faced with the prospect of living here for donkey’s years like some of the poor old things----”

“Oh, don’t!” Miss Matfield groaned.

“I say that it’s a marvel to me we don’t just marry anybody, anybody at all, or, failing that, run away with somebody. A place like this simply encourages wild matrimony and risky adventures. And if there isn’t more of it, I’ll tell you why. It’s not just because we’re all such ni-ice, ni-ice girls, so ni-icely brought up, but because there aren’t many chances going about.”

“Oh, aren’t there, Morrison?” said Caddie. “Speak for yourself.”

“I’m not speaking for myself or for anybody in particular----”

“You’re certainly not speaking for _me_, Miss Morrison,” said Miss Snaresbrook, with large, sweet, forgiving smile. “I like the society of men, but I like the society of other girls too. Whoever they are, I find they interest me, and we have something to say to one another, very often some little secret to share, some confession to make. Of course, I admit those little clairvoyant gifts of mine have helped me a great deal, and have brought me friends, dear friends, among girls who probably imagined at first that they and I hadn’t much in common. And I’m sure I intend to enjoy _my-self_ at the Burpenfield.” And, smiling sympathetically at them all, she rose and left the table.

“And I hope it keeps fine for you,” muttered Miss Morrison to her retreating back. “You know, of the many ghastly specimens who have turned up here this year, I think that one the worst.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Miss Cadnam. “She’s not so bad, really----”

“That’s because she’s going to read Caddie’s palm to find her gift of expression,” Miss Matfield explained.

“Of course it is,” said Miss Morrison. “You’re feeble, Caddie. I saw you swallowing the bait, as if you’d just been born. Vile!”

“Have you people realised that it’s nearly Christmas?” said Miss Matfield as they moved upstairs, where they could smoke.

“My dear Mattie,” cried Miss Cadnam, “you don’t mean to say you’ve only just found that out! I’ve bought all my presents and sent half of them off. If I don’t send some of my people very early presents, they never remember to send me anything.”

“Christmas, yes,” said Miss Morrison, with languid distaste. “Isn’t it foul? I haven’t bought a thing yet, haven’t even made out a list. Anyhow, I haven’t any money. I loathe Christmas, even though one does have a holiday. What good is it? Are you going home, Matfield?”

“Yes. I always do.”

“So am I. It’s pretty ghastly. It wasn’t so bad before my brother went out to the Sudan. We used to have rather an amusing time.”

“But you’ve another brother, haven’t you, Morrison? I thought I saw him here once.”

“Yes, Anthony. He’s at Cambridge, researching. By the way,” Miss Morrison continued, “he wants to come along early next week and bring his researching friend Jiggs or Hoggs or something and take me and any lady friend o’ mine out for what passes for a gay evening up in the Cambridge research labs. If either of you is dying to come, you can, but I don’t advise it. I’m trying to get out of it.”

“I thought you were bursting to go round with a few men, Morrison.”

“No, it’s not as bad as all that. I’ve tried this before. Anthony, my brother, is pretty glum and dumb--quite different from Tom, the Sudan one--and his researching friend, Higgs or Joggs, is the limit. He’s frightfully tall and awkward, with very short hair, a very long nose, and spectacles, and when you try to make conversation with him, he thinks you’re asking scientific questions. If he doesn’t know exactly, he just says ‘I don’t know’; but if he does know, he explains all about it, gives you a short lecture, and then completely shuts up. It’s like being back at school, only worse. He’s a horror. Anthony, of course, adores him, and thinks he’s conferring an immense favour on you by bringing this monster. He said to me, ‘One day you’ll be proud to think you’ve talked to Jiggs’--or Hoggs. And so I told him I wasn’t ambitious and I’d risk having missed the great Higgs. No, on second thoughts, you can’t come. I’m definitely going to put him off. Talking about Joggs has brought it all back too clearly.”

“Hello!” cried Miss Cadnam, looking at her watch. “I must fly.”

“Ivor?”

“Ivor--thank God! We’re supposed to be in the middle of another row, but I know he’ll be there.”

“What a ridiculous pair!” said Miss Matfield, smiling, as she watched Caddie leave the lounge.

“Who? Caddie and her Ivor? Oh, quite mad, of course, from what I’ve heard about them. Still,” said Miss Morrison carefully, “it does pass the time for her, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, it does a lot more than that. Caddie lives a wonderfully dramatic life. She probably would, anyhow, if there wasn’t Ivor to quarrel with and then make it up with. She and Evelyn Ansdell were the only two people here I’ve ever envied, because they both contrived to have an exciting life all the time, even if they _were_ absurd. I think I shall have to find a nice little Ivor.” And Miss Matfield gave a short laugh.

“You don’t lead a double life or anything of that kind, do you, Matfield?” Miss Morrison inquired, almost wistfully.

“Heavens, no! What do you mean?”

“Let’s have another cigarette, shall we? Make a night of it. I only meant--well, it’s a compliment, really----”

“It doesn’t sound like one.”

“Well, I meant that you looked as if you had a more interesting sort of life going on _somewhere_. You go down to your office in the City--it is in the City, isn’t it?--yes, I remember your telling me it was--and you come back here and don’t seem to do anything much, but at the same time you look quite alive, as if something’s happening somewhere.”

“It isn’t.” Miss Matfield laughed, then lit her cigarette. “I wish it was. All perfectly dull, respectable, ordinary. A typical Burpenfield existence.”

“Oh, foul! Well, I’m disappointed in you, I really am, Matfield. I’ve been suspecting some time that you were a dark horse. Tell me, what sort of men are there in that office of yours. Did I ever tell you I was in the City once? I nearly died. I don’t believe it was a typical City place at all, though I was only there a week. There were four men there, two young ones with adenoids and whiny voices, who always called me ‘Miss,’ and two older ones with red faces and waxed moustaches who either shouted at me at the top of their voices or came over slimy and breathed down my neck and put their hot hands on my shoulder. Revolting! Don’t tell me they’re all like that. What are your lot like?”

They were in a quiet corner of the lounge, which was not so full as usual, indeed almost empty, and Miss Matfield found herself drifting into a fairly detailed description of the people in Angel Pavement, concluding at some length with the newest arrival there, Mr. Golspie. She ended with an account of her visit to the _Lemmala_, the foreign sailors, the cabin, the vodka, all the strange romantic accessories. She described it well, and Miss Morrison, who appeared to have dropped her usual attitude of languid disdain towards this life, listened eagerly.

“But, my dear Matfield,” she cried when it was done, “I think that was a most amusing adventure. I like the sound of that man, even if he is middle-aged and what not. Now, if I met people like that when I went to work, I wouldn’t grumble. No such luck, not in Anglo-Catholic and ladies’ bridge circles in Bayswater--nothing but old tabbies. I think I shall have to try the City again, after all. I didn’t know there were such entertaining, mysterious, brigandish sort of men down there.”

“That’s exactly what Mr. Golspie is--brigandish.”

“Quite right, too. I’m all for it. You ought to lure him in here, so that I can meet him. But tell him to shave off that large moustache first.”

“Why should I? It doesn’t matter to me. I’m not going to kiss him,” Miss Matfield added quickly, without thinking what she was saying.

“No, I suppose you’re not,” said Miss Morrison meditatively. “By the way, has he suggested you should?”

“No, of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. I believe you’re suffering from a complex, Morrison. Why should he?”

“Oh, I don’t know. He sounds vaguely like it to me. I don’t mean he sounded like those awful creatures with waxed moustaches that I worked for--not a bit. Quite a different type. But still---- However, I’ll say no more. Did you say he was away, this mystery man? When is he coming back? Quite soon? All right, Matfield, you must tell me more about this, you really must. I’m interested for once in my young but embittered life. You must tell me more.”

“There won’t be anything to tell,” said Miss Matfield casually. “I think I’ll write home, think about Christmas presents, have a bath, and go to bed early. Good-night, Morrison.” No, of course, there wouldn’t be anything to tell. And if there was, it was no business of Morrison’s. (But Morrison was not a bad sort, much better than she used to appear to be.) But then, there wouldn’t be. Absurd.

II

“Just read that over, please, Miss Matfield,” said Mr. Dersingham, and then listened self-consciously. “Does that sound all right to you?” he inquired, when she had done. “I want to send them--y’know--a jolly stiff letter. They’ve asked for it, by George!”

“I think it sounds rather feeble,” replied Miss Matfield. She had no respect for Mr. Dersingham; he was too vague, pink, and flabby; he was like too many men she had met at home, the sort who cry “Shooting!” when somebody makes a good stroke at tennis; he did not really exist, in her eyes, as an individual at all; there were hundreds, thousands of him. She knew that though he might be her employer he was really frightened of her. Impossible for her to have any respect for him. Quite a decent fellow, of course, but then the place is stiff with dull, decent fellows; a few fascinating crooks would be a change.

“Oh, I don’t know about that, Miss Matfield,” he said. “Seems to me to touch ’em up a bit. What’s wrong with it exactly?”

“I should change it--there”--she pointed--“and there, don’t you think so?” What was it like being Mrs. Dersingham, she wondered, and came to the conclusion that it must be rather fussing half the day, boring the other half, but on the whole pleasanter than being Lilian Matfield at the Burpenfield. But that was leaving out Dersingham himself. She couldn’t marry him. Help! She stared at his nose, which was quite a healthy, sound nose, slightly bulbous, a shiny pink deepening to a fishy red at the blunted tip; there was really nothing wrong with it; nevertheless, it annoyed her; it was a silly nose. What was Mrs. Dersingham’s real opinion now, of that nose? Did she think it was marvellous? Was she indifferent to it? Had she been irritated by it so long that she was ready to scream at the very thought of that nose?

Happily unconscious of what was buzzing about in the dark head so close to his, Mr. Dersingham frowned down upon the letter he was answering, an evasive, slinking, slimy letter from the mysterious fellow who ran the Alexander Imperial Furnishing Company. “He’s a dirty dog, y’know, Miss Matfield,” he mused. “This is the fourth letter he’s sent explaining why he can’t pay, and every time it’s a different excuse. By the way, remind me to send Sandycroft a note, telling him not to call there any more. All right, I’ll write something shorter and stronger. ‘Unless our account is settled within the next fourteen days, we shall be obliged to take--what is it?--proceedings.’ Something like that, eh? Right you are, then. Cancel that one. We’ll start again.”

That did not take long. The note to Sandycroft could be left to Miss Matfield. She was given several letters that Mr. Smeeth could attend to, and then there was nothing left. “I’m expecting Mr. Golspie back this morning,” said Mr. Dersingham. “He’ll probably have some letters for you. He rang me up last night, at home, to say he’d just arrived and would be down this morning. Just take this lot, will you? Half a minute, though, I must have another look at that North-Western and Trades Furnishing letter. Hang on a minute.”

Miss Matfield, hanging on, found she was quite excited by the prospect of seeing Mr. Golspie again so soon, though they had been expecting him to return any time these last few days. It was not quite three weeks since she had stood by his side on the deck of that steamer in the Thames, but, nevertheless, Mr. Golspie, strictly as a person, a face, a body, a voice, had become curiously dim and unreal, though as a figure in outline and as a mass of character he had been constantly in her thoughts, where he had appeared, especially during the last few days, hardly as a real person she knew, but rather as a particularly vivid and memorable character in a play she had seen or a novel she had recently read. It was queer and exciting to think that he would actually walk into the office at any moment.

“I think I’d better have a talk to Mr. Smeeth about that letter,” said Mr. Dersingham, putting it on one side. “You might tell him, Miss Matfield----” But now two doors were flung open and banged to in rapid succession. Mr. Golspie had arrived.

“Hello, Dersingham,” he boomed, clapping and rubbing his hands. “Hello, Miss Matfield. Brrrrr--but it’s devilish cold here. I can feel it creeping up and down my bones. Funny thing, but it’s colder here than it ever is in places that pretend to be really cold, twenty below and all the rest of it. Damp, I suppose. Ten years of this would do me in. Well, how’s everything? Making money?”

“All right, Miss Matfield,” said Mr. Dersingham.

Miss Matfield could not decide whether she had exaggerated the size of Mr. Golspie’s moustache or whether he had had it trimmed. The fact remained that it seemed considerably smaller. Another fact remained, and that was that she felt disappointed. She walked out of the room feeling absurdly disappointed. It was quite unreasonable, but there it was.

This feeling persisted throughout the day. Mr. Golspie came into the general office and shouted genial greetings at everybody. Afterwards, when Mr. Dersingham had gone, he dictated a few letters to her, but he said little or nothing, and neither that day nor any of the days before Christmas did he once refer to her visit to the _Lemmala_. There was no particular reason why he should, but still it was disappointing, and he was disappointing, and everything was disappointing.

Those last few days before Christmas were so awful that she found herself looking forward more and more eagerly to the holiday at home, to that train which would take her away, on Christmas Eve, from the vast glittering muddle of London. Mr. Golspie, who was apparently going to spend Christmas in Paris with his daughter, and Mr. Dersingham, whose spirits rose at the approach of all holidays, were in a good temper, but everybody else in the office seemed unusually gloomy. Mr. Smeeth was not exactly gloomy, but he was worried and fussy, as if something was troubling his grey and shrinking little mind. Turgis, who was not very cheerful at any time, was simply terrible; he went slouching about the place, sat at his desk staring out of the window at the black roofs, made a mess of his work, and almost snarled his replies to any civil question. Several times she had to speak to him quite sharply, the lout. The little Sellers girl, perhaps because Turgis was either so aloof or so rude, was not her usual perky self, and even Stanley, though ready to give Christmas or any other holiday the warmest welcome, had suffered so much lately from the moods of Mr. Smeeth and Turgis, who accused him unjustly of dawdling over every errand, that he was now turning into quite a sulky boy. And although Miss Matfield, who considered herself merely a visitor to Angel Pavement, _in_ it but not _of_ it, had always preserved her independence, she had to sit in the same room all day with these others, to work with them, and could not help being influenced by the prevailing outlook and their various attitudes. It was depressing.