Part 30

“You could go anywhere looking like that, believe me,” he assured her. “But I suppose you mean you’re not all dressed up. That doesn’t matter. We’re not going where they’re slinging the confetti at one another, we’re going where the food is. You go and get ready while I stamp these letters.”

It was a clear cold night. Angel Pavement looked strangely dark and deserted, a little black gulf with a faint spangle of stars above it.

“Do you know why I came to your place?” said Mr. Golspie, as they walked along. “I looked up the names of the firms in this line of business, and Twigg and Dersingham took my fancy not because of _their_ name, but because of the address. Angel Pavement did it. I was so tickled by that name, I said to myself, ‘I must have a look at that lot, first of all.’ And if I hadn’t said that, I shouldn’t have been here, and you wouldn’t have been trotting along here with me, would you?”

“Didn’t you know anything about this business before?” she asked.

“Not a thing. But I’ve picked up a good many different sorts of business in my time, and I haven’t finished yet, not by a long chalk. But I don’t call this veneer trade a proper business. It’s a side-line. There’s no size to it. You might as well be selling sets o’ chessmen or rocking-horses. No size to it, no chance of real growth, you see? It’s all right for Dersingham--it’s about his mark--but then he’s not really in business. He’s only got one leg in it instead of being up to the neck in it. He thinks he’s a gentleman amusing himself. Too many of his sort in the City here. That’s how the Jews get on, and the Americans. None of that nonsense about _them_.”

The main road, into which they had turned now, still showed a few lighted windows, behind which the last orders of the year were being booked and the last entries made in the ledgers, and there were still a few belated clerks and typists hurrying away on each side; but compared with its usual appearance, the hooting muddle of the day and early evening, its appearance now was that of a lighted stone wilderness. A tram came grinding down, looking as if it expected nothing. A bus slipped through, curiously swift and noiseless. They walked down to the end of the road, past the narrow openings of little streets and alleys already sunk into midnight and the mouths of wider streets that were illuminated emptiness. At the bottom they turned to the right. A taxi came jogging along at that moment, and Mr. Golspie at once claimed it, shouted “Bundle’s” to the driver, and then sat very close to Miss Matfield.

“Thought we’d go to Bundle’s,” he said, “if it’s all the same to you. D’you know it?”

“I’ve heard of it, of course,” she told him, “but I’ve never been there. It’s more a restaurant for men, isn’t it?”

“More men than women there certainly, but women do go. And if they’d more sense, they’d go oftener. Bundle’s is the place if you’re really hungry and you want a good solid feed. It’s English, too, and I like it for that--good old-fashioned tack. I don’t suppose there’ll be a lot of people there now--lunch is the crowded time at Bundle’s--and there’s no need to dress up to go there.”

“Thank Heaven for that!” cried Miss Matfield.

“Mind you, Bundle’s isn’t a cheap place, by any means,” Mr. Golspie continued, apparently anxious to suggest that he was not skimping his hospitality. “Don’t get that idea into your head. It’s plain, but it works out as expensive as most places, even though the other places are giving you ten courses and a band and rattles and confetti and God knows what else. There’s nothing like that at Bundle’s, but there’s real food and some good drink.”

“Well, Mr. Golspie, I’ll be quite candid, and confess that I could do with both at this very moment. Even,” she added mischievously, “if they will cost you a lot of money.”

“I didn’t say that, Miss Matfield,” he said, pinching her arm. “All I said was that Bundle’s isn’t cheap. As for costing me a lot of money, I don’t honestly think you could do if you tried, not at Bundle’s. You’d be sick before you could eat that amount, and drunk long before you could drink it. I took a feller there, just before Christmas, and he _did_ cost me money. He found they had some Waterloo brandy there, and fancied a few goes of that after lunch.”

“Well, suppose I do, too,” said Miss Matfield, as St. Paul’s went jogging past the window on her side of the cab. “What about that?”

“I’ll promise you one, though, if you ask me, it’s a waste of beautiful stuff, because I’m sure you can’t appreciate it. But you won’t get any more out of me. If you did, you’d turn round afterwards and tell me I made you drunk. No, no.”

“Don’t be absurd. I was only joking. I don’t like brandy, as a matter of fact; the taste of it always reminds me of being ill. I loathe whisky, too. I like wine, though, you’ll perhaps be glad to know. You will also be glad to know that I can drink quite a lot of it--if it’s good--without feeling tight.”

“All right. Now I know. The sooner he gets there now, the better it will be. I’m getting hungrier and hungrier.”

“So am I. If I’d gone back to the Club, I’d never have been able to find enough to satisfy my appetite to-night. The food’s not really too bad there, but it isn’t quite real--if you know what I mean. It’s like the food you get in cheap hotels.”

“I know,” said Mr. Golspie grimly. “You can’t tell me anything about cheap hotels and bad grub. And when you say it’s not real, you mean it all tastes alike and never quite leaves you satisfied. Nothing like that about Mr. Bundle. And here he is.”

Mr. Bundle, whoever he was, had remembered one simple fact when he first established his tradition of catering, and that was that Man is one of the larger _carnivora_. You went to Bundle’s to eat meat. The kitchen turned out acceptable soups, vegetables, puddings, tarts, savouries, and the like, but all these were as nothing compared with the meat. The place was a vegetarian’s nightmare. It seemed to be perpetually celebrating the victory of some medieval baron. Whole beeves and droves must have been slaughtered daily in its name. If you asked for roast beef at Bundle’s, they took you at your word, and promptly wheeled up to you the red dripping half of a roasted ox, and after the waiter had implored you to examine it and had asked you a few solemn questions about fat and lean, under-done and over-done, he cut you off a pound or two here, a pound or two there. A request for mutton was not treated perhaps with the same high seriousness, but even that meant that legs and shoulders came trundling up from all directions, and you found yourself facing a few assorted pounds of it on your plate. The waiters themselves had a roasted jointy look, though most of them were lean and under-done, whereas most of the guests were obviously fat and over-done and suffering from gigantic blood pressures that took another leap upward every time they went out of these doors. It was the meatiest place Miss Matfield had ever seen, and she had a suspicion that if she had not been feeling really hungry, it might have made her feel rather sick. As it was, she welcomed the look of it and smell of it, and enjoyed, too, its very definite masculine atmosphere.

Mutton was wheeled at Miss Matfield and beef was wheeled at Mr. Golspie, and, while acolytes brought vegetables, the high priests gravely pointed to fat and lean and under-done and over-done, and then sliced away with their exquisite long narrow knives. Mr. Golspie, after consulting briefly with her, ordered a good rich burgundy. Then, after Mr. Golspie, a true Bundle’s man, had polished off his gigantic helping of beef, and Miss Matfield had eaten about a third of her mutton, he had a savoury and she had some apple tart and cream.

“We’ll finish the wine before we have coffee,” said Mr. Golspie, pointing the bottle at her glass, which she had emptied. “It’s a good burgundy this.”

“Only about half a glass, please. It’s lovely rich sunshiny stuff, but I daren’t drink much more. I feel as if I’d had about fifteen of my Club dinners rolled into one. I don’t believe I shall ever be hungry again.”

“You look well on it,” said Mr. Golspie, who perhaps looked a shade too well on it himself. “You’ve a fine colour, Miss Matfield, and your eyes are sparkling, and altogether you look full of fight and fun, too good for Angel Pavement, I can tell you.”

“Oh, but I am,” she cried humorously. She suddenly felt that life was rich and gay.

“Of course you are. I said that to myself the first time I set eyes on you. There’s a girl with some spirit and sense, I thought--she’s alive, not like these other poor devils. ‘She don’t belong,’ I said to myself. That’s why I kept my eye on you. Did you notice me keeping my eye on you?”

“Mmmm, ye-es,” looking at him and hoping that her eyes were still sparkling. “Sometimes I thought you seemed quite human.”

“Human!” he roared, so that a waiter jumped forward. “I’m human enough, I can tell you. I’m a dam’ sight too human.”

“If you’re in the City, you can’t be _too_ human, Mr. Golspie. Not for me. I’ve spent months there sometimes and never spoken to anyone who seemed to me really human. Awful creatures. Then people like Mr. Smeeth, all grey and withered and not bad really, but just--pathetic.”

“No, Smeeth’s not a bad feller. But he’s not pathetic. He doesn’t make me weep, anyhow. All he wants is to be safe, that’s what’s the matter with him. Anything to be safe--that’s his line. Pay him a pound or two a week, give him some little cash-books to play with, tell him he’s safe, and he’s as happy as a king. But he’s better than that dreary youngster you have in there--what’s his name?--Turgis.”

“Oh, he’s hopeless, I agree.”

“Not your style, eh?”

“What, Turgis! Help!”

“He’s a typical specimen of what they’re breeding here now--no sense, no guts, no anything. I can’t even remember the look of the lad, although I see him nearly every day. That shows you what impression _he_ makes. He might be a shadow flickering about the place.”

“I know. And yet that funny little Cockney girl, Poppy Sellers, thinks he’s marvellous. I’ve watched her worshipping him at a distance. Isn’t it strange--I mean, the way everybody amounts to something different to everybody else?”

“Well, a lad like that’ull never mean anything to me, never amount to anything to anybody, I should think, no more than a bit of straw or paper blowing about the streets,” said Mr. Golspie.

The waiter who had jumped forward was still waiting expectantly a few yards away. Mr. Golspie called him. “You’ll have some coffee, won’t you? And I’m going to have some brandy, not the Waterloo, though. Will you have a liqueur? Have one of the sweet ones. What about a Benedictine or a Kümmel? What do you say? Here, look at the list.”

She examined it. What fascinating names they had, these liqueurs! “I don’t know. Shall I? All right then, I’ll have a Green Chartreuse.”

Mr. Golspie lit a cigar and then, over the coffee and liqueurs, answered some questions she asked about his recent trip abroad, and went rambling on about his experiences in those Baltic countries and in other places still more mysterious and romantic to her. As she listened, feeling very gay and confident inside, his blunt staccato talk seemed to open a series of little windows upon a magical world she had always known to be somewhere about, although she had never walked in it herself, and his own figure took colour from the blue and golden lights flashing through these little windows. He talked in the way she had always felt a man should talk. He was so tremendously and refreshingly un-Burpenfieldish. And he was interested in her; he was not merely filling in an idle hour; she attracted him, had attracted him, she felt now, for some time; and--oh!--it was all amusing and exciting.

“It’s quarter to ten,” Mr. Golspie suddenly announced. “What about that dance of yours?”

“O Lord!--I don’t know. It’s hardly worth it now. What a nuisance!”

“Like dancing, eh?”

“Adore it.”

“All right. You listen to me. I remember now I had an invitation from one or two of those Anglo-Baltic chaps; they weren’t giving the show, but a friend of theirs was, and a lot of people I know were going to be there. Dancing, too. We’ll go there, and then you won’t be able to say I’ve done you out of your Old Year’s Night celebration. What d’you say? Good! I’ve got the telephone number down in my notebook, and now I’ll just ring up to make sure. Shan’t be a minute.”

He returned, smiling, with the news that the party had just begun. “Yes, I know what you’re trying to say now,” he continued. “What about clothes, eh? Well, any clothes are right for this affair. They’re not a dressy lot. If you went without clothes, they wouldn’t care. We’ll have to stop on the way to buy something--a bottle or two and something to eat--to take with us. It’s not necessary, but it’ll be appreciated. These people will be a change for you--not the sort you meet in a girls’ club at all--and it’ll amuse you, if you’re the girl I take you to be.”

There wasn’t even time to ask him then what exactly was the girl he took her to be.

V

They went in a taxi and the place was somewhere Notting Hill way, but that was as near as she ever came to-knowing where it was. She could have asked, of course, but she preferred to be without exact information; it was more amusing. The road in which they finally stopped looked one of those dingy, shabby-genteel streets, but she could not be sure even about that. They walked up a garden path, but instead of going up the steps to the house itself, they turned to the right, by the side of the house, until they came to a lighted door and a great deal of noise. Apparently the party was being held in one of those large detached studios.

She found herself shaking hands with a very small woman with frizzy black hair, tiny black eyes that seemed to jump and snap, a long humorous nose, and an outrageous purple dress. After that she shook hands with a very tall fair man who looked like a retired Siegfried. These were obviously the host and hostess, and they were both foreigners, but she never caught their names. Clearly it was the sort of party at which names were of little importance. The studio was filled with people; most of whom had a foreign look. None of the men wore evening dress, and among the women, she was glad to see, there was an astonishing variety of clothes, so that she was not at all conspicuous. Mr. Golspie recognised a good many acquaintances, and she was introduced to some of them, mostly youngish men of a nondescript foreign appearance who drew themselves up sharply, looked grave for a moment, then suddenly smiled and widened their eyes, as if to say: “I am being introduced to a lady, by my friend Mr. Golspie. This is serious, important. Ah, but how charming, how beautiful a lady!” It was a pleasure being introduced to men with such a manner. One of them, the youngest, a nice, smiling boy with bright hazel eyes, called Something-insky, insisted upon her smoking a long cigarette, and brought her a mysterious, greeny-yellow drink. Mr. Golspie, who had found a whisky and soda, grinned at her, and exchanged knowing remarks in a mixed language with various men, who patted him on the shoulder and slapped him on the back and were patted and slapped in return.

The little hostess, her eyes snapping furiously, came rushing through and screamed in an unknown tongue at two young men in a corner, a small crooked Jew, almost a hunchback, and a thin red-haired young man, very serious behind enormous spectacles. When she finished screaming at them and had held out both her arms in an imploring gesture, these two bowed gravely, and then the Jew sat down at the grand piano and the red-haired spectacled one seated himself behind some drums. They began playing--and very well they played, too--and in a moment the centre of the room was cleared for dancing.

“You veel danz, eh? Pleass?” said Something-insky.

He was a good dancer, and though he was not quite tall enough for her, they got on very well together. As he piloted her in and out, for nearly everybody was dancing and the floor was crowded, he talked the whole time. “I study here ee-conom-eegs,” he told her, “at Lon-don School of Ee-conom-eegs,” and he was very serious about his economics, but it was difficult to understand much of what he said about them. Very soon he passed to more intimate matters. “Yes, I like Eng-lish girls vairy moch. Oh, but I am vairy saad, vairy, vairy saad now,” he told her, his hazel eyes dancing with pleasure. “I leef in High-gate and in High-gate I have a girl, an Eng-lish girl, vairy beautiful--Flora. She leefs, too, in High-gate, Flora, and she has blue eyess and golden hair. For two veeks, you see, we have a quarrel. Oh yes, it is vairy seely, but it is vairy saad, too. One night I go to movees. I ask Flora to go too, but no--she cannot go. So I go-by-myself. I am standing outside and I see a girl I know, a girl from High-gate. Vairy nice girl--but--aw, she is noding to me. But I am pol-ite, I say to her, ‘Good-evening, mees. You go to movees too?’ I am by-myself. I take her weet me into movees. Noding, noding at all. But after, she tell Flora--at High-gate--‘Oh, I go weet your foreign friend to movees.’ Flora comes to me and we have a beeg quarrel.” He squeezed Miss Matfield’s hand as if he felt that at this point he must have sympathy or die. “Yes, a beeg quarrel. For two veeks, I do not see Flora at all. I am vairy saad now.”

Miss Matfield said it was rather sad, but told herself that in its mixture of Highgate and foreign-ness it was really quite absurd and wonderlandish, and somehow it gave the key to the whole evening. Nobody in this studio, except herself and Mr. Golspie (and she was not sure about him), was quite real. Something-insky and his friends were very charming, but it was rather a relief when Mr. Golspie marched up, very solid and dominating, and said, “Well, what about a dance with me?”

“Of course,” she told him. “I thought perhaps you didn’t dance. You’ve not been dancing, have you?”

“No. I thought I’d wait for you, Miss Matfield. You’re the partner I want. I can dance all right, but, mind you, I don’t pretend to be good at it, not like some of these lads. Have another drink before we start, eh?”

“If I have another drink to-night, I shall probably be quite drunk. I feel hazy now.”

“No harm in feeling hazier. I’ll look after you, don’t you worry.”

But she shook her head. The music started again, the little Jew wagging his black locks over the piano and his companion solemnly nodding above his drums, and Mr. Golspie grasped her masterfully. He was obviously not a very good dancer, but even if he had been, there would not have been much chance for him to show what he could do in that crowded space, for now there seemed to be twice as many people on the floor.

“How d’you like this show?” he asked, grinning at her.

“I do like it. It’s amusing.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“You sound as if you don’t care for it very much.”

“It’s not bad,” he told her. “But too much of a crowd for my liking. Just the pair of us somewhere would please me better.”

Afterwards there was an interval, during which everybody ate and drank and smoked and talked all at once, and a girl who appeared to be a secretary at some legation came up with Something-insky and another, older man, and the girl who was a secretary was very giddy and gay and apparently rather tight, though not unpleasantly so, and then a little foreign girl with a hideous fur-trimmed jacket joined them, and the six of them made a little group in one corner, where they ate and drank and smoked and talked as hard as anybody. Then the little hostess screamed again, and this time the tall host produced a number of astonishing syllables in a rasping tenor and then put on a colossal smile, and at once everybody sat down somewhere and most of the lights were turned out. Only the corner where the Jew still sat at the piano was fully illuminated. Then there appeared in front of the piano a smallish plump man with an enormous bald head and a yellow fat face, who stood there, smiling vaguely at them while they applauded, like another but alien Humpty-Dumpty. The Jew played a few sonorous and melancholy chords. Humpty-Dumpty put his hand to his mouth, as if to press a button, for when he lowered his hand, his face was quite different; the smile had been wiped off; his eyebrows had descended at least an inch and a half; and his eyes stared tragically out of deep hollows. Miss Matfield noticed all these details. It was queer, but though things in general were curiously hazy, she had only to concentrate her attention upon anything and every detail of it, like Humpty-Dumpty’s lips and eyebrows, stood out in clear relief. This made everything seem tremendously amusing, and she was very happy. Humpty-Dumpty began singing now in a great rich bass voice, which immediately plunged Miss Matfield, who delighted in rich bass voices, into a dreamy ecstasy. He sang one song after another, sometimes sinking into the profoundest melancholy and the bitterness of death, and at other times breaking into high spirits that were as strange and wild as a revolution. With her eyes fixed on that great yellow moon of a face from which these entrancing sounds came, Miss Matfield allowed her mind to be carried floating away on these changing currents of music, and her body to rest against the stalwart arm and shoulder of Mr. Golspie. She was sorry when it came to an end, and Humpty-Dumpty, after bowing, smiling, frowning, shaking his head in an amazingly rapid succession, walked away to eat a whole plateful of sandwiches, wash them down with lager beer, and talk to five people at once with his mouth full.

There was just time for another dance and then it was twelve o’clock. Everybody was silent for a moment. At the end of that moment, they all behaved like men and women who had been reprieved in the very shadow of the gallows, which is perhaps how they saw themselves. Never before had Miss Matfield seen such a raising and clinking of glasses, so much back-slapping, hand-shaking, embracing, and kissing. Something-insky kissed the little girl in the fur-trimmed jacket and the secretary girl from the legation, and then kissed Miss Matfield’s hand fifteen times while the girl in the fur-trimmed coat, who had suddenly burst into tears, kissed her on the cheek. Mr. Golspie shook her by the hand, then gave her a big hug. It was at this moment that the only unpleasant event of the evening occurred. Once or twice before, Miss Matfield had had to escape from a tall bleary-eyed man, one of the very few Englishmen there, who was rather drunk and had been bent on dancing with her. Now he suddenly lurched into the middle of their little group, murmuring something about a happy New Year, and tried to embrace her. Mr. Golspie, however, stepped forward smartly and with one shove of his heavy shoulder sent the man reeling back.

“I think I’d better go now,” she said to Mr. Golspie. “I’m terribly late as it is.”

“All right. I’ll come with you.” Taking no notice of the unpleasant fellow, who was mumbling threats just behind them, he took her by the arm, marched her through the crowd to shake hands with the host and hostess, and then led her towards the door. There they separated to look for their things. When Miss Matfield returned to the little entrance hall of the studio, the unpleasant man was there. Fortunately, Mr. Golspie appeared, too.

“Now wha’s the idea, eh?” said the unpleasant one, thickly and truculently to Mr. Golspie, trying to put a hand on his shoulder.

“The idea is--you go home to bed,” replied Mr. Golspie, giving him one contemptuous glance.