Part 37

At the corner of the Strand and Wellington Street the bus turned and then stopped, and there he left it and began walking eastward. He had no destination, no plan; his mind issued no commands to his body to move, this way or that; his legs simply went on; while his mind was half in a dream and, for the rest, a vague jangle of conflicting voices. It was quieter now, less crowded, for he was going along Fleet Street, where later, perhaps, the machines would pound him into brisk news just as the other machines had pulped the tall trees into paper for such news. They were waiting, just round the corner, down the dark alleys, these machines, ready to pounce on some unhappy morsel of humanity. But as yet he was still only Turgis, Mrs. Pelumpton’s, Twigg & Dersingham’s, and now he drifted on, up Ludgate Hill, turning his face towards the old grey ghost of St. Paul’s, then curving in its shadow round Church Yard, up Old Change, down Cheapside, along Milk Street and Aldermanbury. It was better here in the City; not so much glare and noise, not so many people; it was huge, dark, and wettish, like a big cellar, a cave. It made his head feel better; and at last he could think a bit, though it was like trying to think in a nightmare. His legs were taking him somewhere now. There was no sense in it, but then there was no sense in anything. Oh, what had he done, what had he done? A street lamp, set queerly at the side of a great blank wall, threw its uncertain light on to a short curving flight of stone steps. While he questioned himself, his feet sought these steps and trod them with an ease that suggested familiarity. His hand touched the stout little iron post at the top, as it had done many and many a time before, for the blank wall belonged to _Chase & Cohen: Carnival Novelties_, and these were the steps that prevented Angel Pavement from being a _cul de sac_.

Two little yellow lights flickered at him, like a dubious pair of eyes, from somewhere down the little street. He walked towards them, quite slowly now, as if at last his mind was attempting to control his legs. The lights were those of a car. They were the feeble headlights of a taxi. And above this taxi, there was one lighted window, on the first floor, and on the first floor of No. 8. Somebody was in the office, Twigg & Dersingham’s, at this time, ten o’clock. He had to tell himself so very slowly and clearly, and he did it while he was standing in front of the waiting taxi.

He put his head round the corner, to look in the driver’s seat. “I say,” he began, with difficulty as if his voice was rusty, “I say----”

“Hel-lo, hel-lo!” the driver suddenly shouted, so that Turgis jumped back. “What the hel-lo! You give me a start, mate. I must ha’ dropped off.”

“I say,” said Turgis, returning to look at him earnestly, “did you bring somebody here? In there, I mean.”

“I did,” replied the driver. “And I’m waiting for the party to come out.”

“Who was it? I mean, what was he like?”

The driver pushed forward a wrinkled red face. “Now I should say--that’s my business. Who d’you think you are, young feller? Scotland Yard or what?”

“No, but you see, I happened to be passing, you see,” he hesitated a moment, “and, well, I work up there--where the light is--in that office, and I wondered who it was.”

“Your place--like?”

“Yes.” Turgis gulped. He felt sick; he was trembling; he couldn’t talk like this long. “My place, where I work.”

“I see. Well, matter of fact, there’s two of ’em in there, and I brought ’em here from a restaurant in Greek Street. There’s a young lady and a stiffish gent--big moustache. That’s who’s in there, mate. Now are you satisfied?”

“Yes--thanks.”

“’Ere,” said the driver, after a pause, pushing his face over the edge of his door and staring at Turgis, “’ere, half a minute, boy, what’s the matter? You’re not crying, are you? Got the jim-jams, boy, or what?”

But Turgis had disappeared into the dark doorway.

V

The office door was slightly open, so that a thin pencil of light pointed across the landing. Turgis waited a minute, staring at it from the shadow. He passed a hand roughly over his wet face. Then, summoning all the courage left him in the world, he blundered in, almost flinging himself into the private office beyond.

“Now who the hell are you?” roared Mr. Golspie, jumping up from his chair at the table. Somebody gave a scream. It was Miss Matfield, in the corner.

“Lena,” said Turgis, choking over the name.

“Well, I’ll be damned! If it isn’t What’s-his-name--Turgis.” Mr. Golspie glared at him, and advanced ferociously. “And what the devil do you want charging in here like this, eh? What’s the game, eh?”

“Lena. Lena.”

“Do you mean my daughter, Lena? What are you talking about? What about her? What the blazes has she got to do with you?”

“I think--I’ve killed her.”

“_Killed_ her?”

“Yes.” And Turgis stumbled to a chair and began sobbing.

“My God! he’s mad, he’s clean mad,” cried Mr. Golspie to Miss Matfield, who had risen from her chair and was looking from Turgis to Mr. Golspie in startled bewilderment. “Here, you, stop that blubbering, and try to talk sense. What do you know about my daughter, Lena? You’ve never even set eyes on her.”

“I have,” cried Turgis, almost indignantly. “I was with her to-night, in your flat. I’ve been there before. I took some money there first----” He hesitated.

“That’s right, he did take some money there,” said Miss Matfield quickly. “Oh!--I believe it’s true.”

Mr. Golspie pounced on him at once, clapping a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Come on, then. What happened? Get it out, quick.”

Turgis blurted out a few sentences, broken and confused, but they were quite enough.

“My God, if she is, I’ll kill _you_. Come on, get up, you--you bloody little rat, you--we’re going straight into that taxi and we’re going to see, and you’re coming with us.”

“But can’t you telephone?” cried Miss Matfield, wildly.

“Yes, of course--no, I can’t. I knew I’d have thought of it. The rotten telephone’s out of order--been out of order for two days. Come on, let’s get away. You turn the lights out, Lilian; I’m going to look after this fellow. Hurry up, for God’s sake.”

It was a long long journey. For the first five minutes or so, nothing was said, but after that Mr. Golspie, out of sheer impatience, began to ask questions, and piece by wretched piece, he dragged the whole miserable story out of Turgis, who sat facing him, on one of the little seats, trembling, afraid every minute that Mr. Golspie was going to hurl himself across the tiny space at him. His misery was so great, now that his brain was clearer, that he felt that he would not mind being killed, but nevertheless Mr. Golspie’s huge violence, repressed but apparently ready to burst out any moment, terrified him. Miss Matfield hardly spoke a word the whole time, and when she did it was in a very soft shaky voice. But she stared at Turgis, and when the lights flashed in he saw that her face was pale. It never occurred to him to wonder what she was doing there so late with Mr. Golspie.

“It just shows you, doesn’t it?” said Mr. Golspie to Miss Matfield. “If I hadn’t suddenly thought during dinner I ought to slip back there for quarter of an hour, to tot those figures up to show that chap in the morning, we’d never have seen this fellow. What were you doing there anyhow? I don’t know if it’s much good asking you, because you seem to me wrong in your damned head--but what were you doing there?”

“I don’t know,” Turgis muttered. “I just went there. I didn’t know where I was going. I suppose when I got to the City, well, I just went to Angel Pavement--sort of force of habit.”

“Another ten minutes and we shouldn’t have been there, and then I shouldn’t have got back home till twelve. What time is it now? Quarter past ten, eh? What time did you leave my place?”

“I don’t know really. I’m all mixed up----”

“My God!--you are,” said Mr. Golspie bitterly. “And you’re going to be a worse mix up soon, let me tell you.”

“I think--it couldn’t have been much after eight--I don’t know, though--might have been half-past eight.”

“Nearly two hours--och!” Mr. Golspie groaned. “Here, this fellow’s got to drive faster than this, or we’ll be all the damned night getting there.”

It was horrible stumbling back up that garden path again, going through the hall and climbing the stairs once more. It was worse inside the flat. “You go in there and wait, you,” said Mr. Golspie, and gave him a mighty shove that landed him in the middle of the sitting-room, which seemed to him now, of all the places he had ever known, the most horrible, the most closely packed with misery, and the very sight of its cushions and fancy boxes made him feel sick. Nevertheless, he had not been there more than a minute before he knew somehow that Lena was not dead. Then, after a few more minutes, voices came through the open door behind him, and he turned and crept nearer to it.

“No, no, no!” cried a voice, and he recognised it at once as that of the foreign, witch-like old woman who lived downstairs, “she would not ’ave a doctair. I loosen her dress and geef her cognac and do dees teeng and odair teengs, and ven I say, ‘You ’ave a vairy great shock, my dee-air, ve call a doctair,’ she say: ‘No, no, no. No doctair.’ Vell den, eet does not mattair. But I say, ‘You go to bed. Aw, yes, you go to bed, at vonce, my dee-air.’ And she deed not vant to go to bed, but I make her go.”

“Little monkey!” Mr. Golspie rumbled. “Good job you thought something was up, though, and came in. I’m much obliged. Very grateful. Just take Miss Matfield here in to her, will you, and I’ll be back in a minute or two.”

“Is she all right?” cried Turgis, as Mr. Golspie came into the room.

“I don’t know about that,” he replied grimly, “but she’s a damned sight better than she was when you left her lying here, you crazy little skunk. Come here.”

“Oh!--thank God!”

“Come here. You can do your thanking afterwards.” And he grabbed Turgis by the lapel of his coat and yanked him nearer. “Just listen to me. There are one or two things I could do to you. To start with, I could give you such a damned good hiding you’d never want to look at a girl, never mind put your hands on her, for the next six months. See?” And he shook Turgis with a sort of menacing playfulness, like a terrier with a rat. “And while I’m about it, here’s a bit of good advice for you. Keep away from ’em. You’re not a lady-killer, y’know--though, by God, you nearly were to-night--and if you take a good look at yourself, you’ll see why. Drop it. You’re no good at it. And another thing I could do to you, mister half-starved caveman, is to hand you over to the police. I could do that all right, couldn’t I?” he demanded, looking sternly at his wretched prisoner, who, hearing that tone and meeting that look, had every excuse for not realising that this was the last thing Mr. Golspie had any idea of doing.

“Yes, you could, Mr. Golspie,” he replied miserably. He saw himself marched off, locked in a cell.

“Well, I’m not going to, not yet, anyhow. But, listen--if I ever set eyes on you again, I will. If you come within a mile of this place----”

“Oh, I won’t, I won’t.” And Turgis certainly meant it.

“And you don’t go back to that office, understand? You don’t go near it again. Keep right away from it. Keep away from me altogether, see?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Turgis gasped, for now Mr. Golspie had stopped shaking him, but was pulling him backwards through the sitting-room doorway, almost lifting him bodily with that huge powerful grasp on his coat shoulder.

“I don’t ever want to see you again, unless it’s in the dock or the madhouse,” said Mr. Golspie, throwing open the door of the flat with one hand while with the other he gave a violent twist and brought Turgis round in front of him. “The very sight of you turns my stomach, see? You understand? You’re not going back to that office, and you’re not coming within a mile of this flat, and you’re going to keep out of my sight and you’re going to keep your nasty mouth shut, too. You’ve been lucky to-night, my God you have! But if ever I see you again, you won’t be lucky. So get out and bloody well stay out. There!” And Mr. Golspie, spinning him round, released his coat collar, put a hand in the small of his back, and with a short run and a tremendous heave sent him sprawling down the stairs. He pitched forward badly, banged his nose so hard that it bled, and was bruised, but managed to pick himself up at the bottom and go blindly along the hall to the front door.

He waited a minute outside, leaning dizzily against one of the pillars. The cool darkness rocked round him. In the garden, just by the broken statue of the boy and the two fishes, he was violently sick.

VI

Nearly all Nathaniel Street was in darkness when he returned there that night. At No. 5 they were still up, and he could hear them singing; a rum lot at No. 5. Across the street there was a light or two and a gramophone going somewhere. But that was all. No. 9 was in complete darkness; obviously they had all gone to bed, Edgar too, for when Edgar was out, Mrs. Pelumpton always left a light in the hall for him, a courtesy she did not extend to her two lodgers, Park and Turgis. If they were so late, they had to grope. Very, quietly, slowly and painfully, for he had walked all the way from Maida Vale, partly because he wanted to arrive late and so avoid any questions, and was tired out, aching all over, Turgis crawled upstairs to his room at the top. There he lit the tiny gas mantle, and then sat down on his bed, resting his head in his hands.

All his face felt stiff. Laboriously, he removed his soaking shoes, and was not surprised to find that his socks were wet. He put a match to the little gas-fire, which exploded with a startling bang in that stillness. He did not take his socks off, but held out in turn the sole of each foot towards the gas-fire and watched it steam. He had no slippers; he was always meaning to buy some, but never did. He stared at his reflection, holding the cracked little mirror in the wooden frame near the gaslight. There was a bruise on the ridge of his rather prominent nose; dried blood caked about the nostrils; a long smear down one cheek and just above one eyebrow. The eyes, red-rimmed, stared back at him in despair. In all his life he had never hated himself as much as he did then. The cracked face in the black wooden frame began to twitch a little, and he banished it. The water he had used before going out was still in the basin, and now he soaped his hands in it and rubbed them over his face, until his eyes smarted. When he had finished wiping his face, he looked at it again in the mirror, and found that the smears and dried blood had gone, but that the bruise was more marked than before. He did not look long. His face, pale and silly, disgusted him. Going through his pockets, he discovered a crumpled cigarette and had the first smoke for several hours. He remembered the last one, when he was on his way to Maida Vale, not five hours ago. Not five hours ago! A hundred years ago.

The haze had completely vanished from his mind, leaving a dreadful clarity. He saw himself quite clearly, and loathed what he saw. He knew now that Lena was simply a little flirt, who had happened to be bored, her friends being away, when he first called at the flat with the money, and had amused herself with him for a few hours because she had nothing better to do and, for the time being, his obvious worship entertained her. Then the minute somebody better came along, she had dropped him at once, and had afterwards been so annoyed that she had disliked the very sight of him. Now it seemed all quite clear, and it was unbelievable that he could not see it like that before, that he could have gone on dreaming away and hanging about to see her and deluding himself. He did not even hate her now. She simply did not interest him.

What did interest him, however, was the figure he cut himself, and that was what he saw with such terrible clearness. As he sat drooping on the bed, pulling away mechanically at the last inch of the cigarette, he put himself through a pitiless cross-examination. How could he ever have thought that he could make a girl like Lena fall in love with him, a girl who was pretty, who could meet all kinds of fellows, who had lived in places like Paris, who had a father with money? The very thought of Mr. Golspie crushed the last grains of self-respect in him. What had he, Harold Turgis, been fancying himself for? What was he? What could he do? What had he got? Nothing, nothing, nothing. Only a silly face, with a big useless nose and a trembling mouth and eyes that began to water almost if anybody looked hard at them. He threw the stump of his cigarette at the dirty saucer in front of the gas-fire, missed it, and had to go down painfully on his knees and retrieve the glowing end.

He returned to the bed and curled up on it, his eyes fixed on some photographs, cut out of a film weekly, pinned up on the opposite wall; but he did not see the photographs, for he was staring through them, through the wall, into the future, a vague darkness, in which he, a small lonely figure, moved obscurely. His job was gone. He had finished with Twigg & Dersingham and Angel Pavement. Perhaps they might have given him a rise soon; he might have had Smeeth’s job and seven or eight pounds a week before long, a proper home and carpets and armchairs and a big wireless set of his own; and now it might be a long time before he got a job as good as the one he had just lost. What could he do? A bit of typing and clerking, that was all, and anybody could do that; even girls could do it; some of them, really educated ones like Miss Matfield (yes, and what had she been doing with Mr. Golspie?), just as well as he could. And when he had queued up and looked at advertisements and written letters and trailed round and waited and got a job at last, what then? What would he get out of it? Nothing. He saw the world before him with no happiness in it, only foolish work and weariness, and unnamed fears, a place of jagged stones, shadows, dim menacing giants.

Having got so far, he could go no further. A little voice, like that of some tiny erect indignant figure in a great gloomy assembly, spoke up now, protesting. It was not right. It was not fair. There had been a time when it had looked as if everything was going to be quite different. Something had gone wrong. Where, how had it gone wrong? He could be happy; he could be as happy as anybody, if only he had a chance to be; and why hadn’t he a chance to be? Here!--if he’d a chance, he could be a lot happier than Park or Smeeth or even Mr. Dersingham--yes, he could! Then why shouldn’t he be? What was wrong? What _was_ it, what _was_ it? The little voice asked these questions, but no answer came. No answer. It was as if the erect figure suddenly collapsed and the gloomy assembly remained untroubled, unstirring.

It was no good. Every bit of him, from the damp soles of his feet to his tangled hair (which seemed to have a separate and equally miserable existence of its own, this night), agreed that it was no good. He stood up. He looked about him, as if searching the little room in despair for something to touch, to hold, to cling to, now that the night was pouring in, through the decayed woodwork of the window frame, through the cracked mortar and the foul old stone, its malevolent influences, its beckoning and gibbering ghosts. The calm, the clarity, were gone; the dream fumes rose and drifted again; but when he moved, he still moved slowly, as if led here and there by uncertain spectral hands. He fastened the window tight, and stuffed paper in its various crevices. The door fitted badly, and he had to stuff more paper, indeed all the paper he had, between the door and the frame, and then in the keyhole. He turned off the gas from the tiny mantle, leaving the room uncertainly illuminated by the gas-fire. For a moment he considered the dying glow of the mantle. Could he use that gas? If he had a tube he could, but he hadn’t a tube; and if he turned it on full, it gave out so little gas that it would be painfully, horribly slow doing anything to him. No, the gas-fire was the thing. He had only to turn it out now, wait a minute or two until the burners had cooled, then put a hand to that tap again, lie on his bed and hear the gas hissing out for a minute or two, fall asleep and all would be over.

He sat on the floor, in front of the fire, leaning his elbow against the side of his bed. Staring at the three twisted glowing pillars of the fire, he contemplated with sombre satisfaction his approaching end. It would be painless, that he knew, for he had once talked to a man in the Pavement Dining Rooms, and this man had a brother who was a policeman, and this policeman had had a lot of experience with people who had done it with gas and he gave it as his opinion that they all passed quietly away in their sleep without a bit of pain and fuss and worry: it was far easier getting out of the world altogether than taking a train to the City at Camden Town Tube Station. They would find him in the morning, peacefully asleep. There would be an inquest and it would get into the papers. Some of them, Mr. Golspie and Lena, perhaps, would have to give evidence. Mrs. Pelumpton, too. Had the deceased been strange in his actions lately, had he something on his mind? A promising young fellow--would anybody say that? Tragic End, Young Clerk’s Fatal Romance. Who would be really sorry? Nobody. No, no, one or two, perhaps a lot of people; you never knew. Poppy Sellers, for instance; Miss Matfield had said that little Poppy, poor kid, was keen on him; so that she ought to be sorry, very sorry; perhaps it would be the great sorrow of her life--“He meant everything to me, that boy. I worshipped him”--he could hear these, and other heart-broken phrases from the pictures, coming from a rather vague Poppy Sellers, very pale and dressed in black. It made him feel sorry himself, and it was the pleasantest feeling he had had for hours, quite warm and luxuriant.

“A very sad case, gentlemen,” said the coroner, mournfully. “Here you have a young man full of promise----” Turgis interrupted him, for somehow Turgis was there too: “It’s all right saying that _now_,” he cried to them all, triumphant in his bitterness, “but why didn’t you do something about it before? It’s too late now, and you know it is. Too late, too late! Let this,” he continued sternly, “be a warning to you.” But that was silly. He would be dead and gone. Perhaps he ought to leave a letter; they usually left letters; but he hated writing letters, and he knew there was no ink in the room. No, of course, he hadn’t any ink! He’d nothing! He might as well finish it off now, and show them all, the rotten swine!

As he arrived at this savage conclusion, he noticed for the first time that the three little glowing pillars of the gas-fire were dwindling. They shrank rapidly until they were nothing but quivering blue blobs that shot up once and popped, shot up again and popped, then popped out altogether. No more gas. He hadn’t a shilling, he had only eightpence. He couldn’t even commit suicide, couldn’t afford it.

After a short silence, an unusual sound, a most strange sound, a fantastic and incredible sound, came from the side of the bed and travelled round the dark little room. It came from Turgis, and he may have been crying, he may have been laughing, or doing both at once. He was certainly not committing suicide.