Part 10

His wife, who had just put their baby daughter to bed, was sitting in the parlour darning his socks. She looked up--surely her forehead was rather like a knee!

“You wear your socks properly, Harold,” she said; “it’s all I can do to mend this pair.” Her eyes were china-blue, round like saucers; her voice had the monotony of one brought up to minimise emotion. A farmer’s daughter, young Mellesh had become engaged to her during a holiday in Somerset. Pale himself, from office and the heat, he thought how pale she looked.

“The heat’s dreadful, isn’t it?” she said. “Sometimes I wish we’d never had baby. It does tie you in the evenings. I _am_ looking forward to Whitsuntide, that I am.”

Young Mellesh, tall and straggly, bent over and kissed her forehead. How on earth to let her know that he had ‘blewed’ their holiday? He was realising that he had done an awful thing. Perhaps--oh! surely--she would understand how he couldn’t sit and see that girl ‘jugged’ before his eyes for want of it! But not until the end of their small supper did he say abruptly:

“I got quite upset this morning, Alice. Had to go down to the police court about that car smash I told you of, and afterwards I saw them run in a lot of those Piccadilly girls. It fair sickened me to see the way they treat them.”

His wife looked up; her face was childlike.

“Why, what do they do to them?”

“Quod them for speakin’ to men in the street.”

“I s’pose they’re up to no good.”

Irritated by the matter-of-factness in her voice, he went on:

“They speak to ’em as if they were dirt.”

“Well, aren’t they?”

“They may be a loose lot, but so are the men.”

“Men wouldn’t be so loose if they weren’t there.”

“I suppose it’s what you call a vicious circle;” and, pleased with his play on words, he added: “One or two of them were pretty.”

His wife smiled; her smile had a natural teasing quality.

“They treat _them_ better, I suppose?”

That was jolly cynical! and he blurted out:

“One, quite young, never there before, they gave her a fortnight just because she hadn’t any money--I couldn’t stick it; I paid her fine.”

There was sweat on his forehead. His wife’s face had gone quite pink.

“You paid? How much?”

He was on the point of saying: ‘Ten shillings.’ But something in his soul revolted. “Regular pill--two pound ten;” and he thought glumly: ‘Oh! what a fool I’ve been!’

He did wish Alice wouldn’t open her mouth like that, when nothing was coming out--made her look so silly! Her face puckered suddenly, then became quite blank; he was moved as if he had hit or pinched her.

“Awfully sorry, Alice,” he muttered, “never meant to--she--she cried.”

“Course she cried! You fool, Harold!”

He got up, very much disturbed.

“Well, and what would _you_ have done?”

“Me? Let her stew in her own juice, of course. It wasn’t your affair.”

She too had risen. He thrust his fingers through his hair. The girl’s face, tear-streaked, confusedly pretty, had come up before him, her soft common grateful voice tickled his ears again. His wife turned her back. So! he was in for a fit of sulks. Well! No doubt he had deserved it.

“I dare say I _was_ a fool,” he muttered, “but I did think you’d understand how I felt when I saw her cry. Suppose it had been you!” From the toss of her head, he knew he had said something pretty fatal.

“Oh! So that’s what you think of me!”

He grasped her shoulder.

“Of course I don’t, Alice; don’t be so silly!”

She shook off his hand.

“Whose money was it? Now baby and me’ll get no holiday. And all because you see a slut crying.”

Before he could answer she was gone. He had an awful sense of having outraged justice. Given away her holiday--given his wife’s holiday to a girl of the streets! Still, it was his own holiday, too; besides, he earned the money! He’d never wanted to give it to the girl; hadn’t got anything for it! Suppose he’d put it into the offertory bag, would Alice have been in such a temper even if it was their holiday? He didn’t see much difference. He sat down with knees apart, and elbows planted on them, staring at the peonies on the Brussels carpet paid for on the hire system. And all those feelings that rise in people living together, when they don’t agree, swirled in his curly head, and troubled his candid eyes. If only the girl hadn’t cried! She hadn’t meant to cry; he could tell that by the sound of it. And who was the magistrate--he didn’t look too like a saint; who was any man to treat her like that? Alice oughtn’t--No! But suddenly, he saw Alice again bending over his socks--pale and tired with the heat--doing things for him or baby--and he had given away her holiday! No denying that! Compunction flooded him. He must go up and find her and try and make his peace--he would pawn his bicycle--she should have her holiday--she should!

He opened the door and listened. The little house was ominously quiet--only the outside evening sounds from buses passing in the main road, from children playing on the doorsteps of the side street, from a man with a barrow of bananas. She must be up in the bedroom with baby! He mounted the steep whitewashed stairway. It wanted a carpet, and fresh paint; ah! and a lot of other things Alice wanted--you couldn’t have everything at once on four pound ten a week--with the price of living what it was. But she ought to have remembered there were things he wanted too--yes, precious bad, and never thought of getting. The door of their bedroom was locked; he rattled the handle. She opened suddenly, and stood facing him on the little landing.

“I don’t want you up here.”

“Look here, Alice--this is rotten.”

She closed the door behind her.

“It is! You go down again, I don’t want you. Think I believe that about crying? I’d be ashamed, if I were you!”

Ashamed! He might have been too soft, but why ashamed?

“Think I don’t know what men are like? You can just go to your street girl, if she’s so pretty!” She stood hard and stiff against the door, with red spots in her cheeks. She almost made him feel a villain--such conviction in her body.

“Alice! Good Lord! You must be crazy! I’ve done nothing!”

“But you’d like to. Go along! I don’t want you!”

The stabbing stare of her blue eyes, the muffled energy of her voice, the bitterness about her mouth all made a fellow feel--well, that he knew nothing about anything--coming from one’s wife like that! He leaned back against the wall.

“Well, I’m damned!” was all he could get out.

“D’you mean to say she didn’t ask you?”

The insides of his hands grew wet. The girl’s card in his pocket!

“Well, if you like to be a cat I can’t help it. What d’you take me for?”

“Giving your own child’s money to a dirty slut! You owed it--that’s what it was--or will be. Go on with you; don’t stand there!”

He had a nasty longing to smite her on the mouth--it looked so bitter. “Well,” he said slowly, “now I understand.”

Yes, that was it--she was all of a piece with something, with that police court, with the tone of the men’s voices, with something unsparing, hard and righteous, which came down sharp on people.

“I thought--I think you might----” he stammered.

“Ugh!” The sound exasperated him so, that he turned to go downstairs.

“You whited sepulchre!”

The door clicked before he could answer the odd insult; he heard the key turned. Idiotic! The little landing seemed too small to hold his feelings. Would he ever have been such an ass as to say a word to Alice, if he _had_ done it? Why! He had never even thought of doing anything!

Giddy from chagrin he ran downstairs, and, clawing his straw hat from the rack, went out. The streets were malodorous from London fug--fried fish, petrol, hot dirty people; he strode along troubled, his eyes very rueful. So this was what he was really married to--this--this! It was like being married to that police court! It wasn’t human--no, it wasn’t--to be so suspicious and virtuous as all that! What was the use of being decent and straight, if this was all you got for it? Someone touched him on the shoulder.

“Mister, you’ve been standing against something; you’re all white behind--let me give you a brush.”

He stood confused, while a stout fair man smote his back up and down with a large flat hand. Whited sepulchre! A bubble of rage rose to his lips. All right! She should see! He felt for the girl’s card, and was suddenly amazed to find that he had no need to look at it--he remembered the address! Not far off, on the other side of the Euston Road! That was funny--had he been looking at it without realising? They said you had a subconscious mind. Well, what about it? No, it was his conscious mind that was going to serve Alice out! He had reached the Euston Road. Crossing it, he began to feel a queer pleasurable weakness in the legs. By this he knew that he was going to do wrong. He was not going to visit the girl just to serve his wife out, but because the prospect was----! That was bad--bad; it would put Alice in the right! He stood still at the corner of a narrow square, with a strip of garden, and railings round it. He leaned against those railings, his eyes searching the trees. He had always been quite straight with his wife--it was she who had put the idea into his head. And yet his legs being pleasurably weak seemed in an odd way to excuse her. It was like his doubt whether they hadn’t to do something about it at the police court. Barring Alice--barring the police court--where would he--would any man be? Without virtue, entirely without virtue. A pigeon in the garden cooed. “Any time you’re passing, I’ll be glad to see you.” It had sounded genuine--really grateful. And the girl had looked--not worse than anybody else! If Alice had been sympathetic about it he would never have thought of her again; that is--well----! The doubt set his legs in motion. He was a married man, and that was all about it! But he looked across at the numbers on the houses. Twenty-seven! Yes, there it was! A bloom of lilac brushed his face. The scent jerked him suddenly back to the farm in Somerset, and he and Alice courting. Alice--not the Alice on the landing! He scrutinised the shabby house, and suddenly went hot all over. Suppose he went in there--what would that girl think? That he had paid her fine because----! But that wasn’t it at all--oh! no--he wasn’t a squirt like that! He turned his face away, and walked on fast and far.

The signs were lit above the theatres; traffic was scanty, the streets a long dawdle of what vehicles and humans were about. He came to Leicester Square and sat down on a bench. The lights all round him brightened slowly under the dusk--theatre lights, street lamps. And the pity of things smote him, sitting there. So much of everything; and one got so little of anything! Adding figures up all day, going home to Alice--that was life! Well, it wasn’t so bad when Alice was nice to him. But--crikey!--what one missed! That book about the South Sea Islands--places, peoples, sights, sounds, scents, all over the world! Four pound ten a week, a wife, a baby! Well, you couldn’t have things both ways--but had he got them either way? Not with the Alice on the landing!

Ah! Well! Poor Alice; jolly hard on her to miss her holiday! But she might have given him the chance to tell her that he would pawn his bicycle. Or was it all a bad dream? Had he ever really been in the police court, seen them herding those girls to prison--girls who did what they did because--well, like himself, they had missed too much. They’d catch a fresh lot to-night. What a fool he’d been to pay that fine!

‘Glad I didn’t go into that girl’s house, anyway,’ he thought. ‘I would have felt a scum!’ The only decent thing about it all had been her look when she said: “Ow! thank you!” That gave him a little feeling of warmth even now; and then--it, too, chilled away. Nothing for it! When he had done sitting there, he must go home! If Alice had thought him a wrong-un before, what would she think when he returned? Well, there it was! The milk was spilt! But he did wish she hadn’t got such a virtue on her.

The sky deepened and darkened, the lights stared white; the square garden with its flower-beds seemed all cut out and stiff--like scenery on a stage. Must go back and ‘stick’ it! No good to worry!

He got up from the bench, and gave himself a shake. His eyes, turned towards the lights of the Alhambra, were round, candid, decent, like the eyes of a baby.

1922.

CONSCIENCE

Taggart sat up. The scoop under the ranger’s fence, cannily selected for his sleeping place, was overhung by branches, and the birds of Hyde Park were at matins already. His watch had gone the way of his other belongings during the last three months, and he could only assume from the meagre light that it was but little after dawn. He was not grateful to the birds; he would be hungry long before a breakfast coming from he hardly knew where. But he listened to them with interest. This was the first night he had passed in the open, and, like all amateurs, he felt a kind of triumph at having achieved vagrancy in spite of the law, the ranger, and the dew. He was a Northumbrian, too, and his ‘tail still up,’ as he expressed it. Born in a town, Taggart had not much country lore--at sparrows, blackbirds, thrushes, his knowledge stopped; but he enjoyed the bobbery the little beggars were kicking up, and, though a trifle stiff perhaps, he felt ‘fine.’

He lit his pipe, and almost at once his brain began to revolve the daily problem of how to get a job, and of why he had lost the one he had.

Walking, three months ago, burly, upright, secure and jolly, into the room of his chief at the offices of ‘Conglomerated Journals, Ltd.,’ he had been greeted with:

“Morning, Taggart. Georgie Grebe is to give us an article for the _Lighthouse_. He won’t be able to write it, of course. Just do me a column he could sign--something Grebeish. I want a feature of that sort every week now in the _Lighthouse_; got half a dozen really good names. We simply must get it on its legs with the big Public.”

Taggart smiled. Georgie Grebe! The name was a household word--tophole idea to get him!

“Did he ever write a line in his life, sir?”

“Don’t suppose so--but you know the sort of thing he _would_ write; he gets nothing for it but the Ad. The week after I’ve got Sir Cutman Kane--you’ll want to be a bit careful there; but you can get his manner from that book of his on murder trials. He hasn’t got a minute--must have it devilled; but he’ll sign anything decently done. I’m going to _make_ ’em buy the _Lighthouse_, Taggart. Get on to the Grebe article at once, will you.”

Taggart nodded, and, drawing from his pocket some typewritten sheets of paper, laid them on the bureau.

“Here’s your signed leader, sir; I’ve gingered it a bit too much, perhaps.”

“Haven’t time to look at it; got to catch a train.”

“Shall I tone it down a little?”

“Better perhaps; use your judgment. Sit here, and do it now. Good-bye; back on Friday.”

Reaching for his soft hat, assisted into his coat by Taggart, the chief was gone.

Taggart sat down to pencil the signed leader.

‘Good leader,’ he thought; ‘pity nobody knows I write ’em!’

This devilling was quite an art, and, not unlike art, poorly enough paid. Still, not bad fun feeling you were the pea and the chief only the shell--the chief, with his great name and controlling influence. He finished pencilling, O.K.’d the sheets, thought, ‘Georgie Grebe! what the deuce shall I write about?’ and went back to his room.

It was not much of a room, and there was not much in it except Jimmy Counter, smoking a pipe and writing furiously.

Taggart sat down too, lit his own pipe, took a sheet of paper and scrawled the words ‘Georgie Grebe Article’ across the top.

Georgie Grebe! It _was_ a scoop! The chief had a wonderful flair for just the names that got the Public. There was something rather beautifully simple about writing an article for a man who had never written a line--something virginal in the conception. And when you came to think of it, something virginal in the Public’s buying of the article to read the thoughts of their idol, Georgie Grebe. Yes, and what were their idol’s thoughts? If he, Taggart, didn’t know, nobody would, not even the idol! Taggart smiled, then felt a little nervous. Georgie Grebe--celebrated clown--probably he hadn’t any thoughts! Really, there was something very trustful about the Public! He dipped his pen in ink and sat staring at the nib. Trustful! The word had disturbed the transparency of his mental process, as a crystal of peroxide will disturb and colour a basinful of water. Trustful! The Public would pay their pennies to read what they thought were the thoughts of Georgie Grebe. But----! Taggart bit into the pipe stem. Steady! He was getting on too fast. Of course Georgie Grebe had thoughts if he signed them--hadn’t he? His name would be reproduced in autograph, with the indispensable portrait. People would see by his features that he must have had them. Was the Public so very trustful then? The evidence was there all right. Fraudulent? This was just devilling, there was nothing fraudulent about ‘devilling’--everybody did it. You might as well say those signed leaders written for the chief were fraudulent. Of course they weren’t--only devilled! The Public paid for the thoughts of the chief, and there they were since he signed them. Devilled thoughts! And yet! Would the public pay if those leaders were signed A. P. Taggart? The thoughts would be the same--and very good. They ought to pay--but--would they? He struck another match, and wrote:

“I am no writer, ladies and gentlemen. I am--believe me--a simple clown. In balancing this new pole upon my nose I am conscious of a certain sense of fraud----”

He crossed out the paragraph. That word again--must keep it from buzzing senselessly round his brain like this! He was only devilling; hold on to ‘devilling’; it was his living to devil--more or less--just earning his living--getting nothing out of it! Neither was Georgie Grebe--only the Ad.! Then who was getting something out of it? ‘Conglomerated Journals’! Out of Georgie Grebe’s name; out of the chief’s name below the devilled leaders--a pretty penny! Well, what harm in making the most of a big name? Taggart frowned. Suppose a man went into a shop and bought a box of pills, marked ‘Holloway,’ made up from a recipe of ‘Tompkins’--did it matter that the man thought they were Holloway’s, if they were just as good pills, perhaps better? Taggart laid down his pen and took his pipe out of his mouth. ‘Gosh!’ he thought, ‘never looked at it this way before! I believe it does matter. A man ought to get the exact article he pays for. If not, any fraud is possible. New Zealand mutton can be sold as English. Jaeger stuffs can have cotton in them. This Grebe article’s a fraud.’ He relit his pipe. With the first puff his English hatred of a moral attitude or ‘swank’ of any sort beset him. Who was he to take stand against a custom? Didn’t secretaries write the speeches of Parliamentary ‘big-bugs’? Weren’t the opinions of eminent lawyers often written by their juniors, read over and signed? Weren’t briefs and pleadings devilled? Yes; but all that was different. In such cases the Public weren’t paying for expression, they were paying for knowledge; the big lawyer put his imprimatur on the knowledge, not on the expression of it; the Cabinet Minister endorsed his views, whether he had written them out or not, and it was his views the Public paid for, not the expression of them. But in this Grebe article the Public would not be paying for any knowledge it contained, nor for any serious views; it would pay for a peep into the mind of their idol. ‘And his mind will be mine!’ thought Taggart; ‘but who’d pay a penny to peep into that?’ He got up, and sat down again.

With a Public so gullible--what did it matter? They lapped up anything and asked for more. Yes! But weren’t the gullible the very people who oughtn’t to be gulled? He rose again, and toured the dishevelled room. The man at the other table raised his head.

“You seem a bit on your toes.”

Taggart stared down at him.

“I’ve got to write some drivel in the _Lighthouse_ for Georgie Grebe to sign. It’s just struck me that it’s a fraud on the Public. What do you say, Jimmy?”

“In a way. What about it?”

“If it is, I don’t want to do it--that’s all.”

His colleague whistled.

“My dear chap, here am I writing a racing article ‘From the Man in the Paddock’--I haven’t been on a racecourse for years.”

“Oh! well--that’s venial.”

“All’s venial in our game. Shut your eyes, and swallow. You’re only devilling.”

“Ga!” said Taggart. “Give a thing a decent label, and it is decent.”

“I say, old man, what did you have for breakfast?”

“Look here, Jimmy, I’m inclined to think I’ve struck a snag. It never occurred to me before.”

“Well, don’t let it occur to you again. Think of old Dumas; I’ve heard he put his name to sixty volumes in one year. Has that done him any harm?”

Taggart rumpled his hair, reddish and rather stiff.

“Damn!” he said.

Counter laughed.

“You get a fixed screw for doing what you’re told. Why worry? Papers must be sold. Georgie Grebe--that’s some stunt.”

“Blast Georgie Grebe!”

He took his hat and went out; a prolonged whistle followed him. All next day he spent doing other jobs, trying to persuade himself that he was a crank, and gingerly feeling the mouths of journalists. All he got was: Fuss about nothing! What was the matter with devilling? With life at such pressure, what else could you have? But with the best intentions he could not persuade himself to go on with the thoughts of Georgie Grebe. And he remembered suddenly that his father had changed the dogmas of his religion at forty-five, and thereby lost a cure of souls. He was very unhappy; it was like discovering that he had inherited tuberculosis. On Friday he was sent for by the chief.

“Morning, Taggart; I’m just back. Look here, this leader for to-morrow--it’s nothing but a string of statements. Where’s my style?”

Taggart shifted his considerable weight from foot to foot.

“Well, sir,” he said, “I thought perhaps you’d like to put that in yourself, for a change. The facts are all right.”

The chief stared.

“My good fellow, do you suppose I’ve got time for that? Anybody could have written this; I can’t sign it as it stands. Tone it up.”

Taggart took the article from the chief’s hand.

“I don’t know that I can,” he said; “I’m----” and stopped.

The chief said kindly:

“Ill?”

Taggart disclaimed.

“Private trouble?”

“No.”

“Well, get on with it, then. How’s the Grebe article turned out?”

“It hasn’t.”

“How do you mean?”

Taggart felt his body stiffening.

“Fact is, I can’t write it.”

“Good gracious, man, any drivel will do, so long as it’s got a flavour of some sort to carry the name.”

Taggart swallowed.

“That’s it. Is it quite playing the game with the Public, sir?”

The chief seemed to loom larger suddenly.

“I don’t follow you, Taggart.”

Taggart blurted out: “I don’t want to write anyone else’s stuff in future, unless it’s just news or facts.”

The chief’s face grew very red.

“I pay you to do certain work. If you don’t care to carry out instructions, we can dispense with your services. What’s the matter with you, Taggart?”

Taggart replied with a wry smile:

“Suffering from a fit of conscience, sir. Isn’t it a matter of commercial honesty?”

The chief sat back in his swivel chair and gazed at him for quite twenty seconds.

“Well,” he said at last in an icy voice, “I have never been so insulted. Good-morning! You are at liberty.”

Taggart laid down the sheets of paper, walked stiffly to the door, and turned.

“Awfully sorry, sir, can’t help it.”

The chief bowed distantly, and Taggart went out.