Gallions Reach Page 3

  Perplexing, with that thought of a nice girl in a green coat who had gone out of April so abruptly, to worry through the eager throng of home-goers hurrying along from Ludgate Circus. They knew nothing about it. Only one of the bubbles had gone from that stream of life. Episodic, a girl who drops over a bridge when others feel jolly on a half-holiday. At the corner by the Circus he felt he would like a drink. Must have it. He left the daylight and went into a crypt, vaulted and cool, under the railway. Lamps were alight in there. It opened into other low caves with roofs arched and dim. Casks stood in rows by the walls with tiny white pails under their spigots. A famous literary man, whom Jimmy recognised because he was even more pleasing than the familiar and outrageous caricature of him, sat by himself, a black cloak falling from his shoulders, at a round table which was like a toy out of a doll’s house beside that expansive rotundity. He was nursing a comparatively minute bulb of wine on his knee with an expression of child-like faith and dreamy beatitude. Men stood about talking to each other with the rapid confidential amiability released by alcohol. Some high stools with exiguous seats were ranged along a counter. Jimmy mounted a stool next to a hulk whose taut hinder-parts bulged spherically over their pedestal. The hulk was turned the other way, consulting anxiously with another man. Jimmy got some Burgundy and a plate of sandwiches. He thought of the unknown girl in a green coat while looking at a picture on the wall illustrating high wassail, in which a nymph was emerging from a wine-glass to advertise a famous brand of champagne to two men in evening dress.

  “Not me,” he heard the hulk say earnestly at last to his friend. “Not me, Charley. I can’t. I can’t go back. I couldn’t apologise to Harmsworth.”

  “No,” murmured his little companion meditatively. “No. He never waits for an apology, does he? But couldn’t you go back without trying to apologise? He mightn’t notice you were there.”

  Jimmy was drinking when he heard that, and he made a bubbling sound in his glass, which he lowered too quickly. The barmaid glanced at him at once in cold dislike. He was a stranger there. They might think he had been eavesdropping. He left the place. Of course, those caves were for the retirement of journalists. Another world surrounded those caves. Another? No. Probably only an extension of the world he knew, complete with its Perriams and idiotic fears which meant nothing except to those whose alarms were roused by the only taboos and fetishes they knew.

  Here he was. The retired front of the British Museum, frowning darkly in its retirement with its wealth of the mind, unsolicitous of attention, does not induce the stranger within its gates of iron. Beyond the austere guardians in their uniform at its outer ward an intervening desert of gravel is chiefly interesting for its doves. The doves are alive. They make love unashamed under the shadow of wisdom. You may watch them, through the iron railings, without going in. No need to cross that desert of gravel. All the urgency of life, insistent on the unknown word which first set it going, is in the iridescent neck of the gentleman who struts briskly after the coy lady: “By God, madam, but you must.” What is inside the dark portals of the building is only the sublimation of the iridescent throat of a dove in spring.

  That high, massive, and grim colonnade, the last strange consequence of love, is not to be entered by humble and ignorant mortals. They are intimidated. They have the play of the doves to watch, which is easier than summoning up the courage to mount the spacious terrace of temple steps to the interior gloom. But Jimmy turned in without a thought. Man, he knew, had done something with the passionate bloom on a dove’s throat. He thought the Museum was the best thing in London except the Abbey at Evensong. He became positive when he was in the Museum. His sporadic hints concentrated into a confidence which he could not explain. Why explain, when you know? Man was aware of something better than the things to which he was daily compelled. There, about you in the Museum, the confirmation was, whichever way you looked.

  Jimmy did not consult his watch. He did not know the time, as he mounted, his mind at ease, the steps to the temple which enshrined the proofs of the ardent experiments of his fellows. He was not thinking of time. He went inside, surrendered his stick, and then, irresolutely, because he was trying to think of something he could not bring to the front of his memory, went up the stairs past the stones teeming with the figures from the Indian tope of Amaravati. What had he come to that place to see? He considered this vaguely, while noticing that a wasp-waisted creature, with exaggerated breasts and hips, seemed to be moving sinuously out of the stonework. The stones moved with seductive little forms. One might suppose it was inevitable that those breasts and hips should have developed from the teachings of Buddha. Whatever man did, he found it hard to keep that from his thoughts. He gave his temples to the adoration of the baby. Quite right too. The temples began with that, and they would end with it. Things must be kept going, while we are here. But those Hindu waists were too slight. They were sensual. Adoration of the mere form of good was likely to make the generative gods shy.

  He became lost among carved ivory oddments from Japan, translucent Chinese bowls of jade, lacquered boxes, and jolly dolls of the traditional Japanese puppet shows. In those things the fond human mind was at play. Its very fun was better than all the ledgers of British commerce. He wandered on, past Samian ware, and some hints of Rome in a land where the Cæsars at last came down to nothing but the unresolved litter of their imperial state. It served them right. What did they expect to do with lawyers and soldiers? At the far end of a corridor was an obeisant figure, black but comely, spreading out to him its robe, edged with gold, in gracious salutation. He felt that he and that figure were alone in the place, and that it had known he was sure to come. Nobody else was there. It was plain that the figure watched him as he approached. He went straight to that exquisite idol spreading its cloak, offering a lotus bud in its right hand, in invitation to a shrine of peace lost somewhere now in the jungle of Burma. But there was no attaining to the spirit which created that figure, and the assurance of the far grove where it was at home. Too late?

  Yet some other image was sternly eyeing him. He had known that all the time. He did not turn his head at once to meet its lofty regard. That required a little resolution. He had been there before, and he knew. With a sigh at last, under compulsion, he turned to the other idol, the supreme example of human handiwork in the Museum. It was the challenge of the Orient to the west, that great representative of the mind, one of Buddha’s men. London city could not answer that critical glance. If it were not condemnation, at least it reduced Leadenhall Street to a skittle-alley. That image, of a Lohan, haughty and challenging, though in complete repose, was a little awesome. He could not turn away from it. He had not the nerve. He backed slowly from it. It followed him with its unspoken and unanswerable challenge. He knew he had no adequate apology to make. But if it could only answer questions!

  When out of that room, he looked at his watch. Five o’clock! There was no doubt at all that Helen Denny would not have waited an hour for him.

  Chapter IV

  No diner at the Gridiron should flatter another diner by noticing his capriciousness. That would betray his surprise, which he ought not to feel. If he were not singular, he would not be there. For that restaurant is not only in Soho, but it is hard to discover unless one who knows it is clever enough to think you are equal to it, and so conducts you to its primrose door between a dubious tobacconist’s shop and a large window of many small panes that are screened by dark-white curtains. No-outside symbol betrays the Gridiron. Its frequenters are so pleased with the secret of its choice attractions that they take their friends to it. It is sufficient that it should be known to those who deserve it. If you should enter that restaurant with the bare guess that it is a place for refreshment, and because you have noticed that one place where food is sold is much like the others in any neighbourhood, you will be stopped in a narrow passage by a sinister waiter, who will slyly question you. Should you answer him in any way you will be admitted; should you not answer h
im at all you will be allowed in.

  Even though your nature is so mild that it would permit without impatience a casual policeman to scatter the contents of your bureau as rudely as would a burglar, that is nothing. It is sure to be the sport of gay caprice at the Gridiron. For it is but just to allow the deserving some protest against conformity after they have suffered it virtuously all day; and caprice for an evening in a secluded chamber which we trust is Bohemian is all the revolt most of us can manage against the spell cast over us by custom and habit. The Gridiron is the only place in London where you may get Italian dishes you do not want.

  So the proud voice of the great musician Suvretta, as he conversed there with a lady noticeable because of the distance between her burst of orange-coloured hair and the upper margin of her green frock, drew no attention. Everybody behaved as though the musician had the place and the lady to himself. Yet Suvretta knew that the best of his harsh drollery would appear presently, neatly glossed by a journalist who then was missing nothing of it, in one of those illustrated papers which give us the soothing illusion that we are not far from where the important people move in the brightness of their wit with better manners amid their improvements on life.

  Helen Denny, at the other end of the saloon, while watching the door, could not help a glance idling occasionally towards the musician. She knew the vulgarity that face betrayed, but it was a masculine face. That arrogant mouth would never soften in surrender to a gentle appeal, except in condescension. And condescension is savoury, especially to those who themselves compel others with a show of pride and indifference. His sullen eyes were arbitrary and poaching. He knew she had been looking at him. The lines of his broad face were as definite as those of a mastiff’s. He was a savage, but savages had their way. Jimmy had not come. It was getting late. Would the duffer remember where they would be that night? Jimmy was a strange fellow. It was not easy to see whether he was as simple as a child, or was as experienced as sin, and so was not particularly interested. No, not experienced; that was unfair. She liked his quiet informality. That looked very like wisdom. You could be sure of Jimmy. But his restraint was tantalising. Restraint was a puzzling attribute of informality.

  She turned, in a petulant dismissal of Jimmy, to her companions. She was wasting her evening. It did not matter where he was. He reserved too much. He would never be touched by life. Probably he was still dutiful at the office, making quite sure the things that worried him went their proper roads. You could never tell what was in his mind. He only looked as if he knew. His usual answer to any bright word of a friend was a happy chuckle. He might say something about it to her, hours later. But if his comment was surprising then, it was too late, and was wasted. Jim was either careless of the opinions of others, or else he was unaware that people were curious and critical. It was not easy to see which it was in a man whose eyes were often fixed elsewhere and distantly when his friends were drawn together by something which had aroused them, and who, if he spoke at all then, did so as one who was good-humoured but had something else to think about. If he had anything better, what was it? She wished she knew.

  Doris Oliver was looking at Helen with her black eyebrows arched over her childish face in an expression of querulous languor. Her elbows were on the table, and her pale hands drooped towards each other like two lilies which had been communing on their stalks, but had fallen asleep. Doris was a wily elf, Helen thought. Helen wondered whether a girl ought to wear her hair like that. It was as smooth as an Indian carving in ebony, and so coaxed down to her thin cheeks that it left only a white triangle of forehead, and was coiled into neat bosses over her ears. Could there be a prim wanton? Doris looked like it, fastidious but hungry. A pallid little Quakeress with florid lips.

  “I saw Jimmy this afternoon.”

  “Yes? What had he to say? Haven’t seen him for a week.”

  “Oh, he didn’t see me. Jimmy never sees any one.” Doris picked at her necklace of limpid crystals and swayed it with a tired hand. “I’d been to hear the ‘Twelfth Mass’ at Saffron Hill. He was in Ludgate Circus, looking as if he’d just come away from an interview with his Maker, and was dissatisfied. Then a bus intervened. He vanished. Translated in a fiery motor, perhaps. All gone.”

  A plump young man sitting next to Doris, whose happy grin, which never left him, suggested that he was cherishing a ridiculous world because it was so amusing, leaned forward eagerly, as though he were going to add a jocund comment, but he saw that Helen’s attention had wandered. He checked himself, with his mouth a little open. His good teeth, and his fair hair which stood upright as if in constant astonishment, made it right for him to smile with his mouth a little open in cheerful interest. He thought, as he appreciated Helen, that Jim Colet must be a cool customer. Helen distinguished their table. She was the picture of the place. That is, if you liked ’em heroic. Too classical for him. She might be warm, but not cosy. A little haughty, except with those she acknowledged. He did not think she had accepted him. It was hard to learn that from a woman whose profile was like—it would have been like Brynhild’s, only she was too quick for a Teutonic goddess. She was wasted on a chap whose game was bales and casks and all that. Such a fellow could do nothing with a bosom which was meant for privileged joy. Beside her, Doris was a peevish child. All the same it would not be pleasant to annoy Helen. Those little lines were not at the corners of her mouth for nothing. Things had fallen a bit flat this evening. He must talk.

  “I say, Doris,” he said, “I’ve been reading that book of new poems you lent me. Many thanks. But what’s it about?”

  Doris was swaying her beads. “I wondered whether you’d ask that when I lent it, but I might have known you would. You ought to get some change from biology.”

  His grin broadened. “All I can say is, my dear, give me the old songs, though I can’t sing them, if they’re the new. What does poetry want with foot-notes about psychoanalysis and negro mythology?”

  “Suppose,” some one asked him, “that you don’t know anything about them?”

  “Well, I couldn’t get them out of footnotes and the poetry all in one stride, could I? But Doris, they were very clever and insulting poems, I think. Sing a song of mockery. Is that the latest? But it was a surprising little book, though it smelt like the dissection of bad innards.”

  There was a quiet chuckle above him.

  “Hullo, Jim. We’ve been waiting for you. Come on. Only as far as the soup, and no hope of progress much before midnight.”

  “This place is only known to the elect,” said Doris.

  “And so the waiters have no time,” continued the light-hearted young man. “Sit down and let Suvretta refresh you. Look at the Princess Olga. And there’s a table full of Russian dancers over there. Hors d’auvres all over the room.”

  Jimmy blinked obediently towards the princess, but saw no distinguishing back in that direction. The Russian dancers, entertained by a newspaper proprietor, were very engaging. The long room, with its vistas deepening into a sort of maroon haze, was warm and chromatic, and sparkling with eager noises at the level of the table lights. Everybody seemed to be enjoying it. He looked at Helen with some concern, but she was talking calmly to Doris. The biologist was relating a story happily to a girl Colet did not know. Plenty of cheerful common sense about that scientist. A healthy boy. A waiter came, performed some legerdemain at the table swiftly but noiselessly, bent over him in confidential and unexpected solicitation, and left him. He could hear only fragments of the conversation.

  “Got no time for him. When I open that man’s books, only a little lymph comes out,” said the biologist.

  Helen was gazing absently into her wine, rotating her glass reflectively on the table, as if admiring the gleams of its ruby light. It sent a flush upwards to drift about her throat.

  “What would you expect, Walcott; blood, these days?”

  “Don’t be silly. But I’d like to know why you literary critics are so keen over those morbid symptoms. Why not cut up d
ogfish with me?”

  The critic looked sadly but tolerantly at the biologist, and smiled. Walcott was so young that he was lively. The kindly critic did not appear to think it was necessary to answer. He guarded the secret of literature with a pleasant but superior smile.

  “Well, give me something I can enjoy. I’ve always thought literature was above my laboratory, but from the modern books Doris presses on me for my good I’ve been thinking it must be the same thing as the dissecting slab, only more smelly.”

  “If you are able to find books you can enjoy, why not enjoy them? There’s something for all of us,” the critic murmured.

  “I know. But consider the young learner. Isn’t the best meant for enjoyment, these days?”

  “Obviously it depends on what you can enjoy.” The critic’s gentle but deprecating smile showed that he was not to be idly provoked. “Why not keep, for a time, to Lamb and Dickens and—and the approved entertainments?”

  Jimmy turned quickly to the speaker. The man seemed to mean it. Perhaps he would regard death with a gentle sneer. He did not appear to be expecting applause for an original remark.

  The amusement of the biologist, however, was now a little embarrassed, as though he had become conspicuous with a childish enthusiasm. His forehead was pink. Doris watched him with a trace of affected weariness in her eyes.

  “I should like to know what you think is important in literature—if, of course, I may be told.”

  “Important?” The critic was slow and deliberate. “I never said that literature has anything of importance to say. If you were to ask me, I should say that I don’t think it has. Its importance, if we were honest enough to admit it, is but in its manner, which is a matter of taste. One need not insist on one’s own taste.”

  The critic was patient, and spoke as if this belief, like all else, afforded him no pleasure. If the truth was insisted, on, well, there it was.