Читать книгу The Passionate Quest - Edward Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 7

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The pilgrimage commenced on the following day a little tremulously for Rosina and Philip, notwithstanding their boundless enthusiasm; confidently and placidly for Matthew. They found, on the night of their arrival in London, three small bedrooms and a smaller sitting room, on the fifth floor of a lodging house in Maltby Street, W. C., which is somewhere between Long Acre and the district where second-hand book shops and hand-printed notices of "Rooms to let for single gentlemen" suggest the neighbourhood of the British Museum. Their breakfast, on the following morning, consisted of an egg each, a loaf of bread and a quarter of a pound of butter, commodities selected by Matthew during an early morning stroll around the neighbourhood. Rosina made tea in a brown teapot, and urns were for ever solemnly forsworn. Matthew was for starting out immediately on the great adventure, but for once in his life he gave way to popular clamour. It was Rosina's entreaties which prevailed.

"Our first day in London, Matthew," she pleaded. "We must spend it all together, and spend it wonderfully."

"I rather thought of calling on a few firms in the city," Matthew remarked thoughtfully. "One must make a start."

"Oh, bother your start!" Rosina laughed. "You can do as you like to-morrow, but to-day we stretch our arms and look up at the sun and thank God for our freedom! We are going to count the treasures which the fates may have in store for us."

"You mean that you are going to waste a day," Matthew rejoined stolidly.

"Not waste it," Philip declared. "We are going to pause just for a moment and look down on the city of our desires. We are going to play the conscious and deliberate philanderer. We are going to choose our places in the scheme of the Universe, with care and caution."

"You're right if you mean that it's no use accepting the first thing that's offered," Matthew agreed, a little puzzled. "I shall call on at least five places in the city before I make up my mind."

Philip was rolling a cigarette with a broad grin upon his face. Rosina leaned over and passed her arm around Matthew's shoulder.

"Don't be so atrociously literal, Matthew," she begged. "What I propose is this. London is the city of allegories. Let us each show the other what it is that we seek in life; then to-morrow we will set to work in earnest to find it. Let to-day be a day of dreams; to-morrow we can take the first step on the ladder of attainment."

"If you'd put it into plain English," Matthew grumbled, "I should know where I was. Do you mean that we go riding about on 'buses all day, because that costs money?"

"Listen," Rosina continued, "you have done all the practical work up to now. You showed us how to get our money out of the Savings Bank, you bargained for the rooms here and got them a great deal cheaper than we should have done, you even brought the breakfast. It rests with you, then, to begin. Take us to the Mecca of your dreams, show us the places where you desire to be supreme. After you have finished, we will follow where Philip leads. And after that, it will be my turn."

"Very well," Matthew agreed, "get your things on and we'll start at once. No need to waste any time over my part of the show."

He piloted them to a 'bus, where, by reason of his pushfulness, they obtained front seats. Slowly they made their way citywards. As they drew near the Mansion House, the blocks in the traffic grew more frequent. They became jammed in a medley of vehicles. The pavements were crowded with streams of hurrying men, with here and there a few girls and young women. Matthew pointed downwards.

"There you are," he said, "there's one thing I brought you here to show you. You've watched the people pass through the streets in Norchester. They just look as though they were going to any old place, and it didn't matter a row of pins when they got there or what they did when they arrived. Now look at the faces of these people. They've got something else written there, every one of them, men and women alike. I'm not much of a hand at this sort of job, but you can see what I mean, can't you?"

"They're out for something definite," Philip declared.

"That's right," Matthew assented approvingly. "They're seekers. They've either got jobs that they want to push along with, or they're all in a hurry to shoulder some one else out of the way and climb another notch in the ladder. You see that, Philip? And you, Rosina?"

"Absolutely!" they both agreed.

"Now let's get off, then," Matthew suggested. "I'll show you where my gods are enshrined."

They walked down Threadneedle and Lombard streets, and Matthew rolled off the names on the brass plates with amazing familiarity.

"Here they are," he pointed out. "The men in the bank parlours are the governors of the world to-day. It's a place in there I covet. I don't want to sit in a row behind the plate-glass windows, but back in the private room, with a Turkey carpet beneath my feet, a mahogany desk before me, and half a dozen telephones by my side. I want my private secretary to enter the room on tiptoe—will I see an emissary from the Governors of the Bank of England?—a financial secretary to the Treasury is waiting—the greatest of American millionaires is anxious for me to lunch with him! Come along this way."

He led them to the front of the Stock Exchange. Rosina and Philip looked with amazement at the surging crowds of well-dressed men. The thrill of money-making was in the air. The shadow of unwholesome anxiety seemed lurking in the faces of the men who streamed in and out of the great building.

"These are the parasites," Matthew continued, a little contemptuously, "the slaves of the men who sit in the bank parlours of the world. Some day I shall pull the strings, and who cares to may watch the faces."

They turned away. Matthew walked apart for a few moments in absorbed silence. He was as nearly moved as ever they had seen him.

"Well," he said at last, "I have had my turn. Now you can be guide, Philip."

They took a 'bus as far as Fleet Street. Here they got out and walked slowly down the thronged thoroughfare.

"For me it is more difficult to reach the concrete," Philip expounded, "but here, on either side of us, are the newspaper offices of the country. If you listen, you can hear the roar of the machinery above the sound of the traffic. The written word of the cleverest men whom the genius of selection can bring together is being flung into type to carry its message all over the world. Somewhere up in those quieter rooms, shut off from the world by green baize doors and jealous secretaries, men sit and think. Imagine their power! The word that flows from their pen will fashion the thought of to-morrow. They let loose the dogs of war or hold them in. The power of your men in the bank parlours is great enough, Matthew, but what about these? They direct the thought of the world. The men in the bank parlours can only change its temporal fortunes."

"The Press is a great power," Matthew acknowledged tolerantly. "Broadly speaking, there is reason in what you say, but the financial papers themselves can be bought or sold. Lombard Street has only to stretch out its hand, dripping with gold, and their leading articles become nothing more nor less than advertisements."

"The financial papers are out of my scheme," Philip objected. "They do not belong to the Press proper. Come, this is only the first phase," he added. "Now for the corollary."

He led them, breathless and a little protesting, to the top of the Monument. London stretched out below them in great arteries, thoroughfares and bridges crowded with human beings and traffic.

"There the world goes," Philip said, leaning down absorbedly, "moving according to plan. Who set it going no one can say; who will stop it no one can tell. Wagons and lorries, tradesmen's carts and costers' barrows, taxicabs, automobiles and pedestrians—they are all bound for some definite rendezvous, all part of the great scheme of life."

"Not too much philosophising, please, Philip," Rosina begged, passing her arm through his.

"I don't want to philosophise at all," Philip rejoined. "I want to understand."

Matthew was a little contemptuous, wholly unsympathetic.

"What's the good of bothering about other people?" he asked bluntly. "I don't care a hang where all these crowds are going to, or what they are thinking about. I want to get at my own job, and get on with it as quickly as ever I can."

"You may get on with your own job better for understanding theirs," Philip replied. "It isn't apparent, I know, but they are all making their way down different avenues to one common end. Directly one understands that, one has sympathy, and directly one has sympathy, one begins to feel, one is conscious of the power which is only born with feeling."

Matthew was frankly bored. Philip was almost eagerly apologetic as they descended once more into the crowded thoroughfare.

"I know this sort of thing isn't much in your line, old fellow," he said, passing his arm through Matthew's, "and, of course, the silly way I express myself must make it all sound like bunkum. But there's something underneath which I can't quite get at. It's stirring there, though, and it's going to help me. I shall write stories, Matthew, and believe me, my dear commercial soul, the man in the street will buy them. Sometimes, even the people who understand cannot write. The people who crave to understand, however, nearly always can. The desire is the great thing."

"My chief desire at present," Matthew declared, looking at his watch, "is for luncheon."

They found a place close at hand, carefully selected by Matthew, who ordered the luncheon and checked each item on the bill before he paid. He then collected their shares from his two companions, and they sallied out into the street again.

"Now it's my turn!" Rosina exclaimed. "I shall probably shock you both. I am going to show you what a pagan I really am."

She took them to Bond Street and dragged them from shop window to shop window. Her face lit up as she discoursed to them of silks and laces, of Paris models, of pearls and Cartier's jewellery. She studied with frank envy the beautifully gowned women whom they passed. Once, lingering in front of a shop window, she began to laugh and pointed to their reflections.

"I wonder what Bond Street is thinking of us!" she exclaimed. "Don't let us ever forget our first appearance here!"

There was a certain quaintness about the trio, and certainly more than one passer-by turned to look at them. Both the young men were wearing ready-made suits of Norchester design, Philip a soft collar and tweed cap, Matthew a carefully-brushed bowler hat. There was something about them suggestive of the Saturday morning crowd poured into London from the north to witness a Football Final. Yet, at the same time, they each possessed something apart from the class to which their clothes and obvious lack of familiarity with their surroundings would seem to relegate them. Matthew's claims to originality consisted in his stolid but unobtrusive self-assurance, and the suggestion of power in his obstinate jaw and firm lips; Philip's in his Byronic type of face, his nervous features and restless eyes. Rosina, walking between the two, presented even more puzzling anomalies. Her primly fashioned, homely clothes were powerless to conceal the grace of her young limbs and body. Her girlish, almost childish air of delight in her surroundings, her soft, eager laughter, her complete absence of any form of self-consciousness, all lent an unanalysable distinction to her more obvious attractiveness. Passers-by turned to look after her, puzzled. The modern boulevardier found himself at fault. There was no place in his classification of the other sex for anything so entirely ingenuous and yet so charming.

"And now," Rosina declared, as they reached Piccadilly again, after having traversed both sides of Bond Street, "I am going to redeem myself a little. Come along."

She took them to the National Gallery, and again her selective instinct was almost as true as her perception for the slighter things. She revelled in many of the pictures and much of the statuary, Philip sharing to some extent her enthusiasm. She was frankly indifferent to some of the world's masterpieces, but she made no mistake in what really appealed to her. Their visit was cut short owing to Matthew's impatience. She passed her arm through his as they stood upon the steps, looking down over Trafalgar Square.

"Matthew dear," she said, "if this is boring you, I'm sorry, but I somehow feel that to-day is going to be a very important day for all of us. We have grown up together, we three. We have suffered together. This is our first day of freedom. We are all going to strike out along different paths, and I feel that, unless we understand one another, we may very soon drift a long way apart. I suppose I'm terribly frivolous because the greatest passion I feel, just now, is the love of beautiful things, but I'm trying to show you—it isn't for the body only—there's the mind and the soul, too. Come, we're going down on the Embankment now. I want to sit and look at Westminster Abbey, and see the tugs go down the river under the bridges."

They spent a desultory hour or so wandering along the Embankment, having tea at a coffee stall, watching the circling gulls and the haze on the other side of the water. The brilliancy of the summer day passed early away, little patches of white mist hung, shroudlike, over the higher stretches of the river. The sun was obscured, an oppressive heat seemed to rise from the baked pavements. There seemed to be no breath of air anywhere. Over the city, the yellow bank of clouds parted once or twice to reveal the lurid glory of a blaze of sheet lightning. Matthew rose to his feet.

"I think we'll be moving along," he suggested. "There's a storm not far away, and we haven't an umbrella between us. If we get wet through, our clothes will be spoilt."

They moved up the Savoy Hill and were caught in the stream of vehicles turning into the Savoy courtyard. A few spots of rain were falling. Rosina clutched at the arms of her two companions and dragged them up to the sheltered end, near the Theatre. They watched the people arriving—Matthew with a certain stolid interest at the display of so much wealth and luxury, Philip with half-amused, half-wistful curiosity, Rosina with a pleasure which was almost passionate in its intensity. The women looked at their best in the zephyrlike clothing of a summer night; the men, with their dazzling shirt fronts and glossy silk hats, seemed to belong to a world in which Norchester had no part. Through the great plate-glass windows, they could catch a glimpse of the maîtres d'hôtel moving about, ushering guests to their tables. From the restaurant far below, they could hear, now and then, the strains of music. Rosina clung to her two companions.

"Philip," she murmured breathlessly, "Matthew—we must hurry—we must get on quickly! You, Matthew, must make money. You, Philip, must get your stories published. I want to come here and dance with you both, and I want you to have clothes like these men, and I want to have a white lace dress like that girl who has just gone in, with white silk stockings and silver shoes, and a cloud of ermine all over me."

Philip laughed indulgently.

"The day my first novel is published," he promised, "we will all dine here."

"Before six months have passed," Matthew declared, "I shall lunch at that table by the window. In a year's time, I shall dine here whenever I choose."