Читать книгу The Anxious Days - Philip Gibbs - Страница 6

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In Oxford Street there was another legion standing ten deep on the pavement outside the façade of a great shop with tall Corinthian columns above a mass of masonry illuminated by some method of flood-lighting which made the pillars gleam white and cast black shadows between them into the deep recesses. It was a building of heavy magnificence, deliberately grandiose, like the palace of a Roman Emperor rebuilt in London. It had golden gates with the emblem of the fasces on them. Crystal torches flung their light down upon thousands of upturned faces. It was the House of Horridge.

An endless stream of motor-cars flowed along Oxford Street between the crowds, and swirled round this building to entrances behind. Mr. Horridge was giving a party to his customers and friends, whom he had invited to watch the Election results between intervals for refreshment and dancing. In London that night there were many women, and some men, more interested in Mr. Horridge’s party than in the political fate of their nation. Their eager faces pressed forward on each side of the red carpet under the awning which sheltered the entrance, as people in evening clothes came out of the arriving cars and hurried into the light and warmth behind the plate-glass windows.

The crowd had quick glimpses of lovely ladies in silk or ermine cloaks, with jewels in their hair, and of men whose faces above white ties and gleaming shirt-fronts seemed familiar to them now and then. They nudged each other and called back to friends behind them.

“George du Maurier! Yes, that’s ’im. Looks like a prize-fighter, don’t ’e? ... Gladys Cooper? Well, I believe so. ’Aven’t seen her nearer than the pit. Thin legs, you know! ... ’Oo’s that old girl in the tiara? Some duchess, I wouldn’t be surprised. Buys ’er nicknacks in the bargain basement.... If that isn’t Tallulah, I’ll eat my hat. ’Ullo, Tallulah? Oh, you naughty puss!”

Those names, familiar as household words, arrived somewhat later in the evening than the first tide of guests who poured into the big shop. The theatrical profession came on after eleven o’clock, by which time many hundreds of Mr. Horridge’s customers and friends had already assembled, and many Election results had been declared. But the early arrivals were equally distinguished, if not so familiar to the crowd. Mr. H. G. Wells had arrived with a little lady in a hooped skirt who waved her programme and cried “Hooray!” every time there was a Labour gain, to the amusement of Mr. Wells, and the annoyance of her neighbours who were followers of Mr. Baldwin. Other literary gentlemen had come to the House of Horridge, laying aside their typewriters or their fountain pens, and forgetting, or at least thrusting back into their subconsciousness, the plots of plays, novels, and short stories in order to see this drama of actuality in English history. Sisters of their craft were in even greater strength of numbers, and the practised eye might find them, or some of them, by the length of their cigarette-holders—one cannot write if smoke is curling into one’s eyes—and by a slight defiance of fashion, or at least a touch of originality not devised by the Mussolinis of millinery.

There was the author of the latest “best seller”, condemned to the flames of hell—and magnificently advertised—by that austere moralist, Mr. James Douglas. She was a young creature with her pretty back bare to her waist, looking as innocent as a German doll. There also was the young author of a book of reminiscences in which, with disconcerting candour, a lady of adventure revealed her love affairs with men who failed to remember her. Her dark, brooding eyes roved round the assembly on the top floor of Horridge’s as though seeking for other victims, or searching for half-forgotten loves. As though in a solitude, she painted her lips again.

It was no solitude. Downstairs, Mr. Horridge’s guests surged through the side entrance, and, after giving up their coats and cloaks, made their way to golden lifts, served by young women in long fawn coats with breeches to match, and Tudor caps of the same cloth, neat and charming to see. There were many peers and peeresses of ancient lineage or more modern creation, whose ancestors would have died of shame or apoplexy if a son or daughter of theirs had “gone into trade”, but who, in more democratic days, had gratefully accepted this invitation from the most distinguished shopkeeper in London.

Some of them had already applied to him for jobs in any of his departments, on behalf of nephews and nieces who were anxious to earn three pounds a week, or less, after college careers and subsequent restlessness. Some of the nephews and nieces were there on the dancing-floor, fresh and elegant and amused. Surely a man might have thought, rashly, that all the prettiest women, the most flowerlike girls of England, were here to-night in the House of Horridge, unless he had remembered that there were thousands of others elsewhere waiting for the Election results, in the London clubs, in the great restaurants, in country houses and suburban homes.

Financial gentlemen with a slightly worried look because of bad trade and lean days on the Stock Exchange rubbed shoulders with poets, painters, architects, journalists, film stars, play producers, and types of all professions. There was even a Dean, smiling above a broad chest at pretty ladies who waggled fingers at him and said “Hullo, Dean!” as he shouldered his way towards them. Mr. Horridge, who stood receiving his guests with the dignity of an American senator and the consciousness of power earned by hard work, personality, and a genius for the adventure of trade, had many friends that night.

Some of the visitors to the Big Shop, who knew their way about, or were eager to explore, went up by lifts to the roof garden, from which they could see a panorama of London below a grey sky flushed by the lights of the great city, and down into the deep gulf of Oxford Street, where the massed crowd turned white faces up to the boards which signalled the Election results.

Labour gain.

Every time those words flashed out a deep-throated roar of cheers rose from the street and shattered against the Corinthian pillars.

Up on the roof garden a girl with bare shoulders shivered and clutched the arm of a young man who was leaning over the balustrade, almost invisible in his blackness, except for the tiny glow of his cigarette.

“Very dramatic,” said the girl, “but I’m catching pneumonia!”

“Let’s drown our sorrows in drink, dear lady,” said the young man. “It looks as though Labour——” He stumbled against a small tree in a green tub, and said, “Holy Snakes!”

Down on the dancing-floor were many attractive-looking couples swaying to the rhythm of a jazz band. Through the pillars leading to another room covering an acre of floor space six hundred of the guests or more had found seats in front of a stage where a variety entertainment was provided by Mr. Horridge to entertain them while waiting for new results shouted through loud speakers and exhibited in columns of names and figures. Two performers, dressed like Italian organ-grinders, were making a loud din with drums and concertinas. One of them had a small monkey on his big drum. It peered with screwed-up eyes at all these cousins in the crowd, and at every bang of the big drum took off its cap.

The music faded out. The voice of the announcer bellowed “Labour gain!” The monkey scratched itself.

On the outer edge of the dancing-floor the young man who had been on the roof garden with the girl who had shivered stared with an expression of ironical amusement at the crowd and the dancing couples. The band was playing again, and a saxophone chuckled above the beat of drums.

“Nero fiddles while Rome burns,” he remarked brightly. “Come and do a foxtrot, Birdie.”