Читать книгу Old Wine and New - Warwick Deeping - Страница 16

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Martagon Terrace diverged from the King’s Road. It was old Chelsea, if not quite porcelain, and the office of Messrs. Jimson & Stent had adapted the front of No. 8 Martagon Terrace to the business of real estate. Two broad windows and a glass door abutted on the pavement. Mr. Jimson and his wife lived in the house above, which was of the Dickens period, dark brick and white window sashes, though the interior had to conform to Mrs. Jimson’s ideas upon art.

Julia Marwood had a key of her own and could let herself into the office. Usually she arrived about a quarter to nine, in time to open the wire letter basket attached to the door, and to deal with the morning’s mail. She sat at a flat-topped desk in the right-hand window, and screened from the street by yellow muslin blinds. Mr. Jimson sat at the desk in the other window when he was not conducting some private affair in the inner office. Mr. Stent was dead. An inarticulate youth in spectacles completed the firm’s staff, for Messrs. Jimson & Stent were not in a large way of business.

After three years in this Chelsea office Julia Marwood had absorbed all that there was to be learnt about the selling and letting of houses. Also she knew much that needed knowing about Mr. Paul Jimson. The most significant and suppressing fact was that he was afraid of her. He had not been afraid of her father; there had been occasions when he had been impolite to Mr. Marwood and his clerk had swallowed the affront with an air of sombre sulkiness. But Mr. Jimson in his most fussy and worried moments had never been impolite to Julia.

For the truth was she would not lie. Had she considered this peculiarity of hers impersonally she would not have counted it a virtue. Her obstinate exactitude resembled some physical idiosyncrasy, like a loathing of fat, or a distaste for vinegar or people with pale eyelashes. It was part of a kind of personal fastidiousness, a kink in the fibre of her pride, and very early in their business relationship Mr. Jimson had found his adroit ankles entangled in the tethering rope of her veracity. There had been an argument about the state of the drains in a certain house and Mr. Jimson had shown an inclination to skip delicately and imaginatively over unsalubrious realities. Miss Marwood had pulled him up.

He should have disentangled himself and got rid of her, but he didn’t. Like most people who deal in embellishments and inexactitudes, his moral courage was shaky when challenged. He had not regarded Miss Marwood’s presence in the office as permanent; her father would return. Moreover, she really was a very reliable young woman, tactful and thorough; she could handle people; she was amazingly mature for her age; she did not suffer from lapses and temperamental instabilities. Mr. Jimson respected her, which was another way of saying that, as a rather circuitous person, he was afraid of her directness.

Julia unlocked the office door of No. 8, placed her attaché-case on her desk, hung up her hat and coat behind the screen in the corner, and removed the morning’s mail from the letter basket at the door. She began the day’s routine as she always began it. The lid of the typewriter was removed; a feather duster was whisked over the desks and letter-trays and files. Then she sat down to deal with the letters, knowing that at five minutes to nine Bates would enter, remove his bowler hat, and rub his very large boots vigorously on the doormat.

“Good morning, Miss Marwood.”

“Good morning.”

His devoted spectacles glimmered at her shyly. He blushed. He was as unfinished and as awkward as his boots, and a suppliant at her more decided feet. He was given to self-conscious clearings of the throat, and sudden, fatuous smiles.

“Rather dull this morning.”

“Much as usual.”

She was abrupt with Bates. She suppressed him, for spectacled and nervous devotion in a closed compartment measuring some fifteen feet by twelve was apt to be a nuisance. There was no room for it. She passed him the letters to be entered up.

Then Mr. Jimson arrived from the inner office, half screened by the morning paper which his wife would not allow him to read at breakfast, and Julia saw him as a neat little pair of grey and black striped trousers, a sleek small head, and a pair of pince-nez perched on a long, thin nose. Mr. Jimson was both musical and ritualistic; he attended St. Ethelburga’s Church in South Kensington, and wore a little cross of gold dangling from his watch-chain. He had a trick of fingering that cross, especially so when he was engaged in mellifluous persuadings and reassurings. It was as though he displayed it as a hall-mark. When fingering it most nervously Julia knew that he was on the edge of inexactitudes.

Standing there with the paper spread, his little feet close together, he reminded Julia of a lectern. With his head slightly on one side, he looked at her over the top of the paper. His scrutiny was always polite and faintly anxious. He had a way of pursing up his lips. Had he not once advised her—“Miss Marwood, always be polite—but firm.”

He rustled the paper.

“Excellent news. These Huns—”

He seemed to invite her to be truculent. She should remember her poor father, and exult with him. The barbarians were broken.

Her handsome pallor was confronting other destinies.

“Nothing of importance this morning, sir.”

She called him sir. It helped to keep the official furniture properly adjusted. She had more than a feeling that she was indispensable to Mr. Jimson. He had grown fussy and careless and worried, a strange combination of qualities, but then man was a strange creature. Julia’s study of the male had uncovered in him profundities of moral cowardice. Besides, she knew so much.

She said abruptly but quietly—“Do you mind if I have an hour off this morning? Private business, sir.”

Mr. Jimson looked at her suspiciously, with his head still more on one side. Was she contemplating taking another post, a more lucrative post?

“By all means. Miss Marwood. Something personal?”

“Quite. I want to consult my lawyer.”