Читать книгу Old Wine and New - Warwick Deeping - Страница 22

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Scarsdale took a bus to Highbury Station. It was one of those golden days in March when the heart of northern man renews its youth, and Scarsdale was feeling young and free. Amazing emancipation! In an hour or less he would have kicked off that khaki for ever, and scorning the issue of a civvy suit, reclothed himself in peaceful tweeds. He had written to his landlady at No. 24A Canonbury Square; he had asked for a fire.

And here was Upper Street—Islington uncoiling itself in the March sunlight, and Scarsdale, on top of his red bus, looked at the familiar buildings like a man reviewing the days of his youth. The Angel, the Agricultural Hall, “Collins”, Roberts’s row of windows. To Scarsdale it was a street of splendour because it was friendly and familiar, and on that afternoon in March his eyes were not open to its shabbiness, nor to its air of faded and distressful gentility.

He got off at Highbury Station, and strolled across to take a look at Highbury Fields, and the row of grave old houses. Yes, this was England, solid, kindly England, decorus, a little grey, suddenly beautiful and suddenly hideous. He loved it, yes even the ugliness that man had made, for it seemed so much part of himself, and of his memories. He remembered summer evenings on a seat under those trees, with a book and a pipe, and a sense of life lyrical even in suburbia. He wanted to get back into his old self, back to that comfortable routine with its pleasant, platitudinous, go as you please philosophy.

He walked along the familiar streets to Canonbury Square. How respectable they were, a little shabby and dull perhaps, but so solid and reassuring. He came to the square and stood a moment, and thought how small it looked, with its railed garden in the centre, and its flat-faced houses with their rows of windows and doors. There were Lent lilies in flower, and lilacs were brilliant with green shoots.

No. 24A was in the right-hand far corner. Scarsdale felt excited as he approached its yellow brick and stucco, and its brown front door. He looked up at the balcony, and saw the two windows under their shallow arches, his windows. How comfortable and reassuring!

He rang the bell, and almost at once the door was opened. He saw Miss Lydia Gall standing there, the same Miss Gall, and yet she was different. He had remembered her as a tall, thin woman with prominent teeth, and eyes big and bulbous behind high-powered pince-nez, one of those women who are all edges. Her face had always been colourless, and running to nose and teeth and chin, while her hair seemed strained back from her forehead as though an invisible hand held Miss Gall well gripped. But Scarsdale’s impression of her was that of a woman yellow and thin, with teeth protruding hungrily, and hollow places even in her thinness. Miss Gall looked starved.

He saluted her. He was glad to see Miss Gall, for she was part of the comfortable past, a little too “refained” perhaps, but calculable. He was smiling, even though he was wondering why she looked so faded.

“Well,—here we are, at last, Miss Gall. It’s good to be back. You got my letter?”

Suddenly, and with just a momentary blinking of the eyes, Miss Gall burst into tears. They ran down her flat cheeks and blurred her glasses, and she felt in a blouse for a handkerchief that was not there.

“O, dear,—Mr. Scarsdale,—I really must apologize, but I’m not quite—”

Her lips trembled; her face was all puckered up; her emotion had an absurd, pathetic futility, and she seemed conscious of its futility.

“Really,—I’m ashamed; so unlike me.”

She stood back and let him into the familiar passage with its brown linoleum and its drain-pipe for umbrellas, its fumed oak hat-stand, and its photographs in gilt frames. A draught blew from somewhere, and in that narrow passage Scarsdale felt a little chilly breath of tragedy. Something shivered. Miss Gall after closing the door, seemed to rustle by him like a pale and desiccated leaf.

He was troubled. The sun was not shining here, and there was a something in the woman’s poor, scared face that moved him to pity. She looked frightened, and her fear infected him.

He said—“Have you been ill?”

No, she had not been ill. She forced an icy animation, as though terrified by the very suggestion that she could be ill.

“It’s such a comfort to have you back, sir. I hope—I’m sure—you will be just as comfortable. I have had your trunks unpacked and your clothes aired.”

She loitered at the foot of the stairs, her hands clasped as though she might wring them, were the provocation supplied. Scarsdale’s face was in the shadow. He spoke gently.

“I’ll go up. The old rooms. I have often dreamed of them.”

He went up, and she followed him, and hesitated, and then climbed a few more steps, and stood with one hand on the rail. Scarsdale had opened the door of the sitting-room, and he saw the sun shining in on the same faded Axminster carpet, and the blue plush curtains at the windows, and his desk, and the upholstered armchair facing the fireplace. But the room was different; he missed things, a corner cupboard and its china, a mahogany bookcase, two chairs that had been christened Hepplewhite. And there was no fire.

He stood, wondering. He became aware of that figure in black hesitant in the doorway. He had a feeling that if he did not say something kind that poor starved face would crack. She was watching him so anxiously.

“Sunny and clean as ever.”

There was a moment of silence.

“I do hope—I—I had to sell one or two things. You see—”

And suddenly he did see, pieces of china going gradually, the war on the home front, a woman short of food.

He was looking at the empty grate, and his face had grown sad, and she was watching it. She thought that he was annoyed.

“I couldn’t manage a fire. You see—things are so difficult, so dear. And the rationing. One has to keep the coal for cooking, Mr. Scarsdale. I’m so very sorry.”

Her frightened voice pleaded, and he turned and smiled at her.

“O, that’s quite all right. Things must have been rather hard over here.”

Her eyes blinked and grew moist.

“You always were a gentleman, Mr. Scarsdale, so considerate.”

He wanted to say to her—“Look here, you’ve been starving yourself. You have had no butter, no sugar, no meat,” but he knew that at the moment such things could not be said. Some women are such devoted fools, they deny themselves to spoil that greedy creature—man.