Chapter Eight: MISS MATFIELD’S NEW YEAR

I

A day or two before Mr. Golspie returned, Miss Matfield, sitting with cold feet and a novel she disliked in the 13 bus, realised with a shock that it was nearly Christmas. The shops she passed every day in the bus along Regent Street and Oxford Street had been celebrating Christmas for some time; and it was weeks since they had first broken out into their annual crimson rash of holly berries, robins, and Father Christmasses. The shops, followed by the illustrated papers, began it so early, with their full chorus of advertising managers and window dressers, shouting “Christmas Is Here,” at a time when it obviously wasn’t, that when it did actually come creeping up, you had forgotten about it. Miss Matfield told herself this, and then remembered that every year her mother used to cry, “What, nearly Christmas already! I never thought it was so near. It’s taken me completely by surprise, this year.” Yes, every year she used to say that, and year after year, Miss Matfield would tease her about it. And now, Miss Matfield told herself, she had begun to say it, just as if she was on the point of becoming forgetful and absurd and middle-aged. Oh—foul! She stared out of the window. Those two miles of Xmas Gifts and lavish electric lighting and artificial holly leaves and cotton wool snow were still rolling past. The festive season—help! It was all an elaborate stunt to persuade everybody to spend money buying useless things for everybody else. She tried her novel again: The months passed, and still Jeffrey made no sign. He had not forgiven her. In despair, Jenifer accepted an invitation to join the Mainwarings in Madeira, returned to a gay but feverish fortnight in Chelsea (where John Anderson sought her out everywhere and never left her side), and then appeared, still smiling, still audacious, but with a vaguely haunted look, at Cap d’Antibes. It was there she heard that Jeffrey had been seen at Miami—“And with Gloria Judge, my dear.” And that was quite enough of that. Who cared what happened to Jenifer and Jeffrey, the pair of ninnies? And why were all these novels always filled with people who spent all their time travelling about to mere resorts and spas, and deciding whom to live with next? Nobody ever did any work in them.

She returned to the subject of Christmas. It was, on the whole, she decided, revolting. You gave people a lot of silly things, diaries and calendars and rot, or useful things that were not right, gloves of the wrong size and stockings of the wrong shade (and she would have to be thinking out her presents now, and she was terribly hard up); and they in their turn gave you silly things and the useful things that were not right. You ate masses of food you didn’t want (and even Dr. Matfield, who had ideas about diet, said it didn’t matter at Christmas), and then you sat about, pretending to be jolly, but really stodged, sleepy, headachy, and in urgent need of bicarbonate of soda. If you stayed at home, you yawned, tried to convince your mother that you hadn’t a rich secret life you were hiding from her, and drearily sampled the family supply of literature. If you went out, you had to pretend you were having a marvellous time because you were wearing hats from crackers and playing pencil and paper games (“Let me see, a river beginning with ‘V’?”). And what was so terribly depressing and revolting about it all was that it was possible to imagine a really good Christmas, the adult equivalent of the enchanting Christmasses of childhood, the sort of Christmas that people always thought they were going to have and never did have. As the bus stopped by the dark desolation of Lord’s cricket-ground, swallowed two women who were all parcels, comic hats, and fuss (a sure sign this that Christmas was near, for you never saw these parcels-and-comic-hat women any other time), and then rolled on, Miss Matfield took out from its secret recess that dream of a Christmas. She was in an old house in the country somewhere, with firelight and candlelight reflected in the polished wood surfaces; by her side, adoring her, was a vague figure, a husband, tall, strong, not handsome perhaps but distinguished; two or three children, vague too, nothing but laughter and a gleam of curls; friends arriving, delightful people—“Hello,” they cried. “What a marvellous place you’ve got here! I say, Lilian!”; some smiling servants; logs on the fires, snow falling outside, old silver shining on the mahogany dining table, and “Darling, you look wonderful in that thing,” said the masculine shadow in his deep thrilling voice. “Oh, you fool, stop it,” Miss Matfield cried to herself. She had only brought out that nonsensical stuff to annoy herself. She liked reminding herself how silly she could be. It braced her.

She would go home, as usual, for Christmas, and on the way there she would look forward to it and imagine that this time it was going to be rather nice, and once she was there she would wonder how she could have thought it would be anything but depressing. All as usual. Still, it would be a change, a break in what had lately been the very dull round of the office and the Burpenfield. Never had the round been duller. The Burpenfield was getting worse; Evelyn Ansdell—lucky child!—had gone off with her absurd father; and nobody amusing had arrived. She had not met a single interesting new person for ages. Then, life in Angel Pavement had merely been so much typewriter-pounding since the one amusing person there, Mr. Golspie, had been away. Mr. Golspie, she admitted to herself, with unusual candour, was amusing, easily the most amusing person on the horizon—bless him!—and she would be glad when he came back. It would be fun, if only one had the cheek and courage to do it, to bring Mr. Golspie into the Club, to introduce him to Tatters, to say “Miss Tattersby, this is the only amusing man I know just now.” But—O Lord!—she must keep off Tatters. In the Club, they talked about Tatters day and night.

She had further proof of this, if she had wanted it, when she reached the Club, for on the landing outside her room she met the depressing Miss Kersey. “Is that you, Matfield?” Kersey wailed, all damp and droopy as usual. “Don’t, don’t, go near Tatters to-night, whatever you do. I went in to ask her about sub-letting my room and she simply snapped my head off, didn’t give me an earthly chance to tell her when I wanted to sub-let or anything. She just flew at me, Matfield, as if I’d been caught stealing or something. Isn’t Tatters really awful? And yet the last time I went in, she was as nice as anything and even asked me about my sister, the one who’s gone to Burma. I won’t go near her now for months,” she added, really enjoying the fact that Miss Tattersby could be so ferocious, so unpredictable in manner. “I’ll send her notes as some of the others always do. Don’t you go near her to-night.”

Miss Matfield said she had no intention of doing so, and then hurried into her room, where she came to the conclusion, as she tidied herself for dinner, that it was really Tatters who made the Burpenfield endurable for people like Kersey, for she gave their lives a colouring of danger and drama, poor old things. At dinner, she had to share a table with Isabel Cadnam, the languid Morrison, and a recent arrival who had taken Evelyn Ansdell’s old room, and annoyed Miss Matfield just because she was not Evelyn Ansdell. But, apart from that, this new girl was an irritating creature. Her name was Snaresbrook; she had untidy dark hair, huge staring eyes (heavily made up), and white, flabby, sagging cheeks; and she was soulful, gushing and psychic. So far she had been a great success because she went round talking to people about themselves very sympathetically, offering to tell their fortunes, and going in tremendously for this heart-to-heart business. Miss Matfield, a tougher subject than most, refused to be taken in. When she sat down the other three were already there, and were talking about work.

“I’ll bet you’ll agree, Mattie,” said Miss Cadnam.

“What’s that?” inquired Miss Matfield.

“I was just saying that it’s part of the cussedness of everything that nearly every girl here has the wrong job, I mean, if you like one kind of thing, then it’s ten to one you have to work in a place where it’s all another kind of thing. I’ve just discovered that Snaresbrook here works for a film renting show, and she loathes it⁠——”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Miss Snaresbrook put in softly in her soulful contralto, “because I don’t loathe anybody. I don’t think one ought to⁠——”

“I do,” said Miss Morrison. “I loathe nearly everybody. I think the world’s full of people who are absolutely foul.”

“No, I don’t loathe these film people. But I do feel they’re not my own kind. I don’t feel really sympathetic towards them, and I feel there is work of a better kind waiting for me.” And Miss Snaresbrook turned her huge staring eyes, like the headlights of a car, round the table.

“That’s just what I’m saying,” cried the excitable Caddie. “Now I’d adore to work at a film place; just my style. And here I am, assistant secretary to the League of the Divine Lotus, and I’m sure you’d adore that, wouldn’t you, Snaresbrook? Whereas, if you don’t mind my saying so, I think these Divine Lotus people are all too sloppy to live, and the minute they begin to talk now, they get on my nerves. If I stay there much longer I’ll go potty too and break out into robes and mystic stars and Wisdom from the East. If anybody mentions the East now, I want to scream. A lot of fat film men smoking cigars would be a marvellous change. And to go to trade shows if you want to—marvellous!”

“You two ought to swop jobs,” said Miss Matfield. “Then you’d both be satisfied. What about that, Caddie?”

“That’s just where the cussedness comes in. They’d never have the right ones. It’s the same with nearly everybody here. If you’re heavily West End, you’re landed with a job at a wholesale cheap milliner’s somewhere in the City⁠——”

“Revolting!” murmured Miss Morrison.

“And if you’re a wild Socialist or something, like that Colenberg girl, you find yourself secretary to Lady Thomson-Greggs in Berkeley Square and grumble like anything because the place is stiff with footmen. I told Ivor about that, the other night, and he said I ought to write an article about it for the papers.”

“Why don’t you?” said Miss Snaresbrook. “I’m sure you could write. You have the gift of expression. I don’t think I’ve looked at your hand yet, have I? I’m sure it’s written in your hand.”

Miss Matfield looked across the table in time to catch a disgusted glance from Morrison, whose grey eyes had also the gift of expression and announced quite clearly that Snaresbrook was revolting. “Well, I don’t think much of my job,” said Miss Matfield, “but I don’t know that I particularly want anybody else’s here. The fact is, they’re all pretty rotten, and that’s the real trouble. We don’t any of us get a chance to do anything really important. They’re all silly little mechanical jobs. If we were men, we’d be doing something decent now. What chance has a girl? The rot they talk about women working! The men jolly well see where all the decent jobs go to. And you know it.”

“True, Miss Matfield,” said Miss Snaresbrook, turning on all the sympathetic stops. “I feel it’s particularly unjust in your case. A girl with a strong character like you is entitled to an important, responsible post. We have a long way to go yet. Men are still trying to hold women back, to keep them in inferior places. And their attitude! The things some of those film men have said to me!” She sighed, then switched on the headlights.

“Yes, I’ll bet they’re a tough crowd,” said Caddie cheerfully, “but that ought to make it amusing. Men are easy enough to handle. It’s women who are so awful. There are some frightful old cats among those Lotus creatures. They come swarming and drooping all over you, and all the time they’re poking their long noses into your affairs and making up the most fiendish lies. Give me men. I wish there were some in this club.”

“Miss Cadnam, you don’t really,” said Miss Snaresbrook reproachfully.

“Yes, she does, and so do I,” said Miss Morrison, roused for once from her languid disgust, “and so will you when you’ve been here as long as we have. I’m not so terribly keen on men—most of them are pretty foul, so far as I can see—but a few here would be a pleasant change. The ones we do get as visitors are usually fairly hopeless, but even then I like to see them down here, trying to pretend they don’t mind the foul food. There are too many girls here. Ugh! Too much feminine slush and slop. Too much powder and lipstick and cold cream. Too many stockings and silk jumpers. Too many hot-water bottles and bedroom slippers. Too much messiness and brightness and depressingness and sympathy. Every time I hear some man clumping about here, and see him sit down, all solid and thick, I’m delighted—I don’t care how terrible he is. Too many women about. Revolting!”

“Whoops!” cried Caddie. “Go on, my dear. Don’t stop now.”

“Talk about girls living their own independent lives!” Miss Morrison continued, pink and defiant. “It’s a marvel to me that after living here a year or two and being faced with the prospect of living here for donkey’s years like some of the poor old things⁠——”

“Oh, don’t!” Miss Matfield groaned.

“I say that it’s a marvel to me we don’t just marry anybody, anybody at all, or, failing that, run away with somebody. A place like this simply encourages wild matrimony and risky adventures. And if there isn’t more of it, I’ll tell you why. It’s not just because we’re all such ni-ice, ni-ice girls, so ni-icely brought up, but because there aren’t many chances going about.”

“Oh, aren’t there, Morrison?” said Caddie. “Speak for yourself.”

“I’m not speaking for myself or for anybody in particular⁠——”

“You’re certainly not speaking for me, Miss Morrison,” said Miss Snaresbrook, with large, sweet, forgiving smile. “I like the society of men, but I like the society of other girls too. Whoever they are, I find they interest me, and we have something to say to one another, very often some little secret to share, some confession to make. Of course, I admit those little clairvoyant gifts of mine have helped me a great deal, and have brought me friends, dear friends, among girls who probably imagined at first that they and I hadn’t much in common. And I’m sure I intend to enjoy my-self at the Burpenfield.” And, smiling sympathetically at them all, she rose and left the table.

“And I hope it keeps fine for you,” muttered Miss Morrison to her retreating back. “You know, of the many ghastly specimens who have turned up here this year, I think that one the worst.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Miss Cadnam. “She’s not so bad, really⁠——”

“That’s because she’s going to read Caddie’s palm to find her gift of expression,” Miss Matfield explained.

“Of course it is,” said Miss Morrison. “You’re feeble, Caddie. I saw you swallowing the bait, as if you’d just been born. Vile!”

“Have you people realised that it’s nearly Christmas?” said Miss Matfield as they moved upstairs, where they could smoke.

“My dear Mattie,” cried Miss Cadnam, “you don’t mean to say you’ve only just found that out! I’ve bought all my presents and sent half of them off. If I don’t send some of my people very early presents, they never remember to send me anything.”

“Christmas, yes,” said Miss Morrison, with languid distaste. “Isn’t it foul? I haven’t bought a thing yet, haven’t even made out a list. Anyhow, I haven’t any money. I loathe Christmas, even though one does have a holiday. What good is it? Are you going home, Matfield?”

“Yes. I always do.”

“So am I. It’s pretty ghastly. It wasn’t so bad before my brother went out to the Sudan. We used to have rather an amusing time.”

“But you’ve another brother, haven’t you, Morrison? I thought I saw him here once.”

“Yes, Anthony. He’s at Cambridge, researching. By the way,” Miss Morrison continued, “he wants to come along early next week and bring his researching friend Jiggs or Hoggs or something and take me and any lady friend o’ mine out for what passes for a gay evening up in the Cambridge research labs. If either of you is dying to come, you can, but I don’t advise it. I’m trying to get out of it.”

“I thought you were bursting to go round with a few men, Morrison.”

“No, it’s not as bad as all that. I’ve tried this before. Anthony, my brother, is pretty glum and dumb—quite different from Tom, the Sudan one—and his researching friend, Higgs or Joggs, is the limit. He’s frightfully tall and awkward, with very short hair, a very long nose, and spectacles, and when you try to make conversation with him, he thinks you’re asking scientific questions. If he doesn’t know exactly, he just says ‘I don’t know’; but if he does know, he explains all about it, gives you a short lecture, and then completely shuts up. It’s like being back at school, only worse. He’s a horror. Anthony, of course, adores him, and thinks he’s conferring an immense favour on you by bringing this monster. He said to me, ‘One day you’ll be proud to think you’ve talked to Jiggs’—or Hoggs. And so I told him I wasn’t ambitious and I’d risk having missed the great Higgs. No, on second thoughts, you can’t come. I’m definitely going to put him off. Talking about Joggs has brought it all back too clearly.”

“Hello!” cried Miss Cadnam, looking at her watch. “I must fly.”

“Ivor?”

“Ivor—thank God! We’re supposed to be in the middle of another row, but I know he’ll be there.”

“What a ridiculous pair!” said Miss Matfield, smiling, as she watched Caddie leave the lounge.

“Who? Caddie and her Ivor? Oh, quite mad, of course, from what I’ve heard about them. Still,” said Miss Morrison carefully, “it does pass the time for her, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, it does a lot more than that. Caddie lives a wonderfully dramatic life. She probably would, anyhow, if there wasn’t Ivor to quarrel with and then make it up with. She and Evelyn Ansdell were the only two people here I’ve ever envied, because they both contrived to have an exciting life all the time, even if they were absurd. I think I shall have to find a nice little Ivor.” And Miss Matfield gave a short laugh.

“You don’t lead a double life or anything of that kind, do you, Matfield?” Miss Morrison inquired, almost wistfully.

“Heavens, no! What do you mean?”

“Let’s have another cigarette, shall we? Make a night of it. I only meant—well, it’s a compliment, really⁠——”

“It doesn’t sound like one.”

“Well, I meant that you looked as if you had a more interesting sort of life going on somewhere. You go down to your office in the City—it is in the City, isn’t it?—yes, I remember your telling me it was—and you come back here and don’t seem to do anything much, but at the same time you look quite alive, as if something’s happening somewhere.”

“It isn’t.” Miss Matfield laughed, then lit her cigarette. “I wish it was. All perfectly dull, respectable, ordinary. A typical Burpenfield existence.”

“Oh, foul! Well, I’m disappointed in you, I really am, Matfield. I’ve been suspecting some time that you were a dark horse. Tell me, what sort of men are there in that office of yours. Did I ever tell you I was in the City once? I nearly died. I don’t believe it was a typical City place at all, though I was only there a week. There were four men there, two young ones with adenoids and whiny voices, who always called me ‘Miss,’ and two older ones with red faces and waxed moustaches who either shouted at me at the top of their voices or came over slimy and breathed down my neck and put their hot hands on my shoulder. Revolting! Don’t tell me they’re all like that. What are your lot like?”

They were in a quiet corner of the lounge, which was not so full as usual, indeed almost empty, and Miss Matfield found herself drifting into a fairly detailed description of the people in Angel Pavement, concluding at some length with the newest arrival there, Mr. Golspie. She ended with an account of her visit to the Lemmala, the foreign sailors, the cabin, the vodka, all the strange romantic accessories. She described it well, and Miss Morrison, who appeared to have dropped her usual attitude of languid disdain towards this life, listened eagerly.

“But, my dear Matfield,” she cried when it was done, “I think that was a most amusing adventure. I like the sound of that man, even if he is middle-aged and what not. Now, if I met people like that when I went to work, I wouldn’t grumble. No such luck, not in Anglo-Catholic and ladies’ bridge circles in Bayswater—nothing but old tabbies. I think I shall have to try the City again, after all. I didn’t know there were such entertaining, mysterious, brigandish sort of men down there.”

“That’s exactly what Mr. Golspie is—brigandish.”

“Quite right, too. I’m all for it. You ought to lure him in here, so that I can meet him. But tell him to shave off that large moustache first.”

“Why should I? It doesn’t matter to me. I’m not going to kiss him,” Miss Matfield added quickly, without thinking what she was saying.

“No, I suppose you’re not,” said Miss Morrison meditatively. “By the way, has he suggested you should?”

“No, of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. I believe you’re suffering from a complex, Morrison. Why should he?”

“Oh, I don’t know. He sounds vaguely like it to me. I don’t mean he sounded like those awful creatures with waxed moustaches that I worked for—not a bit. Quite a different type. But still⁠—— However, I’ll say no more. Did you say he was away, this mystery man? When is he coming back? Quite soon? All right, Matfield, you must tell me more about this, you really must. I’m interested for once in my young but embittered life. You must tell me more.”

“There won’t be anything to tell,” said Miss Matfield casually. “I think I’ll write home, think about Christmas presents, have a bath, and go to bed early. Good-night, Morrison.” No, of course, there wouldn’t be anything to tell. And if there was, it was no business of Morrison’s. (But Morrison was not a bad sort, much better than she used to appear to be.) But then, there wouldn’t be. Absurd.

II

“Just read that over, please, Miss Matfield,” said Mr. Dersingham, and then listened self-consciously. “Does that sound all right to you?” he inquired, when she had done. “I want to send them—y’know—a jolly stiff letter. They’ve asked for it, by George!”

“I think it sounds rather feeble,” replied Miss Matfield. She had no respect for Mr. Dersingham; he was too vague, pink, and flabby; he was like too many men she had met at home, the sort who cry “Shooting!” when somebody makes a good stroke at tennis; he did not really exist, in her eyes, as an individual at all; there were hundreds, thousands of him. She knew that though he might be her employer he was really frightened of her. Impossible for her to have any respect for him. Quite a decent fellow, of course, but then the place is stiff with dull, decent fellows; a few fascinating crooks would be a change.

“Oh, I don’t know about that, Miss Matfield,” he said. “Seems to me to touch ’em up a bit. What’s wrong with it exactly?”

“I should change it—there”—she pointed—“and there, don’t you think so?” What was it like being Mrs. Dersingham, she wondered, and came to the conclusion that it must be rather fussing half the day, boring the other half, but on the whole pleasanter than being Lilian Matfield at the Burpenfield. But that was leaving out Dersingham himself. She couldn’t marry him. Help! She stared at his nose, which was quite a healthy, sound nose, slightly bulbous, a shiny pink deepening to a fishy red at the blunted tip; there was really nothing wrong with it; nevertheless, it annoyed her; it was a silly nose. What was Mrs. Dersingham’s real opinion now, of that nose? Did she think it was marvellous? Was she indifferent to it? Had she been irritated by it so long that she was ready to scream at the very thought of that nose?

Happily unconscious of what was buzzing about in the dark head so close to his, Mr. Dersingham frowned down upon the letter he was answering, an evasive, slinking, slimy letter from the mysterious fellow who ran the Alexander Imperial Furnishing Company. “He’s a dirty dog, y’know, Miss Matfield,” he mused. “This is the fourth letter he’s sent explaining why he can’t pay, and every time it’s a different excuse. By the way, remind me to send Sandycroft a note, telling him not to call there any more. All right, I’ll write something shorter and stronger. ‘Unless our account is settled within the next fourteen days, we shall be obliged to take—what is it?—proceedings.’ Something like that, eh? Right you are, then. Cancel that one. We’ll start again.”

That did not take long. The note to Sandycroft could be left to Miss Matfield. She was given several letters that Mr. Smeeth could attend to, and then there was nothing left. “I’m expecting Mr. Golspie back this morning,” said Mr. Dersingham. “He’ll probably have some letters for you. He rang me up last night, at home, to say he’d just arrived and would be down this morning. Just take this lot, will you? Half a minute, though, I must have another look at that North-Western and Trades Furnishing letter. Hang on a minute.”

Miss Matfield, hanging on, found she was quite excited by the prospect of seeing Mr. Golspie again so soon, though they had been expecting him to return any time these last few days. It was not quite three weeks since she had stood by his side on the deck of that steamer in the Thames, but, nevertheless, Mr. Golspie, strictly as a person, a face, a body, a voice, had become curiously dim and unreal, though as a figure in outline and as a mass of character he had been constantly in her thoughts, where he had appeared, especially during the last few days, hardly as a real person she knew, but rather as a particularly vivid and memorable character in a play she had seen or a novel she had recently read. It was queer and exciting to think that he would actually walk into the office at any moment.

“I think I’d better have a talk to Mr. Smeeth about that letter,” said Mr. Dersingham, putting it on one side. “You might tell him, Miss Matfield⁠——” But now two doors were flung open and banged to in rapid succession. Mr. Golspie had arrived.

“Hello, Dersingham,” he boomed, clapping and rubbing his hands. “Hello, Miss Matfield. Brrrrr—but it’s devilish cold here. I can feel it creeping up and down my bones. Funny thing, but it’s colder here than it ever is in places that pretend to be really cold, twenty below and all the rest of it. Damp, I suppose. Ten years of this would do me in. Well, how’s everything? Making money?”

“All right, Miss Matfield,” said Mr. Dersingham.

Miss Matfield could not decide whether she had exaggerated the size of Mr. Golspie’s moustache or whether he had had it trimmed. The fact remained that it seemed considerably smaller. Another fact remained, and that was that she felt disappointed. She walked out of the room feeling absurdly disappointed. It was quite unreasonable, but there it was.

This feeling persisted throughout the day. Mr. Golspie came into the general office and shouted genial greetings at everybody. Afterwards, when Mr. Dersingham had gone, he dictated a few letters to her, but he said little or nothing, and neither that day nor any of the days before Christmas did he once refer to her visit to the Lemmala. There was no particular reason why he should, but still it was disappointing, and he was disappointing, and everything was disappointing.

Those last few days before Christmas were so awful that she found herself looking forward more and more eagerly to the holiday at home, to that train which would take her away, on Christmas Eve, from the vast glittering muddle of London. Mr. Golspie, who was apparently going to spend Christmas in Paris with his daughter, and Mr. Dersingham, whose spirits rose at the approach of all holidays, were in a good temper, but everybody else in the office seemed unusually gloomy. Mr. Smeeth was not exactly gloomy, but he was worried and fussy, as if something was troubling his grey and shrinking little mind. Turgis, who was not very cheerful at any time, was simply terrible; he went slouching about the place, sat at his desk staring out of the window at the black roofs, made a mess of his work, and almost snarled his replies to any civil question. Several times she had to speak to him quite sharply, the lout. The little Sellers girl, perhaps because Turgis was either so aloof or so rude, was not her usual perky self, and even Stanley, though ready to give Christmas or any other holiday the warmest welcome, had suffered so much lately from the moods of Mr. Smeeth and Turgis, who accused him unjustly of dawdling over every errand, that he was now turning into quite a sulky boy. And although Miss Matfield, who considered herself merely a visitor to Angel Pavement, in it but not of it, had always preserved her independence, she had to sit in the same room all day with these others, to work with them, and could not help being influenced by the prevailing outlook and their various attitudes. It was depressing.

Outside the office it was as bad, if not worse. She had her presents to buy, which meant frantic rushes to the shops during lunchtime or the short space left to her in the evening before they closed. They were packed out with people, and, of course, you could never find the things you wanted, and if you went late, the assistants, who had not drawn a proper breath for several hours, hated the sight of you and would not help. At last the army of advertising managers, copy writers, commercial artists, colour printers, window dressers, bill posters, which had been screaming “Buy, buy. Christmas is coming. Buy, buy, buy” for weeks and weeks, was charging to victory. London was looting itself. Those damp dark afternoons seemed to rain people down into the shopping streets; whole suburbs burst upon Oxford Street, Holborn, Regent Street; the shops themselves were full, the pavements were jammed, and the vehicles on the crowded road could hold no more. Never before had Miss Matfield seen so many boxes of figs and dates, obscenely naked fowls, cheeses, puddings in basins, beribboned cakes, and crackers, so much morocco and limp leather and suede and pig-skin, so many calendars, diaries, engagement books, bridge-scorers, fountain-pens, pencils, patent lighters, cigarette-holders, dressing-cases, slippers, handbags, manicure sets, powder-bowls, and “latest novelties.” There were several brigades of Santa Clauses, tons and tons of imitation holly, and enough cotton-wool piled in the windows and dabbed on the glass to keep the hospitals supplied for the next ten years. Between those festive windows and a line of hawkers, street musicians, beggars, there passed a million women dragging after them a million children, who, after a brief space in some enchanted wonderland were dazed, tired, peevish, wanting nothing but a rest and another bun. From a million bags, bags of every conceivable shape and colour, money, wads of clean pound notes straight from the bank, dirty notes from the vase on the mantelpiece, half-crowns and florins from the tin box in the bedroom, money that had come showering down out of the blue, money that had been stolen, money that had been earned, begged, hoarded up, was being pushed over counters and under little glass windows and then conjured into parcels, parcels, parcels, with whole acres of brown paper and miles of string called into service every few minutes. Hundreds of these parcels, especially the huge three-cornered ones, seemed to find their way into every bus that Miss Matfield, after waiting and running forward and returning and waiting again, contrived to board. She felt like a shivering and bruised ant. Never had she hated London so much. She wanted to scream at it. When she got back to the Club, the only thing she wished to do was to have a long hot soak in the bath, and of course it was precisely the thing that everybody else wanted to do too, so she would find herself hanging about, still waiting, after waiting to leave the office, waiting to get a bus, waiting to be served in the shop, waiting at the cash desk, waiting for her parcel, waiting for another bus; and then Kersey would come up and say: “Going out to-night, Matfield? No? Well, you can’t expect to go out every night, can you, dee-ar?” Hell!

Mr. Golspie left for Paris—lucky man—on the morning of Christmas Eve; Mr. Dersingham wished them all a merry Christmas and departed early; Mr. Smeeth gave them all an extra week’s money, brightened up a little, and hoped they would have a very good time. Miss Matfield, after working miracles, arrived at Paddington, a Paddington that suggested that some invading army had already reached the Bank and that shells were falling into Hyde Park and that the seat of government had already been transferred to Bristol, and she was just in time to get three-quarters of a seat and no leg space in the 5.46. The lights of Westbourne Park and Kensal Green, such as they were, blinked at her and then were gone. Thank God she was done with this nightmare of a London for a few days! Perhaps Christmas at home this time would be amusing. At any rate, it would be reasonable and quiet, and her father and mother would be glad to see her, and she would be glad to see them. As the train gathered speed, shrugging off the outer western suburbs, she thought of her parents with affection, and for a little time felt nearer the child she had once been, the child who had thought her father and mother so wonderful and had found Christmas the most radiant and magical season than she had done for many a month. She closed her eyes; her mouth gradually lost its discontented curve; her whole face softened. Angel Pavement would hardly have recognized her.

III

“Hello, Matfield! What sort of a Christmas did you have?”

“Oh, the usual thing, you know—rather feeble.”

“Do anything special?”

“No, just stodged and sat about and yawned. Stayed in bed every morning for breakfast and never got up till nearly lunch time. That was about the best thing that happened. What about you?”

“Oh, awful!” replied the other girl, Miss Preston, who worked at the Levantine Bank, but based her claim to attention at the Club on the fact that her brother, under another name, was a well-known actor. He had visited the Club twice, and each time Preston’s reputation had soared. “The minute I got home I started the vilest cold, and then Archie—my brother, you know, the actor—had promised to come for Christmas, but wired at the last second that he couldn’t.”

“Hard luck!” cried Miss Matfield, but not with much conviction. You had to give out so much sympathy at the Burpenfield that you were apt to become very mechanical, and if something really terrible and tragic had happened there, if, for example, half a dozen girls had gone down with ptomaine poisoning, the other girls would probably have been struck dumb, having over-worked so long all the possible expressions of pity and horror.

Now they were all discussing their holidays. The youngish ones, who had probably enjoyed themselves thoroughly, were mostly going about crying “Vile! Absolutely ghastly, my dear!” The oldish ones, the lonely hot water bottle enthusiasts, who had probably had nothing but a mocking shadow of a Christmas, were busy pretending, with a strained creaking brightness, that they had had a wonderful time. The members in between these two groups, such as Miss Matfield, gave fairly truthful accounts. The entrance hall, the lounge, the stairs and the corridors above, all buzzed with these descriptions. The Burpenfield Club was returning to its normal life. With admirable forethought, Miss Tattersby had pinned up half a dozen new notices all written in her most exclamatory and sardonic style, and already these notices, especially a very bitter and tyrannical one about washing stockings and handkerchiefs, were feeding the mounting flames of talk. “My dear, but have you seen Tatters’ latest?” they cried, along the landings and in and out of their little bedrooms.

Miss Matfield went up to her little room, found a space on the wall for two framed Medici prints she had brought back from home, cleared out of her tiny bookshelf several books she had borrowed and forgotten to return, and put in their place some books she had contrived to borrow during the holidays. There were two travel books and three novels or romances, and all three stories had for their settings such places as Borneo and the South Seas. This was not a mere coincidence. Miss Matfield liked her fiction to be full of jungles, coral reefs, plantations, lagoons, hibiscus flowers, the scent of vanilla, schooners on the wide Pacific, tropical nights. So long as the young man was first shown to her dressed in white and lounging on a verandah, while a noiseless brown figure brought him something long and cool to drink, she was ready to follow his love story to the end. If the story had no love in it but had the right exotic setting, she would read it, but she preferred a fairly strong love interest. She had not bad taste, and if the story was written for her by Joseph Conrad, so much the better; but she was ready to endure if not to delight in authors of a very different cut from Conrad if they would only give her the jungles and lagoons and coral reefs and mysterious brown faces. The worst story about Malaysia was preferable to the best story about Marylebone. She did all her reading on the bus to and from the office, in some teashop at lunch time, and in bed, and as her one desire was to escape from any further consideration of buses, teashops, and girls’ club bedrooms, these stories of the other end of the world, strange, savage, beautiful, might have been specially created for her; indeed, many of them were. She never admitted that she had a passion for these exotic and adventurous tales. She did homage to them negatively by looking through other and very different novels, novels about London and Worcestershire, and then sneering heavily at them. A long acquaintance with these heroes in bungalows and schooners and bars run by Chinese had gradually shaped and coloured her attitude towards men, though here again she admitted nothing and only paid these distant creatures a negative tribute, by criticizing adversely the fellows who were quite different and much nearer home. The idea of a man that warmed her secret heart was that of the strong, adventurous, roving male with a background of alien scenes, of little ships and fantastic drinking haunts. If she married him, she might want to domesticate him in that beautiful old country house in which she had spent so many imaginary Christmasses, but he would have to be that kind of man first, and not born in captivity.

It was not possible to change her room very much—though she always tried after being away—because it was far too small; it was like trying to re-arrange three or four toys in a boot-box; but now, as before, she did what she could. She had come back determined, as she told herself, to fight against the Burpenfield atmosphere. No more drooping and whining, no more waiting for something to turn up while you knew all the time it wouldn’t, no more wistful hanging about on the roadside of life! She would lead a real life of her own, full, adventurous, gay. This was not the first time—alas!—she had come back to the Club with such a resolution and had promptly tried to change her room about as an early outward sign of it; but now it was different; she was older, more experienced, and this time she meant it. Moreover, she had now a total of five pounds a week instead of four pounds ten, for they had given her a ten-shilling rise at the office, and though she had told her father, he had only congratulated her (with that tired smile and that faint irony which frequently accompany long experience of a general medical practice, that constant round of births and deaths), and had not proposed cutting down his allowance of six pounds a month. Any girl at the Burpenfield would have instantly appreciated the profound distinction between five pounds a week and four pounds ten shillings, for whereas on four pounds ten you have still to be careful, on five pounds you can really begin to splash about a bit.

“Well, if you ask me, Mattie,” said Miss Cadnam, who had looked in and had been promptly told about this new mood, “you’re absolutely rolling. I only get four, you know, including what I get from home, when they don’t forget, and I know if I suddenly got an extra pound, I’d simply break out in all directions. Do you know, Ivor only gets six pounds a week, that’s all. Don’t say anything, of course. He’d be furious if he knew I’d told anybody—men are awfully silly about things like that, aren’t they?—terribly secretive—but honestly that’s all he gets, and he seems to have an awful lot to spend.”

Miss Matfield shut a drawer with a bang, turned to face her visitor, and looked very determined. “I always think this time that’s coming now—the next two months or so—the foulest part of the whole year. Awful weather, cold and slush and everything, and Easter and spring a long time away, and nothing happening very much, and it’s just the time when, if you let yourself go, you get depressed beyond words.”

“I absolutely agree,” said Miss Cadnam earnestly.

“Well, I’ve made up my mind this time I’m not going to have it. If things don’t happen, I’ll make them happen. If anybody asks me to go anywhere or do anything that’s at all decent, I shall accept. I shall go to theatres and concerts more, and if there’s any dancing about, I’m having it. By the way, mother’s given me what seems to me rather a nice dress. I’ll show it to you. The only thing I’m not certain about is the length at the front. What do you think?”

There was a short interlude, during which the dress was held up, pulled down, examined, and finally approved.

“Anyhow, that’s my programme, Caddie,” said Miss Matfield, after the dress had been put away again. “I’ve come to the conclusion that one gives in too much—I don’t mean that you do, my dear, because you’re one of the very few people here who definitely don’t—it’s something in the Burpenfield atmosphere that does it, sort of saps your initiative and makes you frightened—and if you let yourself drift here, it’s fatal. I’m not going to have it. And that’s to-day’s great thought and resolution, Caddie.”

“Good! I always come back feeling like that. You know, feeling I must start all over again somehow, whether it’s leading a gay life or leading a quiet life or what it is.”

There was a tap on the door, which opened to admit the head of Miss Morrison. “Hello, Matfield. Hello, Cadnam. Is this terribly private? Sure?” She came in. “This is to announce that I’ve changed my room and am now your neighbour, four doors down on the other side.”

“That’s Spilsby’s room,” said Miss Matfield.

“It was, but is Spilsby’s no longer. Spilsby is not coming back. She’s going to New Zealand or Australia, I forget which, and it’s just the place for her, whichever it is. I’ve discovered Spilsby’s secret vice—reading those American magazines that you can buy cheap at Woolworth’s and other places, you know the kind—Western Yarns with a Punch.”

“I know,” cried Miss Cadnam. “But not Spilsby?”

“Spilsby. She’d bought hundreds of them. I’ve just had them turfed out. You couldn’t move for them. All Westerns or the big wild North-West or the red-blooded Yukon, all bunches of gripping yarns with a punch. Spilsby was a red-blooded Western addict—Revolting! Are you sure you wouldn’t like some, Matfield, before they’re all gone? You look a bit fierce to-night.”

“She is,” said Miss Cadnam. “Aren’t you, Mattie? She’s just been telling me that she’s come back full of grand resolutions.”

“Ugh!” Miss Morrison looked disgusted. “Don’t tell me you’ve made up your mind to spend all your evenings learning Italian and German or something like that.”

“You’re quite wrong.”

“Quite.”

“Thank the Lord for that,” said Miss Morrison. “It would have been completely foul. Besides, you’re not young enough and not old enough, if you see what I mean, for that sort of thing. When I was a few years younger, I used to come back full of good intentions and ambition and tell myself I was going to learn commercial Spanish or qualify as an accountant or something equally crazy. You feel like that after the holidays. But what’s this new attitude?”

It was explained to her, and she listened with a dubious smile on her smooth pale face. “Ah, my children,” she said, “I like to hear you talk. I, too, have felt like that in my time. It won’t work.”

“In your time! Why, Morrison, I’m two years older than you at least,” cried Miss Matfield.

“And I’m nearly as old as you, Morrison,” said Miss Cadnam. “I’m getting terribly old.”

“It isn’t just the years, little ones. It’s the experience. You make me feel old with your charming youthful illusions. However, I’m all for you leading a dashing worldly life, Matfield. I’m all in favour of you going to the devil, for that matter. How do you do it, by the way? I used to hear an awful lot of vague talk about the temptations of a poor girl’s life in London. Where do they come in? Nobody ever tempts me. The only temptations I have are to steal some of my worthy employeress’s terribly expensive bath salts when I’m allowed to enter her bathroom to wash my hands, and—there must be something else—yes, not to give the bus conductor my penny when he doesn’t ask for it. What chance have I then to be really virtuous or to be wicked either? I admit, Matfield, that you’re different. You go down to the great City, to begin with, and meet mysterious men on romantic ships⁠——”

“When was this?” cried Miss Cadnam. “Did you, Mattie, or is she making it up?”

“Quiet, child! You will understand in time. And then again, my dear Matfield, you have a look. I don’t say you look terribly marvellous, my dear⁠——”

“I don’t pretend to,” Miss Matfield told her.

“But there’s a something—a hint, you might say, of dark, wild forces. I don’t suppose you have any, really, but there’s a look. That’s where you completely beat me. I haven’t that look at all, whereas if people only knew what I was really like⁠—— Well, never mind. But you have it, though if I were you—particularly now, when you’ve made up your mind to be a One—I should do my hair rather differently. You ought to have it out at the side more. I’ll show you what I mean. You watch, Cadnam, and see if you don’t agree.”

“Ye-es, I think you’re probably right,” said Miss Matfield finally.

“By the way,” said Miss Morrison, “there’s a dance here on New Year’s Eve. And as nobody has asked me anywhere else, I think I’ll go, and I might be able to persuade a couple of men I know vaguely to look in. They’re not very bright lads, but they’re energetic and harmless and better than nothing. What about you, Matfield? A dance at the Burpenfield is perhaps hardly a proper start on the downward path—but still, you never know.”

“Oh yes, I’ll be there,” said Miss Matfield. But she wasn’t.

IV

Many a time afterwards Miss Matfield wondered if Mr. Golspie deliberately engineered that staying late on New Year’s Eve. She never asked him and never made up her own mind about it. At the time, it seemed accidental enough. He had looked in at the office during the morning, had gone out quite soon and had not returned until six o’clock, when they were all busy clearing off the last odds and ends of work. Mr. Dersingham had already gone. Mr. Golspie arrived, shouted for her, and went into the private office.

“Sorry, Miss Matfield,” he began, “but I’ll have to ask you to do a bit of work for me at once.”

“What, now?”

“Yes, now. Don’t look at me like that, Miss Matfield—spoiling your handsome features. It can’t be helped, and an extra hour for once isn’t going to hurt you, is it?”

“I suppose not, Mr. Golspie. It’s only—well, it’s New Year’s Eve, isn’t it?”

“So it is. I’d clean forgotten. Old Year’s Night, we always used to call it. Still, there’ll be plenty of it left when we’ve finished.”

“Yes, that’s all right—only, I’d arranged to go to a dance to-night.”

“O-ho, the gay life, eh?” he boomed, grinning at her. “Now I remember, my daughter’s going to one to-night. One of these balloon, confetti, and false noses affairs, eh? Champagne at midnight, eh?”

“No such luck. It’s only a dance at the girls’ club where I live, a very modest affair.”

“Oh, a dance at a girls’ club, eh? That’s nothing. You’re as well off here with me as at a dance at a girls’ club. What time does it start?”

“About nine, I suppose.”

“I shan’t keep you here until nine, unless you want me to. Now you go back and finish what you were doing, and you can tell the rest of ’em they can go when they like, as far as I’m concerned. Then come back here, bring your notebook, and we’ll get down to it. I’ve some letters I must get off to-night. Somebody’s got to earn some money for this firm, y’know.”

When she returned to the private office, Mr. Golspie, meditating over a cigar and occasionally jotting down some figures, motioned her towards a chair and did not speak for several minutes. She heard the outer door bang behind the other people, going home, heard other doors banging and noisy footsteps on the stairs, and then everything suddenly sank into silence.

“Now then,” said Mr. Golspie, “let’s make a start. You can take the whole lot down at once, if you like, or you can take two or three, go and type ’em, then come back for more, just as you please. All I care about is that they go to-night.”

She took down several letters, then went to type them out while he looked at his figures and thought about the rest of them. It was very strange to be at work in the deserted general office, to go back to the private office and find Mr. Golspie there, almost lost in his cigar smoke, to return again to her machine under the solitary light. As the quarters of an hour slipped by, so many little noises from outside disappeared into the silence that at last she did not seem to be working in a place she knew at all. The instant the familiar and now cheerful clatter and ping of her typewriter stopped, everything turned ghostly, until she found herself again in the private office, which was not at all ghostly. There was nothing spectral about Mr. Golspie.

“But what about copying them?” she cried, when they were all done, all signed, and ready for their envelopes.

“They can stay uncopied,” replied Mr. Golspie.

“But, you know, we always copy all letters.”

“Well, this time we don’t. It isn’t worth the bother. I know what I’ve said to these people, and they’re my letters, not Dersingham’s. Help me to put them into their envelopes and bring some stamps, then we’ve done. That’s the way. A good job of work, that, Miss Matfield. I’m much obliged. Most girls would have kicked up a fuss and then done the work dam’ badly just to show their independence. What time is it? Would you believe it?—nearly eight! I thought I was hungry.”

Miss Matfield had given a little cry of dismay.

“Hello, what’s the matter with you?”

“I’d no idea it was so late, though I feel terribly hungry, too. Dinner will be over at the Club when I get back there now, though I suppose I shall be in time to get something.”

“You’re hungry, too, are you? What did you have for lunch?”

“I never had much lunch, you see,” said Miss Matfield. “I had an egg and a roll and butter and a cup of coffee.”

“And then you had a cup of tea and a biscuit, and now it’s nearly eight and you feel hungry and you think if you run all the way back to your Club they’ll give you a bite of something there—that’s it, isn’t it? Well, that’s no good at all. That’s the way you girls do yourselves in. You don’t feed. It’s all wrong. If you don’t have at least one thumping big meal a day in this town at this time o’ the year, you might as well send for the doctor at once and have done with it. Now, Miss Matfield,” and he rose and put a hand on her shoulder, “you’re not one of those half-starved wizened little monkeys of creatures that pass for girls nowadays; you’re a fine upstanding girl, a real woman; and you can’t play those tricks with yourself. Now listen—you’re coming to feed with me. We’ve both been working; we’re both hungry; and we’re going to feed together.”

“Oh, are we?” It was all she could find to reply at the moment.

“If you want me to make a favour of it, I’ll do it,” he continued. “Here I am—on the last night of the year, too—going to have dinner all by myself, and here are you, as hungry as I am, and we’ve been working together, and you won’t join me to cheer me up a bit. How’s that?”

She laughed. “All right, I will. Thank you. Only I can’t go anywhere very marvellous, looking like this, you know.”

“You could go anywhere looking like that, believe me,” he assured her. “But I suppose you mean you’re not all dressed up. That doesn’t matter. We’re not going where they’re slinging the confetti at one another, we’re going where the food is. You go and get ready while I stamp these letters.”

It was a clear cold night. Angel Pavement looked strangely dark and deserted, a little black gulf with a faint spangle of stars above it.

“Do you know why I came to your place?” said Mr. Golspie, as they walked along. “I looked up the names of the firms in this line of business, and Twigg and Dersingham took my fancy not because of their name, but because of the address. Angel Pavement did it. I was so tickled by that name, I said to myself, ‘I must have a look at that lot, first of all.’ And if I hadn’t said that, I shouldn’t have been here, and you wouldn’t have been trotting along here with me, would you?”

“Didn’t you know anything about this business before?” she asked.

“Not a thing. But I’ve picked up a good many different sorts of business in my time, and I haven’t finished yet, not by a long chalk. But I don’t call this veneer trade a proper business. It’s a side-line. There’s no size to it. You might as well be selling sets o’ chessmen or rocking-horses. No size to it, no chance of real growth, you see? It’s all right for Dersingham—it’s about his mark—but then he’s not really in business. He’s only got one leg in it instead of being up to the neck in it. He thinks he’s a gentleman amusing himself. Too many of his sort in the City here. That’s how the Jews get on, and the Americans. None of that nonsense about them.”

The main road, into which they had turned now, still showed a few lighted windows, behind which the last orders of the year were being booked and the last entries made in the ledgers, and there were still a few belated clerks and typists hurrying away on each side; but compared with its usual appearance, the hooting muddle of the day and early evening, its appearance now was that of a lighted stone wilderness. A tram came grinding down, looking as if it expected nothing. A bus slipped through, curiously swift and noiseless. They walked down to the end of the road, past the narrow openings of little streets and alleys already sunk into midnight and the mouths of wider streets that were illuminated emptiness. At the bottom they turned to the right. A taxi came jogging along at that moment, and Mr. Golspie at once claimed it, shouted “Bundle’s” to the driver, and then sat very close to Miss Matfield.

“Thought we’d go to Bundle’s,” he said, “if it’s all the same to you. D’you know it?”

“I’ve heard of it, of course,” she told him, “but I’ve never been there. It’s more a restaurant for men, isn’t it?”

“More men than women there certainly, but women do go. And if they’d more sense, they’d go oftener. Bundle’s is the place if you’re really hungry and you want a good solid feed. It’s English, too, and I like it for that—good old-fashioned tack. I don’t suppose there’ll be a lot of people there now—lunch is the crowded time at Bundle’s—and there’s no need to dress up to go there.”

“Thank Heaven for that!” cried Miss Matfield.

“Mind you, Bundle’s isn’t a cheap place, by any means,” Mr. Golspie continued, apparently anxious to suggest that he was not skimping his hospitality. “Don’t get that idea into your head. It’s plain, but it works out as expensive as most places, even though the other places are giving you ten courses and a band and rattles and confetti and God knows what else. There’s nothing like that at Bundle’s, but there’s real food and some good drink.”

“Well, Mr. Golspie, I’ll be quite candid, and confess that I could do with both at this very moment. Even,” she added mischievously, “if they will cost you a lot of money.”

“I didn’t say that, Miss Matfield,” he said, pinching her arm. “All I said was that Bundle’s isn’t cheap. As for costing me a lot of money, I don’t honestly think you could do if you tried, not at Bundle’s. You’d be sick before you could eat that amount, and drunk long before you could drink it. I took a feller there, just before Christmas, and he did cost me money. He found they had some Waterloo brandy there, and fancied a few goes of that after lunch.”

“Well, suppose I do, too,” said Miss Matfield, as St. Paul’s went jogging past the window on her side of the cab. “What about that?”

“I’ll promise you one, though, if you ask me, it’s a waste of beautiful stuff, because I’m sure you can’t appreciate it. But you won’t get any more out of me. If you did, you’d turn round afterwards and tell me I made you drunk. No, no.”

“Don’t be absurd. I was only joking. I don’t like brandy, as a matter of fact; the taste of it always reminds me of being ill. I loathe whisky, too. I like wine, though, you’ll perhaps be glad to know. You will also be glad to know that I can drink quite a lot of it—if it’s good—without feeling tight.”

“All right. Now I know. The sooner he gets there now, the better it will be. I’m getting hungrier and hungrier.”

“So am I. If I’d gone back to the Club, I’d never have been able to find enough to satisfy my appetite to-night. The food’s not really too bad there, but it isn’t quite real—if you know what I mean. It’s like the food you get in cheap hotels.”

“I know,” said Mr. Golspie grimly. “You can’t tell me anything about cheap hotels and bad grub. And when you say it’s not real, you mean it all tastes alike and never quite leaves you satisfied. Nothing like that about Mr. Bundle. And here he is.”

Mr. Bundle, whoever he was, had remembered one simple fact when he first established his tradition of catering, and that was that Man is one of the larger carnivora. You went to Bundle’s to eat meat. The kitchen turned out acceptable soups, vegetables, puddings, tarts, savouries, and the like, but all these were as nothing compared with the meat. The place was a vegetarian’s nightmare. It seemed to be perpetually celebrating the victory of some medieval baron. Whole beeves and droves must have been slaughtered daily in its name. If you asked for roast beef at Bundle’s, they took you at your word, and promptly wheeled up to you the red dripping half of a roasted ox, and after the waiter had implored you to examine it and had asked you a few solemn questions about fat and lean, under-done and over-done, he cut you off a pound or two here, a pound or two there. A request for mutton was not treated perhaps with the same high seriousness, but even that meant that legs and shoulders came trundling up from all directions, and you found yourself facing a few assorted pounds of it on your plate. The waiters themselves had a roasted jointy look, though most of them were lean and under-done, whereas most of the guests were obviously fat and over-done and suffering from gigantic blood pressures that took another leap upward every time they went out of these doors. It was the meatiest place Miss Matfield had ever seen, and she had a suspicion that if she had not been feeling really hungry, it might have made her feel rather sick. As it was, she welcomed the look of it and smell of it, and enjoyed, too, its very definite masculine atmosphere.

Mutton was wheeled at Miss Matfield and beef was wheeled at Mr. Golspie, and, while acolytes brought vegetables, the high priests gravely pointed to fat and lean and under-done and over-done, and then sliced away with their exquisite long narrow knives. Mr. Golspie, after consulting briefly with her, ordered a good rich burgundy. Then, after Mr. Golspie, a true Bundle’s man, had polished off his gigantic helping of beef, and Miss Matfield had eaten about a third of her mutton, he had a savoury and she had some apple tart and cream.

“We’ll finish the wine before we have coffee,” said Mr. Golspie, pointing the bottle at her glass, which she had emptied. “It’s a good burgundy this.”

“Only about half a glass, please. It’s lovely rich sunshiny stuff, but I daren’t drink much more. I feel as if I’d had about fifteen of my Club dinners rolled into one. I don’t believe I shall ever be hungry again.”

“You look well on it,” said Mr. Golspie, who perhaps looked a shade too well on it himself. “You’ve a fine colour, Miss Matfield, and your eyes are sparkling, and altogether you look full of fight and fun, too good for Angel Pavement, I can tell you.”

“Oh, but I am,” she cried humorously. She suddenly felt that life was rich and gay.

“Of course you are. I said that to myself the first time I set eyes on you. There’s a girl with some spirit and sense, I thought—she’s alive, not like these other poor devils. ‘She don’t belong,’ I said to myself. That’s why I kept my eye on you. Did you notice me keeping my eye on you?”

“Mmmm, ye-es,” looking at him and hoping that her eyes were still sparkling. “Sometimes I thought you seemed quite human.”

“Human!” he roared, so that a waiter jumped forward. “I’m human enough, I can tell you. I’m a dam’ sight too human.”

“If you’re in the City, you can’t be too human, Mr. Golspie. Not for me. I’ve spent months there sometimes and never spoken to anyone who seemed to me really human. Awful creatures. Then people like Mr. Smeeth, all grey and withered and not bad really, but just—pathetic.”

“No, Smeeth’s not a bad feller. But he’s not pathetic. He doesn’t make me weep, anyhow. All he wants is to be safe, that’s what’s the matter with him. Anything to be safe—that’s his line. Pay him a pound or two a week, give him some little cash-books to play with, tell him he’s safe, and he’s as happy as a king. But he’s better than that dreary youngster you have in there—what’s his name?—Turgis.”

“Oh, he’s hopeless, I agree.”

“Not your style, eh?”

“What, Turgis! Help!”

“He’s a typical specimen of what they’re breeding here now—no sense, no guts, no anything. I can’t even remember the look of the lad, although I see him nearly every day. That shows you what impression he makes. He might be a shadow flickering about the place.”

“I know. And yet that funny little Cockney girl, Poppy Sellers, thinks he’s marvellous. I’ve watched her worshipping him at a distance. Isn’t it strange—I mean, the way everybody amounts to something different to everybody else?”

“Well, a lad like that’ull never mean anything to me, never amount to anything to anybody, I should think, no more than a bit of straw or paper blowing about the streets,” said Mr. Golspie.

The waiter who had jumped forward was still waiting expectantly a few yards away. Mr. Golspie called him. “You’ll have some coffee, won’t you? And I’m going to have some brandy, not the Waterloo, though. Will you have a liqueur? Have one of the sweet ones. What about a Benedictine or a Kümmel? What do you say? Here, look at the list.”

She examined it. What fascinating names they had, these liqueurs! “I don’t know. Shall I? All right then, I’ll have a Green Chartreuse.”

Mr. Golspie lit a cigar and then, over the coffee and liqueurs, answered some questions she asked about his recent trip abroad, and went rambling on about his experiences in those Baltic countries and in other places still more mysterious and romantic to her. As she listened, feeling very gay and confident inside, his blunt staccato talk seemed to open a series of little windows upon a magical world she had always known to be somewhere about, although she had never walked in it herself, and his own figure took colour from the blue and golden lights flashing through these little windows. He talked in the way she had always felt a man should talk. He was so tremendously and refreshingly un-Burpenfieldish. And he was interested in her; he was not merely filling in an idle hour; she attracted him, had attracted him, she felt now, for some time; and—oh!—it was all amusing and exciting.

“It’s quarter to ten,” Mr. Golspie suddenly announced. “What about that dance of yours?”

“O Lord!—I don’t know. It’s hardly worth it now. What a nuisance!”

“Like dancing, eh?”

“Adore it.”

“All right. You listen to me. I remember now I had an invitation from one or two of those Anglo-Baltic chaps; they weren’t giving the show, but a friend of theirs was, and a lot of people I know were going to be there. Dancing, too. We’ll go there, and then you won’t be able to say I’ve done you out of your Old Year’s Night celebration. What d’you say? Good! I’ve got the telephone number down in my notebook, and now I’ll just ring up to make sure. Shan’t be a minute.”

He returned, smiling, with the news that the party had just begun. “Yes, I know what you’re trying to say now,” he continued. “What about clothes, eh? Well, any clothes are right for this affair. They’re not a dressy lot. If you went without clothes, they wouldn’t care. We’ll have to stop on the way to buy something—a bottle or two and something to eat—to take with us. It’s not necessary, but it’ll be appreciated. These people will be a change for you—not the sort you meet in a girls’ club at all—and it’ll amuse you, if you’re the girl I take you to be.”

There wasn’t even time to ask him then what exactly was the girl he took her to be.

V

They went in a taxi and the place was somewhere Notting Hill way, but that was as near as she ever came to-knowing where it was. She could have asked, of course, but she preferred to be without exact information; it was more amusing. The road in which they finally stopped looked one of those dingy, shabby-genteel streets, but she could not be sure even about that. They walked up a garden path, but instead of going up the steps to the house itself, they turned to the right, by the side of the house, until they came to a lighted door and a great deal of noise. Apparently the party was being held in one of those large detached studios.

She found herself shaking hands with a very small woman with frizzy black hair, tiny black eyes that seemed to jump and snap, a long humorous nose, and an outrageous purple dress. After that she shook hands with a very tall fair man who looked like a retired Siegfried. These were obviously the host and hostess, and they were both foreigners, but she never caught their names. Clearly it was the sort of party at which names were of little importance. The studio was filled with people; most of whom had a foreign look. None of the men wore evening dress, and among the women, she was glad to see, there was an astonishing variety of clothes, so that she was not at all conspicuous. Mr. Golspie recognised a good many acquaintances, and she was introduced to some of them, mostly youngish men of a nondescript foreign appearance who drew themselves up sharply, looked grave for a moment, then suddenly smiled and widened their eyes, as if to say: “I am being introduced to a lady, by my friend Mr. Golspie. This is serious, important. Ah, but how charming, how beautiful a lady!” It was a pleasure being introduced to men with such a manner. One of them, the youngest, a nice, smiling boy with bright hazel eyes, called Something-insky, insisted upon her smoking a long cigarette, and brought her a mysterious, greeny-yellow drink. Mr. Golspie, who had found a whisky and soda, grinned at her, and exchanged knowing remarks in a mixed language with various men, who patted him on the shoulder and slapped him on the back and were patted and slapped in return.

The little hostess, her eyes snapping furiously, came rushing through and screamed in an unknown tongue at two young men in a corner, a small crooked Jew, almost a hunchback, and a thin red-haired young man, very serious behind enormous spectacles. When she finished screaming at them and had held out both her arms in an imploring gesture, these two bowed gravely, and then the Jew sat down at the grand piano and the red-haired spectacled one seated himself behind some drums. They began playing—and very well they played, too—and in a moment the centre of the room was cleared for dancing.

“You veel danz, eh? Pleass?” said Something-insky.

He was a good dancer, and though he was not quite tall enough for her, they got on very well together. As he piloted her in and out, for nearly everybody was dancing and the floor was crowded, he talked the whole time. “I study here ee-conom-eegs,” he told her, “at Lon-don School of Ee-conom-eegs,” and he was very serious about his economics, but it was difficult to understand much of what he said about them. Very soon he passed to more intimate matters. “Yes, I like Eng-lish girls vairy moch. Oh, but I am vairy saad, vairy, vairy saad now,” he told her, his hazel eyes dancing with pleasure. “I leef in High-gate and in High-gate I have a girl, an Eng-lish girl, vairy beautiful—Flora. She leefs, too, in High-gate, Flora, and she has blue eyess and golden hair. For two veeks, you see, we have a quarrel. Oh yes, it is vairy seely, but it is vairy saad, too. One night I go to movees. I ask Flora to go too, but no—she cannot go. So I go-by-myself. I am standing outside and I see a girl I know, a girl from High-gate. Vairy nice girl—but—aw, she is noding to me. But I am pol-ite, I say to her, ‘Good-evening, mees. You go to movees too?’ I am by-myself. I take her weet me into movees. Noding, noding at all. But after, she tell Flora—at High-gate—‘Oh, I go weet your foreign friend to movees.’ Flora comes to me and we have a beeg quarrel.” He squeezed Miss Matfield’s hand as if he felt that at this point he must have sympathy or die. “Yes, a beeg quarrel. For two veeks, I do not see Flora at all. I am vairy saad now.”

Miss Matfield said it was rather sad, but told herself that in its mixture of Highgate and foreign-ness it was really quite absurd and wonderlandish, and somehow it gave the key to the whole evening. Nobody in this studio, except herself and Mr. Golspie (and she was not sure about him), was quite real. Something-insky and his friends were very charming, but it was rather a relief when Mr. Golspie marched up, very solid and dominating, and said, “Well, what about a dance with me?”

“Of course,” she told him. “I thought perhaps you didn’t dance. You’ve not been dancing, have you?”

“No. I thought I’d wait for you, Miss Matfield. You’re the partner I want. I can dance all right, but, mind you, I don’t pretend to be good at it, not like some of these lads. Have another drink before we start, eh?”

“If I have another drink to-night, I shall probably be quite drunk. I feel hazy now.”

“No harm in feeling hazier. I’ll look after you, don’t you worry.”

But she shook her head. The music started again, the little Jew wagging his black locks over the piano and his companion solemnly nodding above his drums, and Mr. Golspie grasped her masterfully. He was obviously not a very good dancer, but even if he had been, there would not have been much chance for him to show what he could do in that crowded space, for now there seemed to be twice as many people on the floor.

“How d’you like this show?” he asked, grinning at her.

“I do like it. It’s amusing.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“You sound as if you don’t care for it very much.”

“It’s not bad,” he told her. “But too much of a crowd for my liking. Just the pair of us somewhere would please me better.”

Afterwards there was an interval, during which everybody ate and drank and smoked and talked all at once, and a girl who appeared to be a secretary at some legation came up with Something-insky and another, older man, and the girl who was a secretary was very giddy and gay and apparently rather tight, though not unpleasantly so, and then a little foreign girl with a hideous fur-trimmed jacket joined them, and the six of them made a little group in one corner, where they ate and drank and smoked and talked as hard as anybody. Then the little hostess screamed again, and this time the tall host produced a number of astonishing syllables in a rasping tenor and then put on a colossal smile, and at once everybody sat down somewhere and most of the lights were turned out. Only the corner where the Jew still sat at the piano was fully illuminated. Then there appeared in front of the piano a smallish plump man with an enormous bald head and a yellow fat face, who stood there, smiling vaguely at them while they applauded, like another but alien Humpty-Dumpty. The Jew played a few sonorous and melancholy chords. Humpty-Dumpty put his hand to his mouth, as if to press a button, for when he lowered his hand, his face was quite different; the smile had been wiped off; his eyebrows had descended at least an inch and a half; and his eyes stared tragically out of deep hollows. Miss Matfield noticed all these details. It was queer, but though things in general were curiously hazy, she had only to concentrate her attention upon anything and every detail of it, like Humpty-Dumpty’s lips and eyebrows, stood out in clear relief. This made everything seem tremendously amusing, and she was very happy. Humpty-Dumpty began singing now in a great rich bass voice, which immediately plunged Miss Matfield, who delighted in rich bass voices, into a dreamy ecstasy. He sang one song after another, sometimes sinking into the profoundest melancholy and the bitterness of death, and at other times breaking into high spirits that were as strange and wild as a revolution. With her eyes fixed on that great yellow moon of a face from which these entrancing sounds came, Miss Matfield allowed her mind to be carried floating away on these changing currents of music, and her body to rest against the stalwart arm and shoulder of Mr. Golspie. She was sorry when it came to an end, and Humpty-Dumpty, after bowing, smiling, frowning, shaking his head in an amazingly rapid succession, walked away to eat a whole plateful of sandwiches, wash them down with lager beer, and talk to five people at once with his mouth full.

There was just time for another dance and then it was twelve o’clock. Everybody was silent for a moment. At the end of that moment, they all behaved like men and women who had been reprieved in the very shadow of the gallows, which is perhaps how they saw themselves. Never before had Miss Matfield seen such a raising and clinking of glasses, so much back-slapping, hand-shaking, embracing, and kissing. Something-insky kissed the little girl in the fur-trimmed jacket and the secretary girl from the legation, and then kissed Miss Matfield’s hand fifteen times while the girl in the fur-trimmed coat, who had suddenly burst into tears, kissed her on the cheek. Mr. Golspie shook her by the hand, then gave her a big hug. It was at this moment that the only unpleasant event of the evening occurred. Once or twice before, Miss Matfield had had to escape from a tall bleary-eyed man, one of the very few Englishmen there, who was rather drunk and had been bent on dancing with her. Now he suddenly lurched into the middle of their little group, murmuring something about a happy New Year, and tried to embrace her. Mr. Golspie, however, stepped forward smartly and with one shove of his heavy shoulder sent the man reeling back.

“I think I’d better go now,” she said to Mr. Golspie. “I’m terribly late as it is.”

“All right. I’ll come with you.” Taking no notice of the unpleasant fellow, who was mumbling threats just behind them, he took her by the arm, marched her through the crowd to shake hands with the host and hostess, and then led her towards the door. There they separated to look for their things. When Miss Matfield returned to the little entrance hall of the studio, the unpleasant man was there. Fortunately, Mr. Golspie appeared, too.

“Now wha’s the idea, eh?” said the unpleasant one, thickly and truculently to Mr. Golspie, trying to put a hand on his shoulder.

“The idea is—you go home to bed,” replied Mr. Golspie, giving him one contemptuous glance.

“Home to bed!” the other sneered. “T-t-t-t-t-talk like a dam’ fool. Bed!” Then he recollected himself. “All I wanner do is to wish thish young lady a Hap-py New Year.” And he made a clutch at her.

This time Mr. Golspie instantly pinned both the man’s arms to his side with so powerful a grasp that the man cried out. “Talk like a dam’ fool, do I?” said Mr. Golspie, pushing his face forward. “If you don’t make yourself scarce, you’ll start the worst new year you ever remembered. See?” And he shook the man. “See?” And with that, he sent the man flying back, took three or four steps forward to see if any more persuasion was needed, and when he saw it was not—for the man had obviously had quite enough of Mr. Golspie—he returned to Miss Matfield’s side. “I’ve rung up for a taxi,” he said calmly. “There’s a telephone in there where I had my hat and coat. It’ll be here in a minute. We’ll wait just outside and get a breath of fresh air.”

Miss Matfield, who had been half frightened, half elated by the little scene, and now, what with the wine and the dancing and the music and the embracing and the general excitement of the long evening, was in a fantastic condition, tired and excited and timid and audacious and thrilled all at once, followed her brutal or heroic friend out of the studio and into the shadow of the neighbouring house. Just before the shadow ended, he stopped. “We can wait here as well as anywhere,” he said.

She did not tell him that it would be still more sensible to wait at the front gate. She stopped, and said nothing.

“Well, that wasn’t bad,” he said, “though I’d had enough of it when you said you had to go. They’ll keep it up till the milk comes. I shouldn’t have gone, though, if you hadn’t said you’d come with me. If you want to know my opinion, we’ve had a good Old Year’s Night. We’ve got to see more of each other.”

“Oh, have we?” She was in no condition to be femininely cool and mocking, but she did her best.

“Yes, of course we have,” he replied coolly. “You’re the sort of girl I like, and I don’t often find one.”

“Thank you for the compliment,” she said, and was instantly annoyed with herself for sounding so feeble.

“Well, Miss Matfield—oh, damn it, I can’t keep calling you Miss Matfield, not out of the office, anyhow. What’s your other name?”

“Lilian,” she replied, in a tiny voice.

“That’s good—Lilian. Well, Lilian, now that we’re out of that monkey house in there, with everybody snatching and pecking at each other, I can wish you a proper Happy New Year.” And, saying no more, he swept her to him, kissed her several times, and held her close, so close that she could hardly breathe.

She could not have described it as being either pleasant or unpleasant. It was not an experience that could fall into such easy categories. It could not be tasted, examined, reported on, like most of Miss Matfield’s experiences. If it belonged anywhere, it belonged to the fire, flood and earthquake department. Her quickening blood faced and replied to this huge masculine onslaught, but the rest of her was simply dazed and shaken.

“There’s our taxi,” he said, breathing hard, but otherwise cool enough. “What’s the address?”

Inside the taxi, she suddenly felt very tired and quite disinclined to talk. She drooped, leaned against him, and could only repeat to herself that it was all quite absurd, though all the time she knew very well that whatever else it might be, it was not absurd. Mr. Golspie was quiet too, though in that little enclosed space he seemed now a gigantically vital creature, a being essentially different from herself, a huge throbbing engine of a man.

“Getting near your place?” he inquired, as the taxi began to mount the hill.

“Yes, it’s only about half-way up this hill.”

“We’ll have some more nights out together, shall we? Not all like this, y’know. Just the two of us, roaming round a bit, going to a show or two, and so on. What d’you say?”

“Yes, I’d like to. In fact—I’d love it.” She glanced out of the window, then rapped on it. “We’re just outside now. Please, don’t come out. No, no more. All right then—there! Good-bye—and—and thank you for my nice big dinner.”

The dance was over at the Club and most of the lights were out, but a few girls were still drifting about the hall and chattering softly on their way upstairs.

“Hello, Matfield!” somebody cried. “Happy New Year!”

Would it be? It had begun strangely enough. Now that she was back in the familiar and despised Burpenfield atmosphere, the night’s antics ought to have appeared in retrospect gayer and more delightfully adventurous than ever, with Mr. Golspie directing them like a droll and massive fairy prince; but oddly enough, they cut no such figure and she found herself wanting to avoid the thought of them. As she slowly climbed the darkening stairs she shivered a little. She was tired, rather cold, and her head ached. There floated into her mind, as if borne there by white virginal sails, the comforting thought of aspirin and her hot water bottle.

VI

When he asked her, two days later, to spend another evening with him, she gladly accepted, although she had told herself several times before that she would refuse; and after that they spent a good deal of time together. They would have dinner somewhere, and then amuse themselves by visiting some show of his choice. They saw the new Jerry Jerningham musical comedy and a crook play; they went twice to the Colladium; they tried a Talkie or two; and one exciting night he took her to a big boxing match. She never really learned a great deal about him; he would talk about odd experiences he had had by the hour, but he remained mysterious; she never discovered what his plans were, and at times she suspected that he did not intend to stay in England much longer, but this suspicion was only based on casual vague remarks; she never went near his flat, never met his daughter, and never heard a single word from him about his dead wife, if indeed she was dead; and yet she felt she knew him as she had never known a man before. Sometimes he was simply friendly or uncle-ish, dismissing her with a pat on the shoulder or a squeeze of the arm; sometimes he turned cynically and grossly amorous, and when he tried to paw her and she repulsed him, he jeered at her and said things that were all the more brutal because there was in them a hard core of truth, and then she saw him as a gross middle-aged toper, loathed him, and despised herself for having anything to do with him; but then, at other times, after a happy exciting evening, he would reach out to her in sudden passion and her own mood would flare up to match with his, and in some little patch of darkness or in the taxi going home, they would kiss and clutch and strain to one another, without a single word of love passing between them, and she would be left shaken and gasping, unable to decide whether she was a woman who was falling in love with this strange unlikely man or a crazy little fool who had just had too much excitement and wine, who ought to go and have a good hot bath and learn sense and decency. And that was all, so far, though even she guessed it could not go on like that. Meanwhile, between these curious expeditions, she chatted and grumbled as usual at the Club, wrote home in the old strain once a week, and quietly worked away at the office, where nobody knew what was happening to her.

Then, one night, as he took her back to the Club, he said, quite casually: “I see they’re having a nice fine spell on the South Coast. What about a trip down there next week-end, Lilian? Might get hold of a car.”

“Oh yes,” she cried at once, without thinking, for week-ends out of London were her dream, even in January. “Let’s do that.”

“Is it a bargain?” he said quickly, triumphantly.

And then she realised what it meant. “No, no. I’m sorry. I spoke without thinking.”

“Ah, she spoke without thinking, did she? You do far too much thinking. Girls shouldn’t think too much, not good-looking ones, anyhow. When I first met you, you’d done nothing but think for a long time, and you weren’t looking too cheerful on it.”

She made no reply. She was annoyed, partly because she was compelled to recognise the truth behind this little jeer. When he talked about her in his casual, rather brutal fashion, he had a strange knack of fastening upon some unpleasant truth. He seemed to take aim quite wildly, but somewhere in her mind, a bell rang nearly every time.

He changed his tone now. “Oh, come on. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Let’s enjoy ourselves while we’re here.”

“No, thank you,” she said quietly, though she found it far more difficult to resist this kind of appeal.

He pressed her.

“No, I won’t. Sometime, perhaps. But not now. No, I mean it.”

“Well, I’m disappointed in you. Still, I’ll try again. Otherwise, y’know, you might regret saying that, some day. Oh, you can laugh⁠——”

“I might well laugh. I think men are the limit. You just want your own way, no matter what it costs—to me, and you’re quite hurt and disappointed because you can’t have it, and anybody would think to hear you that you’d been spending weeks thinking it all out purely for my benefit.”

“That’s right,” said Mr. Golspie cheerfully, and she knew, though she could not see him properly, that he was grinning. “Just what I have been doing. That’s why I’m disappointed.”

“And that’s why I’m laughing,” she retorted, though she did not feel like laughing now. “At your impudent selfishness. Marvellous!”

“And I tell you, young woman, you might regret it one day. I’m going to ask you again. You think it over.”

“I won’t.”

But she did think it over, and unfortunately she began that very night, so that it was hours and hours before she got to sleep. Her angry taut body refused to relax; her head was a huge hot ring round which her thoughts went galloping dustily; and as she turned in the uneasy darkness she heard the late taxis and cars go hooting far away, melancholy hateful sounds in the deep night, like flying rumours of disaster.