So Lovers Dream Page 2

  ‘I’ll have to get someone else, I suppose,’ said the editor ruefully.

  ‘Then why not have a shot at some beginner?’ Stanley said. ‘You’ld get him cheaper. He’ld take a lot of trouble over them. There’s more news value for you in launching a new man.’

  ‘Whom do you suggest?’

  ‘What’s wrong with Gordon Carruthers?’

  ‘He’s not done much lately.’

  ‘That’s why he’ld suit your purpose. He’s about due for another break. At any rate, he’ld probably do you a specimen article on the chance.’

  ‘So if you care to run the risk,’ Stanley had suggested to Gordon, ‘there the chance is waiting.’

  Gordon took the risk. He also took a great deal of trouble over the article. It was approved. The series was commissioned. One morning as he began his walk through the Park to Covent Garden he was astounded by the sight of a fleet of buses sweeping up Piccadilly, bearing each of them on both sides of the top deck the flaming poster of his series. For a week his name was placarded over London. The experience was so exciting that on three separate occasions he was nearly run over as he stood gazing mesmerized at the embellished buses as they swung towards him.

  ‘Those articles of yours went rather well,’ Stanley remarked a few days later. ‘The editor was wondering whether there mightn’t be a serial in your next novel.’

  ‘I should doubt it.’

  ‘You might anyhow let me see as much of it as you’ve done.’

  It was a story of Social Bohemia; of the Quadrant; Tour d’Eifel Londoner. Stanley’s verdict on it was prompt.

  ‘There’s a serial there,’ he said. ‘But it’ll need altering. You had best go straight ahead with it as a novel. When it’s finished we can discuss it as a serial.’

  The advice he gave was simple.

  ‘All that matters in a newspaper serial is the first instalment. That has to be self-contained, it has to finish on a strong curtain, it needs to be five thousand words. Imagine you were writing a five-thousand-word story setting out the main issue of your story ending on a note of What’s going to happen next? After that it should be all plain sailing.’

  It proved to be. Gordon made more money out of his fourth novel than out of his other three combined. It was also the last novel under his first agreement.

  In the same way that they had drifted into friendship, Stanley and Gordon drifted into business. The English code has no such formal avowal of friendship as the continental ‘tu.’ There came no moment when Gordon said, ‘I appoint you as my agent.’ The existence of the association was gradually assumed. When Gordon’s new novel was finished he remarked in the interval between two innings that he had no agreement for it. ‘Hadn’t you better fix something up about it?’ he had said.

  Their business was carried on at odd, unlikely moments. They never formally discussed anything. Members now of the same club, they met on an average three or four times a week. When Gordon wrote a story or had an idea for an article he would deliver it without comment, making no subsequent reference to it till he had heard from Stanley. Such references would be made with extreme indifference. If Stanley had any good news he would always announce it last. He would fix a date for squash, arrange a meeting-place for a cricket match, then when the conversation was apparently over, he would say, ‘Oh, by the way, Harrison thinks that new story of yours worth fifty pounds.’ Whenever he had bad news he held it back till there was some good news to counterbalance it.

  The announcement of the news that was to reorientate the course of Gordon’s life was typical.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ he remarked, ‘that you’re going to have rather a lot of trouble over your income-tax next year.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Hollywood has offered ten thousand dollars for the film rights in your new book.’

  Gordon’s father when he heard the news had said: ‘If you invest that in War Loan you’ll have a hundred pounds coming into you every year.’

  His son had smiled. ‘I’ld rather invest it in myself.’

  ‘How are you proposing to do that?’

  ‘By giving up my job as a publisher and going round the world.’

  Two months later he had started. By the time he was back he had got the travel habit.

  For five years now he had travelled more or less incessantly. In no place had he stayed for longer than three months. During those years the complete control of his affairs had remained in Stanley’s hands. All his letters, all his bills were sent to Adelphi Terrace. He rarely wrote to Stanley. There was little to write about. An author can usually judge what his income will be for the next six months. Before he started anywhere, he and Stanley would find out how much was likely to be coming in, Stanley would then give a guarantee for that amount of overdraft at Gordon’s bank. Letters were not forwarded. When any bills got particularly pressing, Stanley settled them.

  During those years, Stanley had become used to Gordon’s changes of plan. When Gordon said, ‘I’m coming straight back by the next boat,’ he no more expected to see him within a week, than he expected not to see him for a year when Gordon accompanied a batch of manuscript with the note: ‘Penang is heaven. I am thinking of taking a house and settling here.’ A letter on Chatham Hotel notepaper with a New York postmark announcing his intention of summering in Martinique did not make Stanley less prepared for a cable signed by an unknown name, addressed to a place that Gordon was not expected to reach for months, announcing that the place where he was supposed to be was desolate in his absence.

  ‘You’d better get out Gordon Carruthers’ ledger,’ he told his secretary, ‘and if there’s any money owing to him draw a cheque.’

  Two hours later a telephone call came through.

  ‘It’s Gordon Carruthers speaking.’

  ‘Where’s he speaking from?’

  ‘Waterloo Station.’

  ‘When’s he coming round here?’

  ‘Right now.’

  ‘That’s good. I’ve got a cable for him.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘That somebody called Faith is missing him.’

  ‘Oh.’ There was a pause. Then: ‘I’ll be right round.’

  Gordon’s voice had quickened at the mention of the cable, and in his eyes there was an excited gleam as he took the yellow envelope. Stanley watched him with a smile. Gordon had changed considerably. He was looking extremely well; he had thinned and he was sunburnt. But it was not there that the difference lay. An inner glow had electrified and vitalized him, so that although in a photograph the short, sturdy figure, with no particularly arresting feature would have seemed unexceptional, you would at that moment, had you passed him in the streets, have turned round to look at him. At the times when one’s life is dramatic, one looks dramatic. There was something potential about Gordon then.

  ‘New York seems to suit you,’ Stanley said.

  ‘I’ve got my weight down to a hundred and forty seven.’

  ‘You’ve learnt to talk American, I see.’

  ‘I’ve learnt to drink rye straight.’

  ‘Then we’d better have a game of squash and see how your wind’s standing it.’

  ‘I played every morning over there.’

  ‘That’s an end of your handicap.’

  ‘I doubt it. Their game’s hard hitting and no angles.’

  ‘Then I’ll give you two. What about Friday? Five o’clock at Lord’s.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘I was afraid you were going to say O.K.’

  ‘I’m not that bad yet.’

  ‘Nearly. In the meantime I’ve got some money for you.’

  ‘Much? I hope it is. I’m broke.’

  ‘Let’s have a look.’

  While he was away Gordon Carruthers always imagined that on his return he would find innumerable problems waiting to be discussed. But on his return he invariably found that five minutes concentrated talk could settle everything. A writer’s business, provided it is we
ll organized by an agent, becomes simplified as he comes down the course. He produces less and is paid more for it.

  A minute and a half’s glance at his ledger gave Gordon a pretty clear idea of his position.

  There was about two hundred due to him at the moment. There would be another three hundred coming in during the next eight weeks. He would have, he reflected, to do a good deal of work in the next four months if he was not going to be uncomfortably short of money in the next autumn. For, since a novelist gets paid for his work on an average nine months after he does it, he is always in the dangerous position of being able to take a holiday without immediately imperilling his resources, and Gordon had taken such a holdiay.

  ‘Things look,’ said Stanley, ‘as though they’ld need careful management, unless you’ve sold things independently on the other side.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘I heard something about your lecturing.’

  ‘I’ve fixed up a tour of sorts there for the spring.’

  ‘With the Stock market crashing that’ll not do much more than cover your expenses.’

  ‘Not much. And as there’s my taxi ticking away three-pences downstairs. . . .’ He had risen and begun to assemble his scarf and gloves and hat.

  ‘On Friday,’ he said, ‘Lord’s at five.’

  ‘And in the meantime, you are planning what?’

  ‘To do a modern girl novel. Something we can serialize both sides.’

  ‘I was wondering from that cable whether there might not be more ahead than that.’

  Gordon laughed.

  ‘Whatever there is, it’s quite a little way ahead.’

  ‘Be careful. The American woman isn’t, I’m told, like anything one’s used to.’

  ‘That’s just how I’ld describe her.’

  ‘I could take that in two ways,’ said Stanley.

  Gordon smiled, ‘I didn’t mean you to.’

  The moment he was alone in the taxi he drew the yellow sheet of paper from his pocket. ‘New York is desolate without you.—Faith.’ He tapped on the window of the cab.

  ‘Stop at the nearest post-office,’ he said.

  On a pale buff sheet he wrote this message:

  ‘FAITH SWEDEN. 126 E 53 New York City. Arrived tonight in a London that might just as well be empty.— GORDON.’

  Chapter Two

  He did not really think it might. He was conscious on the contrary of a very real feeling of excitement as his taxi rattled northwards through Regent Street, towards St John’s Wood. It was good to be back. It was eight months since he had sailed on a September morning from Marseilles. During those eight months he had seen much beauty. There had been the long blue days at sea, with the ship dipping slowly into the grey-blue water; there had been Tangiers, white and tranquil against brown Africa; there had been le pays des revenants, the high hills of Martinique, with the chattering negresses in their long skirts, with bright Madras handkerchiefs about their necks and long earrings dangling from their ears; there had been the silent efficiency of Panama, the beauty of a machine, perfectly accomplishing its purpose; there had been Tahiti, the beloved of Loti with the flamboyants, scarlet and gold along the quay, and Moorea across the Pacific channel, changing hour by hour its coronal of lights; there had been San Francisco, gay and gallant under a pale blue sky, under a January sun; there had been the rugged cypresses of Del Monte, the bleak rocks and the seals splashing round Point Lobus; there had been the grandeur of the Carmel valley. Lastly there had been New York, with its noise, its squalor, its sudden aspects of breathless beauty; the incredible sky-line of Fifty-ninth Street; the rugged blocks of concrete with their patches of oblong light; the speed and drama of Park Avenue, with the green lights flashing down it and the golden crown of the Central Terminal gleaming three miles away. For eight months he had feasted upon beauty, but in all those months had he seen anything so completely in harmony with itself, so perfected, and self-sufficient as a London square?

  There was no place like London. And he was inclined to think that very few Londoners enjoyed London as completely as he did. Usually when people say ‘I do think you have a jolly life,’ one’s tendency is to feel resentful and catalogue one’s griefs. But when Gordon’s friends said to him, ‘I don’t see what you’ve got to grumble over,’ his invariable answer was, ‘When have you heard me grumble?’ He did not feel he had much to grumble over. When one was tired of London, one was tired of life. The more he saw of other cities, the more dearly he loved his own.

  With eager eyes he looked out of the taxi window, glancing first to one side, then to the other, like a schoolboy returning for the holidays, noting each landmark with greedy haste: the tall white columns of Selfridge’s, the austerities of Portman Square, the weather-vane over the grand-stand at Lord’s, the armoured and lanced knight by the Marlborough Road Metropolitan. It was a schoolboy’s excitement that he felt as the car swung out of the noise of the Finchley Road, towards his home.

  His parents lived and, during the whole of his life, had lived, at the apex of one of the few completely quiet streets in London. Curving as it does from the Swiss Cottage to the Marlborough Road end of Finchley Road, St John’s Wood Park with gardens backing upon other gardens is a blind alley for all main traffic.

  The house of which Gordon’s parents had taken a ninety-nine years’ lease in their fourth year of marriage, with the birth of a second child approaching, was such a house as has in many parts of London since the war been split up into maisonettes and flats. In the 1890’s when it had been built it was the typical home of a prosperous middle-class family. Which was what the Carruthers were. The changing fortunes of that class can indeed be as well exemplified as anywhere in the story of the Carruthers family.

  In early Victorian England a man was judged less by his personality and achievements than by his antecedents. Gordon’s grandfather, as a West-country solicitor, occupied in the social system much the same position that a colour-sergeant does in the army. Honesty was demanded of him and self-reliance and the exercise of dignity. He was respected and he influenced behaviour. Once a year he would be invited by County families formally to dine, twice a year informally to lunch. He hunted and rode and shot. His life was comfortable, honourable and agreeable.

  At the time when he had gone to school there were scarcely six real public schools in the country. Fernhurst, at which he had received a strictly classical education, was a local grammar school in Wessex containing less than thirty boys. By 1880 it contained three hundred. The thirty years that divided the two generations marked the rise into prominence of the middle-classes. The growth of the British Empire had necessitated a vastly increased number of civil servants, officials, soldiers, of people trained and competent to rule and administer the Empire’s resources. This need could only be satisfied by recruiting a ruling class from the upper middle class. That recruiting was symbolized by the creation of the public school system, by the founding of a number of new institutions, and by the transformation of a number of old grammar schools into establishments built on the same pattern as Eton, Winchester, Rugby, Harrow. When Gordon went there in 1911 Fernhurst was one of the thirty most important schools in England, with honour boards containing names that were famous across five continents.

  The rise of the Public School system was the symbol of a social revolution. With the end of the war the last borders of social geography became blurred. With death duties, income tax, depreciated land values and the accumulated mortgages of Victorian extravagance weighing upon the upper classes, the distinction between a trade and a profession disappeared. Peers became stockbrokers, countesses opened dress shops. Men and women stood or fell on their own merit. The definition of a man’s social position by his occupation had become as abstract and academic a science as would a conference in the Argentine on the correct drawing of the colour line.

  To whatever extent, however, the world may change externally, a man retains as a background the ideas to which he has been reared. Gordon�
�s father had been born at the time when Darwin and Huxley were breaking the complacent faith in which early Victorian England had been nourished. Unable to accept wholeheartedly the first chapter of Genesis and the absolute authority of the Bible, the late Victorians made a religion of public service. What came afterwards was uncertain. This alone they knew: that they had this world to live in, that this world was capable of infinite improvement, that by taking thought they could leave this world better for their successors. If Religion was man’s protest against the fact of death, they could defeat death by their work’s survival.

  The creed of the late Victorian was a leaving of the world better than he found it. That creed was taken usually to mean an extension and safeguarding of material power. Gordon’s father believed that it was the citizen’s duty to the State to marry, to support a family, to train his children to be effective citizens, to invest a tenth of his income, to pay his debts, to insure his old age. He saw marriage as a settling down to the serious business of life; a settling down that was symbolized in the large stuccoed house in St John’s Wood Park, with its long mahogany dining-table, its family portraits, its oak-panelled smoking-room, its leather-bound books running in long, dusty rows from floor to ceiling; its drawing-room whose heavily brocaded windows looked out on a trim garden; its thick carpets, its kitchened basement, its high, wide bedrooms, its airy nursery. The house had a substantial air. You could not imagine anyone taking such a house unless he proposed to spend his entire life in it.

  It was a house with whose spirit both Gordon’s parents were in harmony. Mr Carruthers was tall, slim, grey-haired, clean-shaven, the chin a little blue, with heavy lines running between his nose and mouth, who gave in spite of his slimness an effect of weight. His eyes were grey and serious. He spoke with a slow, carefully, almost unctuously cadenced voice. His voice gave you a feeling of the inherited tradition of the law; of authorities consulted and reversed; of parchment and dusty tomes, of estates conveyed and re-conveyed; of properties entailed, of mortgages and reversions. You could picture as you looked at him a life spent in the grey thoroughfares of Lincoln’s Inn. You saw him walking morning after morning through the small iron gate in Chancery Lane into the wide silence of Stone Buildings, past the Library, between the green lawns to the red-brown beauty of New Square, his mind tranquillized by its calm dignity of line. You saw him at his desk, in a large, brown room, dictating letters, interviewing clients, consulting with his clerk, verifying authorites; calm, judicial, un-impassioned. You had the sense of a life in harmony with itself.