Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (65 page)

‘I always think it was such a good idea,’ said Mr. Eccles, – ‘a fellow I read about in a book. Instead of saying “Damn” and “Blast” and all the rest, whenever he was annoyed he used to say “
Mice and Mumps
–
Mice and Mumps!
”’

‘Oh yes?’ (Couldn’t a dentist break it off halfway down, and then crown it?)

‘Humorous idea – but it always appealed to me. Got it off his chest, and hadn’t said anything he regretted.’

‘No.’ (Or he might have it yanked out altogether. But the gap would be worse.)

‘“
My giddy forefathers
” is enough for me.’

‘Yes. Same for me.’ (Unless the teeth on each side grew inwards so as to cover it up. She believed they sometimes did that.)

‘But all these – Bees,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘They get on my nerves. . . . I can’t stand Bees, can you?’

‘No. I don’t like them.’ (From her experience in the bar she could herself have included a large variety of initials rivalling or reducing to naught the mild scandal of Bees, but she was not so unmaidenly as to tell him so.)

‘Dees are bad enough,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘But
Bees
. . . .’

‘Yes. It’s very unnecessary.’ (He might wear a Plate of course, but she didn’t think she could stand that.)

‘And then all this Dragging in of the Deity,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘Why does everybody Drag in the Deity every time they open their mouths?’

‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ said Ella, feeling that he was rather exaggerating the average man’s resort to this form of appeal.

‘Neither do I,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘Not that I’m a Religious man.’

‘No,’ said Ella, non-committally.

‘But I think there’s something
There
, don’t you?’

‘Yes. I suppose there is.’

‘I mean there must be something
There
, mustn’t there,’ said Mr. Eccles, painfully unable to specify exactly Where, and leaving Ella rather doubtful as to how she was to show her comprehension.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘A Great First Cause,’ tried Mr. Eccles. ‘– which we Obey.’

‘Yes.’

‘A Spirit of Good.’

‘Yes.’

‘Something which Looks On.’

‘Yes.’

‘And Guides.’

‘Yes.’

‘In fact I suppose you would really say that I
am
a religious man – though I don’t show it on the surface.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘And I certainly believe in going to Church.’

‘Oh – do you?’ (Good Lord, was he going to turn Religious on her now?)

‘And I believe in the Power of Prayer.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes – don’t you?’

‘I don’t really know,’ said Ella. . . .

‘Ah – but you Must – you Must,’ said Mr. Eccles with
sudden extemporized Chadbandian fervour. ‘You must let me Help you.’

This was frightful. If he was going to superadd Religion to all the other mental thumbscrews and tortures he had at his disposal in the dungeon of his shameless and enwrapping personality, she really could not bear it. Not that Ella Minded religion, in the ordinary way. Her sole reflection on the matter was that there was just as much religion in Some people as there was in Others – if you knew what she meant. But Religion and Mr. Eccles simply did not go.

‘You must try,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘It all Comes – if you Try.’

‘Does it?’

‘Will you Try, for my sake?’

‘Yes. I must,’ said Ella, and decided, this time she believed for good and all, that she could not marry this monster. And was there the same obligation to marry him now, if there was five hundred pounds coming her way? Or, if she must not be so wicked as to take that into account, what about India?

(She had written to India, that was to say to Mrs. Thingymajig, only yesterday, as a matter of fact, and she was expecting an answer to-morrow.)

‘It’s so easy when you Start,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘To get in touch with the Spirit of Peace upon the Waters. . . .’ And Mr. Eccles looked at her in a steady, perturbing way, as though here and now he was getting in touch with the Spirit of Peace upon the Waters, amid all the spoon-clinking, order-calling, and china-clanking of the crowded restaurant.

‘Is it?’ she said.

‘Ah,’ said Mr. Eccles with a smile of sickly winsomeness. ‘I see that you will have to let me take charge of your spiritual as well as your bodily welfare!’

And the smile, of course, revealed the Tooth which had now got beyond the passive hypnotic stage, and was nearly driving her mad.

‘Though I don’t know,’ added Mr. Eccles with his head on one side, ‘that Little Ladies need bother their little heads too much about such grave matters.’

What a fool, and what a Tooth! And how she would like to
shake up his complacency! In his bland egoism he had shown the minimum of interest in the happenings over at Pimlico, and she wondered what he would think now if he knew how those happenings were likely to change the whole course of events? And what would he think if he knew about India? Well, let him go on dwelling a little longer in his toothy paradise. It was strange, how the combined action of Pimlico and India should have brought to the fore and enabled her at last fully to indulge her previously concealed dislike of a mere tooth, but she was now finding that these two localities had strange and magical influences in all directions.

‘They’re more worried,’ said Mr. Eccles, ‘with High Heels than Heaven – eh?’

‘I suppose they are,’ said Ella, smiling. Let him go on. Let him go on. . . .

‘I say – I should make an awfully good Preacher, shouldn’t I?’ said Mr. Eccles, and started on another tack.

‘5 Amprey Gardens,

N.W.3.

‘Mrs. Sanderson-Chantry thanks Miss Dawson for her letter, and would be obliged if she would call to talk the matter over at the above address between 2 and 3.15 on Friday afternoon.

‘E. S
ANDERSON
-C
HANTRY
.’

E
LLA COULD NOT
help feeling a little chilled, indeed a little snubbed, by this briefly scribbled postcard which came two mornings later. After all the fuss and carrying on between the several Mrs. So-on-and-so-forths, she had somehow been led to anticipate a warmer and more welcomingly confiding acknowledgment of her letter. And what a funny way of putting things, in the third person and present tense like that,
as though relating a story, or like a broadcasting announcer describing a sort of athletic event in progress, with themselves as the chief combatants. And no ‘yours faithfully’ or ‘yours truly’ or anything – no human note at all. Just E. (what did E. stand for?) Sanderson-Chantry – as much as to say that was enough for anybody. But she supposed this was the way ‘Ladies’ were compelled by their own rigid laws to conduct matters – ‘Ladies’ having a whole host of ascetic rituals unfathomable by the uninitiated – and so she would not let herself become despondent.

Again, it was very awkward – the way in which 2 to 3.15 had been regally and arbitrarily fixed upon as the time for her call, as unless she took an aeroplane it was physically impossible to get up to Hampstead by 3.15 on a Friday, when she didn’t finish her work in ‘The Midnight Bell’ till three, and had to dress and all. But ‘Ladies,’ who toiled not nor spun, nor did any work save the work of working others, were notoriously incapable of understanding what it meant really to be a working person.

However, quashing these unfruitful grumblings at the gods, and feverishly utilizing the half hour she had off for lunch for the purposes of washing, dressing and making herself seemly in the critical eyes of ‘Ladies’ – Ella contrived to leave ‘The Midnight Bell’ at two minutes past three in full war array – if war array was the right expression to use in describing her intensely studied moderation as regards clothes, cosmetics, and demeanour, in trying to look like a natural-born genius as a nurse-maid for children in India.

It is in nearly all cases impossible for servants, or wage-slaves of any kind, to seek happier conditions of slavery free of charge, and the heavy tax of fourpence (eightpence there and back) was exacted by the Underground Railway on her way to N.W.3. But Ella (seriously as this cut into her weekly earnings – which, if she was to Put anything By amounted only to six shillings weekly, and her clothes had to come out of that) regarded this blindly as an Investment, and made no demur.

But even when she had arrived at Hampstead, and asked
the way shyly from passer-by to passer-by, she had enormous trouble in locating Amprey Gardens, which was reached up hill and down dale, that was to say up all the wrong hills and down all the futile dales, in the mazy northern suburb. But at last she found herself getting warmer, and amongst the Ampreys, and her heart beat faster as she saw ‘Amprey Gardens’ itself written up in a superior road with trees and houses lying back from the pavement in spruce front gardens.

She found Number Five, but was now in such a state of fright that she had to walk on a little way to collect herself – an affliction of the nerves common to wage-slaves, with only their labour power to sell, and the consciousness of their insignificance and powerlessness before their aloof and comfortable masters.

However, at last her footsteps were scrunching up the gravel path, and she was standing in the porch listening to the lingering tinkle of the bell at the back of the still house.

A silent, beastly moment, if ever there was one, and not much improved by the opening of the door – this by a fellow wage-slave, dressed in the neat insignia of wage-slavery, a cap and apron, but not very friendly or understanding in her manners. Hidden rivalry and circumspection, rather than fellow-feeling, most often exists between wage-slave and wage-slave in circumstances such as these, possibly because of their sensitiveness to the dangerous surplus of willing wage-slaves on the market, and possibly because certain fortunate wage-slaves come to acquire some of the aloof and clannish airs of their lords above.

It was half a minute before a coolly stared-at Ella could make her rights and business clear, and then she was reluctantly and silently escorted into a drawing-room on the left of the hallway, and surlily left.

The door was not quite closed on her, and as she looked around, marvelling at the pictures and ornaments of the chintzy room, she could hear and sense the life of the house around her.

This consisted of a succession of curious and rather violent Bumps from above, betokening the presence of a Man in the
house – the dim clatter of washing-up in the basement, and the sound of doors being opened and closed furtively. She had evidently caused rather a crisis in a minor and mysterious way.

Finally a door burst open somewhere; heavy footsteps ran thumping down the stairs, and a Man’s raised voice was heard shouting ‘Rosie! Rosie! . . . Will you keep this
door
shut!’ and a door was slammed.

The next moment Ella’s own door was flung with desperate anger open, and she found herself glaring terror-stricken into the outraged eyes of a tall, good-looking gentleman with a moustache.

‘Oh – I’m sorry,’ said the tall good-looking gentleman, and had shut the door on her and vanished completely in a flash.

Rather a funny way of meeting a tall good-looking gentleman with a moustache, she reflected. . . . The Master she presumed. She wished the Mistress would come, as this suspense was getting on her nerves.

About five minutes later the Mistress appeared, with apologies for the delay. Also with a large brown dog preceding her. Which dog at once began to bark the house down, and to spring lickingly upon Ella in a very insecure and dubiously welcoming way. ‘
Down
, Buster,
Down
!’ cried its mistress – a tall, hatchet-faced, lady-like lady with grey hair. ‘
Down!
. . . Bustah! . . . Bustah! . . .’

‘He’s always like this,’ she explained, but it wasn’t much consolation to hear that.

It was quite a minute or two before the animal was under any form of control, and then they began to discuss the matter in hand. But somehow the life had been taken out of their powers of concentration by the dog, who was grasped firmly but still rebellious, and they could not get down to the thing with very great intimacy or seriousness.

However, in the cool and indifferent manner of her class, Mrs. Sanderson-Chantry described the various advantages (‘
Bustah
! – Don’t!’) and disadvantages of the post, mentioned Ella’s aunt (‘
Don
’
t
, Bustah!’), sketched the salary and the sort of duties which Ella hypothetically would be called upon
(‘Bustah! Will you
stop
!’) to undertake, and so led gracefully on to the snag, which was that there was Another Girl (‘Bustah!’) whom Mrs. Sanderson-Chantry had as good as engaged as far back as three weeks ago, before she had even heard of Ella – only this Girl hadn’t yet been able to decide whether or not she could come. Mrs. Sanderson-Chantry had always Wanted this girl, and she couldn’t very well let her down if she still wanted to come – weally, could she? Mrs. Sanderson-Chantry spoke in rather an affected voice, but Ella decided that she was a Very Nice woman at heart. It is to the advantage of wage-slaves wistfully to form an early opinion that their prospective masters and mistresses are Very Nice, and they generally manage to subdue and shape their subconscious impressions to this gratifying conclusion.

‘So you see it’s weally wather impossible – Bustah!
Bustah
! Lie down Bustah! – impossible,’ went on Mrs. Sanderson-Chantry, ‘to make a Weal Decision at the moment. Lie
down
, will you!’

‘Did you know when you might be knowing, Madam?’ said Ella. She was having a certain amount of difficulty in bringing out her ‘Madams,’ having had no practice with this lately – her service at ‘The Midnight Bell’ requiring only the familiar ‘Guv’nor’ or ‘Mrs.’ to the powers that were. But she well knew that it was a very different proposition when you were on parade before a Real Lady like this, and she brought the word out with due solemnity every time she spoke.

‘Oh – I should think in a few days at the most. I’m going to write to her again to-night as a matter of fact.’

‘Then perhaps you could let me know, Madam, when you hear.’