Another Part of the Wood Read online

  Here, in silent companionship, they would gaze at the traffic below; at taxis rushing to and fro, or cruising in search of prey; at private cars purring or spluttering as they swept through the long ravine; at pedestrians hurrying or sauntering on their mysterious affairs; at policemen conscientiously idling past the area railings; at lovers linked in obstructive catalepsy; at postmen rapping their way into the distant perspective; in short, at all the manifestations of civic life which may be observed from an upper window in Wykeham Street after the busiest part of the day is over, and before the fading twilight has altogether gone. Thus did they calm their youthful souls after the toiling and telephoning in their respective offices. Thus did they meditate on human existence, with particular reference to whatever problems it might be offering them at the moment. Thus did they work their way through the quarter-pound tins of Baffy’s Mixture which were dotted all over the room behind them. And thus—not least important—did they avoid the indescribably tedious conversation of Mr. Burgess, as he cleared away the remains of their evening meal.

  There was tradition, also, behind this window-seat business, dating back to other windows in the city of Oxford, where the two companions had also knelt, and smoked, and ruminated; windows looking over green quadrangles, where the foreshortened passage of strangers and acquaintances did so much to keep the trickle of dialogue going; and another window, in their joint digs in the same damp city, from which the sphere of philosophic observation had been considerably enlarged by the addition of vehicular traffic. In this particular situation and attitude it seemed, somehow, unnecessary to finish sentences that one had begun, or to explain references which had become merged in the lighting of a match. A grunt, a few incoherent mumblings, and yet another valuable idea had been shared with the fellow-creature who knelt by your side. Even the rail of a liner, and the hypnotic backwash of the ocean itself, can hardly effect a closer communion of spirit than a window-seat at the right height from the ground, and the changeless variety of the panorama below. As a stimulus to thought it may well challenge comparison with the countryman’s five-barred gate.

  And so, as April passed into May and the evenings became longer and warmer, the snatches of intercourse on the window-seat at Number Ninety-seven showed an increasing tendency to flicker round the subject which Mr. Brett could never wholly dislodge from his mind. It was understood, of course, that no fellow with any decency would mention definite names, and still less would he employ the monosyllable which describes the tenderest and most insupportable of passions. One must also reserve the right to abandon the subject without notice, and to return to it without explanation or warning. Yet even so, when hitched over a window-sill like this, and with one’s pipe in one’s mouth—so that one need never look at one’s companion and could mumble as much as one chose; even so, one could convey a pretty accurate notion of the canker which was at work on one’s vitals.

  And there was this to be said for old Snubs; that he was the last kind of person to worry one with damn-fool questions, or to hustle one, or to go back to the great subject without being given a lead. He listened, he smoked, and sometimes he grunted. But he never smiled, or alternatively appeared to lose interest, if one preferred to linger on the edge of the great subject, or approached it by the most distant and devious routes. One might begin, for instance, and often did begin, by some vague reference to the high cost of living. Would Snubs give it as his opinion that two people could keep going better on a small income when they were sharing it than when they weren’t?

  “No doubt of it,” Snubs would say, without loosening the grip on his pipe. “Look at us.”

  “’S a matter of fact,” Beaky would mumble, “I was thinking of married people. But that would be just the same, wouldn’t you say?”

  Snubs had no doubt of this, either.

  How little did Snubs suppose that one could start on; like that?

  Snubs stared at a boy on a bicycle, and said that it all depended.

  Beaky admitted this. But a little later he wanted to know what Snubs would do if, just for the sake of argument, he—that is to say the mumbler—got married himself.

  Snubs, smoking stolidly, supposed that he’d have to buy a new top-hat.

  Oh, quite. But would he be surprised, though?

  Not particularly. He didn’t go in for being surprised.

  Well, here was a rather interesting sort of case. Supposing a fellow thought he might be raking in a bit more screw from his office later on—every chance of it, and all that—ought he to wait until he was before he said anything?

  Said anything to whom?

  Said anything to the girl, of course.

  Snubs, still smoking, thought not. Snubs thought that girls didn’t thank you if you kept them hanging about for ever. In Snubs’s view, once a fellow managed to get accepted, almost anything might happen. Nobody liked having an engaged daughter about the house, or a daughter—it came to the same thing—who said she was engaged. They moped.

  An odd look of fearful pride spread over Beaky’s features in the twilight, as he pictured Sylvia moping for his sake. But they were still a long way from such a romantic possibility, and with a jerk of his shoulders he put forward what he described as another rather interesting sort of case. Supposing a fellow’s father had died or been killed or something, and another sort of old boy had become the fellow’s kind of trustee. Sat on his cash, and so forth. Was that more or less clear?

  Absolutely. The clarity, though Snubs didn’t say so, was considerably increased by the fact or coincidence that this was exactly his friend’s situation. So he nodded, and the friend went trickling on.

  This, it appeared, was the sort of point that he was driving at, if Snubs saw what he meant. Supposing this old boy had got to hand over some of the cash when the fellow got married, but only if he approved of the fellow’s choice—well, what ought the fellow to do then? At which end ought he to start? By telling the old boy that he was going to marry a girl who might then go and turn him down, and probably would, in fact; or by having it out with her first, and then finding that the old boy had put his hoof down? In the latter event, in the sort of case that he was thinking of, the fellow might have to go on being engaged for years, which everybody said was Hell. In the former event he would look, feel and altogether be such a dashed fool. Rather awkward, wasn’t it?

  Snubs agreed. But why, he asked, after several thoughtful puffs, why should the old boy put his hoof down?

  “Because,” said Beaky, to Wykeham Street as a whole, “in the sort of case I’m thinking of, he’s just the kind of old boy who would. I dare say he doesn’t mean to be like that, but there’s no getting away from it. He hates listening to anybody, and he loathes making up his mind. All he wants is not to be worried about anything, and fellows like that always put their hooves down. They don’t realise that other people may want to get things settled, and can’t wait for ever. They just——Oh, well, it’s no good talking about it all. Let’s have a tune.”

  So then the victim of circumstance would scramble off the window-seat, and switch on the lights, and wind up the gramophone and set the turn-table spinning with plum-coloured band-music. And presently, as the hoarse bleating filled the sitting-room, the two tenants would dance thoughtfully each on his own little bit of carpet, whistling gently to themselves, or sometimes snapping their fingers and saying “Too-tooty-too.” In this arduous though soothing exercise all mention of girls, fathers, proposals and old boys would vanish for the time being. The records which had been set aside for dispatch to Noodles had drifted imperceptibly back into the current repertoire. But then almost anything plum-coloured would have done equally well on these evenings when both tenants had so much to think about.

  2

  Personal problems don’t stand still just because you delay all direct action and confine yourself to mumblings with your head out of a third-floor window in Wykeham Street. Either Mr. Brett would go on meeting Miss Shirley, or else he wouldn’t; and as this w
asn’t really an alternative at all, because of course he did go on meeting her, then the original question of the stage at which Mr. Cottenham was to be taken into his confidence seemed likely to settle itself. For Miss Shirley was here in London, and Mr. Cottenham was at Pippingfold. Could one possibly take a cold-blooded journey down to the country, then, when she might choose that very evening to ask one to another dinner-party? Most certainly one could and would do nothing of the sort. Should one approach this tremendous business in a niggling spirit of pounds, shillings and pence? Not, apparently, now that one had gone so much too far to go back. One was as honourable as ever about supporting Miss Shirley in the style to which she was accustomed, and one still knew that one hadn’t the faintest chance of doing it, but these were no reasons for leaving the field open to utterly unscrupulous rivals. As Snubs had so profoundly remarked, almost anything might happen once a fellow had managed to get engaged. You’d have her on your side, then, and no amount of elderly characters could hold out against a situation like that.

  Besides, it wasn’t as if one were doomed to have Mr. Cottenham as one’s guardian for ever. He had discussed this point with Noodles, and their memories of what they had been told had exactly tallied. At the age of twenty-five—which in his own case was only fourteen months away—Mr. Cottenham was to hand over the cash on which he had been sitting all this time, and they could then marry anybody that they chose. If they married sooner—which at the date of the discussion had seemed a ridiculous notion—then Mr. Cottenham had first to agree. “And of course he wouldn’t,” Noodles had added, “so I shan’t try.”

  The idea of being in a will at all had filled them both with a pleasant sense of importance, of which they were almost immediately intensely ashamed. That was why Beaky had never asked, and consequently had no knowledge, whether the cash were large or small. Whether it had been sprouting at compound interest, or whether it had all been blown on his own and Noodles’s education. He didn’t scowl horribly when people mentioned his parents, but a corresponding sensibility had made it impossible for him to satisfy his curiosity at Somerset House; for that was Beaky’s way, and would equally have been Noodles’s if she had ever heard of such a place. He’d look an ass, of course, if Mrs. Shirley asked him straight out; but then she’d never do this unless …

  “Oh, Gosh!” said Beaky, striding up and down his bedroom and glaring at the photograph. “There’s only one question that matters a curse, really. And that is, how the dickens does one propose?”

  There were more mumblings on the window-seat that evening, where it must be admitted that the punctilio of anonymity was beginning to break down. The first time that he had said “Sylvia” by mistake, he had nearly flung himself into the area in his horror and remorse; but after Snubs, by a similar accident, had referred to the old boy as Mr. Cottenham—and had thought it simpler not to apologise—the so-called fellow had drifted pretty rapidly into the first person. It was “I” all the time now. It was “I” to-night as soon as Mr. Burgess had left the sitting-room with his last tray-load.

  “I’ve quite decided, Snubs. I’m going to do it.”

  Snubs blew an interrogative puff of smoke.

  “I can’t go on like this,” said Beaky. “You can see for yourself I’m going off my nut.”

  Snubs nodded, sympathetically.

  “I’m going,” said Beaky, “to jolly well tell her.”

  Snubs nodded again.

  “It’ll probably be the end of everything,” said Beaky. “I don’t imagine for a moment that she’ll have me. I can’t see any earthly reason why she should. But”— here he clenched his fist and smote the window-sill— “it’s got to be done.”

  “I see,” said Snubs. “Well, I’m sure——”

  “Never mind about that,” said Beaky, wildly. “For Heaven’s sake don’t say anything encouraging, or it’ll only make it all worse. But if I go on like this…”

  He groaned, and switched back to the beginning.

  “Only how?” he asked.

  “How what?”

  “Ought one to say it, do you think? Or write?”

  Snubs gave it as his opinion that letters were dashed risky sort of things.

  “Gives ’em time to think,” he added.

  “Good God!” said Beaky, indignantly. “But do you suppose I want her to do anything she doesn’t want to do? I’m not that sort of fellow.”

  “Oh, rather not. But, still——”

  Beaky wasn’t listening.

  “And if you want the real truth,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Well, if you want the real truth, I tried to do it yesterday. Speaking to her, I mean. And I just … My Gosh, Snubs, when she looks at you like that, you just can’t say anything!”

  Mr. Brett’s voice rose to a wail of agony, and red-hot fragments of Baffy’s Mixture fluttered down into Wykeham Street.

  “Every single word went clean out of my head,” he moaned. “I’d got the whole thing ready—not that it was any good, I mean—and I couldn’t say one dashed syllable. There’s never been such a ghastly failure. Never!”

  “Hard luck,” said Snubs. “Why don’t you try the telephone?”

  “What?”

  “Well, I mean, she couldn’t look at you then. And you could learn it all up, and sing it out to her.”

  “And have that butler listening on the other extension—not to mention all the girls at the exchange. No, thanks. And you needn’t talk about ‘singing’ like that. This isn’t a musical comedy, you know.”

  “My mistake,” said Snubs.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry, I mean. Yes, perhaps you had better write.”

  “It’s the only way,” said Beaky. “It’s the only chance I’ve got.”

  “All right.”

  “And I’ll register it, don’t you think? Not that that’ll make any difference.”

  “Then why——”

  “Oh, you don’t understand. I mean, she’s bound to say No, whatever I do. It’s an absolute certainty. It’s a million to one. It’s a dead snip. It’s—— Oh, well, it’s bound to go wrong, whatever happens. I’ve felt that from the beginning. I say—shall we have a tune?”

  They scrambled off the window-seat, and had a tune.

  3

  It is difficult for us to see Mr. Brett’s proposal as he writes it, because he has gone into his bedroom and locked the door. He has also hunched himself over the pad of notepaper so closely and protectively that he can hardly see what he is writing himself. We hear the fountain-pen gliding and hesitating, and every now and then he rises and tears another attempt into a great number of very small pieces, which he then burns very carefully in the empty grate. But after a while this seems to be taking too much time, and he thrusts the failures into his pocket—to be dealt with when he shall have achieved what he considers a success. Later still he flings them desperately on to the floor, where we have a chance to read some of them, and note that they almost all begin with the statement that he is only writing this because he simply can’t help it—which makes us wonder, perhaps, why they all break off about three lines further down. Hang-dog fragments they are, bursting with violent denunciation of the author and depriving him of every shred of character. They are laden with cringing apologies for his existence, and take pains to point out that the recipient could hardly make a worse choice. Then they stagger into incoherence, and stop, and the fountain-pen rushes back to repeat that preposterous opening.

  He groans, straightens his back, and catches sight of a phrase among that welter on the carpet. Seen like this, in a sudden, fleeting glance, it strikes him as better than some of the later improvements. Perhaps, then, if he forces himself to go through the welter again, he may piece together a letter which really says what he means. He does this. Though he examines each morsel with an expression of unutterable distaste and loathing, there do seem to be bits, here and there, which aren’t quite as awful as he had thought. They may seem pretty awful to
us, and of course Heaven alone knows how they might strike the recipient; but as other authors have discovered, almost anything that you wrote half an hour ago seems better than what you are writing just now. Slowly but steadily the composite version grows. It is half-way down the page now. It is nearly at the bottom. A large full-stop. It is finished.

  Well, not quite; because he is suddenly up against the greatest obstacle of all. How on earth is he going to sign it? Yours sincerely? Too cold. Yours ever? Too daring. Yours? Well, he is hers, of course, but that doesn’t look right somehow, either.

  As he falters, his gaze wanders back to the body of the text, and in terror lest he should find himself condemning the whole production, he screws up his eyes and jams in the word “Beaky” without prefix or suffix. She’ll know who it’s from anyhow. He’ll only make it worse if he tries again.

  Speed has now become the one essential. He wrenches at the pad—so violently that he has to replace several sheets. He empties his pockets. He gathers up the débris from the floor. He tears blindly and savagely. He closes the writing-pad and tosses it aside. His tongue plays like lightning over the flap of the registered envelope. The side of his fist crushes it flatter than a pancake.

  Miss Sylvia Shirley, 19, Dolphin Street, S.W. 1.

  Even in his own handwriting the name makes him tremble, but he recovers himself sufficiently to light one more bonfire in the empty grate, which he watches carefully until the last scrap of evidence has shrivelled and turned black. That’s all, then, except for the writing-pad, which must go back in the sitting-room, for it is communal property. He rushes to the door, rattles it violently, realises that it is still locked, unlocks it, and darts precipitately across the landing.