The man who found himself (Smith's Magazine 1920)/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
On the morning of the fourth of May, the same morning on which Simon had broken like a butterfly from his chrysalis of long molded custom and stiff routine, Mr. Bobby Ravenshaw, nephew and only relative of Simon Pettigrew, awoke in his chambers in Carlton Mansions, Piccadilly, yawned, rang for his tea, and, picking up the book he had put beside him on dropping to sleep, began to read.
The book was “Monte Cristo.” Now, Carlton Mansions, Piccadilly, sounds a very grand address, and, as a matter of fact, it is a grand address, but the address is grander than the place. For one thing it is not in Piccadilly. The approach is up a dubious side street; the word Carlton bears little relationship to it nor the word “mansions,” and the rents are moderate. Downstairs there is a restaurant and a lounge with cosy corners.
People take chambers in Carlton Mansions and vanish. The fact is never reported to the Society of Psychical Research, the levitation being always accountable for by solid reasons. To stop them from vanishing before their rent is paid they have to pay their rent in advance. No credit is given under any circumstances. This seems hard, yet there are compensating advantages that the rent is low, the service good, and the address taking.
Bobby Ravenshaw had chosen to live in Carlton Mansions because it was the cheapest place he could get near the gayest place in town. Bobby was an orphan, an Oxford man, without a degree, and with a taste for literature and fine clothes. He was absolutely irresponsible. Five hundred a year, derived from a relative, of whose only sister he was the son, and an instinct for bridge that was worth another two hundred and fifty, supported Bobby in a sort of lame way, assisted by friends, confiding tailors, and bootmakers, and a genial money lender who was also a cigar merchant.
Bobby had started in life a year or two before with cleverness of no mean order and the backing of money, but Fate had dealt him out two bad cards: a nature that was charming and irresponsible, and good looks. Girls worshiped Bobby, and if his talents had only cast him on the stage, their worship might have helped. As it was, it hindered, for Bobby was a literary man, and no girl has ever bought a book on the strength of the good looks of the author.
His tea having arrived, Bobby drank it, finished the chapter in “Monte Cristo,” and: then rose and dressed. He was leaving Carlton Mansions that day for the very good reason that, if he wished to stay beyond twelve o'clock, he would have to pay a month's rent in advance, and he only had thirty shillings.
The rich relative had “foreclosed.” That was Bobby's impression, a month ago. For a month Bobby had watched the sands running down, no more money to come in and all the time money running out. Absolutely unalarmed, and only noticing the fact as he might have noticed a change in the weather, he had made no provision, trusting to chance, to bridge that betrayed him, and to friends. Literature could not help. He had got into a wrong groove as far as money-making went. Fine little articles for literary papers of limited circulation and a really cultivated taste are not the immediate means to financial support in a world that devours its fictional literature like ham sandwiches, forgotten as soon as eaten. Only fictional literature pays.
He was thinking more of “Monte Cristo” than of his own position as he dressed. The fact that he had to look out for other rooms worried him as an uncomfortable business to be performed, but not much. If he couldn't get other rooms that day he could always stay with Tozer. Tozer was an Oxford man with chambers in the Albany—chambers always open to Bobby at any hour—a sure stand-by in trouble.
Having dressed, Bobby took his hat and stick and the sovereign and half-sovereign lying on the mantel, tipped the servant the half-sovereign, and ordered that his things should be packed and his luggage taken to the office to be left till he called for it.
“I'm going to the country,” said Bobby, “and I'll send my address for letters to be forwarded.”
He called first at the Albany.
Tozer, the son of a big, defunct Manchester cotton merchant, was a man of some twenty-three years, red haired, with a taste for the good things of life, a taste for boxing, a taste for music, and a hard common sense that never deserted him even in his gayest and most frivolous moods. His chambers were newly furnished. The walls of the sitting room were adorned with old prints. Boxing gloves and single sticks hinted of themselves, and a violoncello stood in the corner.
He was at breakfast when Bobby arrived. Tozer rang for another cup and plate.
“Tozer,” said Bobby, “I'm bust.”
“Aren't surprised to hear it,” replied Tozer. “Try these kippers.”
“One single sovereign in the world, my boy, and I'm hunting for new rooms.”
“What's the matter with your old rooms? Have they kicked you out?”
Bobby explained.
“Good Lord!” said Tozer. “You've cut the ground from under your feet, staying at a place like that.”
“It's not all my fault; it's my relative. I always boasted to him that I paid my rent in advance. He took it as a sign of wisdom.”
“What made him go back on you?”
“A girl.”
“Which way?”
“Well, it was this way. I was staying with the Huntingdons— you know, the Warwickshire lot.”
“I know—bridge-and-brandy crowd.”
“Oh, they're all right. Well, I was staying with them when I met her.”
“What's her name?”
“Alice Carruthers.”
“Heave ahead.”
Simon had struck a flower shop. This was the result.
“I got engaged to her. She hadn't a penny.”
“Just like you.”
“And her people haven't a penny, and I wrote, like a fool, telling the relative. He gave me the option of cutting her off or being cut off. It seems her people were the real obstacle. He wrote quite libelous things about them. I refused to give her up.”
“Of course.”
“And he cut me off. Well, the funny thing was she cut me off a week later, and she's engaged now to a chap called Harkness.”
“Well, why don't you tell the relative and make it up?”
“Tell him she'd fired me! Besides, it's no use. He'd just go on to other things—what he calls 'extravagance' and 'irresponsibilities'.”
“I see.”
“That's just how it is.”
“Look here, Bobby,” said Tozer, “you've just got to cut all this nonsense and get to work. You've been making a fool of yourself.”
“I have,” said Bobby, helping himself to marmalade.
“There's no use saying 'I have' and then forgetting. I know you. You're a good sort, Bobby, but you're in the wrong set. You couldn't keep the pace. You've loads of cleverness and you're going to rot. Work!”
“How?”
“Write,” said Tozer, who believed in Bobby and hated to see him going to waste. “Write! I've always been urging you to settle down and write.”
“I made five pounds ten last year writing,” said Bobby.
“I know—articles on old French poetry and so on. You've got to write fiction. You can do it. That little story you wrote for Tillson's was ripping.”
“The devil of it is,” said Bobby, “I can't find plots. I can write all right if I only have something to write about, but I can't find plots.”
“That's rubbish, and pure laziness. Can't find plots, with your experience of London and life! You've got to find plots, and find them sharp. It's the only trade open to you, you can do it, and it pays. Now look here, B. R., I'll finance you.”
“Thanks awfully,” said Bobby, helping himself to a cigarette.
“Reserve your thanks. I'm not going to finance a slacker, which you are at present, but a hard-working literary man, which you will be when I have done with you. I'll give you a room here on the strict conditions that you keep early hours five days a week”
“Yes.”
“That you give up bridge”
“Yes.”
“And fooling after girls”
“Yes.”
“And this day set out and find a plot for a good, honest, payable piece of fiction, novel length. I'm not going to let you off with short-story writing.”
“Yes.”
“I know a good publisher, and I'll assure you that the thing shall be published in the best form, that I will back the advertising and pushing—see?—and I'll promise you that, however the thing turns out, you shall have two hundred pounds. You will get all profits if it is a success, understand me?”
“Yes.”
“You shall have five pounds a week pocket money while you are writing, to be repaid out of profits if the profits exceed two hundred, not to be repaid if they don't.”
“I don't like taking money for nothing,” said Bobby.
“You won't get it, except for hard work. Besides, it's for my amusement and interest. I believe in you and I want to see my belief justified. You need never bother about taking money from me. First, I have plenty. Secondly, I never give it without a quid pro quo—the trading instinct is too strong in me.”
“Well,” said Bobby, “it's jolly good of you, and I'll pay you the lot back, if”
Tozer, lighting a cigarette, flung tthe match down impatiently.
“'If! You'll do nothing if you begin with an 'if.' Now make up your mind quick without any 'ifs.' Will you, or won't you?”
“I will!” said Bobby, suddenly catching on to the idea and taking fire. “I believe I can do it if”
“If!” shouted Tozer.
“I will do it! I'll find a plot. I'll dig in my brains right away. I'll hunt round.”
“Off with you, then,” said Tozer, “and send your luggage here and come back to-night with your plot. You can work in your bedroom and you can have all your meals here—I forgot to include that. Now I'm going to have a tune on the cello.”
Bobby departed with a light heart. His position, before calling on Tozer, had really begun to weigh on him. Tozer had given him even more than the promise of financial support, he had given him the backing of his common sense. He had “jawed” him, mildly, and Bobby felt all the better for it. It was like a tonic. His high spirits, as he descended the stairs, increased with every step taken.
Bobby was no sponge. Bridge and the relative had kept him going and he had always managed to meet his debts, somehow, with the exception perhaps of a tradesman or two. He would not have taken this favor from any other man but Tozer, and perhaps not even from Tozer had it not been accompanied by the “jawing.”
So he set out, light of heart, young, good looking, well dressed, yet with only a sovereign, to hunt through the summer landscape of London for the plot for a novel. Why, he himself was the plot for a novel, or at least the beginning of one, had he known!
He did not, but he had an intimate knowledge of Tozer's fictional proclivities and a fine understanding of exactly what Tozer wanted. Bones-ribs-and-vertebrae construction—or in other words, story. Tozer could not be fubbed off with fine writing, with long, introspective chapters dealing with the boyhood of the author, with sham psychology masquerading as romance; nor, indeed, could Bobby have supplied the two latter features. Tozer wanted action, people moving on their feet under the dominion of the author's purpose, through situations, toward a definite goal,
Out in Vigo Street, and despite the aura of inspiration around the Bodley Head, Bobby's high spirits came slightly under eclipse. It all at once seemed to him that he had undertaken a task. In Cork Street, as he stood for a moment looking at the rare editions exposed in the windows, this feeling grew and put on horns.
A task to Bobby meant a thing disagreeable to do, and the elegant volumes of minor poets, copies of the yellow books, and vellum-bound editions of belles lettres were saying to him: “You've got to write a novel, my boy, a good Mudie novel; the sort of novel the Tozers of life will pay for. No slight essays written with the little finger turned up! No modern verses like your 'Harmonies and Discords' that cost you twenty-five pounds to produce and which sold sixteen copies of itself, according to last returns. You have got to be the harmonious blacksmith now, get into your apron, get under your spreading chestnut tree, and produce.”
In Bond Street, Bobby met Lord Billy Tottenham, a fellow Oxonian, who met his death in a mudhole hunting in Flanders the other year. Lord silly had a boyish, smug, but immovable face, adorned with a tortoise-shell-rimmed eyeglass.
“Hello, Bobby,” said Billy.
“Hello, Billy,” said Bobby.
“What's wrong with you?” asked Billy.
“Broke to the world, my dear chap.”
“What was the horse?” asked Billy.
“'Twasn't a horse—a girl, mostly.”
“Well, you're not the first chap that's been broke by a girl,” said Billy. “But it might have been worse. Walk along a bit.”
“How so?”
“She might have married you.”
“Maybe. But the worst of it is I've got to work—tuck up my sleeves and work.”
“What at?”
“Novel writing.”
“Well, that's easy enough,” said Billy cheerfully. “You can easy get some literary cove to do the writing and stick your name to it, and we'll all buy your books, my boy, we'll all buy your books. Not that I ever read books much, but I'll buy 'em if you write 'em. Come into Jubber's.”
Arm in arm they entered Long's Hotel, where Billy resided, and over a mutual whisky-and-soda they forgot books and discussed horses. They lunched together and discussed dogs, girls, and mutual friends. It was like old times again, but over the liqueurs and over the cigarette smoke there suddenly appeared to Bobby the vision of Tozer. He said good-by to the affluent one and departed. “I've got to work,” said he.
His momentary lapse from the direction of the target only served to pull him together, and it seemed, now, as though the luncheon and the lapse had made things easier. He told himself that if he hadn't brains enough to scare up some sort of plot for a six-shilling novel, he had better drown himself. If he couldn't do what hundreds of people with half of his knowledge of the world and ability were doing, he would be a mug of the very first water.
If anything depressed him it was the horrible and futile assurance of Billy that “his friends would buy his books.” He went to Carlton Mansions and ordered his luggage sent to the Albany, then he changed his sovereign and bought a cigar. An omnibus gave him an inspiration. He would get on top of an omnibus and in that cool and airy position do a bit of thinking.
It was not an original idea—he had read or heard of a famous author who thought out his plots on the tops of omnibuses—but it was an idea. He clambered on to the top of an eastward-going bus and, behind a fat lady with bugles on her bonnet, tried to compose his mind.
Why not make a story about—Billy? People liked reading of the aristocracy, and Billy was a character in his way and had many stories attached to him. He could start the book grandly, simply out of remembered visions of Lord William Tottenham in his gayest moods—L.W.T. emptying bottles of cliquot into a grand piano at Oxford. Oxford! Oh, grander and grander! The book should begin at Oxford with a fresh and vigorous picture of university life. Tozer would come in and a host of others. Then, after Oxford—ah, there was the rub! The story that had begun so brightly suddenly ceased. A character and a situation do not make a story.
They had reached the bank—as if by derision. He got off the omnibus and got on a westbound one harking back to the land he knew. He remembered the expression “racking one's brains to find a plot.” He knew the meaning of it now.
At Piccadilly Circus, where all things meet, a lanky, wild-looking, red-haired girl in a picture hat and a fit of abstraction—that was the impression she gave—caught his eye. In a moment he was after her.
Here was salvation—Julia Delyse, the last “catch-on,” whose books were selling by the hundred thousand. He had met her at the “Three Arts” Ball and once since. She had called him Bobby the second time. He had flirted with her, as he flirted with everything with skirts on, and forgotten her. She was very modern—modern enough to raise the hair on a grandmother's scalp. Her looks were to match.
“Hello, Bobby,” said Julia.
“You are just the person I want to see,” said Bobby.
“How's that?” said Julia.
“I'm in a fix. I've got to write a novel.”
“What's the hurry?” asked Julia.
“Money,” said Bobby.
“Make money?”
“Yes.”
“If you write for money, you're lost,” said Julia.
“I'm lost anyway,” replied Bobby. “Where are you going to?”
“Home—my flat's close by. Come and have some tea.”
“I don't mind. Well, now see here, I've got to do it and I can't find anything to write about.”
“With all London before you?”
“I know, but when I start to think, it all gets behind me. I want you to start me with some idea. You're full of ideas and you know the ropes.”
They had reached the flat and the lady with ideas ushered him in. She offered cigarettes, lit one herself, and tea was brought in. Then the hypnotism began.
The fact that she was a “famous authoress” would not have mattered a button to Bobby yesterday. To-day, on his new, strange road, it lent her a fascination that completed the fascination of her wondrous eyes. I know, they seemed wild in the street, but when she looked at one intensively they were wonderful! Plots were forgotten, and in the twilight Bobby's full, musical voice might have been heard discussing literature—with long pauses.
“Dear old thing, is that cushion comfy? Oh, bother the girl and the tea things! I just put your head so”
He had been hooked twenty times by girls and pulled off the hook by parents, or been thrown back by the fisherwoman on inspecting his bank balance, but he had never been hooked like this before; for Julia had no parents to speak of, she was above bank balances, and her grip was of iron where passion and publishers were concerned. Her publishers could have told you that by the way she gripped her rights when they tried to cheat her of them, for, despite her wondrous eyes and wild air and the fact that she was a genius, she was practical as well as tenacious in hold.
Then, at the end of the séance, Bobby found himself leaving the flat a semi-tied-up man. He couldn't remember whether he had proposed to her or she to him, or whether either of them had proposed or actually accepted, but there was a tie between them—a tie slight enough and not binding in any court; less an engagement than an attachment formed, so he told himself.
He remembered in the street, however, that a tie between him and an authoress was not what Tozer wanted. He had received no plot, or even a literary hint. Had he retained his clear senses during the séance, and had he possessed a knowledge of Julia Delyse's brilliant and cynical books, he might have wondered where the brilliancy and cynicism came from. In love, Julia was absolutely unliterary and a bit heavy—clinging, as it were.
The momentary idea of running back to ask for the forgotten plot as for a hat left behind, was dispelled by this sudden feeling that she was heavy. Under the fascination of her eyes and in that weird room, she had seemed light. In St. James' Street, where he now was, she seemed heavy. And he would have to go on with the attachment for a while or be a brute. That recognition, with the remembrance of Tozer in his hands and a recognition of his failure in his search for the one essential thing, depressed him for a moment. Then he determined to forget about everything and go and have dinner.