You Can't Go Home Again (71 page)

This grotesque little creature even spoke a different language. It was Cockney, of course, but not sharp, decisive Cockney; it was a kind of thick, catarrhal jargon, so blurred in the muttering that it was almost indecipherable. George could hardly understand him at all. Mrs. Purvis could make better sense of it, but even she confessed that there were times when she did not know what he was talking about. George would hear her beginning to rail at him the instant he came staggering into the house beneath the weight of a heavy case of beer:

“‘Ere, now, mind where you’re goin’, won’t you? And try not to make so much noise with those bottles! Why can’t you wipe those muddy boots before you come in the ‘ouse? Don’t come clumpin’ up the stairs like an ‘orse!...Oh,” she would cry in despair, turning to George, “‘e is the clumsiest chap I ever saw!...And why can’t you wash your face once in a while?” she would say, striking again at the urchin with her sharp tongue. “A great, growin’ chap like you ought to be ashamed goin’ about where people can see you with a face like that!”

“Yus,” he muttered sullenly, “goin’ abaht wiv a fyce lahk that. If you ‘ad to go abaht the wye I do, you’d wash your fyce, wouldn’t yer?”

Then, still muttering resentfully to himself, he would clump down the stairs and go away, and from the front window George would watch him as he trudged back up the street towards the wine and liquor shop in which he worked.

This store was small, but since the neighbourhood was fashionable the place had that atmosphere of mellow luxury and quiet elegance—something about it a little worn, but all the better for being a little worn—that one finds in small, expensive shops of this sort in England. It was as if the place were mildly tinctured with fog, touched a little with the weather, and with the indefinable but faintly exciting smell of soft coal smoke. And over everything, permeating the very woods of the counter, shelves, and floor, hung the fragrance of old wines and the purest distillations of fine liquors.

You opened the door, and a little bell tinkled gently. You took a half-step down into the shop, and immediately its atmosphere made you feel at peace. You felt opulent and secure. You felt all the powerful but obscure seductions of luxury (which, if you have money, you can feel in England better than anywhere else). You felt rich and able to do anything. You felt that the world was good, and overflowing with delectable delicacies, and that all of them were yours for the asking.

The proprietor of this luxurious little nest of commerce seemed just exactly the man for such an office. He was middle-aged, of medium height, spare of build, with pale brown eyes and brown moustaches—wispy, rather long, and somewhat lank. He wore a wing collar, a black necktie, and a scarf-pin. He usually appeared in shirt-sleeves, but he dispelled any suggestion of improper informality by wearing arm protectors of black silk. This gave him just the proper touch of unctuous yet restrained servility. He was middle class—not middle class as America knows it, not even middle class as the English usually know it—but a very special kind of middle class, serving middle class, as befitted a purveyor of fine comforts to fine gentlemen. He was there to serve the gentry, to live upon the gentry, to exist by, through, and for the gentry, and always to bend a little at the waist when gentry came.

As you entered the shop, he would come forward behind his counter, say “Good evening, sir,” with just the proper note of modified servility, make some remark about the weather, and then, arching his thin, bony, sandily-freckled hands upon the counter, he would bend forwards slightly—wing collar, black necktie, black silk arm protectors, moustache, pale brown eyes, pale, false smile, and all the rest of him—and with servile attentiveness, not quite fawning, would wait to do your bidding.

“What is good to-day? Have you a claret, a sound yet modestly-priced vintage you can recommend?”

“A claret, sir?” in silken tones. “We have a good one, sir, and not expensive either. A number of our patrons have tried it. They all pronounce it excellent. You’ll not go wrong, sir, if you try this one.”

“And how about a Scotch whisky?”

“A Haig, sir?” Again the silken tones. “You’ll not go wrong on Haig, sir. But perhaps you’d like to try another brand, something a trifle rare, a little more expensive, perhaps a little more mature. Some of our patrons have tried this one, sir. It costs a shilling more, but if you like the smoky flavour you’ll find it worth the difference.”

Oh, the fond, brisk slave! The fond, neat slave! The fond slave bending at the waist, with bony fingers arched upon his counter! The fond slave with his sparse hair neatly parted in the middle, and the narrow forehead arched with even corrugations of pale wrinkles as the face lifted upwards with its thin, false smile! Oh, this fond, brisk pander to fine gentlemen—and that wretched boy! For suddenly, in the midst of all this show of eager servitude, this painted counterfeit of warmth, the man would turn like a snarling cur upon that miserable child, who stood there sniffling through his catarrhal nose, shuffling his numbed feet for circulation, and chafing his reddened, chapped, work-coarsened hands before the cheerful, crackling fire of coals:

“Here, now, what are you hanging round the shop for? Have you delivered that order to Number 12 yet? Be on your way, then, and don’t keep the gentleman waiting any longer!”

And then immediately the grotesque return to silken courtesy, to the pale, false smile again, to the fawning unctions of his “Yes, sir. A dozen bottles, sir. Within thirty minutes, sir. To Number 42—oh, quite so, sir. Good night.”

And good night, good night, good night to you, my fond, brisk slave, you backbone of a nation’s power. Good night to you, staunch symbol of a Briton’s rugged independence. Good night to you, and to your wife, your children, and your mongrel tyranny over their lives. Good night to you, my little autocrat of the dinner-table. Good night to you, my lord and master of the Sunday leg of mutton. Good night to you, my gentlemen’s pander in Ebury Street.

And good night to you, as well, my wretched little boy, my little dwarf, my gnome, my grimy citizen from the world of the Little People.

The fog drifts thick and fast to-night into the street. It sifts and settles like a cloak, until one sees the street no longer. And where the shop light shines upon the fog, there burns a misty glow, a blurred and golden bloom of radiance, of comfort, and of warmth. Feet pass the shop, men come ghostwise from the fog’s thick mantle, are for a moment born, are men again, are heard upon the pavement, then, wraithlike, vanish into fog, are ghosts again, are lost, are gone. The proud, the mighty, and the titled of the earth, the lovely and protected, too, go home—home to their strong and sheltered walls behind the golden nimbus of other lights, fog-flowered. Four hundred yards away the tall sentries stamp and turn and march again. All’s glory here. All’s strong as mortared walls. All’s loveliness and joy within this best of worlds.

And you, you wretched child, so rudely and unfitly wrenched into this world of glory, wherever you must go to-night, in whatever doorway you must sleep, upon whatever pallet of foul-smelling straw, within whatever tumbled warren of old brick, there in the smoke, the fog-cold welter, and the swarming web of old, unending London—sleep well as can be, and hug the ghosts of warmth about you as you remember the forbidden world and its imagined glory. So, my little gnome, good night. May God have mercy on us all.

33. Enter Mr. Lloyd McHarg

During the late autumn and early winter of that year occurred an event which added to Webber’s chronicle the adventure of an extraordinary experience. He had received no news from America for several weeks when, suddenly in November, he began to get excited letters from his friends, informing him of a recent incident that bore directly on his own career.

The American novelist, Mr. Lloyd McHarg, had just published a new book which had been instantly and universally acclaimed as a monument of national significance, as well as the crowning achievement in McHarg’s brilliant literary career. George had read in the English press brief accounts of the book’s tremendous success, but now he began to receive enlargements on the news from his friends at home. Mr. McHarg, it seemed, had given an interview to reporters, and to the astonishment of everyone had begun to talk, not about his own book, but about Webber’s. Cuttings of the interview were sent to George. He read them with astonishment, and with the deepest and most earnest gratitude.

George had never met Mr. Lloyd McHarg. He had never had occasion to communicate with him in any way. He knew him only through his books. He was, of course, one of the chief figures in American letters, and now, at the zenith of his career, when he had won the greatest ovation one could win, he had seized the occasion, which most men would have employed for purposes of self-congratulation, to praise enthusiastically the work of an obscure young writer who was a total stranger to him and who had written only one book.

It seemed to George then, as it seemed to him ever afterwards, one of the most generous acts he had ever known, and when he had somewhat recovered from the astonishment and joy which this unexpected news had produced in him, he sat down and wrote to Mr. McHarg and told him how he felt. In a short time he had an answer from him—a brief note, written from New York. Mr. McHarg said that he had spoken as he had because he felt that way about Webber’s book, and that he was happy to have had the opportunity of giving public acknowledgment to his feeling. He said that he was about to be awarded an honorary degree by one of America’s leading universities—an event which, he confessed with pardonable pride, pleased him all the more because the award was to be made out of season, in special recognition of his last book, and because the ceremony attending it was not to be part of the usual performance of trained seals at commencement time. He said that he was sailing for Europe immediately afterwards and would spend some time on the Continent, that he would be in England a little later, and that he hoped to see Webber then. George wrote back and told him he was looking forward to their meeting, gave him his address, and there for a time the matter rested.

Mrs. Purvis was a party to George’s elation, which was so exultant that he could not have kept the reason a secret from her if he had tried. She was almost as excited about his impending meeting with Mr. McHarg as he was. Together they would scan the papers for news of Mr. McHarg. One morning she brought the “nice ‘ot cup” of Ovaltine, rattled the pages of her tabloid paper, and said:

“I see where ‘e is on ‘is way. ‘E’s sailed already from New York.”

A few days later George smacked the crisp sheets of
The Times
and cried: “He’s there! He’s landed! He’s in Europe! It won’t be long now!”

Then came the never-to-be-forgotten morning when she brought the usual papers, and with them the day’s mail, and in the mail a letter from Fox Edwards, enclosing a long clipping from
The New York Times
. This was a full account of the ceremonies at which Mr. McHarg had been awarded his honorary degree. Before a distinguished gathering at the great university Mr. McHarg had made a speech, and the clipping contained an extended quotation of what he had had to say. George had not foreseen it. He had not imagined it could happen. His name shot up at him from the serried columns of close print and exploded in his eyes like shrapnel. A hard knot gathered in his throat and choked him. His heart leaped, skipped, hammered at his ribs. McHarg had put Webber in his speech, had spoken of him there at half a column’s length. He had hailed the younger man as a future spokesman of his country’s spirit, an evidence of a fruition that had come, of a continent that had been discovered. He called Webber a man of genius, and held his name before the mighty of the earth as a pledge of what America was, and a token of where it would go.

And suddenly George remembered who he was, and saw the journey he had come. He remembered Locust Street in Old Catawba twenty years before and Nebraska, Randy, and the Potterhams, Aunt Maw and Uncle Mark, his father and the little boy that he had been, with the hills closing in round him, and at night the whistles wailing northward towards the world. And now his name, whose name was nameless, had become a shining thing, and a boy who once had waited tongueless in the South had, through his language, opened golden gateways to the Earth.

Mrs. Purvis felt it almost as much as he did. He pointed speechless to the clipping. He tapped the shining passages with trembling hand. He thrust the clipping at her. She read it, flushed crimson in the face, turned suddenly, and went away.

After that they waited daily for McHarg’s coming. Week lengthened into week. They searched the papers every morning for news of him. He seemed to be making a tour of Europe, and everywhere he went he was entertained and feted and interviewed and photographed in the company of other famous men. Now he was in Copenhagen. Now he was staying in Berlin a week or two. Later he had gone to Baden-Baden for a cure.

“Oh Lord!” George groaned dismally. “How long does that take?”

Again he was in Amsterdam; and then silence. Christmas came.

“I should ‘ave thought,” said Mrs. Purvis, “‘e’d be ‘ere by now.”

New Year’s came, and still there was no word from Lloyd McHarg.

One morning about the middle of January, after George had worked all night, and now, in bed, was carrying on his usual chat with Mrs. Purvis, he had just spoken of McHarg’s long-deferred arrival rather hopelessly—when the phone rang. Mrs. Purvis went into the sitting-room and answered it. George could hear her saying formally:

“Yes. Who shall I say? Who’s callin’, please?” A waiting silence. Then, rather quickly: “Just a moment, sir.” She entered George’s room, her face flushed, and said: “Mr. Lloyd Mc’Arg is on the wire.”

To say that George got out of bed would be to give a hopelessly inadequate description of a movement which hurled him into the air, bedclothes and all, as if he had been shot out of a cannon. He landed squarely in his bedroom slippers, and in two strides, still shedding bedclothes as he went, he was through the door, into the sitting-room, and had the receiver in his hand.