laugh loud enough when the boss made that joke yesterday? And the next instalment on the vacuum cleaner.
Neatly, taking a pleasure in his neatness, with the sensation of dropping piece after piece of a jigsaw puzzle into place, he fashioned another stanza:
They think of rent
,
rates
,
season tickets
,
Insurance
,
coal
,
the skivvy’s wages
,
Boots
,
school-bills
,
and the next instalment
Upon the two twin beds from Drage’s
.
Not bad, not bad at all. Finish it presently. Four or five more stanzas. Ravelston would print it.
A starling sat in the naked boughs of a plane tree, crooning self-pitifully as starlings do on warm winter days when they believe spring is in the air. At the foot of the tree a huge sandy cat sat motionless, mouth open, gazing upwards with rapt desire, plainly expecting that the starling would drop into its mouth. Gordon repeated to himself the four finished stanzas of his poem. It was
good
. Why had he thought last night that it was mechanical, weak and empty? He was a poet. He walked more upright, arrogantly almost, with the pride of a poet. Gordon Comstock, author of
Mice
. ‘Of exceptional promise,’
The Times Lit
.
Supp
. had said. Author also of
London Pleasures
. For that too would be finished quite soon. He knew now that he could finish it when he chose. Why had he ever despaired of it? Three months it might take; soon enough to come out in the summer. In his mind’s eye he saw the ‘slim’ white buckram shape of
London Pleasures
; the excellent paper, the wide margins, the good Caslon type, the refined dust-jacket. And the reviews in all the best papers. ‘An outstandingachievement’—
The Times Lit
.
Supp
. ‘A welcome relief from the Sitwell school’—
Scrutiny
.
Coleridge Grove was a damp, shadowy, secluded road, a blind alley and therefore void of traffic. Literary associations of the wrong kind (Coleridge was rumoured to have lived there for six weeks in the summer of 1821) hung heavy upon it. You could not look at its antique decaying houses, standing back from the road in dank gardens under heavy trees, without feeling an atmosphere of outmoded ‘culture’ envelop you. In some of those houses, undoubtedly, Browning Societies still flourished, and ladies in art serge sat at the feet of extinct poets talking about Swinburne and Walter Pater. In spring the gardens were sprinkled with purple and yellow crocuses, and later with harebells, springing up in little Wendy rings among the anæmic grass; and even the trees, it seemed to Gordon, played up to their environment and twisted themselves into whimsy Rackhamesque attitudes. It was queer that a prosperous hack critic like Paul Doring should live in such a place. For Doring was an astonishingly bad critic. He reviewed novels for the
Sunday Post
and discovered the great English novel with Walpolean regularity once a fortnight. You would have expected him to live in a flat on Hyde Park Corner. Perhaps it was a kind of penance that he had imposed upon himself, as though by living in the refined discomfort of Coleridge Grove he propitiated the injured gods of literature.
Gordon came round the corner, turning over in his mind a line from
London Pleasures
. And then suddenly he stopped short. There was something wrong about the look of the Dorings’ gate. What was it? Ah, of course! There were no cars waiting outside.
He paused, walked on a step or two and stopped again, like a dog that smells danger. It was all wrong. There
ought
to be some cars. There were always quite a lot of people atthe Dorings’ parties, and half of them came in cars. Why had nobody else arrived? Could he be too early? But no! They had said half past three and it was at least twenty to four.
He hastened towards the gate. Already he felt practically sure that the party
had
been put off. A chill like the shadow of a cloud had fallen across him. Suppose the Dorings weren’t at home! Suppose the party had been put off! And this thought, though it dismayed
Neatly, taking a pleasure in his neatness, with the sensation of dropping piece after piece of a jigsaw puzzle into place, he fashioned another stanza:
They think of rent
,
rates
,
season tickets
,
Insurance
,
coal
,
the skivvy’s wages
,
Boots
,
school-bills
,
and the next instalment
Upon the two twin beds from Drage’s
.
Not bad, not bad at all. Finish it presently. Four or five more stanzas. Ravelston would print it.
A starling sat in the naked boughs of a plane tree, crooning self-pitifully as starlings do on warm winter days when they believe spring is in the air. At the foot of the tree a huge sandy cat sat motionless, mouth open, gazing upwards with rapt desire, plainly expecting that the starling would drop into its mouth. Gordon repeated to himself the four finished stanzas of his poem. It was
good
. Why had he thought last night that it was mechanical, weak and empty? He was a poet. He walked more upright, arrogantly almost, with the pride of a poet. Gordon Comstock, author of
Mice
. ‘Of exceptional promise,’
The Times Lit
.
Supp
. had said. Author also of
London Pleasures
. For that too would be finished quite soon. He knew now that he could finish it when he chose. Why had he ever despaired of it? Three months it might take; soon enough to come out in the summer. In his mind’s eye he saw the ‘slim’ white buckram shape of
London Pleasures
; the excellent paper, the wide margins, the good Caslon type, the refined dust-jacket. And the reviews in all the best papers. ‘An outstandingachievement’—
The Times Lit
.
Supp
. ‘A welcome relief from the Sitwell school’—
Scrutiny
.
Coleridge Grove was a damp, shadowy, secluded road, a blind alley and therefore void of traffic. Literary associations of the wrong kind (Coleridge was rumoured to have lived there for six weeks in the summer of 1821) hung heavy upon it. You could not look at its antique decaying houses, standing back from the road in dank gardens under heavy trees, without feeling an atmosphere of outmoded ‘culture’ envelop you. In some of those houses, undoubtedly, Browning Societies still flourished, and ladies in art serge sat at the feet of extinct poets talking about Swinburne and Walter Pater. In spring the gardens were sprinkled with purple and yellow crocuses, and later with harebells, springing up in little Wendy rings among the anæmic grass; and even the trees, it seemed to Gordon, played up to their environment and twisted themselves into whimsy Rackhamesque attitudes. It was queer that a prosperous hack critic like Paul Doring should live in such a place. For Doring was an astonishingly bad critic. He reviewed novels for the
Sunday Post
and discovered the great English novel with Walpolean regularity once a fortnight. You would have expected him to live in a flat on Hyde Park Corner. Perhaps it was a kind of penance that he had imposed upon himself, as though by living in the refined discomfort of Coleridge Grove he propitiated the injured gods of literature.
Gordon came round the corner, turning over in his mind a line from
London Pleasures
. And then suddenly he stopped short. There was something wrong about the look of the Dorings’ gate. What was it? Ah, of course! There were no cars waiting outside.
He paused, walked on a step or two and stopped again, like a dog that smells danger. It was all wrong. There
ought
to be some cars. There were always quite a lot of people atthe Dorings’ parties, and half of them came in cars. Why had nobody else arrived? Could he be too early? But no! They had said half past three and it was at least twenty to four.
He hastened towards the gate. Already he felt practically sure that the party
had
been put off. A chill like the shadow of a cloud had fallen across him. Suppose the Dorings weren’t at home! Suppose the party had been put off! And this thought, though it dismayed
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