You Can't Go Home Again (75 page)

“You must come, my boy,” Mr. Stoat had wheezed over the wire. “You can’t afford to miss this, you know. Henrietta Saltonstall Spriggins is going to be there. You must meet her. And Penelope Buchanan Pipgrass is going to give a reading from her poems. And Hortense Delancey McCracken is going to read her latest play. You simply must come, by all means.”

So urged, George accepted and went, and it was quite an occasion. Mr. Stoat met him at the door and with a pontifical flourish of the eyebrows led him into the presence of Cornelia Fosdick Sprague. After he had made his obeisances Mr. Stoat piloted the young man about the room and with repeated flourishes of the eyebrows introduced him to the other guests. There was an astonishing number of formidable-looking females, and, like the imposing Cornelia, most of them had three names. As Mr. Stoat made the introductions he fairly smacked his lips over the triple-barrelled sonority of their titles.

George noticed with amazement that all of these women bore a marked resemblance to Cornelia Fosdick Sprague. Not that they really looked like her in feature. Some were tall, some were short, some were angular, some were fat, but all of them had a certain overwhelming quality in their bearing. This quality became a crushing air of absolute assurance and authority when they spoke of art. And they spoke of art a great deal. Indeed, it was the purpose of these meetings to speak of art. Almost all of these ladies were not only interested in art, but were “artists” themselves. That is to say, they were writers. They wrote one-act plays for the Little Theatre, or they wrote novels, or essays and criticism, or poems and books for children.

Henrietta Saltonstall Spriggins read one of her wee stories for tiny tots about a little girl waiting for Prince Charming. Penelope Buchanan Pipgrass read some of her poems, one about a quaint organ-grinder, and another about a whimsical old rag man. Hortense Delancey McCracken read her play, a sylvan fantasy laid in Central Park, with two lovers sitting on a bench in the springtime and Pan prancing round in the background, playing mad music on his pipes and leering slyly out at the lovers from behind trees. In all of these productions there was not a line that could bring the blush of outraged modesty to the cheek of the most innocent young girl. Indeed, the whole thing was just too damned delightful for words.

After the readings they all sat round and drank pale tea and discussed what they had read in fluty voices. George remembered vaguely that there were two or three other men present, but they were pallid figures who faded into the mist, hovering in the background like wan ghosts, submissive and obscure attendants, husbands even, to the possessors of those sonorous and triple-barrelled names.

George never went back again to Cornelia Fosdick Sprague’s salon, and had seen nothing more of Mr. Donald Stoat. Yet here he was, the last person in the world he would have expected to find in Lloyd McHarg’s apartment. If Mr. Stoat had ever read any of McHarg’s books—a most improbable circumstance—his moral conscience must have been outraged by the mockery with which, in almost every one of them, McHarg had assaulted the cherished ideals and sacred beliefs that Mr. Stoat held dear. Yet here he was sipping his dry sherry in McHarg’s room with all the aplomb of one who was accustomed to such familiar intimacy.

What was he doing here? What on earth did it mean?

George did not have to wait long for an answer. The telephone rang. McHarg snapped his fingers sharply and sprang for the instrument with an exclamation of overwrought relief.

“Hello, hello!” He waited a moment, his inflamed and puckered face twisted wryly to one side. “Hello, hello, hello!” he said feverishly and rattled the receiver hook. “Yes, yes. Who? Where?” A brief pause. “Oh, it’s New York,” he cried, and then impatiently: “All right, then! Put them through!”

George had never before seen the transatlantic telephone in operation, and he watched with feelings of wonder and disbelief. A vision of the illimitable seas passed through his mind. He remembered storms that he had been in and the way great ships were tossed about; he thought of the enormous curve of the earth’s surface and of the difference in time; and yet in a moment McHarg, his voice calm now, began to speak quietly as if he were talking to someone in the next room:

“Oh, hello Wilson,” he said. “Yes, I can hear you perfectly. Of course…Yes, yes, it’s true. Of course it is!” he cried, with a return to his former manner of feverish annoyance. “No, I’ve broken with him completely…No, I don’t know where I’m going. I haven’t signed up with anyone yet…All right, all right,” impatiently. “Wait a minute,” he said curtly. “Let me do the talking. I won’t do anything until I see you…No that’s not a promise to go with you,” he said angrily. “It’s just a promise that I won’t go anywhere else till I see you.” A moment’s pause while McHarg listened intently. “You’re sailing when?...Oh, to-night! The
Berengaria
. Good. I’ll see you here then next week…All right. Good-bye, Wilson,” he snapped, and hung up.

Turning away from the phone, he was silent a moment, looking a little rueful in his wry, puckered way. Then, with a shrug of his shoulders and a little sigh, he said:

“Well, cat’s out of the bag, I guess. The news has got round. They all know I’ve left Bradford-Howell. I suppose they’ll all be on my tail now. That was Wilson Fothergill,” he said, mentioning the name of one of America’s largest publishers. “He’s sailing to-night.” Suddenly his face was twisted with demonic glee. He laughed a high, dry cackle. “Christ, Georgie!” he squeaked, prodding Webber in the ribs. “Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t it marvellous? Can you beat it?”

Mr. Donald Stoat cleared his throat with premonitory emphasis and arched his eyebrows significantly. “I hope,” he said, “that before you come to any terms with Fothergill, you will talk to me and listen to what I have to say.” There was a weighty pause, then he concluded pontifically: “Stoat—the House of Stoat—would like to have you on its list.”

“What’s that? What’s that?” said McHarg feverishly. “Stoat!” he cried suddenly. “Stoat?” He winced nervously in a kind of convulsion of jangled nerves, then paused, trembling and undecided, as if he did not know whether to spring upon Mr. Stoat or to spring out the window. Snapping his bony fingers sharply, he turned to Webber and shrieked again in a shrill, falsetto cackle: “Did you hear it, Georgie? Isn’t it wonderful? K-k-k-k-k—Stoat!” he squeaked, prodding Webber in the ribs again. “The House of Stoat! Can you beat it? Isn’t it marvellous? Isn’t it—All right, all right,” he said, breaking off abruptly and turning upon the astounded Mr. Stoat. “All right, Mr. Stoat, we’ll talk about it. But some other time. Come in to see me next week,” he said feverishly.

With that he grasped Mr. Stoat by the hand, shook it in farewell, and with his other arm practically lifted that surprised gentleman from his chair and escorted him across the room. “Good-bye, goodbye! Come in next week…Good-bye, Bendien!” he now said to the Dutchman, seizing him by the hand, lifting him from the chair, and repeating the process. He herded the two before him with his bony arms outstretched as if he were shooing chickens, and finally got them out of the door, talking rapidly all the time, saying: “Goodbye, good-bye. Thanks for coming in. Come back to see me again. Georgie and I have to go to lunch now.”

At last he closed the door on them, turned, and came back in the room. He was obviously unstrung.

35. A Guest in Spite of Himself

When Bendien and Stoat were so suddenly and unceremoniously ushered from the room, George rose from his chair in some excitement, not knowing what to do with himself. McHarg now looked at him wearily.

“Sit down, sit down!” McHarg gasped, and fell into a chair. He crossed his bony legs with a curiously pathetic and broken attitude. “Christ!” he said, letting out a long sigh, “I’m tired. I feel as if I’ve been run through a sausage grinder. That damned Dutchman! I went out with him in Amsterdam, and we’ve been going it ever since. God, I can’t remember having eaten since I left Cologne. That was four days ago.”

He looked it, too. George was sure that he had spoken the literal truth and that he had not paused to eat for days. He was a wreck of jangled nerves and utterly exhausted weariness. As he sat there with his bony shanks crossed like two pieces of limp string, his gaunt figure had the appearance of being broken in two at the waist. He looked as if he would never be able to get out of that chair again without assistance. Just at that moment, however, the telephone rang sharply, and McHarg leaped up as if he had received an electric shock.

“Jesus Christ!” he shrilled. “What’s that?” He darted for the phone, snatched it up savagely, and snapped: “Hello, who’s there?” Then feverishly but very cordially: “Oh, hello; hello, Rick—you bastard, you! Where the hell have you been, anyway? I’ve been trying to reach you all morning…No! No! I just got here last night…Of course I’m going to see you. That’s one of the reasons I’m here…No, no, you don’t need to come for me. I’ve got my own car here. We’ll drive down. I’m bringing someone with me…
Who?
” he cackled suddenly in his shrill falsetto. “You’ll see, you’ll see. Wait till we get there…For dinner? Sure, I’ll make it. How long does it take?...Two hours and a half? Seven o’clock. We’ll be there with time to spare. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What’s the address? Wait till I get it down.”

He seated himself abruptly at the writing-desk, fumbled for a moment with pen and paper, and then passed them impatiently towards George, saying: “Write it down, George, as I give it to you.” The address was in Surrey, a farm on a country road several miles away from a small town. The directions for finding it were quite complicated, involving detours and cross-roads, but George finally got it all down correctly. Then McHarg, feverishly assuring his host that they would be there for dinner, with time to spare, hung up.

“Well, now,” he said impatiently, springing to his feet with another exhibition of that astounding vitality which seemed to burn in him all the time, “come on, Georgie! Let’s snap out of it! We’ll have to get going!”

“
W-w-w-we?
” George stammered. “Y-y-y-you mean me, Mr. McHarg?”

“Sure, sure!” McHarg said impatiently. “Rick’s expecting us to dinner. We can’t keep him waiting. Come on! Come on! Let’s get started! We’re getting out of London! We’re going places!”

“P-p-p-places?” George stammered again, dumbfounded. “But w-w-w-where are we going, Mr. McHarg?”

“West of England,” he barked out instantly. “We’ll go down to Rick’s and spend the night. But to-morrow—to-morrow,” he muttered, pacing up and down and speaking with ominous decision, “we’ll be on our way. West of England,” he muttered again, pacing and hanging to his coat lapels with bony fingers. “Cathedral towns,” he said. “Bath, Bristol, Wells, Exeter, Salisbury, Devonshire, coast of Cornwall,” he cried feverishly, getting his geography and his cathedrals hopelessly confused, but covering, nevertheless, a large portion of the kingdom in a single staccato sentence. “Keep out of cities,” he went on. “Stay away from swank hotels—joints like this one. Hate them. Hate all of them. Want the country—the English countryside,” he said with relish.

George’s heart sank. He had not bargained for anything like this. He had come to England to finish his new book. The work had been going well. He had established the beat and cadence of daily hours at his writing, and the prospect of breaking the rhythm of it just when he was going at full swing was something that he dreaded. Moreover, God only knew where such a jaunt as McHarg spoke of would end. McHarg, meanwhile, was still talking, pacing nervously back and forth and letting his enthusiasm mount as his mind built up the idyllic picture of what he had suddenly taken it into his head to do.

“Yes, the English countryside—that’s the thing,” he said with relish. “We’ll put up at night by the side of the road and cook our own meals, or stay at some old inn—some real English country inn,” he said with deliberate emphasis. “Tankards of musty ale,” he muttered. “A well-done chop by the fireside. A bottle of old port, eh Georgie?” he cried, his scorched face lighting up with great glee. “Did it all before one time. Toured the whole country several years ago with my wife. Used a trailer. Went from place to place. Slept in our trailer at night and did our own cooking. Wonderful! Marvellous!” he barked. “The real way to see the country. The only way.”

George said nothing. At the moment he was unable to say anything. For weeks he had looked forward to his meeting with McHarg. He had leaped to his bidding when McHarg had summoned him to get out of bed instantly and come to lunch. But he had never dreamed of being abducted as a travelling and talking companion on an expedition that might last for days and even weeks, and end up almost anywhere. He had no desire or intention of going with McHarg if he could avoid it. And yet—his mind groped frantically for a way out—what was he to do? He did not want to offend him. He had too great an admiration and respect for McHarg to do anything that might, wittingly or unwittingly, hurt him or wound his feelings. And how could he reject the invitation of a man who, with the most generous and unselfish enthusiasm, had used the power and elevation of his high place to try to lift him out of the lower channel in which his own life ran?

In spite of the brevity of their acquaintance, George had already seen dearly and unmistakably what a good and noble human being McHarg really was. He knew how much integrity and courage and honesty was contained in that tormented tenement of fury and lacerated hurts. Regardless of all that was jangled, snarled, and twisted in his life, regardless of all that had become bitter, harsh, and acrid, McHarg was obviously one of the truly good, the truly high, the truly great people of the world. Anyone with an atom of feeling and intelligence, George thought, must have seen this at once. And as he continued to watch and study McHarg, and took in again the shock of his appearance—the inflamed face, the poached blue eyes, the emaciated figure and nervously shaking hands—an image flashed into his mind which seemed to represent the essential quality of the man, and this, curiously, was the image of Abraham Lincoln. Save for McHarg’s tallness and gauntness, there was no physical similarity to Lincoln. The resemblance came, George thought, from a certain homely identity, from a kind of astonishing ugliness which was so marked that it was hard to see how it escaped the grotesque, and yet it was not grotesque. It was an ugliness which somehow, no matter what extravagances of gesture, tone, and manner McHarg indulged in, never lost its quality of enormous, latent dignity. This strange and troubling resemblance became strikingly evident in repose.