“DEAR OLD AME,
“I expect Horatio will have arrived by the time you get this or is about to any minute and you will be up to your eyes in it, so don’t sweat yourself answering it until you’ve got a sec. to spare. But I just had to tell you our bit of bad news so that you shouldn’t say anything about Dad next time you write to Mum. He’s gone off with that little so-and-so, Mrs. Flower (I expect you remember her—very dark and quiet, lived next door but one). He never said a word—just went off one Saturday and we haven’t heard a word since. Mum’s taken it awfully hard, she doesn’t say anything, not even when Flower came round and kicked up a shine. Maurice had to fetch a policeman. Of course I’d sort of felt Dad was working up for something for years but you know how it is, you don’t really notice the people you live with. I suppose the work got him down, it’s an awful life, as you know. If Mum hadn’t got Maurice I don’t know what she’d do but he really has settled down at last. (No more Mosley for him, he wouldn’t know who you meant if you mentioned the gent!) He’s making money, too. He’s got two dogs running at the Hillover Track this week—one, Baker’s Boy, looks like being a champion. M. has paid back Mum the eighty he borrowed from her (out of the hundred you gave her) and he’s buying one of the new little houses they’re building out near the Hillover Track, and he and Mum and Baby and Artie are moving out there in the spring. It’ll do Mum good to get away from Highbury. She’ll put a manager in the business. Notice my new address? I’m sharing this swelegant little flat with Slugs (remember her?) I’ve just had another step up—secretary to the Old Swine himself now! Can you beat it—and when I think how I used to bleed at the ears every time he walked through the room fifteen years ago!
“Baby started in the Accounts Department at John Lewis’s three weeks ago and seems all right. She’s a pretty kid and does she know it, too! I only hope she doesn’t slip up the stairs with some boy friend or other. Sydney’s had a rise and they’ve just bought a car!!! It’ll be fourpence to speak to the Old Guy soon. Both her kids are awfully fit. Artie’s been moved up on the butter counter now (“Guns and Butter” we call him, he’s just joined the Terriers!) He sends you his love and says I’m to tell you he doesn’t like your new kind of book as well as the old kind. Oh, well. Can’t please everyone, can you?
“Well, no more now. Give Horatio his Auntie Dora’s love when he arrives, and tell him I’m shortly sending him a jacket (knitted with the sweat of my brow in the intervals of A.R.P.)
“You won’t mention Dad to Mum, will you? She’s wonderful, really, but she feels it. She’s getting on; it’s no joke a thing like that at her age. I don’t know how I feel about Dad really. In a way I’m sorry for him. He always was a bit of a dark horse (like someone else I know!). But I’m much sorrier for Mum.
“Love to you and the gorgeous-looking husband.
“Yours ever,
“DORA.”
Amy was so moved by this piece of news that she got up clumsily from her chair and walked about the room for a moment, staring without seeing them at the gilded branches and glittering Christmas stars adorning the walls. She remembered how old and tired Mrs. Beeding had looked when she had last seen her in London two years ago, and how tenderly she had kissed her good-bye and wished her happiness, putting into the embrace all the affection of those eleven years in which she had stood in the place of Amy’s own mother. And Mrs. Flower! She was as familiar a sight to Amy as the kitchen at 5 Highbury Walk, as taken for granted, as firmly in her place. There she had been for years, part of the background of their lives, and all the time Mr. Beeding must have been drawn to her and at last his unhappiness and sickness and longing to escape had mastered him, and her, and they had gone away together. Amy found herself wondering, as she wiped her eyes for Mrs. Beeding, whether they would ever know a moment’s happiness. She imagined them in Wales, walking along a road in the hills, and Mr. Beeding singing once more, deep and sweet and true as the notes of an organ.
But none of them ever saw or heard of him again.
As she was settling into her chair a door opened abruptly and the head of Myron was put round it.
“All right, are yer?” he demanded.
“Yes, thanks, Myron.”
“Ain’t feelin’ bad or anythin’?”
“Not a bit, thanks.”
“Mrs. Vorst Senior jest called up to know how you was. Joe answered. He said you was fine ’n dandy.”
“That’s right, so I am. Myron, has the drink come; and the savouries from Kraus’s?”
“Nope.”
“Well, get Joe to go down as soon as he’s finished whatever he’s doing, will you?”
“Okay. Mrs. Vorst Senior said they’ll be over to-morrow round twelve.”
“Fine.”
“She said Lou’ll be here round about six.”
“All right. Did Mrs. Vorst say anything else?” (Telephone messages always had to be wormed out of Myron.)
“Only asked was the baby here yet. I said no.”
Amy laughed. It was the laugh that her mother would have recognized, fat and deep like the laugh of a tickled child.
“All your folks all right?” next inquired Myron, jerking his head towards the letters. He took a passionate interest in Amy’s English correspondents, while heartily despising all they said and did.
“Yes, thanks.”
She was preparing to defend the contents of her correspondence by a series of elaborate lies when Joe put his head round the door.
It was a tidier head than it had been two years ago. The flaxen hair was plastered back with grease. The scars had faded so as to be visible only in certain lights and the sunken eyelid had lost its redness. A white coat added to the crispness, the efficiency, that made Joe’s young personality unusual.
“All right, are you?” inquired Joe, who had developed an admiration for Myron since the shooting of Dan that made him unconsciously copy Myron’s style.
“Yes, thanks.” (Blow you both, go away. I want to get on with my letters, thought Amy.)
“Myron, tea’s ready.”
“Wash,” grumbled Myron. But he got up from his knees, where he had been tending the coal fire, and went out of the room.
“Mrs. Brady’s husband called up,” Joe announced. “He said she guesses she may be taken bad any time now.”
“Oh Joe,” said Amy, dismayed. “That means tomorrow!”
“Certainly is tough on the Doc,” said Joe, shaking his head. “Oh, well, maybe it won’t happen. You’d think the Doc could have his Christmas Day in peace, wouldn’t you?”
“Come on, come on, we gotta get that wash down us and you’ve gotta go downtown,” muttered Myron, tramping down the passage. Joe smiled at Amy, lingering at the door.
“Will you have tea to-day, Mrs. Vorst?”
“No, thanks, Joe, I’ll wait for Mrs. Viner.”
“Okay.” He shut the door.
Amy opened another letter from England, one with a Harrow postmark, and read in an old-fashioned masculine hand—
“DEAR MRS. VORST,
“Before I turn to this month’s Report, may I express my interest and pleasure at the piece of news contained in your last letter. There can be no deeper joy than that bestowed by a happy and united family life, and I am sincerely happy that you have every prospect of enjoying this. Under separate cover I am forwarding to you a Bear which I hope may please the baby later on. The Bear is not new, as you will notice (it was one of the first toys of this kind ever to be introduced into this country by Messrs. Gamage, in 1904) but it has not had much wear and I should like to think of its being used again. Now as to the matter of this month’s Report. …”
But here Amy put the letter down and leant back in her chair, thinking about the last time she had seen Mr. Danes-ford. It was an occasion that she liked to remember.
Some years ago, a few weeks before her marriage, she had gone back to England after over a year’s absence to settle up her affairs there and to collect her personal treasures
to bring back to her American home. On the very first morning of her arrival she had casually opened The Times while waiting at the hairdresser’s, and read—with how startled a movement of her heart!—
We announce with regret the death of Lord Welwoodham, owner and editor of The Prize since 1906. A memoir will be found on see here.
Shocked, unable to believe it, she turned to see here, and there looked up aloofly at her the long face and Edwardian moustache of her first and last employer. She slowly sat down, still staring at the familiar face and experiencing the strongest feelings of shock and sorrow; and learned how he had died after a short but severe illness following a chill caught while hunting.
I must write to Lady Welwoodham at once and send some flowers, she thought, and later in the day she did both. In the afternoon, when the short winter day was rapidly turning to dusk, she decided to go down and see them all at The Prize and find out what was to be the old paper’s fate.
It was half-past three when she came out of St. Paul’s Station and crossed the crowded noisy street to Rosemary Lane. A cold rose-red sunset glowed between the dark houses in the old quarters of the City. The lights were all glittering in the broad streets, but the lane kept its old look of dimness and crookedness, with faint lights in the windows of its little shops. There were brown chrysanthemums and purple anemones in the flower shop where she had once seen the blue iris hanging in the sunbeam like blossoms made of stained glass. The Chinese wind-bells had been put inside because of the wild winds of the English winter, and there was a grim little notice in one corner of the window warning customers that delivery of goods could no longer be guaranteed because of the War, and advising them to buy while they could. Amy still kept her childish admiration for the Chinese, and she went into the shop for a moment and bought some embroidery and a bunch of charms, beautifully made in flower-coloured glass. Then she went on, with quickly-beating heart, to the offices of The Prize.
Nothing was changed. The sign with the boy receiving the casket from the bearded man still swung gently in the breeze above the shop window full of Bibles; there was the familiar doorway and the dark but clean old wooden staircase up which she had gone countless times as a timid child. It was strange to tread those stairs again now that she was a happy young woman about to be married; it was like being two people, the old one and the new. She crossed the landing and saw the familiar door with the notice: “The Prize: Inquiries. Please Knock”; and then she turned the handle and went quietly in.
The room was in twilight, and at first she thought that there was no-one there. The little fire that Lord Welwoodham had always allowed his staff during the winter months was nearly out in the basket-shaped grate, with one dying red coal among the white ashes, and the curtains had not been pulled across the windows; she could see the massive side of St. Paul’s through them, with some pigeons walking about on its dark columns that had a faint glow from the chilly rose of sunset. An empty cup with an untasted biscuit in the saucer stood on the desk that had always been Miss Grace’s. And then she saw that at the other desk an old man was sitting, with his head buried in his hands. It was not white hairs that gave her the immediate impression of age, for the bowed head that caught the last light from the window was only streaked with grey; it was the bent shoulders and the indescribable absence of hope in his attitude. An old man she thought at once; and then, peering through the dimness, she recognized to her dismay the shabby frock-coat and striped trousers and high collar worn by Mr. Danesford.
Quickly and silently she retreated, shutting the door after her; and stood on the landing for a long moment in the dusk, much disturbed. She had expected to find them all very upset and troubled about their future, but not this—the room in twilight, and no Miss Grace, and Mr. Danesford turned into an old man. Some of her former aloofness and inability to communicate with her fellow-beings crept over her as she hesitated there on the familiar landing. Her happiness with Bob and her adoption by his family had almost conquered it, but suddenly she felt again its cold touch. What could she say to him? He had always seemed so remote to her, such a self-contained and awesome figure. It was like finding one of the Amaravati Tope in tears to discover Mr. Danesford with his head in his hands!
But suddenly she felt so sorry for him that all her hesitation vanished, and she knocked firmly on the door. After a longish pause his deep voice called calmly, “Come in,” and she entered for the second time.
The room looked quite different, for he had pulled the curtains and switched on the lamp on his desk, and was now peering across at her from the circle of light, trying to make out who was there.
“Mr. Danesford?” she said, coming forward. “It’s me—Amy Lee.”
“Miss Lee!” He stood up and bent a little towards her, still peering. “Well! this is a surprise. We did not even know that you were back in England.” She held out her hand and took it limply in his cold one for a second.
“I only got in here yesterday. I’ve just seen about——”
Mr. Danesford quickly looked down at the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” she went on. “It must be——”
“Let me put on the other light.” He crossed to the door with his well-remembered loping walk. “The evenings are drawing in so quickly, I hardly realized how dark it had grown.” He switched on the light and pulled up a chair. “Do sit down, Miss Lee.”
She seated herself and loosened the little sable collar on her coat, but she was so disturbed by the change in him that she could not think of anything to say, and he seemed equally at a loss. He sat opposite to her, not looking at her, playing with old yellow ruler that she had seen him play with a hundred times in the past while deciding some small point of office policy; and did not say a word. She suspected that he was wishing her miles away.
“How is Miss Grace?” she inquired at last.
“Oh, very well, thank you, very well indeed. She is no longer with us. She left us six months ago to be married.”
“Married!” cried Amy—manners, embarrassment, everything forgotten in sheer amazement.
“Oh, yes. Her parents died within a few months of one another last year, and she sold their house at Hendon, and married a Mr. Baron, an old friend of the family, so I understood. He has a nurseryman’s business at Berkhampstead and they have settled there.”
“Well, I am surprised!” murmured Amy. “Fancy Miss Grace married! Weren’t you surprised, Mr. Danesford?” She was determined to rouse him, for his air of mingled apathy and grief was beginning to alarm her.
Mr. Danesford permitted himself a smile. It was a very slight smile, but it encouraged her, for it was the first sign he had given of recognizing that she was not a stranger but an acquaintance of ten years standing.
“We were all a little surprised, I fancy,” he admitted, “but very pleased, of course. We gave her a silver teapot, a fine Georgian piece.”
“And Mr. Ramage—how is he?”
“Mr. Ramage is no longer with us. He went to The Airwoman as advertising manager six months ago,” answered Mr. Danesford quietly.
“And Mr. Cole and Mr. Holbrooke?”
“They too have left us. Mr. Carter has been doing their work.”
Amy was silent, too distressed to utter a word. The whole sad story was plain to her: the gradual shrinkage in advertising revenue, the cutting of salaries, the departure of younger and more active members of the staff to safer berths, the petty economies, the desperate effort by Mr. Danesford to do several people’s work, and then the last blow—the death of Lord Welwoodham.
After a long silence she said awkwardly.
“Do you know what will happen to the paper now?”
He did not move a muscle but somehow she knew that he had to summon all his self-control in order to make himself answer steadily:
“Nothing is decided yet, but I have understood for the last few months that Mr. Cavendish will sell—if he gets an offer. If he does not, we shall cease publication.”
“Cease
publication?” she cried, unable to believe her ears. “But doesn’t he expect to get an offer?”
Mr. Danesford shook his head.
“I have been with The Prize for nearly fifty years, Miss Lee, and I have lived to see all the qualities it stands for pass away. No-one wants us nowadays. We represent an England that has gone for ever.”
He got up and went over to the window and parted the curtains and stood there, staring out at the columns of the cathedral, now illuminated by the theatrical glow of the street lamps. He added over his shoulder, half to himself—
“Who would buy The Prize?”
“I would,” said Amy.
Mr. Danesford turned round at that, with a very kind smile, and came over and stood looking down at her. Though her name was as famous in America as in England, though her dark red coat of French cut and her sable muff and the jewels in her ears all quietly indicated that she was rich, to Mr. Danesford she was still poor Lee’s daughter, who had been considered lucky to get a job as office girl on The Prize.
“I am sure you would, if you could, Miss Lee,” he said, “and it makes me happy (and I am sure it would have pleased Lord Welwoodham, he always took such an interest in you and your work) to know that you are still loyal to the paper.”
“But I mean it.” Amy clasped her hands inside her muff and looked steadily up at him. “I really will buy it.”
“But you haven’t the money!” bayed Mr. Danesford, his usual full rich tones coming back to him under the stress of mingled amazement and hope and doubt, while he stared at her with his bloodhound’s eyes as wide open as they would go.
“I’ve got a great deal of money,” she retorted. “It’s been coming in for six years, you know, and I haven’t spent a quarter of it every year. I don’t know quite how much it is right now but I’m sure it’s enough to make an offer to Mr. Cavendish.”