LITMIR.BIZ

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hate to think of your walking all that way. You look so tired. Be a dear and let me pay your fare home. Do!'

      'No. You've paid quite enough for me already.'

      'Oh, dear! You are so silly!'

      They had halted at the entrance to the Underground. He took her hand. 'I suppose we must say good-bye for the present,' he said.

      'Good-bye, Gordon dear. Thanks ever so much for taking me out. It was such fun this morning.'

      'Ah, this morning! It was different then.' His mind went back to the morning hours, when they had been alone on the road together and there was still money in his pocket. Compunction seized him. On the whole he had behaved badly. He pressed her hand a little tighter. 'You're not angry with me, are you?'

      'No, silly, of course not.'

      'I didn't mean to be beastly to you. It was the money. It's always the money.'

      'Never mind, it'll be better next time. We'll go to some better place. We'll go down to Brighton for the week-end, or something.'

      'Perhaps, when I've got the money. You will write soon, won't you?'

      'Yes.'

      'Your letters are the only things that keep me going. Tell me when you'll write, so that I can have your letter to look forward to.'

      'I'll write tomorrow night and post it on Tuesday. Then you'll get it last post on Tuesday night.'

      'Then good-bye, Rosemary dear.'

      'Good-bye, Gordon darling.'

      He left her at the booking-office. When he had gone twenty yards he felt a hand laid on his arm. He turned sharply. It was Rosemary. She thrust a packet of twenty Gold Flake, which she had bought at the tobacco kiosk, into his coat pocket and ran back to the Underground before he could protest.

      He trailed homeward through the wastes of Marylebone and Regent's Park. It was the fag-end of the day. The streets were dark and desolate, with that strange listless feeling of Sunday night when people are more tired after a day of idleness than after a day of work. It was vilely cold, too. The wind had risen when the night fell. Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over. Gordon was footsore, having walked a dozen or fifteen miles, and also hungry. He had had little food all day. In the morning he had hurried off without a proper breakfast, and the lunch at the Ravenscroft Hotel wasn't the kind of meal that did you much good; since then he had had no solid food. However, there was no hope of getting anything when he got home. He had told Mother Wisbeach that he would be away all day.

      When he reached the Hampstead Road he had to wait on the kerb to let a stream of cars go past. Even here everything seemed dark and gloomy, in spite of the glaring lamps and the cold glitter of the jewellers' windows. The raw wind pierced his thin clothes, making him shiver. Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over The bending poplars, newly bare. He had finished that poem, all except the last two lines. He thought again of those hours this morning—the empty misty roads, the feeling of freedom and adventure, of having the whole day and the whole country before you in which to wander at will. It was having money that did it, of course. Seven and elevenpence he had had in his pocket this morning. It had been a brief victory over the money-god; a morning's apostasy, a holiday in the groves of Ashtaroth. But such things never last. Your money goes and your freedom with it. Circumcise ye your foreskins, saith the Lord. And back we creep, duly snivelling.

      Another shoal of cars swam past. One in particular caught his eye, a long slender thing, elegant as a swallow, all gleaming blue and silver; a thousand guineas it would have cost, he thought. A blue-clad chauffeur sat at the wheel, upright, immobile, like some scornful statue. At the back, in the pink-lit interior, four elegant young people, two youths and two girls, were smoking cigarettes and laughing. He had a glimpse of sleek bunny-faces; faces of ravishing pinkness and smoothness, lit by that peculiar inner glow that can never be counterfeited, the soft warm radiance of money.

      He crossed the road. No food tonight. However, there was still oil in the lamp, thank God; he would have a secret cup of tea when he got back. At this moment he saw himself and his life without saving disguises. Every night the same—back to the cold lonely bedroom and the grimy, littered sheets of the poem that never got any further. It was a blind alley. He would never finish London Pleasures, he would never marry Rosemary, he would never set his life in order. He would only drift and sink, drift and sink, like the others of his family; but worse than them—down, down into some dreadful sub-world that as yet he could only dimly imagine. It was what he had chosen when he declared war on money. Serve the money-god or go under; there is no other rule.

      Something deep below made the stone street shiver. The Tube-train, sliding through middle earth. He had a vision of London, of the western world; he saw a thousand million slaves toiling and grovelling about the throne of money. The earth is ploughed, ships sail, miners sweat in dripping tunnels underground, clerks hurry for the eight-fifteen with the fear of the boss eating at their vitals. And even in bed with their wives they tremble and obey. Obey whom? The money-priesthood, the pink-faced masters of the world. The Upper Crust. A welter of sleek young rabbits in thousand-guinea motor cars, of golfing stockbrokers and cosmopolitan financiers, of Chancery lawyers and fashionable Nancy boys, of bankers, newspaper peers, novelists of all four sexes, American pugilists, lady aviators, film stars, bishops, titled poets and Chicago gorillas.

      When he had gone another fifty yards the rhyme for the final stanza of his poem occurred to him. He walked homeward, repeating the poem to himself:

      'Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over

      The bending poplars, newly bare,

      And the dark ribbons of the chimneys

      Veer downward; flicked by whips of air,

      Torn posters flutter; coldly sound

      The boom of trams and the rattle of hooves,

      And the clerks who hurry to the station

      Look, shuddering, over the eastern rooves,

      Thinking, each one, "Here comes the winter!

      Please God I keep my job this year!"

      And bleakly, as the cold strikes through

      Their entrails like an icy spear,

      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.

      For if in careless summer days

      In groves of Ashtaroth we whored,

      Repentant now, when winds blow cold,

      We kneel before our rightful lord;

      The lord of all, the money-god,

      Who rules us blood and hand and brain,

      Who gives the roof that stops the wind,

      And, giving, takes away again;

      Who spies with jealous, watchful care,

      Our thoughts, our dreams, our secret ways,

      Who picks our words and cuts our clothes,

      And maps the pattern of our days;

      Who chills our anger, curbs our hope,

      And buys our lives and pays with toys,

      Who claims as tribute broken faith,

      Accepted insults, muted joys;

      Who binds with chains the poet's wit,

      The navvy's strength, the soldier's pride,

      And lays the sleek, estranging shield

      Between the lover and his bride.'

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