THE LADY OF LYONS.

Observer, Volume XL, Issue 17, 27 December 1919, Page 24

THE LADY OF LYONS.

By Leonard Merrick

THE jovial solicitor who smacked his clients on the back had absconded, and the minor poet had no longer fifty pounds per annum. Although he was a minor poet, which, strangely enough, is a term of contempt in this country, though we are enjoined to be grateful for even small mercies, he was as human as minor novelists and minor critics, and he suffered. Also he woke; he realised how small had been the world's demand for the wares in which he dealt—he acknowledged that for twenty years he had been living on his little income, not on his little books. His. name was Smith. It was, perhaps, one of the reasons why his poetry was unread. Only a, reviewer possessed of unusual courage could have discovered " the great poetry of Mr. Smith." Only a poet devoid of commercial instincts could have failed to adopt a nom-de-guerre. In the face of disaster Mr. Smith did not make precisely this reflection, but. he reflected painfully that a lack of commercial ability was no longer a matter to be recognised with a, smile. He stood among the daffodils in the village garden, and asked Heaven what would become of him. He was seven-and-thirty ; the only craft that he had learnt was useless; and he had to earn his bread-and-cheese. As Heaven returned no answer, he sought the advice of friends. He was a lovable creature, though a writing man, and his friends were sympathetic. They all invited him to dinner, and assured him warmly that they would bear his necessities in mind. If anything turned up, he might rely upon their telegraphing to him. Being, of a trustful disposition, Mr. "Smith returned to the daffodils, encouraged. And they withered while he waited for a telegram. When they hung their heads he sought advice again. This time his friends did not invite him to dinner, but they pointed out to him, lest h& overlooked it, that he was a poet— in other words, that he was a difficult person to sei-ve. "You have no experience, you see," they said frankly. "You are intelligent, but you have no experience, Robert." When a man is untravelled in the rut that we ourselves tread, we say that he has "no experience." One afternoon the poet went abroad. The journey cost him a penny, and he travelled from Charing Cross as far as the Bank. He was bound for an office in Lombard Street, and as he called by appointment, a clerk showed him promptly w> Mr. Hutton's private room. The business man who received him had once been a little boy in a sailor suit, and he and Robert had played together in a nursery. Today he had numerous financial irons in the fire, and one of them required an obedient gentleman to watch it. Affection suggested Robert for the post. The duties were simple, and. the salary was slight, but if the iron came out in good condition there was to be a slice of the iron, too. They chatted for a long while. Robert was admitted to some confidences about the other irons —the patents, and the shares, and the concessions. All the time that he listened he was seeing the business man as a little boy in a sailor suit again, and was awestruck to hear the little boy talking so glibly of such mysteries. Blankly he felt that he himself had omitted to grow up; he decided that people were right in declaring that he had no experience; it appeared to him suddenly that he had learnt nothing in his life. But, of course, he had learnt many things, though never the most important one—how to make money. Often they were interrupted by the telephone bell, and during one of the colloquies on the telephone

Mr. Hutton seemed depressed. Robert feared he was being browbeaten until he hung up the receiver, and announced, smiling, - that he had "made five hundred pounds by that conversation." It was miraculous. Robert had not made five hundred -pounds by twenty years of work.

"Let's go out and get a cup of coffee," said Mr. Hutton, and piloted the poet through a maze of alleys to a retiring doorway. "What will you have to drink?" The poet dis-covered-that after two o'clock "a cup of coffee" in the City is generally a synonym for a whisky-and-soda.

The little bar was crowded, and he was surprised at seeing such a number of business men doing nothing so leisurely. One man to whom he was introduced asked him if he knew how the "House" closed, biit he did not even, know what it meant. They discoursed in groups, and a strange langtiage; Robert was flooded by compassion for the barmaid. All exponded different views, and all the views were equally unintelligible to him. The only point of unanimity he perceived was the wisdom of having "a fiver each way." As often as anybody entered, the several groups waved hands, and the newcomer accepted a, whisky-and-soda with a piece of-lemon in it, among the group he fancied best. On leaving, Mr. Hutton remarked that he had "sometimes made as much as a thousand pounds by dropning in there." Robert reeled.

Soon he went every day to, the strange land where men talked a language that he did not know. It had been decided that lie should watch the iron in the neighbourhood, so that Mr. Hutton might extend a guiding hand without discomfort, and an office was rented in Eastcheap. Eastcheap is a. soursmelling thoroughfare into which dirty loafers emerge from the courts of Billingsgate in order that they may have more room to spit. Distressing as Robert found it to sit in the office, he found it more distressing to go out.

Of course, not many people see the City. Myriads saw it once, but that was when they came there in their youth. Few are to be discovered in the City who' remember how it looks. Occasionally a clerk in his first berth may be found who sees the City, but he is not promised to the casual searcher, for City clerks as a body are observant in the streets of one thing only. They observe neckties. This passion, to which the hosiers iof the district pander inordinately, was displayed to the poet between the hours of one and two, wet or fine. From desk to food, from food to deskstreamed the black multitude, expressionless, torpid and unseeing, until neckties flaunted in a window; then the vacant faces brightened,and there was a block. The rule of the pavement is known everywhere excepting: in the City, where it is most needed; but at the hosiers' windows pedestrianism became more than an effort—it became a feat.

Robert's- eyes had no custom in them; Robert did see the City, and he was unhappier than he had poetry to tell; for that matter, he did not try to tell it. He wrote nothing now but figures, and commercially ungrammatical epistles which took him a long time to compose. For twenty years he had believed his rushlight 'was a star—he had done with illusion at last. Illusion was in its grave, and the Failure laid his hope of laurels on the top. Yet he thought tenderly of Illusion. The funeral was over, but he mourned. He had embraced a new career, but he did not love it. Although he repeated that the past was dead, he could not prevent its ghost haunting Eastcheap. There were moments when it chilled the iron.

Often, as he forced his dreary way to luncheon, it walked beside him. He lunched sometimes with his preserver in the restaurants of the Employers. Generally he lunched with the ghost in the restaurants of the Employed. He noted that in the former the meat was tainted less frequently. On the other hand, the Employed were served by clean, quiet girls instead of by sleezy, vociferous waiters. One afternoon he lunched at an establishment that he had not tried before. The ghost had. been insistent all the morning. He found a vacant seat, hung xw his hat, and examined the bill of fare. He was in one of the more modest restaurants of Messrs. Lyons, and around him young men and women with blank faces chumped beef-steak pudding, and. read, sixpenny editions of the novels that are written for them. The girl beside him ordered appletart. Her voice was pleasant, and momentarily he regretted that in reading she leant her cheek upon her palm, for she hid her profile. It should have been a pretty profile, to match her voice. Moved by an impulse of curiosity, he glanced at the page she pondered, and then he dropped the menu: she was reading his own verse! "God God!" he exclaimed. 'To be continued next week.)