Bones in London - Edgar Wallace [54]
She waited for him to begin, but he was strangely embarrassed even for him.
“Miss Marguerite,” he began at last a little huskily, “the jolly old poet is born and not–”
“Oh, have you brought them?” she asked eagerly, and held out her hand. “Do show me, please!”
Bones shook his head.
“No, I have not brought them,” he said. “In fact, I can’t bring them yet.”
She was disappointed, and showed it. “You’ve promised me for a week I should see them–”
“Awful stuff, awful stuff!” murmured Bones disparagingly. “Simply terrible tripe!”
“Tripe?” she said, puzzled.
“I mean naughty rubbish and all that sort of thing.”
“Oh, but I’m sure it’s good,” she said. “You wouldn’t talk about your poems if they weren’t good.”
“Well,” admitted Bones, “I’m not so sure, dear old arbitrator elegantus, to use a Roman expression, I’m not so sure you’re not right. One of these days those poems will be given to this wicked old world, and – then you’ll see.”
“But what are they all about?” she asked for about the twentieth time.
“What are they about?” said Bones slowly and thoughtfully. “They’re about one thing and another, but mostly about my – er – friends. Of course a jolly old poet like me, or like any other old fellow, like Shakespeare, if you like – to go from the sublime to the ridiculous – has fits of poetizing that mean absolutely nothing. It doesn’t follow that if a poet like Browning or me writes fearfully enthusiastically and all that sort of thing about a person… No disrespect, you understand, dear old miss.”
“Quite,” she said, and wondered.
“I take a subject for a verse,” said Bones airily, waving his hand toward Throgmorton Street. “A ’bus, a fuss, a tram, a lamb, a hat, a cat, a sunset, a little flower growing on the river’s brim, and all that sort of thing – any old subject, dear old miss, that strikes me in the eye – you understand?”
“Of course I understand,” she said readily. “A poet’s field is universal, and I quite understand that if he writes nice things about his friends he doesn’t mean it.”
“Oh, but doesn’t he?” said Bones truculently. “Oh, doesn’t he, indeed? That just shows what a fat lot you know about it, jolly old Miss Marguerite. When I write a poem about a girl–”
“Oh, I see, they’re about girls,” said she a little coldly.
“About a girl,” said Bones, this time so pointedly that his confusion was transferred immediately to her.
“Anyway, they don’t mean anything,” she said bravely.
“My dear young miss” – Bones rose, and his voice trembled as he laid his hand on the typewriter where hers had been a second before – “my clear old miss,” he said, jingling with the letters “a” and “e” as though he had originally put out his hand to touch the keyboard, and was in no way surprised and distressed that the little hand which had covered them had been so hastily withdrawn, “I can only tell you–”
“There is your telephone bell,” she said hurriedly. “Shall I answer it?” And before Bones could reply she had disappeared.
He went back to his flat that night with his mind made up. He would show her those beautiful verses. He had come to this conclusion many times before, but his heart had failed him. But he was growing reckless now. She should see them – priceless verses, written in a most expensive book, with the monogram “WM” stamped in gold upon the cover. And as he footed it briskly up Devonshire Street, he recited:
“O Marguerite, thou lovely flower,
I think of thee most every hour,
With eyes of grey and eyes of blue,
That change with every passing hue,
Thy lovely fingers beautifully typing,
How sweet and fragrant is thy writing!”
He thought he was reciting to himself, but that was not the case. People turned and watched him, and when he passed the green doorway of Dr Harkley Bawkley, the eminent brain specialist they were visibly disappointed.
He did not unlock the rosewood door of his flat, but rang the silver bell.
He preferred this course. Ali, his Coast servant, in his new livery of blue and silver, made the opening of the door something only less picturesque than the opening of Parliament. This intention