Seated in a wine-room or lager-beer hall, meditatively sipping from glass or tankard, and savouring a fragrant cigar, he contrived to extract a certain pleasure from the contemplation of his equality with the men around him. Many of them, he guessed with satisfaction, were in a worse or a less secure position than his own. He studied faces and made a practice of entering into conversation with strangers, and these chance encounters almost invariably left him with the impression that he had met a mental inferior. Steeping himself, as it were, in all the frivolous, lusory activities of the West End, he began to acquire that indefinable, unmistakable air ofsavoir-fairecharacteristic of the prosperous clerk who spends his leisure in public places. People from the country frequently mistook him for theyoung man-about-town of the society papers, familiar with every form of metropolitan chicane, luxury, and vice.
After breakfast he went out into the Park with his skates. The Serpentine had been frozen hard for more than a week, and yesterday, a solitary unit in tens of thousands, he had celebrated Christmas on the ice, skating from noon till nearly midnight, with brief intervals for meals. The exercise and the fresh air had invigorated and enlivened him, and this morning, as he plunged once more into the loose throng of skaters, his spirits were buoyant. It had been his intention to pass yet another day on the Serpentine; but a sudden, surprising fancy entered his head, flitted away, and returned again and again with such an increasing allurement that he fell in love with it: Why not commence to write now? Why, after all, leave the new beginning till the New Year? Was it true—what he had mournfully taken for granted for a month past, and so lately as an hour ago—that he lacked the moral strength to carry a good resolution into effect at any time he chose?... In a moment, he had sworn to work four hours before he slept that night.
The decision reached, his humour became unequivocally gay. He shot forward with longer,bolder strokes, enjoying with a keener zest the swift motion and the strange black-and-white, sylvan-urban scene about him. He forgot the year of idleness which lay immediately behind him, forgot every previous failure, in the passionate exultation of his new resolve. He whistled. He sang. He attempted impossible figures, and only laughed when they ended in a fall. A woman, skating alone, stumbled to her knees; he glided towards her, lifted her lightly, raised his hat, and was gone before she could thank him: it was neatly done; he felt proud of himself. As the clock struck twelve he took off his skates, and walked in a quiet corner of the Park, deliberating intently upon the plot of a story, which fortunately had been in his mind for several months.
When he came in to dinner, he gave Lily five shillings for a Christmas box, almost without thinking, and though he had no previous intention of doing so; and inquired when she was to be married. He ordered tea for four o'clock, so that the evening might be long. In the afternoon he read and dozed. At a quarter to five the tea-things were cleared away, the lamp was burning brightly, the blinds drawn, and his writing-materials arranged on the table. He lit a pipe and sat down by the fire. At last, at last, the old, long-abandoned endeavours were about to be resumed!
The story which he was going to write was called "Tiddy-fol-lol." The leading character was an old smith, to be named Downs, employed in the forge of a large iron foundry at Bursley. Downs was a Primitive Methodist of the narrowest type, and when his daughter fell in love with and married a sceneshifter at the local theatre, she received for dowry a father's curse. Once, in the foundry, Downs in speaking of the matter had referred to his daughter as no better than a "Tiddy-fol-lol," and for years afterwards a favourite sport of the apprentice boys was to run after him, at a safe distance, calling "Tiddy-fol-lol, Tiddy-fol-lol." The daughter, completely estranged from her parent, died in giving birth to a son who grew up physically strong and healthy, but half an idiot. At the age of twelve, quite ignorant of his grandfather's identity, he was sent by his father to work at the foundry. The other lads saw a chance for fun. Pointing out Downs to him in the forge, they told him to go close to the man and say "Tiddy-fol-lol." "What dost thee want?" Downs questioned gruffly, when the boy stood before him with a vacant grin on his face. "Tiddy-fol-lol," came the response, in the aggravating, uninflected tones peculiar to an imbecile. Downs raised his tremendous arm in a flash of anger, and felled the youngster with a blow onthe side of the head. Then he bade him rise. But the child, caught just under the ear, had been struck dead. Downs was tried for manslaughter, pronounced insane, and subsequently released as a harmless lunatic. The Salvation Army took charge of him, and he lived by selling "War-Cries" in the streets, still pursued by boys who shouted "Tiddy-fol-lol."
Properly elaborated, Richard opined, such a plot would make a powerful story. In his brain the thing was already complete. The one difficulty lay in the selection of a strong opening scene; that done, he was sure the incidents of the tale would fall naturally into place. He began to cogitate, but his thoughts went wool-gathering most pertinaciously, though time after time he compelled them to return to the subject in hand by force of knitted brows. He finished his pipe and recharged it. The fire burnt low, and he put on more coal. Still no suitable opening scene presented itself. His spirits slowly fell. What ailed him?
At length, an idea! He was not going to fail, after all. The story must of course begin with a quarrel between old Downs and his daughter. He drew up to the table, took a pen, and wrote the title; then a few sentences, hurriedly, and then a page. Then he read what was written, pronouncedit unconvincing rubbish, and tore it up. Words were untractable, and, besides, he could notseethe scene. He left the table, and after studying a tale of de Maupassant's, started on a new sheet, carefully imitating the manner of that writer. But he could by no means satisfy himself. Mrs. Rowbotham appeared with the supper-tray, and he laid his writing-materials on the bed. During supper he took up de Maupassant once more, and at ten o'clock made yet a third attempt, well knowing beforehand that it would not be successful. The plot tumbled entirely to pieces; the conclusion especially was undramatic; but how to alter it?...
He was disgusted with himself. He wondered what would happen to him if he lost his situation. Supposing that the firm of Curpet and Smythe failed! Smythe was a careless fellow, capable of ruining business in a month if for any reason Curpet's restraining influence was withdrawn. These and similar morbid fancies assailed him, and he went to bed sick with misery, heartily wishing that he had been less precipitate in his attempt to be industrious. He had a superstition that if he had waited for the New Year, the adventure might have resulted more happily.
In the night he awoke, to lament upon his solitariness. Why had he no congenial friends? Howcould he set about obtaining sympathetic companionship? He needed, in particular, cultured feminine society. Given that, he could work; without it he should accomplish nothing. He reflected that in London there were probably thousands of "nice girls," pining for such men as he. What a ridiculous civilisation it was that prevented him from meeting them! When he saw a promising girl in a bus, why in the name of heaven should he not be at liberty to say to her, "Look here, I can convince you that I mean well; let us make each other's acquaintance"?... But convention, convention! He felt himself to be imprisoned by a relentless, unscaleable wall.... Then he dreamt that he was in a drawing-room full of young men and women, and that all were chattering vivaciously and cleverly. He himself stood with his back to the fire, and talked to a group of girls. They looked into his face, as Adeline used to look. They grasped his ideals and his aims without laborious explanations; half a word was sufficient to enlighten them; he saw the gleam of appreciative comprehension in their eyes long before his sentences were finished....
The next morning was bright with sunshine; the frost had broken, and the streets were beginning to be muddy. Richard went out, his mind empty, and dully dejected. At Sloane Street he mounted a bus, taking the one vacant front seat on the top. For a little while he stared absently at the handle of his stick. Presently a chance movement of the head made him aware that someone's eyes were upon him. He looked round. In the far corner of the seat opposite was Miss Roberts. She hesitated, flushing, and then bowed, and he responded. No further communications were possible just then (and for this, at the moment, he felt thankful), because they were separated by two young gentlemen wearing tweed caps, and collars which might have been clean once, who were arguing briskly over a copy of the "Sportsman."
For some strange reason of diffidence, Richard had not been to the Crabtree since his visit there with Adeline. He was sardonically in search of his motive for staying away when the young gentlemen with the "Sportsman" left the bus. Miss Robertsgrew rosy as he got up and offered her his hand, at the same time seating himself by her side. She wore a black jacket and skirt, well worn but in good preservation, a hat with red flowers, and grey woollen gloves; and any person of ordinary discernment would have guessed her occupation without a great deal of difficulty. During the last year she had become stouter, and her figure was now full rather than slender; her features, especially the nostrils, mouth, and chin, were somewhat heavy, but she had prettily shaped ears, and her eyes, of no definable tint, were soft and tender; her reddish-brown hair was as conspicuous and as splendid as ever, coiled with tight precision at the back of her head, and escaping here and there above her ears in tiny flying wisps. The expression of her face was mainly one of amiability, but passive, animal-like, inert; she seemed full of good-nature.
"We haven't seen you at the Crabtree, lately," she said.
"You are still at the old place, then?"
"Oh, yes; and shall be, I expect. They've taken another floor now, and we're the biggest vegetarian restaurant in London."
There was a note of timid agitation in her voice, and he noticed besides that her cheeks were red and her eyes shone. Could it be that this encounter hadgiven her pleasure? The idea of such a possibility afforded him secret delight.... She, a breathing woman, glad to see him! He wondered what the other people on the bus were thinking of them, and especially what the driver thought; the driver had happened to catch sight of them when they were shaking hands, and as Richard examined the contour of the man's rubicund face, he fancied he saw there a glimmer of a smile. This was during a little pause in the conversation.
"And how have you spent Christmas?" It was Richard's question.
"At home," she answered simply, "with father and mother. My married sister and her husband came over for the day."
"And I spent mine all alone," he said ruefully. "No friends, no pudding, no nothing."
She looked at him compassionately.
"I suppose you live in rooms? It must be very lonely."
"Oh!" he returned lightly, yet seizing with eager satisfaction the sympathy she offered, "it's nothing when you're used to it. This makes my third Christmas in London, and none of them has been particularly uproarious. Fortunately there was the skating this year. I was on the Serpentine nearly all day."
Then she asked him if skating was easy to learn, because she had been wanting to try for years, but had never had opportunity. He answered that it was quite easy, if one were not afraid.
"I'm going your way," he said, as they both got off at Piccadilly Circus, and they walked along Coventry Street together. The talk flagged; to rouse it Richard questioned her about the routine of the restaurant,—a subject on which she spoke readily, and with a certain sense of humour. When they reached the Crabtree,—
"Why, it's been painted!" Richard exclaimed. "It looks very swagger, indeed, now."
"Yes, my! doesn't it? And it's beautiful inside, too. You must come in sometime."
"I will," he said with emphasis.
She shook his hand quite vigorously, and their eyes met with a curious questioning gaze. He smiled to himself as he walked down Chandos Street; his dejection had mysteriously vanished, and he even experienced a certain uplifting of spirit. It occurred to him that he had never at all understood Miss Roberts before. How different she was outside the restaurant! Should he go to the Crabtree for lunch that day, or should he allow a day or two to elapse? He decidedly prudently to wait.
He debated whether he should mention the meetingto Jenkins, and said on the whole that he would not do so. But he found Jenkins surprisingly urbane, and without conscious volition he was soon saying,—
"Guess who I came down with on the bus this morning."
Jenkins gave it up.
"Laura Roberts;" and then, seeing no look of comprehension on Jenkins' face, "You know, the cashier at the Crabtree."
"Oh—her!"
The stress was a little irritating.
"Isaw her about a fortnight ago," Jenkins said.
"At the Crabtree?"
"Yes. Did she say anything to you about me?" The youth smiled.
"No. Why?"
"Nothing. We had a talk, and I mashed her a bit,—that's all."
"Ah, my boy, you won't get far with her."
"Oh, sha'n't I? I could tell you a thing or tworeLaura Roberts, if I liked."
Although Jenkins' remark was characteristic, and Richard knew well enough that there was nothing behind his words, yet his mind reverted instantly to the stories connecting Miss Roberts with Mr. Aked.
"Don't gas," he said curtly. "She looks on you as a boy."
"Man enough for any woman," said Jenkins, twirling the rudiments of a moustache.
The discussion might have gone further, had it not been interrupted by Mr. Smythe, who burst suddenly into the room, as his custom was.
"Larch, come with me into Mr. Curpet's room." His tone was brusque. He had none of Mr. Curpet's natural politeness, though on rare occasions, of which the present was not one, he sought clumsily to imitate it. Richard felt a vague alarm.
With a muffler round his throat, Mr. Curpet was seated before the fire, blowing his nose and breathing noisily. Mr. Smythe went to the window, and played with the tassel of the blind cord.
"We are thinking of making some changes, Larch," Mr. Curpet began.
"Yes, sir." His heart sank. Was he to be dismissed? The next sentence was reassuring.
"In future all costs will be drawn and settled in the office, instead of being sent out. Do you feel equal to taking charge of that department?"
Richard had many times helped in the preparation of bills of cost, and possessed a fair knowledge of this complicated and engaging subject. He answered very decidedly in the affirmative.
"What we propose," Mr. Smythe broke in, "is that you should have an assistant, and that the two of you should attend to both the books and the costs."
"Of course your salary will be increased," Mr. Curpet added.
"Let me see, what do you get now?" This from Mr. Smythe, whose memory was imperfect.
"Three pounds ten, sir."
"Suppose we say four pounds ten," said Mr. Smythe to Mr. Curpet, and then turning to Larch: "That's very good indeed, you know, young man; you wouldn't get that everywhere. By Jove, no, you wouldn't!" Richard was fully aware of the fact. He could scarcely credit his own luck. "And we shall expect you to keep things up to the mark."
Mr. Curpet smiled kindly over his handkerchief, as if to intimate that Mr. Smythe need not have insisted on that point.
"And you may have to stay late sometimes," Mr. Smythe went on.
"Yes, sir."
When the interview was finished, he retraced his career at the office, marvelling that he should have done anything unusual enough to inspire his principals to such appreciation, and he soon made out that, compared with others of the staff, he had indeedbeen a model clerk. A delicious self-complacence enveloped him. Mr. Smythe had had the air of conferring a favour; but Mr. Curpet was at the head of affairs at No. 2 Serjeant's Court, and Mr. Curpet's attitude had been decidedly flattering. At first he had a difficulty in grasping his good fortune, thought it too good to be true; but he ended by believing in himself very heartily. In the matter of salary, he stood now second only to Mr. Alder, he a youth not three years out of the provinces. Three years ago an income of £234 per annum would have seemed almost fabulous. His notions as to what constituted opulence had changed since then, but nevertheless £234 was an excellent revenue, full of possibilities. A man could marry on that and live comfortably; many men ventured to marry on half as much. In clerkdom he had indubitably risen with ease to the upper ranks. There was good Northern stuff in Richard Larch, after all! As he walked home, his brain was busy with plans, beautiful plans for the New Year,—how he would save money, and how he would spend his nights in toil.
There happened to be a room to let on the same floor as Richard's own. The rent was only five shillings per week, and he arranged to take it and use it as a bedroom, transforming the other and larger room into a study. Mrs. Rowbotham was asked to remove all her tables, chairs, carpets, pictures, ornaments, and accessories from both rooms, as he proposed to furnish them entirely anew at his own cost. This did not indicate that a sudden increase of revenue had, as once on a previous occasion, engendered in him a propensity to squander. On the contrary, his determination to live economically was well established, and he hoped to save a hundred pounds per annum with ease. But the influence of an æsthetic environment upon his literary work would, he argued, probably be valuable enough to justify the moderate expenditure involved, and so all the leisure of the last days of the year was given to the realisation of certain theories in regard to the furnishing of a study and a bedroom. Unfortunately the time at his disposal was very limited—- was it not essential that the placeshould be set in order by the 31st of December, that work might commence on the 1st of January?—but he did not spare himself, and the result, when he contemplated it on New Year's Eve, filled him with pleasure and pride. He felt that he could write worthily in that study, with its four autotype reproductions of celebrated pictures on the self-coloured walls, its square of Indian carpet over Indian matting, its long, low bookshelves, its quaint table with the elm top, its plain rush-bottomed chairs, and its broad luxurious divan. He marvelled that he had contrived so long to exist in the room as it was before, and complacently attributed his ill-success as a writer to the lack of harmonious surroundings. By the last post arrived a New Year's card from Mrs. Clayton Vernon. Twelve months ago she had sent a similar kind token of remembrance, and he had ignored it; in the summer she had written inviting him to spend a few days at Bursley, and he had somewhat too briefly asked to be excused. To-night, however, he went out, bought a New Year's card, and despatched it to her at once. He flowed over with benevolence, viewing the world through the rosy spectacles of high resolve. Mrs. Clayton Vernon was an excellent woman, and he would prove to her and to Bursley that they had not estimated too highly the possibilities of Richard Larch. Hewas, in truth, prodigiously uplifted. The old sense of absolute power over himself for good or evil returned. A consciousness of exceptional ability possessed him. The future, splendid in dreams, was wholly his; and yet again—perhaps more thoroughly than ever before—the ineffectual past was effaced. To-morrow was the New Year, and to-morrow the new heaven and the new earth were to begin.
He had decided to write a novel. Having failed in short stories and in essays, it seemed to him likely that the novel, a form which he had not so far seriously attempted, might suit his idiosyncrasy better. He had once sketched out the plot of a short novel, a tale of adventure in modern London, and on examination this struck him as ingenious and promising. Moreover, it would appeal—like Stevenson's "New Arabian Nights," which in Richard's mind it distantly resembled—both to the general and to the literary public. He determined to write five hundred words of it a day, five days a week; at this rate of progress he calculated that the book would be finished in four months; allowing two months further for revision, it ought to be ready for a publisher at the end of June.
He drew his chair up to the blazing fire, and looked down the vista of those long, lamplit eveningsduring which the novel was to grow under his hands. How different he from the average clerk, who with similar opportunities was content to fritter away those hours which would lead himself, perhaps, to fame! He thought of Adeline, and smiled. What, after all, did such as he want with women? He was in a position to marry, and if he met a clever girl of sympathetic temperament, he emphatically would marry (it did not occur to him to add the clause, "Provided she will have me"); but otherwise he would wait. He could afford to wait,—to wait till he had made a reputation, and half a score of women, elegant and refined, were only too willing to envelop him in an atmosphere of adoration.
It was part of his plan for economy to dine always at the Crabtree, where one shilling was the price of an elaborate repast, and he went there on New Year's Day. As he walked up Charing Cross Road, his thoughts turned naturally to Miss Roberts. Would she be as cordial as when he had met her on the omnibus, or would she wear the polite mask of the cashier, treating him merely as a frequenter of the establishment? She was engaged when he entered the dining-room, but she noticed him and nodded. He looked towards her several times during his meal, and once her eyes caught hisand she smiled, not withdrawing them for a few moments; then she bent over her account book.
His fellow-diners seemed curiously to have degenerated, to have grown still narrower in their sympathies, still more careless in their eating, still more peculiar or shabbier in their dress. The young women of masculine aspect set their elbows on the table more uncompromisingly than ever, and the young men with soiled wristbands or no wristbands at all were more than ever tedious in their murmured conversations. It was, indeed, a bizarre company that surrounded him! Then he reflected that these people had not altered. The change was in himself. He had outgrown them; he surveyed them now as from a tower. He was a man with a future, using this restaurant because it suited him temporarily to do so, while they would use it till the end, never deviating, never leaving the rut.
"So you have come at last!" Miss Roberts said to him when he presented his check. "I was beginning to think you had deserted us."
"But it's barely a week since I saw you," he protested. "Let me wish you a happy New Year."
"The same to you." She flushed a little, and then: "What do you think of our new decorations? Aren't they pretty?"
He praised them perfunctorily, even withoutglancing round. His eyes were on her face. He remembered the reiterated insinuations of Jenkins, and wondered whether they had any ground of fact.
"By the way, has Jenkins been here to-day?" he inquired, by way of introducing the name.
"Is that the young man who used to come with you sometimes? No."
There was no trace of self-consciousness in her bearing, and Richard resolved to handle Jenkins with severity. Another customer approached the pay-desk.
"Well, good afternoon." He lingered.
"Good afternoon." Her gaze rested on him softly. "I suppose you'll be here againsometime." She spoke low, so that the other customer should not hear.
"I'm coming every day now, I think," he answered in the same tone, with a smothered laugh. "Ta-ta."
That night at half-past seven he began his novel. The opening chapter was introductory, and the words came without much effort. This being only a draft, there was no need for polish; so that when a sentence refused to run smoothly at the first trial, he was content to make it grammatical and leave it. He seemed to have been working for hours when adesire took him to count up what was already written. Six hundred words! He sighed the sigh of satisfaction, and looked at his watch, to find that it was exactly half-past eight. The discovery somewhat damped his felicity. He began to doubt whether stuff composed at the rate of ten words a minute could have any real value. Pooh! Sometimes one wrote quickly, and sometimes slowly. The number of minutes occupied was no index of quality. Should he continue writing? Yes, he would.... No.... Why should he? He had performed the task self-allotted for the day, and more; and now he was entitled to rest. True, the actual time of labour had been very short; but then, another day the same amount of work might consume three or four hours. He put away his writing-things, and searched about for something to read, finally lighting on "Paradise Lost." But "Paradise Lost" wanted actuality. He laid it aside. Was there any valid reason why he should not conclude the evening at the theatre? None. The frost had returned with power, and the reverberation of the streets sounded invitingly through his curtained windows. He went out, and walked briskly up Park Side. At Hyde Park Corner he jumped on an omnibus.
It was the first night of a new ballet at the Ottoman."Standing-room only," said the man at the ticket-office. "All right," said Richard, and, entering, was greeted with soft music, which came to him like a fitful zephyr over a sea of heads.
One Saturday afternoon towards the end of February, he suddenly decided to read through so much of the draft novel as was written; hitherto he had avoided any sort of revision. The resolve to accomplish five hundred words a day had been kept indifferently well, and the total stood at about fourteen thousand. As he wrote a very bold hand, the sheets covered made quite a respectable pile. The mere bulk of them cajoled him, in spite of certain misgivings, into an optimistic surmise as to their literary quality. Never before had he written so much upon one theme, and were the writing good or bad, he was, for a few moments, proud of his achievement. The mischief lay in the fact that week by week he had exercised less and still less care over the work. The phrase, "Anything will do for a draft," had come to be uttered with increasing frequency as an excuse for laxities of style and construction. "I will make that right in the revision," he had reassured himself, and had gone negligently forward, leaving innumerablecrudities in the wake of his hurrying pen. During the last few days he had written scarcely anything, and perhaps it was a hope of stimulating a drooping inspiration by the complacent survey of work actually done that tempted him to this hazardous perusal.
He whistled as he took up the manuscript, as a boy whistles when going into a dark cellar. The first three pages were read punctiliously, every word of them, but soon he grew hasty, rushing to the next paragraph ere the previous one was grasped; then he began shamelessly to skip; and then he stopped, and his heart seemed to stop also. The lack of homogeneity, of sequence, of dramatic quality, of human interest; the loose syntax; and the unrelieved mediocrity of it all, horrified him. The thing was dry bones, a fiasco. The certainty that he had once more failed swept over him like a cold, green wave of the sea, and he had a physical feeling of sickness in the stomach.... It was with much ado that he refrained from putting the whole manuscript upon the fire, and crushing it venomously into the flames with a poker. Then he steadied himself. His self-confidence was going, almost gone; he must contrive to recover it, and he sought for a way. (Where were now the rash exultations of the New Year?) It was impossible that his work should beirredeemably bad. He remembered having read somewhere that the difference between a fine and a worthless novel was often a difference of elaboration simply. A conscientious re-writing, therefore, might probably bring about a surprising amelioration. He must immediately make the experiment. But he had long since solemnly vowed not to commence the second writing till the draft was done; the moral value of finishing even the draft had then seemed to him priceless. No matter! Under stress of grievous necessity, that oath must be forsworn. No other course could save him from collapse.
He went out into the streets. The weather, fine and bright, suggested the earliest infancy of spring, and Piccadilly was full of all classes and all ages of women. There were regiments of men, too, but the gay and endless stream of women obsessed him. He saw them sitting in hansoms and private carriages and on the tops of omnibuses, niched in high windows, shining in obscurity of shops, treading the pavements with fairy step, either unattended or by the side of foolish, unappreciative males. Every man in London seemed to have the right to a share of some woman's companionship, except himself. As for those men who walked alone, they had sweethearts somewhere, or mothers and sisters, or theywere married and even now on the way to wife and hearth. Only he was set apart.
A light descended upon him that afternoon. The average man and the average woman being constantly thrown into each other's society, custom has staled for them the exquisite privilege of such intercourse. The rustic cannot share the townsman's enthusiasm for rural scenery; he sees no matter for ecstasy in the view from his cottage door; and in the same way the average man and the average woman dine together, talk together, walk together, and know not how richly they are therein blessed. But with solitaries like Richard it is different. Debarred from fellowship with the opposite sex by circumstances and an innate diffidence which makes the control of circumstance impossible, their starved sensibilities acquire certain morbid tenderness. (Doubtless the rustic discerns morbidity in the attitude of the townsman towards the view from his cottage door.) Richard grasped this. In a luminous moment of self-revelation, he was able to trace the growth of the malady. From its first vague and fugitive symptoms, it had so grown that now, on seeing an attractive woman, he could not be content to say, "What an attractive woman!" and have done with it, but he needs must build a house, furnish a room in thehouse, light a fire in the room, place a low chair by the fire, put the woman in the chair, with a welcoming smile on her upturned lips—and imagine that she was his wife. And it was not only attractive women that laid the spell upon him. The sight of any living creature in petticoats was liable to set his hysterical fancy in motion. Every woman he met was Woman.... Of the millions of women in London, why was he not permitted to know a few? Why was he entirely cut off? There they were: their silk skirts brushed him as they passed; they thanked him for little services in public vehicles; they ministered to him in restaurants; they sang to him at concerts, danced for him at theatres; touched his existence at every side—and yet they were remoter than the stars, unattainable as the moon.... He rebelled. He sank in despair, and rose to frenzies of anger. Then he was a pathetic figure, and extended to himself his own pity, smiling sardonically at fate. Fate was the harder to bear because he was convinced that, at the heart of him, he was essentially a woman's man. None could enjoy the feminine atmosphere more keenly, more artistically than he. Other men, who had those delicious rights for which he longed in vain, assessed them meanly, or even scorned them.... He looked back with profound regret to his friendshipwith Adeline. He dreamt that she had returned, that he had fallen in love with her and married her, that her ambitions were leading him forward to success. Ah! Under the incentive of a woman's eyes, of what tremendous efforts is a clever man not capable, and deprived of it to what deeps of stagnations will he not descend! Then he awoke again to the fact that he knew no woman in London.
Yes, he knew one, and his thoughts began to play round her caressingly, idealising and ennobling her. She only gave him his change daily at the Crabtree, but he knew her; there existed between them a kind of intimacy. She was a plain girl, possessing few attractions, except the supreme one of being a woman. She was below him in station; but had she not her refinements? Though she could not enter into his mental or emotional life, did she not exhale for him a certain gracious influence? His heart went forth to her. Her flirtations with Mr. Aked, her alleged dalliance with Jenkins? Trifles, nothings! She had told him that she lived with her mother and father and a younger brother, and on more than one occasion she had mentioned the Wesleyan chapel; he had gathered that the whole family was religious. In theory he detested religious women, and yet—religion in a woman ... what was it? He answered the question with a man's easy laugh.And if her temperament was somewhat lymphatic, he divined that, once roused, she was capable of the most passionate feeling. He had always had a predilection for the sleeping-volcano species of woman.
Richard was soon forced to the conclusion that the second writing of his novel was destined to be a failure. For a few days he stuck doggedly to the task, writing stuff which, as he wrote it, he knew would ultimately be condemned. Then one evening he stopped suddenly, in the middle of a word, bit the penholder for a moment, and threw it down with a "Damn!" This sort of thing could not continue.
"Better come up and see my new arrangements at Raphael Street to-night," he said to Jenkins the next day. He wanted a diversion.
"Any whisky going?"
"Certainly."
"Delighted, I'm sure," said Jenkins, with one of his ridiculous polite bows. He regarded these rare invitations as an honour; it was more than six months since the last.
They drank whisky and smoked cigars which Jenkins had thoughtfully brought with him, and chattered for a long time about office matters. And then, as the cigar-ash accumulated, the topics becamemore personal and intimate. That night Jenkins was certainly in a serious vein; further, he was on his best behaviour, striving to be sympathetic and gentlemanly. He confided to Richard his aspirations. He wished to learn French and proposed to join a Polytechnic Institute for the purpose. Also, he had thoughts of leaving home, and living in rooms, like Richard. He was now earning twenty-eight shillings a week; he intended to save money and to give up all intoxicants beyond half a pint of bitter a day. Richard responded willingly to his mood, and offered sound advice, which was listened to with deference. Then the talk, as often aforetime, drifted to the subject of women. It appeared that Jenkins had a desire to "settle down" (he was twenty-one). He knew several fellows in the Walworth Road who had married on less than he was earning.
"What about Miss Roberts?" Richard questioned.
"Oh! She's off. She's a bit too old for me, you know. She must be twenty-six."
"Look here, my boy," said Richard, good-humouredly. "I don't believe you ever had anything to do with her at all. It was nothing but boasting."
"What will you bet I can't prove it to you?"Jenkins retorted, putting out his chin, an ominous gesture with him.
"I'll bet you half-a-crown—no, a shilling."
"Done."
Jenkins took a leather-case from his pocket, and handed Richard a midget photograph of Miss Roberts. Underneath it was her signature, "Yours sincerely, Laura Roberts."
Strange to say, the incident did not trouble Richard in the least.
He walked down to Victoria with Jenkins towards midnight, and on returning to his lodging, thought for the hundredth time how futile was his present mode of existence, how bare of all that makes life worth living. Of what avail to occupy pretty rooms, if one occupied them alone, coming into them at night to find them empty, leaving them in the morning without a word of farewell? In the waste of London, Laura Roberts made the one green spot. He had lost interest in his novel. On the other hand, his interest in the daily visit to the Crabtree was increasing.
As day succeeded day he fell into a practice of deliberately seeking out and magnifying the finer qualities in her nature, while ignoring those which were likely to offend him; indeed he refused to allow himself to be offended. He went so far as to retardhis lunch-hour permanently, so that, the rush of customers being past, he should have better opportunity to talk to her without interruption. Then he timidly essayed the first accents of courtship, and finding his advances accepted, grew bolder. One Sunday morning he met her as she was coming out of the Wesleyan chapel at Munster Park; he said the encounter was due to accident. She introduced him to her relations, who were with her. Her father was a big, stout, dark man, dressed in black faced-cloth, with a heavy beard, huge chubby fingers, and jagged grey fingernails. Her mother was a spare woman of sorrowful aspect, whose thin lips seldom moved; she held her hands in front of her, one on the top of the other. Her brother was a lank schoolboy, wearing a damaged mortar-board hat.
Shortly afterwards he called on her at Carteret Street. The schoolboy opened the door, and after inviting him as far as the lobby, vanished into a back room only to reappear and run upstairs. Richard heard his loud, agitated whisper: "Laura, Laura, here's Mr. Larch come to see you."
They strolled to Wimbledon Common that night.
His entity seemed to have become dual. One part of him was willingly enslaved to an imperious, headstrong passion; the other stood calmly, cynically apart, and watched. There were hours when hecould foresee the whole of his future life, and measure the bitter, ineffectual regret which he was laying up; hours when he admitted that his passion had been, as it were, artificially incited, and that there could be no hope of an enduring love. He liked Laura; she was a woman, a balm, a consolation. To all else he obstinately shut his eyes, and, casting away every consideration of prudence, hastened to involve himself more and more deeply. Swiftly, swiftly, the climax approached. He hailed it with a strange, affrighted joy.
They were upon Chelsea Embankment in the late dusk of a Saturday evening in May. A warm and gentle wind stirred the budding trees to magic utterances. The long, straight line of serried lamps stretched away to an enchanted bridge which with twinkling lights hung poised over the misty river. The plash of an oar came languorously up from the water, and the voices of boys calling. At intervals, couples like themselves passed by, either silent or conversing in low tones that seemed to carry inner, inarticulate meanings. As for them, they were silent; he had not her arm, but they walked close together. He was deeply and indescribably moved; his heart beat heavily, and when he looked at her face in the gloom and saw that her eyes were liquid, it beat yet more heavily; then lay still.
"Let us sit down—shall we?" he said at length, and they turned to an empty bench under a tree. "What is she thinking?" he wondered, and then the dominant feeling of the moment possessed him wholly. His ambitions floated out of sight andwere forgotten. He remembered nothing except the girl by his side, whose maddening bosom rose and fell under his very gaze. At that moment she belonged to no class; had no virtues, no faults. All the inessentials of her being were stripped away, and she was merely a woman, divine, desired, necessary, waiting to be captured. She sat passive, expectant, the incarnation of the Feminine.
He took her hand and felt it tremble. At the contact a thrill ran about him, and for a second a delicious faintness robbed him of all strength. Then with inexplicable rapidity his mind went unerringly back to that train-journey to William's funeral. He saw the cottage in the fields, and the young mother, half robed and with sleep in her eyes, standing at the door. Exquisite vision!
He heard himself speaking,—
"Laura...."
The little hand gave a timorous encouragement.
"Laura ... you are going to marry me."
The intoxicating pressure of her lips on his was answer. Heedless of publicity, he crushed her against his breast, this palpitating creature with the serious face. Ah, she could love!
It was done. The great irretrievable moment had gone to join a million other moments of nosignificance. He felt triumphant, fiercely triumphant. His frightful solitude was at an end. One woman was his. A woman ... his, his own!
See! A tear quivered in her eye.
Sunday was stiflingly hot. At Sloane Street the roof of every Putney omnibus was already laden with passengers, and Richard on his way to Carteret Street to make the acquaintance of Laura's married sister, Milly Powell, her husband and young child, was forced at last to be content with a seat inside. The public houses were just closing for the afternoon, and the footpaths full of holiday-makers, with here and there a girl or a middle-aged man carrying a Bible. No vehicles were abroad except the omnibuses and an occasional hired carriage which passed by with a nonchalant, lazy air.
At the Redcliffe Arms there got in a little family party consisting of a stout, seemingly prosperous man, gruffly good-humoured, his wife, and a boy of about three years, whose puffy face was disfigured by large spectacles.
"Sit here, Milly, out of the sun," the man said curtly.
Richard looked up at the sound of the name. The woman's likeness to Laura was unmistakable; beyond doubt she must be the sister of his betrothed.He examined her curiously. She was perhaps slightly under thirty, of a good height and well set, with a large head and a large, plain face. Her movements were clumsy. She appeared to be just upon the line which divides the matron from the young mother. In both her features and her attire there were faint reminders of girlish grace, or at least of the charm of the shy wife who nurses her first-born. Her complexion was clear and fresh, her ears small and delicately pink, her eyes cool grey. But one did not notice these beauties without careful inspection, while the heavy jaws, the lax eyelids, the flattened nose whose tilt unpleasantly revealed the nostrils, were obvious and repellent. She wore a black gown, which fitted badly, imparting an ungainliness probably foreign to her proper figure. Her broad hat of black straw, trimmed with poppies and corn-flowers, was strikingly modish, and the veil, running at an angle from the extremity of the brim down to her chin, gave to her face a cloistered quality which had its own seductiveness. Her small hands were neatly gloved, and held a cheap, effective parasol. The woman's normal expression was one of cow-like vacancy, but now and then her eyes would light up as she spoke to the child, gently restraining it, reassuring it, rallying it with simple banter. She was still in love with her husband; frequently sheglanced at him with furtive wistfulness. She was able to enjoy the summer weather. She was not quite dead to the common phenomena of the roadside. But the last resistances of departing youthfulness and vivacity against the narcotic of a dull, unlovely domesticity were taking place. In a year or two she would be the typical matron of the lower middle-class.
When Richard had made these observations, he reflected: "Laura will be like that—soon." Mentally he compared the two faces, and he could, as it were, see Laura's changing....
Then followed a reverie which embraced the whole of his past life. He recognised that, while he bore all the aspect of prosperity, he had failed. Why had nature deprived him of strength of purpose? Why could not he, like other men, bend circumstances to his own ends? He sought for a reason, and he found it in his father, that mysterious, dead transmitter of traits, of whom he knew so little, and on whose name lay a blot of some kind which was hidden from him. He had been born in the shadow, and after a fitful struggle towards emergence, into the shadow he must again retire. Fate was his enemy. Mary had died; Mary would have helped him to be strong. Mr. Aked had died; Mr. Aked's inspiring influence would have incited andguided his efforts. Adeline had abandoned him to a fatal loneliness.
He knew that he would make no further attempt to write. Laura was not even aware that he had had ambitions in that direction. He had never told her, because she would not have understood. She worshipped him, he felt sure, and at times he had a great tenderness for her; but it would be impossible to write in the suburban doll's-house which was to be theirs. No! In future he would be simply the suburban husband—dutiful towards his employers, upon whose grace he would be doubly dependent; keeping his house in repair; pottering in the garden; taking his wife out for a walk, or occasionally to the theatre; and saving as much as he could. He would be good to his wife—she was his. He wanted to get married at once. He wanted to be master of his own dwelling. He wanted to have Laura's kiss when he went out of a morning to earn the bread-and-cheese. He wanted to see her figure at the door when he returned at night. He wanted to share with her the placid, domestic evening. He wanted to tease her, and to get his ears boxed and be called a great silly. He wanted to creep into the kitchen and surprise her with a pinch of the cheek as she bent over the range. He wanted to whisk her up in his arms, carry her from one roomto another, and set her down breathless in a chair.... Ah! Let it be soon. And as for the more distant future, he would not look at that. He would keep his eyes on the immediate foreground, and be happy while he could. After all, perhaps things had been ordered for the best; perhaps he had no genuine talent for writing. And yet at that moment he was conscious that he possessed the incommunicable imaginative insights of the author.... But it was done with now.
The conductor called out their destination, and as Laura's sister gathered the child in her arms he sprang out and hurried down Carteret Street in order to reach the house first and so avoid a meeting on the doorstep. He heard the trot of the child behind him. Children.... Perhaps a child of his might give sign of literary ability. If so—and surely these instincts descended, were not lost—how he would foster and encourage it!