It was the neuter quality in Wynne Rendall which made possible the all-hour intimacy which came to exist between Eve and himself. She would come to his rooms, indifferent to time and convention, and stay far into the night.
Sometimes they conversed little, and then, while he worked or wandered about in a seemingly aimless fashion, seeking some cherished but elusive word, she would read, curled up in the age-worn chair. When the talking mood possessed him she would lay her book aside and contribute endorsement or censure to his ideas. In this respect her courage was boundless, for she never hesitated to dispute with him when she felt he was at fault. He would fight for his mental holdings to the last breath of argument, then of a sudden swing round and say:
“Yes, I know you are right—but how do you know?”
His extraordinary belief in himself filled her with a queer mixture of distress and admiration, but the distress was outweighed by the admiration and the joy she took in their brain to brain fencing or accord. Their talks, although embracing nearly every subject under the sun, were, as a rule, impersonal, or rather impersonal in so far as their relations to one another was concerned.
In common with many folk, Wynne thought more highly of his lesser deeds than of his greater, and vaunted them enthusiastically. He was inordinately proud of his truculence and acerbity to men who were more successful than himself, and took pleasure in recounting the fine-edged verbal tools he had employed against them. He was mortally offended when Eve told him frankly the attitude was unworthy and easily misconstrued.
“They only think you are envious,” she said.
“I envious of them? Good God!”
Her frankness had its effect, however, for he modified the characteristic, and no longer shouted “Yah” at lesser intellects and longer purses.
Another change she brought about was the matter of diet. Very drastically she quashed the nibbling habit which with him had taken the place of meals.
“Wynne,” she said, “what did you have for breakfast?”
“Lord knows. I don’t! Nothing, I expect.”
“Would you like to please me?”
“Yes,” he answered, “I suppose so.”
“You are starving yourself.”
“What nonsense!”
“You are. You won’t be able to stand the strain if you don’t eat properly.”
“I shan’t if I do,” he replied. “How can I buy books and pay rent and all that if I lavish my substance on victuals.”
“How much do you spend a week on food?”
“Never thought.”
“Think then.”
“Not I. Look! You haven’t seen this copy of ‘Erewhon,’ have you? It’s a first edition!”
“I want you to answer my question.”
He tossed his head petulantly.
“Oh, don’t be like that,” he implored. “The world is peopled with folk who worry about these matters; let’s be away from them. You’ll want me to buy a dinner-gong next so that half the street may know I am sitting down to table.”
“Perhaps I shall, for I want you to sit at table—regularly.”
He caught the word “regularly,” and played tunes upon it.
“I know,” said Eve, “and I like you for feeling that way—but you are fighting against nature—not convention—and that’s all wrong. We funny little things who walk about on the world must follow certain laws—we can’t help ourselves—and we may as well follow them sensibly. We have to lie down and get up and wash our faces and brush our hair and eat our dinners; we have to—if we didn’t we should accomplish nothing. It is foolish to fight with the ‘musts’ when there are armies of ‘needn’t be’s’ to draw the sword against.”
He snorted derisively and ridiculed prosaic philosophy. When he had finished she calmly repeated her question.
“How much do you spend a week on food?”
Very reluctantly he produced a sheet of paper and a pencil and scribbled a rough estimate.
“Will you give me the nine shillings and let me cater for you?”
“No,” he said emphatically.
“Please do.”
“Why should I spend money on a dinner when I can stave off hunger with a stick of chocolate?”
“Couldn’t we make a common fund and have one meal together each day. I’d cook it here.”
His expression brightened instantly.
“You would? You’d come each day?”
“If you consent.”
Hitherto her comings had been sporadic—too sporadic. He had felt, when she was absent, the consciousness of something lacking.
“I should like you to come here every day,” he said.
He was willing to accept a routine of her society, though rebelling against a time-table for meals. She smiled as the thought crossed her mind, but to have voiced it would have been to sacrifice the gains she had made.
“If you consent,” she repeated.
“All right; do what you will,” he said.
So every afternoon Eve cooked a meal over a grubby little gas-ring, assisted by a methylated spirit stove, and had the satisfaction of seeing her labours rewarded by a slightly added tinge of colour to his cheeks.
In buying the food she contributed more toward the cost than he, for in the matter of money he was strangely unmindful. Frequently he forgot his weekly contribution altogether, and returned home with some trifle of china or an old print by way of alternative. On these occasions it did not occur to him to question how meals still appeared upon his table, and Eve would not have told him for the world how hard it had been that this should be so.
Increasingly her thoughts centred on his welfare, and her own personality took second place. Even her ambitions—and they had been many and glorious—became merged in the task of helping him to success.
He had not taken into consideration the possibility that she, too, was a climber at heart, and had set her sails for the port where the dreams come true. He was quite offended when one day she spoke of herself.
“But can you act?” he staccatoed.
“One day I shall,” she answered. “One day I shall feel I know so much more than all the others—then I shall act, and people will sit up and say so.”
“H’m.”
“You think it unlikely?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He fidgeted with a cup on the mantelshelf. “It seemed you were echoing those things which I say to myself.”
“We have thoughts in common.”
He shook his head irritably.
“I don’t admit it. There is no common currency in thoughts or ideas. To me parallel lines are antagonistic lines. Why should you want to act?”
“I want to express myself as strongly as you do. I want to succeed.”
“I don’t like women who succeed. Why should you succeed? Where’s the necessity—?”
“Born in me,” she answered.
His words for the moment had hurt her bitterly, but the subtler side of her nature took comfort from the almost childishly petulant tone in which he had spoken them.
“The necessity is born by the things around you,” he said. “They are the impulses toward success.”
“Yes, that’s true. Perhaps it was the wretched drabness of my surroundings which fired the impulse in me. We haven’t talked to each other of our people, you and I?”
“I never think back,” he said.
“I do, because it’s the impetus to think forward.”
He looked at her critically.
“You might have come from princely stock by the look of you. You haven’t the seeming of the drab.”
“Perhaps I did; but it was the inbred collapsed finish of the good stock. My father idled backward to the slums—my mother was gentle, but that was all. He was dead before I could remember. Oh, that dreadful back-street life! You can’t understand. We were only a little removed from the gossipy-doorstep folk who talk of a neighbour’s confinement as they lean on the rickety railings. We played with their children, my sister and I, bought from their horrid mean shops—went to the same wretched school. Oh! how I hated it all—the miserable rooms, the bargaining for food, the squabbles, and the never-ending economy and thrift. Grey—grey—grey! I used to lash a purple whiptop at the corner of the street, and pray sometimes a great chariot of fire would snatch me up into the skies.”
It was Wynne’s habit to ignore central ideas in another’s conversation, hence the question:
“Why apurpletop?”
“I hardly know—but it wasalwayspurple. I kept a patch of purple on my horizon.”
He looked at her queerly.
“What do you mean by that?”
“The Royal Purple. Somehow it stands out as the colour which rises above all sordidness. Can’t explain it otherwise.”
He nodded. “I know what you mean. Strange you should feel like that, too.” The “too” was scarcely audible.
“When I was ever so little I had that feeling, and it has grown up with me. I used to believe that a purple goodness lined the great clouds above and the hilltops of my imagination. I could travel in my imagination, too. Just close my eyes and say to myself: Now the world is falling away, and I’m floating upwards, and I would pass above all the slates and see down all the chimneys until the houses became cities, and the cities grey marks on the green earth—and the rivers twisted silver wires which curled from the mountains to the sea.”
“You should meet Uncle Clem,” said Wynne.
“Who is he?”
“A man who thinks that way. But what is it like up there in the clouds?”
“Do you know, strangely, it isn’t very different—only fuller. Just as if one went up discontented and found contentment in what one had left behind. I used to think this was because my imagination couldn’t picture a better state, but I believe that no longer.”
“The climb is for nothing, then?”
“Oh, no, for the climb proves that what you sought is the best of what you left behind.”
“H’m! Sometimes,” he said. “You have queer notions. Have you found out what is the best of your possessions?”
“I don’t know them by heart, yet.”
“Why by heart?”
“I am a woman.”
“Yes, and sometimes, I think, just like any other.”
“I am.”
“Once I tried to define my motives—can you define yours?”
“I want a place in the sun—want it tremendously. I want to be able to think and feel and move among lovely things and people. I have given away twenty years to sordidness, and all I have earned is appreciation of the beautiful. I want to live the beautiful now, and rise above the trivial bother of a washpail and a gas-ring.”
“Mammon, Mammon,” cried Wynne, for want of a better thought.
“Oh no. Don’t think I crave for money, for it isn’t so; but one must have money if one is never to think of it.”
“Why?”
“Isn’t half the sorrow in the world traceable to such little causes as an extra halfpenny on a quartern of bread?”
“Not untrue,” Wynne nodded. His eyes fell on the dirty gas-ring of the grate, and he frowned. “Why do you come here, then?”
“Don’t you know?” she replied.
“No. It’s squalid enough!”
“Then it is because you are the first real person I have ever met outside the cover of a book.”
“I give you something, then?”
“A great deal.”
A modesty seized him, touched with self-reproach.
“Only because it pleases me,” he said, brusquely. “The giving is done by you. That much I realize.”
“I’m glad—and I’m glad to give.”
“Yes, a woman’s life is to give—that’s natural law—the only kind of law worth accepting.” He hesitated—then, “Are you satisfied to give?”
She smiled her wise, intricate smile, and he did not wait for the answer.
“You never smile as you should,” he reproached. “Yours is a thinking smile—perplexing. Do you never smile or laugh from sheer happiness?”
“Perhaps I have never yet been sheerly happy.”
“What would make you?”
“I haven’t found out.”
“But I want to know. If you smiled for me you would seem less remote.”
“Am I remote?”
“Yes—remote is the word.” He looked at her fixedly, then shook himself and began to pace up and down the room. When next he spoke his voice was querulous and irritable:
“I should have been working all this while. The train of my thoughts is all upset—disordered. It is unlike you to disturb me. I’ve lost an hour. Tomorrow I must work all day—alone.”
“Go back to yourself,” she said, gently.
She did not leave at once, but half an hour later he looked up and saw she was buttoning her coat.
“You needn’t go.”
“I had better,” she said; and at the door—“I come here too often, perhaps. It is selfish of me.”
“But I like you to be here—I want you here. I meant nothing—only I’m a little keyed up and worried. I don’t know why.”
“It’s all right,” said Eve. “Just for tomorrow I’ll stay away.”
“You want to?”
“No; but it is good sometimes to do what one doesn’t want. G’bye.” And she was gone.
That night, as he lay in bed, the same feeling of self-reproach which had sprung into being for an instant during their talk came back to him heavily.
“What do I do for her? Nothing.”
The thought awoke with him next day, and seemed to write itself across the pages of his manuscript. He could not concentrate, and the ink on his dipped pen dried times without number, and not a line was committed to the paper. The hour for their united meal came, and with it a feeling of loneliness and disappointment. He made no attempt to set the table for himself, but sat staring dully at the criss-cross lines of the window transoms, fiddling aimlessly with the books and papers before him.
Once he thought he would go out, but changed his mind, and threw his hat aside before he had reached the door of the room. He tried to read, but the words were meaningless and confused, and conveyed nothing to his mind, so he dropped the book to the floor and fell back to the fruitless staring again. The words she had spoken about her childhood recurred, and with the startling reproductive faculty which he possessed he was able to picture it all very vividly. He could almost visualize the cheap short dress she would have worn when, years before, she lashed her purple top at the corner of that grey side street. The houses there would have narrow and worn steps leading down to the pavement; they would have mean areas, and windows repaired with gelatine lozenges. One of the lodgers would boast a row of geranium pots on the window-sill, stayed from falling by a slack string. No flowers would bloom in those pots—a few atrophied leaves on a brown stalk would be the only reward of the desultory waterings. In the yards at the back queer, shapeless garments would flap and fill upon a line, and gaunt cats would creep along the sooty walls. There would be querulous voices somewhere raised in argument or rebuke, and the shrill cries of children at unfriendly games. On Sundays vulgar youths with button-holes would loaf by the letter-box at the street corner, making eyes and blowing coarse kisses to the giggling girls who warily congregated on the far side. At times there would be chasings, slaps, and rough-and-tumble courtships. Old men without coats would blink and smoke complacently on the doorsteps, and women would nod and whisper of their misfortunes and their fears.
“She came from there—untouched by it all,” thought Wynne. “She deserves her place in the sun.”
A strange restlessness seized him, and he started to pace up and down.
Wynne arrived at the theatre earlier than usual that night, and met Eve in one of the corridors.
“Well,” he said.
“Well?”
He shook his head. “I haven’t worked all day—I couldn’t.”
“I’m sorry. What have you done?”
“Walked about—and thought.”
“Of what?”
“Of you mostly.”
“Have you? I’m glad. I wanted you to think of me today.”
“Why today?”
“It’s my birthday.”
“No!”
She nodded.
“How old?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Twenty-one!”
It seemed rather sad. Twenty-one is a great birthday. Had she been an earl’s daughter there would have been laughter and dancing in the hall that night—white flowers and scarlet in happy clusters everywhere. There would have been pearls from her father, and a dream dress to wear. Wax candles would have glittered the silver on the board, and pink-coated huntsmen would have led her to the dance.
It seemed rather sad she should be walking-on in a crowd to earn three shillings and sixpence. And with this reflection there came to Wynne an idea—one of the first that did not actually concern himself. It smote him gloriously, and sent a pulsation of delight throbbing through his veins. But all he said was:
“You will come to the rooms after the play?”
She hesitated. “I said I would not.”
“But it’s your birthday.”
“Then, if I shan’t disturb you.”
“Even if you do, I want you to come.”
“Very well. Will you wait for me?”
“No. Follow me round. I’ve something to do first. Here, take a key and keep it if you will. I give you the freedom of the rooms.”
“I wish you’d wait,” she said.
“Sorry,” he replied, shaking his head.
“After all, a birthday means very little to a man,” thought Eve. Yet she was disappointed he had refused so small a service.
When his scene was over, Wynne dressed quickly and hurried from the theatre. In his pocket was a sum of six shillings and threepence. He counted it by touch as he walked down Maiden Lane and struck across Covent Garden. Before a modest wine shop in Endell Street he stopped and considered. In the window was a pyramid of champagne bottles, the base composed of magnums, the first tier of quarts, the second of pints, and, resting proudly on top, a single half-pint. Each size was carefully priced, even the tiny bottle showing a ticket on which was printed, “Two shillings and eightpence.”
Wynne squared his shoulders and entered the shop with an air of some importance.
“This Dry Royal,” he said, “is it a wine you can recommend?”
“It is a very drinkable wine,” replied the merchant. “Of course it does not compare—”
But Wynne interrupted with:
“I’ll take one of the half-pints to sample.”
“I have no half-pints.”
“There is one in the window.”
“It is not for sale.”
“Why not?”
“There is no demand for that size.”
“I am supplying the demand.” His tone was irritatingly precise, and the merchant was offended.
“I regret, sir, I cannot undertake to spoil my window dressing for so small an order.” He spoke with finality that could not be misconstrued.
“Good God!” exclaimed Wynne. “You call it a small order? It is nearly half of all I possess. Am I to be cheated of a celebration for the sake of your damned ideas of symmetry?”
His very genuine concern excited interest.
“I should be very sorry to cheat you of anything,” came the answer in a more kindly voice. “Perhaps if you would explain—”
“What explanation is needed? Why does any one buy champagne except to celebrate an event? Must I sacrifice the desire to please and the hope of giving a sparkle of happiness because your hide-bound conventions won’t let you knock the top off a triangle? Is the expression of a kindly wish to be nullified because my worldly wealth won’t run to a pint? Would you decline to serve a rich man with a quart because you stock magnums? There’s no damned sense of justice in it.”
It so happened there were warm springs in the heart of the little Endell Street wine merchant—and imagination too. As he listened to this intemperate outburst he pictured very vividly the event which the small gold-braided bottle was destined to enliven. A man does not spend half his belongings for no purpose, and accordingly he said:
“I never wish to disappoint a customer, sir. If you would accept a pint for the price of the half, you would be doing me a service.”
But the rancour had not abated, and Wynne replied:
“This is a celebration—not a damned charity.”
“I see—of course not. Please forgive me,” said the little man, and opening a panelled door he took the tiny bottle from the top of the pyramid and wrapped it up.
Wynne placed two shillings and eightpence on the counter, pocketed the parcel, and walked to the door. Arrived there, he turned and came back with an outstretched hand.
“You’re a good sort,” he said.
“Thank you, sir, and a very merry evening.”
They shook hands warmly.
At a very special fruiterer’s in Southampton Row Wynne bought a quarter of a pound of hothouse grapes, and argued fiercely with the shop assistant who did not consider the purchase warranted placing the fruit on vine leaves in a basket. He next made his way to a confectioner’s, and forced an entrance as they were putting up the shutters. Here he had a windfall, and secured a small but beautifully iced cake for a shilling, on the double account of the lateness of the hour and a slight crack in the icing.
On the pavement outside he counted what remained of his original capital.
“One and tenpence—good!” he remarked.
The red and green lights of a chemist lured him to enter, and he emerged, after a period of exquisite indecision, with two elegant packages—one containing a tablet of soap, and the other a tiny bottle of perfume.
Carrying his treasures with prodigious care he hastened toward his rooms, but had hardly covered half the distance when an appalling thought occurred to him. Under the weight of it he stopped short, and beat his forehead with a closed fist.
“I’ve forgotten the candles,” he gasped. “The fairy candles—the twenty-one candles!”
Without those twenty-one candles the whole affair would be flat and meaningless. In being able to obtain them reposed the success of the scheme. He tried an oilshop, but without success—he tried another with the same result.
“My God!” he exclaimed in an ecstasy of anxiety, “where can I get the things?”
And the good angel who listens for such prayers heard, and sent toward him a small boy of pleasing exterior who whistled gaily.
“I say,” said Wynne, “ever had a Christmas-tree?”
The boy grinned and nodded.
“One with candles on it, I mean—coloured candles?”
“Yus, it was a proper tree.”
“I want some candles—want ’em tremendously. Know where I could get some?”
Appealed to as a specialist, the urchin adopted a professional mien, and paused for consideration. Eventually he said:
“Dad got ours at Dawes’s, rahnd the street. She’s still got some, ’cos my mate, Joe, bought one for his bull’s-eye.”
“Round which street?”
“Over there.”
Wynne waited for no more, and broke into a run. By a kindly Providence Mrs. Dawes had not put up the shutters, being a lady who traded sweets to little voyagers whose parents were not over particular as to the hours they kept.
“I dessay I could lay my ’and on a few,” she replied to Wynne’s fervent appeal, “though it isn’t the season for them, you understand.”
With that she opened, or rattled, an incredible number of wrong boxes, taken from beneath the counter. The sweat had beaded Wynne’s forehead when at last she discovered what she had been seeking. She did not appear to be in any hurry, and conversed on technical subjects during the search.
“There isn’t the sale for coloured candles that there used to be. Of course you may say as it is more the peg-top season, and that might account for it; but it doesn’t—not altogether, that is. Putting the Christmas trade on one side, boys don’t go for bull’s-eye lanterns as once they did—no, nor Chinese neither. It’s all iron ’oops, or roller skates nowadays, as you may say. Why, I dessay I sell as much as ten or a dozen ’oops a week.”
“Do you indeed?”
“Quite that. Let’s see! Candles! Ah, I think this is them.” And it was.
“Thank God!” exclaimed Wynne. “I want twenty-one.”
He watched in an agony of suspense as she turned out precisely that number.
“Five a penny,” she said.
“Lord!” he gasped. “I’ve only fourpence.”
“You can pay me the odd farthing when you are passing.”
Greatly to the good lady’s surprise the extraordinary young man leant across the counter and planted a kiss upon her ample cheek, then seizing his purchases raced from the shop and scuttled down the street.
“Well I never!” she exclaimed—“must be a bit mad.” But nevertheless she rubbed the spot where the kiss had fallen with a kindly touch.
Probably for the first time in his life Wynne felt the need of fine linen. It is a sorry happening to lay choice dishes on a bare board. A flash of memory provided an alternative, and he unearthed a roll of white wallpaper from a cupboard. Mindful of a trick performed by small boys at gallery doors, he folded and tore the paper to a rough presentment of a lace cloth. Quite imposing it looked upon the black surface of the old oak table.
To the rim of a fine, but much-riveted blue-and-white plate he waxed the twenty-one candles, and in the centre, pedestalled upon an inverted soap-dish, he stood the birthday cake. The champagne and some glasses were placed on one side of this setpiece, the grapes on the other, while before it, squarely and precisely laid, were the two beautifully tied parcels of soap and scent.
So wrapped up was he in the exquisite pleasure of his preparations that he was quite insensible to the deliberate symmetry he had brought about—a circumstance which may prove a great deal, or nothing at all. When he had done he fell back and surveyed his handiwork as an artist before a masterpiece.
And outside rumbled the voices of the clocks saying the hour was eleven.
“Eleven! She will be here in a moment,” he thought. A sudden nervousness seized him. He did not know why or what it was about. He touched his pocket to be sure the matches were there. He wondered if she were all right, and had crossed Long Acre and Oxford Street safely—they were busiest in theatre traffic at that hour, and private cars and taxis paid little heed to pedestrians. It would be so easy for her to be knocked down and run over. He could picture the curious, jostling crowds that would gather round, the blue helmets of the police in the centre—and the gaunt ambulance which would appear from nowhere.
“God! What a fool I am,” he exclaimed. “She’s all right—of course she is.”
Yet, despite this guarantee of her safety, thoughts of possible disaster raced across his mind. Memory of his visit to the Morgue in Paris arose and would not be banished. He recalled what he had said that day: “Death is so horribly conclusive.” Conclusive! Suppose it were visited upon her?—something would die in him, too. He asked himself what that something would be, but could find no answer. It would be something so lately come to life that he did not know it well enough to name.
Once more his eyes fell upon the table, and the fears vanished. Of course she would come—of course nothing would happen to her. Even though it were against her will, she would be drawn by what he had prepared.
He blew out the lamp, and crossing the room opened the window and leant over the sill to wait.
It was a sweet night, starred and silent. Smoke rose ghostily from the silhouetted stacks, and a faint, murmurous wind, which seemed to have stolen from a Devon lane, touched his hair to movement. North, south, east, and west stretched the roofs of London, and in imagination he could hear the soft rustle as the dwellers beneath tucked themselves in for the night.
A hundred times before he had leant out, as now, with thoughts which ran on the groundlings who ate and slept and worked and squabbled beneath that army of stacks and slates; and how, one day, his name should come to be as familiar with them as the pictures hanging on their walls. But tonight his feelings were different. He conceived these people in their relation to each other and not to himself. In each and all those myriad abiding-places there would be folk with gentle thoughts and kindly desires, even as his were then. They would be linked together by the common tie of doing something to please. Never before had it occurred to him that in pleasing another happiness was born in oneself. Hitherto he had only thought to please by the nimbleness of his artistry—the perfection of a style, the ability to express; but now he saw the surer way was to appeal to the heart—to minister to the true sentiment—to hand over sincerity from one’s simple best.
A footfall below, and the glimpse of a grey figure in the light of the street-lamp, brought him to immediate action. He drew back from the window, and, trembling with excitement, put a match to the circle of coloured candles.
A ring of fire leapt into being—a tiny flame for every year of her in whose honour they were burnt in offering.
Standing behind the lights, and almost invisible in the twinkling glare, Wynne waited breathlessly for the door to open.
She was drawing off her gloves as she came into the room, but she stopped, and her hands fell gently to her sides. Her eyes rested on every detail of the little scene, hovering over it with an exquisite increase of lustre. And slowly her lips broke into a smile of the purest child-happiness, as, with a little catch in her voice, she breathed:
“How lovely and dear of you.”
It was hard to find a reply.
“You’re pleased?” he said. “I’m glad.”
“Pleased! Look! there are two presents for me—real champagne, with its livery all bright and goldy—and the bloom on the grapes, it’s—that’s a proper birthday cake, with ‘marzi’ inside—and twenty-one candles because I am twenty-one years old today.”
She held out her hand, and he came to her and took it in one of his. For quite a while they stood in silence.
“This is my first real birthday, and you’ve thought of it all for me. Oh, it is wonderful, you know.”
“You have done something more wonderful for me,” he said, in a voice that seemed unlike his own.
“I?”
“You smiled for me.”
“Because you made me utterly happy.”
“D’you think—I could—go on making you happy?”
For the first time she raised her eyes from the fairy candles to meet his.
“Do you want to?”
His reply was characteristic.
“Yes—for I am happier now than I have ever been.”
She laughed understandingly, and caressed his hand.
“Oh, here!” he said. “Sit down, I want to talk.” He almost thrust her into the chair and settled himself upon the arm. “All of a sudden you have become something that I want—must have. Spiritually I want you near me—you’re—you’re essential. Without you I am incomplete. If I lost you I should lose more than you—far more. D’you understand?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Together we could reach any heights, you and I, for you give me the atmosphere I need—the right essence. I used to believe the line, ‘He travels fastest who travels alone,’ but now I scout it—it’s lost its truth for me. I believe you are wrapped up in my happiness and my success; I believe without you they would be in jeopardy—in danger. D’you care for me well enough to take me on those terms?”
Very slowly she replied:
“I want you to have your happiness, Wynne, and your success—I want that to be a true dream.”
“Then—?”
“I’ll accept your spiritual offer—and give you all in return. But won’t you say just one thing more?”
“What have I left unsaid?”
“Did you say you loved me?”
“No,” he replied; “but, in God’s name, I believe I do.”
“My dear,” she said, with a mother’s voice.
He broke away from her and started to pace the room feverishly.
“Come back,” she pleaded. “I am so proud of that belief.”
He threw up his head.
“I was honest enough to offer all I possessed,” he cried. “A man would have taken you in his arms. God! I’m only half a man—a starveling—! You are beautiful—beautiful to me—beautiful—subtle—desirable—but I haven’t a shred of passion in my half-starved body.”
“Yours is the better half, dear. The spirit counts, and the greatest possession a woman can have is all that her man can give. Let us keep our spirits bright together.” She rose, and he came toward her, and suddenly his face lost its tragic look, and the lines at the corners of his mouth pulled down in a whimsical smile.
“What a triumph for Plato!” he said. “When shall it be?”
She smiled back at him. “Whenever you wish.”
Very delicious she looked in the dancing fairy light. A strangely new and elemental impulse seized him, and he gripped her shoulders fiercely.
“You are wonderful,” he said. “We’ll work together for the Day. The Day shall be ourrealwedding; till then—partners.”
“Partners.”
“You shall help to make a success, and—a man; and when I’m a man I shall seek a man’s reward. We’ll pledge that! Come, let’s feast before the candles burn low.”
The tiny bottle of champagne popped bravely, and the wine tinkled against the glass.
PART SIX“HE TRAVELS FASTEST—
They were on their way to the registrar’s when Wynne stopped short and exclaimed, “Of course!” Then, in answer to an arched-brow inquiry from Eve: “Would you like to meet some one nice?”
“I have,” she smiled, for it was their wedding day, and future wives and husbands say pleasant things to each other on their wedding days, even though sometimes they forget to do so afterwards.
“A man—in fact, an uncle of mine.”
“Uncle Clem?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Guessed.”
“Have I spoken of him?”
“Once.”
“I want you to meet him.”
“Then I do too.”
“Don’t know where he lives though.”
“Let’s try a telephone directory.”
They did—and successfully.
“He would live in Kensington Square,” said Wynne.
“Have you never been to see him before?”
Wynne shook his head.
“But why not?”
“Did you never have that feeling of wanting to keep something back? How can I explain? If you are thirsty and at last you are within reach of a drink, have you never waited awhile instead of snatching it to your lips?”
“I know.”
“Then that’s why. Only here and there has he entered my life, and somehow each time I felt the better for him. I’m not a very grateful individual, but I’m grateful to Uncle Clem—and I’m gratefulforUncle Clem, too. He sees things very agreeably. When I was a child I thought him a god—and I haven’t altogether outgrown that feeling.”
“Then why do you avoid him?”
“When one goes before the Presence one likes to have something to show.”
“I see.”
He touched her hand lightly.
“Today I have something to show.”
They climbed to the top of a bright red ’bus and journeyed to Kensington. At the church they descended, and dipped into the little side street which leads to the Queen Anne houses of Kensington Square.
There was a copper knocker on the door of Uncle Clem’s abode, with which Wynne very bravely tattooed his arrival.
“Yes, Mr. Rendall is in,” admitted the manservant who answered the summons. “Was he expecting you?”
“Heavens! no,” said Wynne. “I’m his nephew—but let him find out for himself. We shouldn’t pocket the spoons if you invited us to come inside.”
The man smiled. “I recognize the relationship in your speech, sir.”
He opened the door of a white-panelled room, and, when they had entered, mounted the stairs to inform his master.
“Good, isn’t it?” said Wynne, his eyes roaming over the comfortable disorder and beautiful appointments. “Everything right. Hullo!” He halted abruptly before a large framed canvas on one of the walls, “The Faun and the Villagers.”
He was standing so when the door opened, and Uncle Clem, dressed in quilted smoking jacket and a pair of ultra vermilion slippers, came in. He paused a moment, then out rang his voice:
“Ha! The young fellow! Ain’t dead, then? Let’s look at you!”
Wynne met the full smack of the descending hand in his open palm.
“No,” he laughed. “Look here, instead,” and pivoted Uncle Clem so that Eve came in his line of sight.
“Splendid!” said Clem, moving to meet her. “Used to tell him he’d do no good until he fell in love. May I kiss her?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“Well, may I?”
“Um!” said Eve.
And he did, saying thereafter:
“First rate! I like it immensely. Sit down—take off your hat, or whatever you do to feel at home. That’s the way. Now let’s hear all about it. Are you married—or going to be? I see—going to be—no ring. Splendid!”
“Here’s the ring,” said Wynne. “It will be worn for the first time today.”
“Today! Today the best day in all the year! And you came to see me on the way to the church. Fine! Y’know, there is something in ’im after all, even though he’s devilish sporadic in coming to see me.”
“He’s saving you up for the good time ahead,” said Eve; “and I can see why, now.”
“Then give up seeing why, little lady. What’s your name, by the way? What is her name, young fellar?”
“Eve.”
“Eve—couldn’t be better. What was I saying? Ah, yes. Give up seeingwhyand come and seemeinstead. Rotten policy to save! (never saved a penny in my life). Fatal to save! Find out, when it’s too late, don’t want what you’ve been saving for—outgrown your impulses. Buried with your bankbook, and every one glad you’re dead. No—no. Spend while you are young. Get a hold on all the friendship and all the love within reach—and then, why then, when you’re old, at least memories will be yours as comforters. You agree, don’t you?”
“Yes, I agree,” said Eve.
“And what about you?”
“All or nothing,” replied Wynne. “And I had rather keep the ‘nothing’ till I can claim the ‘all.’ ”
“Good stars!” exclaimed Clem. “What a speech for a wedding day!” Then, catching a glimpse of the growing colour on Eve’s cheeks:
“Don’t heed me, my dear. I’ve a reputation for saying things which, in the vernacular, I didn’t ought. But a man who speaks of nothing on his wedding day—?”
Wynne hesitated, then:
“This isn’t altogether our wedding day,” he said.
“Eh?”
“Today she and I are becoming—legalized partners.”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“Partners. We shall join forces, she and I, and work together for success—think of, live for, and concentrate on that goal. Afterwards we—”
But Uncle Clem would not let him finish.
“Rank folly!” he cried, jumping to his feet.
“You’ve read your Plato!” said Wynne.
“Plato be damned! Well enough for an old philosopher to mumble his repressive theories from a dead log in the market-place—but for you at twenty-what-ever-it-may-be, tss—madness—rot—folly! My dear, dear girl, for God’s sake, tell him not to talk such utter damn nonsense.”
“You haven’t quite understood,” said Eve, very gently.
“He speaks of success and denies love—he places success before love. Doesn’t he know—? Here! don’t you know,” twisting suddenly round, “that love is the only success worth having—that success is only possible through love?”
“Love is the reward,” said Wynne.
“It is not. It is no more the reward than rain is a reward to the ground, or air is a reward to the lungs. Love is a necessity—a primary necessity—and the fountain of all inspiration. If you can’t realize that, don’t marry—you have no right to marry. Don’t marry him, my dear. Keep away from him till he comes to his proper senses.”
“I think we have a greater knowledge,” said Wynne, moving to Eve’s side.
“And I think you have no knowledge whatsoever—that you are throttling it at the main. Partners!” he threw up his head. “Oh, can’t you see what partners means—what it amounts to in practice? A staling of each other for each other—that’s all. A mutual day-by-day loss of conceit and regard. You can see it in the City, or wherever you choose to look. Listen to what any man says of his partner: ‘He’s all right, but getting old—losing his grip—isn’t the man he was,’ so on and so forth. And why is it? Because they have no closer tie than their signatures on a piece of paper. Nature admits of no lasting partnership between man and woman save one—love.”
“Even that partnership is sometimes dissolved.”
“By fools, yes, and by the blind, but not by those who can see. Knowledge is the keystone which holds up the archway of heaven, my boy—knowledge which has sprung from love. I may be no more than a talkative old bachelor, but, by God! I know that to be true. There are few enough spirits on this earthy old world of ours, and only through love comes the power to know them each by name.” He stopped and fiddled with a pipe on the mantelshelf. “This is a disappointment to me—a big disappointment. I’d looked to you young folk to open your hearts and tell me what was inside, and, instead, I’ve done all the talking, and told you what I think they ought to contain, and perhaps offended you both into the bargain.”
“No, you haven’t,” said Eve. “I like you for it.”
“And you?”
“If I were offended,” said Wynne, “I should not ask you to come to the wedding—and I do.”
Uncle Clem shook his head slowly.
“Not I,” he said. “I’m an idealist—not a business man. I’d as soon watch a stockbroker signing scrip.”
On the doorstep, a few moments later, he touched Eve’s arm and whispered:
“Run away—don’t do it—run away.”
She shook her head. “I love him,” she said.
In silence she and Wynne walked to the High Street and turned into Kensington Gardens.
“He’s losing his grip—not the man he was—getting old,” quoted Wynne.
“And yet,” she answered, “he is younger than we are.”
They fell upon a second silence, then very suddenly Wynne said:
“Are you unhappy?”
“No.”
“Are you doubtful?”
“No.”
“You do believe in me?”
“Yes.”
“It’s—it’s not much of a wedding for you.”
“There’s all the future.”
“Yes. He was wrong, of course.”
“If the future is to be ours.”
“It shall be ours. What’s it matter if we grope along the flats if at last we jump to the mountain top together?”
“I put all my faith in that.”
“You shall never regret it.”
She hung close upon his arm. “No, you won’t let me regret it, will you? You won’teverlet me regret it?”
“ ’Course not.”
“I want to know, when you make that leap to the mountain top, that my arm will be through yours as it is now.”
“It will be then. I shall want to show my treasures to the world,” he said.
Her mouth broke into a smile.
“Nothing else matters,” she said.
A registrar is not, as a rule, an enlivening person. He is a dealer in extremities—to him a birth or a death is merely a matter of so many words written upon a page, and a marriage is no greater affair than a union of two people brought together for the purpose of providing him with subjects for his more serious offices.
The particular registrar who was responsible for making Wynne and Eve man and wife was no exception to the rule. He proved to be a man of boundless melancholy, who recited the necessary passages with a gloom of intonation better befitting a burial than a bridal. His distress was acute in that they had failed to import the required witnesses—and, indeed, at one time he seemed disposed to deny them the privileges of his powers. The apartment in which the ceremony took place smelt disagreeably from lack of ventilation, and the newly-wed pair were thankful to come into the sunshine of the street outside.
So great was the oppression produced that neither one nor the other felt capable of saying a word, and it was only by a mighty effort Wynne was able to say:
“We’re married.”
Eve pressed his hand, and nodded.
“Rather beastly, wasn’t it?”
She nodded again.
“Doesn’t seem very real, does it?”
And she replied, “Would you kiss me just to make it seem more real?”
Rather awkwardly he stooped and brushed her cheek with a kiss.
“Better?” he said.
“A bit.”
He began to speak rather fast:
“After all, what’s it matter? This is only the beginning. We’ll count today as any other day—a working day. I’m no more to you—or you to me—beyond the sharing of a single name and a single roof. We won’t spoil our future by any foretaste of its good. Do you agree?”
“I agree.”
“Then shake hands, partner.”
“God bless you and let you win,” said Eve, as she laid her hand on his.
By the doors of the British Museum they nodded a temporary farewell. He entered and made his way to the reading-room, and she walked home alone.
The moonlight streamed through the slanting window, pitching a dim ray upon Wynne as he lay asleep.
It was dark in the lonely corner, on the far side of the room, where, very faintly, the outline of a slim white figure could be seen—a figure hugging her knees and resting her chin upon them. Very quiet it was—just the rise and fall of a man’s breathing and the muted, humming noises of the night.
The clocks of the City coughed and jarred the hour of three.
Presently the still white figure moved, and, bare-footed, crossed the floor between the two beds. For a little while she stood looking down upon the sleeping man; then, in answer to a human impulse too gentle, and yet too strong to be denied, stooped and laid her head beside his upon the pillow. Her breath was warm upon his cheek, but he made no movement; her hair tressed upon his arm, but it did not quicken to life and fold around her, as a husband’s might; her lips were almost touching his, but he did not move that they might meet in the darkness.
With a little catch in her throat Eve lifted herself and crossed to the lonely shadows beneath the sloping roof.
“May I read these?” asked Eve.
She had unearthed a box full of old manuscripts he had written and cast aside.
“Burn ’em, if you like,” he replied.
She chose one from the pile, saying:
“Have they been sent anywhere?”
“Oh yes, a few have been the round. They are true to the boomerang type, for they always returned to the point of departure.”
She curled herself in the big armchair and began to read. The breakfast things had been washed up, the beds made, and the rooms tidied.
It was an article she had chosen, and the subject was “Education.” Wynne had a singularly marked style of his own—his sentences were crisp and incisive, his views original and striking. When he chose he could write with a degree of tenderness that was infinitely appealing; but in odd contrast to this mood, and usually in immediate proximity to his most happy expressed phrases, occurred passages of satire and mordant wit which detracted immeasurably from the charm of the whole. They stood out like blots upon the page.
The same conditions prevailed in each of the other manuscripts which Eve read, with the result that the fine susceptibilities which had been awakened by his best, were wounded by the ill-humour of his worst.
“Why do you give all the butterflies stings?” she asked.
The question pleased him, and he smiled.
“Why not? Aren’t they mostly well deserved?”
“By whom?”
“The public.”
She had it in mind to say that it was not the public who felt the sting, but, instead, she replied:
“May I copy these out?”
“If you like.”
She did, and, with certain reservations and omissions, dispatched them to the kind of periodical which might be interested.
Three weeks later a letter arrived fromThe Forumaccepting the essay on Education. “Payment of ten guineas will be made on publication,” said the letter.
“But they refused it before!” exclaimed Wynne.
“I made a few cuts, and altered it a little.”
His forehead flew into straight creases.
“Where? What did you cut?”
She showed him.
He shook his head and paced up and down the room. “Heavens above!” he reproached. “Those were the best passages.”
“They weren’t. They were bad, and destructive.”
“Revolutionary, if you like.”
“The wrong sort of revolution.”
“Not at all. I wrote them with a purpose.”
“Then the purpose was wrong.”
“Thank God you cut them and not I. I should esteem myself a coward if I had done that.”
“I don’t. You will never heal by throwing vitriol.”
Wynne’s tenacity was tremendous, and he fought for every inch of ground before conceding it. The lesson, however, did him good, and thereafter, if not always with the best grace, he submitted his writings to her for approval.
Eve had a very sure literary sense, and her criticisms were as just as they were courageous. Wynne could never gauge to what extent a reader will allow the scourge of wit to fall upon his shoulders, but Eve, by some peculiar insight of her own, knew this to a nicety, and little by little forced him to her way of seeing.
As his writings began to be accepted he came to a silent acknowledgment of the value of her decisions, and, subconsciously, his mind, in certain directions, ran parallel with hers. By his sharp acquisitive sense he came to know how she arrived at her reasoning, and in learning this, the necessity to appeal to her diminished correspondingly. Once an idea was firmly implanted it became a part of his being, and very soon his pen lost its jagged edge and ran more smoothly over the pages.
For nearly a year the partners worked together, each in their separate spheres, to the common end of success.
That his mind might go free and unworried wheresoever it willed, Eve cooked and darned, and kept his house in order. It was a grey enough life, with little to raise it from the ruck of sordid domesticity. To all intent and purpose she was a general servant, privileged at rare intervals to wash her hands, sit at her master’s table and share his speech. Her reward was to hear an echo of some of her sweetness in his writings, and to see the results of her gentle care in his looks and bearing.
He had more colour, his step was springier than in the days before they had met, and this added vitality he converted into longer hours of labour. He never spared himself or relaxed, and his tireless energy, perseverance, and concentration were abnormal. Except when he needed her advice he appeared to be wholly detached, and scarcely aware of her presence. The cramped conditions in which they lived made it very difficult for Eve to conduct her household duties without disturbing him. He was very sensitive and exacting, and the sound of a rattled teacup would throw him out of line. Not the least of Eve’s achievement was the manner in which she contrived to do everything that was needful without disturbance, and at the same time to be ever ready to lay all aside in case he should want her.
A man will always give or find occupation for a woman, and in some small way or another the whole of Eve’s time was taken up in meeting his needs and wishes. She was obliged to forego many of the happy book hours she used to spend in order that the wheels could run smoothly and silently. This in itself was a very great sacrifice, for she had loved her reading, and grubbing with pots and pans, or bargaining with tradesfolk, was a sorry substitute.
“But it’s only for a while,” she comforted herself. “One day—” and her thoughts floated out to the sun-lit hills and the sweeping purple heather of the moors.