CHAPTER XIIITHE INVENTORYAll this had happened more than a year ago, and the sense of shame, accompanying that first confession, had been worn to the dull surface, incapable of reflecting the finer feelings of the mind. Under the very nose of that editor who was considering his last short story, John would have stepped boldly into the suspicious-looking little passage; returning the smile of the girl who sold him stamps in the post-office, he would have entered shamelessly the chapel of unredemption. Such is the reward of the perpetual sin of poverty. It brings with it the soothing narcotic of callousness, of indifference--and that perhaps is the saddest sin of all.The watch-chain went that morning with the ease of a transaction constantly performed. There was no need to haggle over the price this time. The same price had been paid many times before. It came last but one on the list of things to be pawned. Last of all was the little brass man--the last to be pledged, the first to be redeemed. There is always an order in these things and it never varies. When pledging, you go from top to bottom of the list; when redeeming, it is just the reverse. And the order itself depends entirely upon that degree of sentiment with which each object is regarded.The following was the list, in its correct order, of those things which from time to time left the world of John's possession, and were hidden in the seclusion of pledged retreat:--FUR COAT.CUFF LINKS.CIGARETTE CASE.TIE PIN.MATCH BOX.WATCH.CHAIN.LITTLE BRASS MAN.Reverse the order of this and you arrive at the sequence in which they returned. And here follows a detailed account of the history of each object--detailed, where details are possible and of interest.Fur Coat. This pretentious-looking article was bought by John as a bargain. One day, when paying his rent to the landlord--a man who smelted and refined the gold that has an acquaintance with false teeth--he was asked if he would like to buy something very cheap. Well--you know what a temptation that is. So great a temptation is it, that you ask first "How much?" and only when you have heard the price, do you inquire the nature of the article. Four pounds ten, he was told. Then what was it? A fur-lined overcoat with astrachan collar and cuffs! There must be a presumption on the part of the seller that you know nothing of fur coats, or he will not talk to you like this. Certainly it was cheap, but even then, it would not have been bought had John not overheard the former possessor offering to buy it back at four pounds five. Such a circumstance as this doubles the temptation. So seldom is it that one comes across a bargain when one has any money in one's pocket, that it is impossible, when one does, to let it go to another man. John bought it. It would be a useful thing to visit editors in when he had no money.But you would scarcely credit the treachery of a fur-lined coat with astrachan collar and cuffs. John had no idea of it. It played fiendish tricks upon him. Just as he determined to mount upon a 'bus, it whispered in his ear--"You can't do this--you really can't. If you want to drive, you'd better get a hansom. If not, then you'd better walk."It was of no avail that he complained of not being able to afford a hansom and of being in too great a hurry to walk. That heavy astrachan collar whispered again:"You can't ride on a 'bus anyway--look at that man laughing at you already----"And with a fiendish joy, it gave him sudden and magical insight into the jeering minds of all those people in the 'bus. He relinquished the 'bus then. He called a hansom; he was in a hurry and he drove away, while the astrachan collar preens itself with pride and delight as it looks in the little oblong mirror.And this is not the only treachery which the fur coat played upon him. As he descended from the cab, a man rushed out of nowhere to protect that coat from the wheels, and overcome with pleasure, the fur coat whispered in his ear once more--"Give him twopence--you can't ignore him.""I could have kept my coat off the wheel quite easily myself," John replied--"He was really only in the way.""Never mind," exclaimed the astrachan collar--"If you're going to be seen about with me, you'll have to give him twopence."Reluctantly John took the twopence out.And then, all the while that he was fumbling in his pocket for the shilling which should have been more than his legal fare, seeing the distance he had come, only that it cannot be less, the astrachan collar was still at him."Can't you hear," it says suggestively--"can't you hear what the cabman is going to say when you only give him a shilling!"Then it imitated his voice, just in the very way John knew he would say it, and he felt the blood tingling to the roots of his hair. Of course, he gave him one and six, for by this time he was the slave of that fur-lined coat. It dominated his life. It ran up bills in his name and he had to pay them. For myself, I would sooner live with an extravagant wife than with a fur-lined coat.And so was it with John. That bargain he had purchased with the astrachan collar and cuffs treated him shamefully. It was insatiable in its demands, and all under false pretences; for there came one terrible day when John, who knew nothing about these things, learnt that it was only imitation astrachan. Then he asserted himself. He refused to take it out, and one freezing day in the month of February pawned it for two pounds five. Some three months later, on a blazing day in May, he received a notice from the pawnbroker, who said that he must redeem it immediately, for he could not hold himself responsible for the fur. Now, even an extravagant wife would have more consideration for you, more idea of the true fitness of things than that. Eventually that fur coat was pawned in order to save a lady from the last, the most extreme sentence that the law can pass upon the sin of poverty. There comes a time when the sin of poverty can be dealt no longer with by the high priest in the chapel of unredemption. Then it comes into the hands of the law. To save her from this, was a debt of honour and perhaps the most generous action that that fur coat ever did in its life, was to pay that debt: for the three months went by, and on one of the coldest days in winter, it passed silently and unwept into the possession of the high priest.Cuff Links. No history is attached to these. They realised ten shillings many times, till the ticket was lost, and then, since, under these circumstances, an affidavit must be made, and cuff links not being worth the swearing about, they were lost sight of.The Watch. For this is the next article on the inventory, of which any substance can be written, and its history is practically known already. John's mother had given it to him. It represented the many times those two bright eyes were tired with counting the stitches of the white lace shawls. It represented the thousands of times that those slender, sensitive fingers had rested in weariness from their ceaseless passing to and fro. It represented almost the last lace-work she had done, before those fingers had at length been held motionless in the cold grip of paralysis. But, above all, it stood for the love of that gentle heart that beat with so much pride and so much pleasure, to see the little boy, whose head her breast had fondled, come to the stern and mighty age of twenty-one. And two pounds five was the value they put upon it all.The Little Brass Man,--theChevalier d'honneur. His story has already been told--his life, so far as it concerns this history. But of what he had lived through in the hundred years that had gone before--nobody knows. One can only assume, without fear of inaccuracy, that it was the life of a gentleman.CHAPTER XIVTHE WAY TO FIND OUTThese were the thoughts passing and re-passing idly through John's mind as he sat, waiting, upon the stiff little iron chair in Kensington Gardens, and felt the minted edge of the half-crowns and the florins that lay so comfortably at the bottom of his pocket.And then came Jill. She came alone.He saw her in the distance, coming up that sudden rise of the Broad Walk down which hoops roll so splendidly--become so realistically restive, and prance and rear beneath the blow of the stick in the circus-master's hand. And--she was walking alone.Then, in a moment, the Gardens became empty. John was not conscious of their becoming so. They were--just empty. Down a long road, tapering to the infinite point of distance, on which her figure moved alone, she might have been coming--slowly, gradually, to their ultimate meeting.He felt no wonder, realised no surprise at their sudden solitude. When in the midst of Romance, you are not conscious of the miracles it performs. You do not marvel at the wonders of its magic carpets which, in the whisk of a lamb's tail, transport you thousands of miles away; you are not amazed at the wizardry of its coats of invisibility which can hide you two from the whole world, or hide the whole world from you. All these you take for granted; for Romance, when it does come to you, comes, just plainly and without ceremony, in the everyday garments of life and you never know the magician you have been entertaining until he is gone.Even John himself, whose business in life it was to see the romance in the life of others, could not recognise it now in his own. There were women he had met, there were women he had loved; but this was romance and he never knew it.With pulses that beat warmly in a strange, quick way, he rose from his chair, thinking to go and meet her. But she might resent that. She might have changed her mind. She might not be coming to meet him at all. Perhaps, as she lay awake that morning--it was a presumption to think she had lain awake at all--perhaps she had altered her opinion about the propriety of an introduction afforded by St. Joseph. It were better, he thought, to see her hand held out, before he took it.So he sat back again in his chair and watched her as she stepped over the railings--those little railings scarcely a foot high, over which, if you know what it is to be six, you know the grand delight of leaping; you know the thrill of pleasure when you look back, surveying the height you have cleared.She was coming in his direction. Her skirt was brushing the short grass stems. Her head was down. She raised it and--she had seen him!Those were the most poignant, the most conscious moments of all when, after their eyes had met, there were still some forty yards or so to be covered before they met. She smiled and looked up at the elm trees; he smiled and looked down at the grass. They could not call out to each other, saying--"How-do-you-do." Inexorably, without pity, Circumstance decreed that they must cross those forty yards of silence before they could speak. She felt the blood rising in a tide to her cheeks. He became conscious that he had hands and feet; that his head was set upon his shoulders and could not, without the accompaniment of his body, face round the other way. The correct term for these excruciating tortures of the mind--so I am assured--is platt. When there is such a distance between yourself and the person whom you are approaching to meet, you are known, if you have any sensitiveness at all, to have a platt.Now, if ever people had a platt, it was these two. That distance was measured in their mind, yard by yard.At last he held her hand."I was," she began at once, "going to write. But I didn't know your address.""You were going to write----?"He pulled forward a chair for her, near to his."Yes--I was going to write and tell you--I'm terribly sorry, but I can't come this morning----" and she sat down.A look of deepest disappointment was so plainly written in his face as he seated himself beside her. He made no effort to render it illegible to those eyes of hers."Why not?" said he, despondently. "Why can't you come?""Oh--you wouldn't understand if I told you."This was the moment for the ferrule of an umbrella, or the point of an elegant shoe. But she had not brought the umbrella, and her shoes, well--she was unable to come that morning, so it had scarcely mattered what she had put on. The toe of the shoe did peep out for a moment from under the skirt, but not being approved of for elegance, it withdrew. She was forced to fall back upon words; so she just repeated herself to emphasise them."You wouldn't understand if I told you," she said again."Is it fair to say that," said John, "before you've found me wanting in understanding?""No, but I know you wouldn't understand. Besides--it's about you.""The reason why you can't come?""Yes.""What is it?""I'll tell you another time, perhaps."Ah, but that would never do. You can't tell people another time. They don't want to hear it then."You can tell me now," persisted John.She shook her head."There's only one time to tell things," he said."When?""Now."She just began. Her lips parted. She took the breath for speech. The words came into her eyes."No--I can't tell you--don't ask me."But he asked. He kept on asking. Whenever there was a pause, he gently asked again. He began putting the words into her mouth, and when he'd half said it for her, he asked once more."Why do you keep on asking?" she said with a smile."Because I know," said John."You know?""Yes.""Then why----""Because I want you to tell me, and because I only know a little. I don't know it all. I don't know why your mother objects to me, except that she doesn't approve of the introduction of St. Joseph. I don't know whether she's said you're not to see me again."That look of amazement in her eyes was a just and fair reward for his simple hazard. Girls of twenty-one have mothers--more's the pity. He had only guessed it. And a mother who has a daughter of twenty-one has just reached that age when life lies in a groove and she would drag all within it if she could. She is forty-eight, perhaps, and knowing her husband as an obedient child knows its collect on a Sunday, she judges all men by him. Now, all men, fortunately for them, fortunately for everybody, are not husbands. Husbands are a type, a class by themselves; no other man is quite like them. They have irritating ways, and no wife should judge other men by their standards. When she would quarrel, theirs is the patience of Job. When she would be amiable, there is nothing to please them. They are seldom honest; they are scarcely ever truthful. For marriage will often bring out of a man the worst qualities that he has, as the washing-tub will sometimes only intensify the strain upon the linen.In the back of his mind, John felt the unseen judgment of some woman upon him, and from this very standpoint. When he saw the look of amazement in Jill's eyes, he knew he was right."Why do you look so surprised?" he said, smiling."Because--well--why did you ask if you knew?""Do you think I should ask if I didn't know?""Wouldn't you?""Oh, no. It's no good asking a woman questions when you don't know, when you haven't the faintest idea of what her answer is going to be. She knows very well just how ignorant you are and, by a subtle process of the mind, she superimposes that ignorance upon herself. And if you go on asking her direct questions, there comes a moment when she really doesn't know either. Then she makes it up or tells you she has forgotten. Isn't that true?"She watched him all the time he spoke. He might have been talking nonsense. He probably was; but there seemed to be some echo of the truth of it far away in the hidden recesses of her mind. She seemed to remember many times when just such a process had taken place within her. But how had he known that, when she had never realised it before?"What do you do, then, when you don't know, if you don't ask questions?"He took a loose cigarette from his pocket and slowly lit it."Ah--then you have recourse to that wonderful method of finding out. It's so difficult, so almost impossible, and that's why it's so wonderful. To begin with, you pretend you don't want to know. That must be the first step. All others--and there are hundreds--follow after that; but you must pretend you don't want to know, or she'll never tell you. But I am sure your mother's been saying something to you about me, and I really want to know what it is. How did she come to hear about me?"He knew it would be easy for her to begin with that. No woman will tell unless it is easy."Did you tell her?" he suggested gently, knowing that she did not."Oh, no--I didn't. It was Ronald.""Ah--he said something?""Yes--at lunch--something about the papers.""And you had to explain?""Yes.""Was she vexed?""Yes--rather. Well--I suppose it did sound rather funny, you know.""You told her about St. Joseph?""I said where I'd met you, in the Sardinia St. Chapel." She smiled up at him incredulously. "You didn't think I'd tell her that St. Joseph had introduced us, did you?""Why not? St. Joseph's a very proper man.""Yes--on his altar, but not in Kensington.""Well--what did she say?""She asked where you lived.""Oh----"It is impossible to make comparison between Fetter Lane and Prince of Wales' Terrace without a face longer than is your wont--especially if it is you who live in Fetter Lane."And you told her you didn't know.""Of course."She said it so expectantly, so hopefully that he would divulge the terrible secret which meant so much to the continuation of their acquaintance."And what did she say to that?""She said, of course, that it was impossible for me to know you until you had come properly as a visitor to the house, and that she couldn't ask you until she knew where you lived. And I suppose that's quite right.""I suppose it is," said John. "At any rate you agree with her?""I suppose so."It meant she didn't. One never does the thing one supposes to be right; there's no satisfaction in it."Well--the Martyrs' Club will always find me."This was John's club; that club, to become a member of which, he had been despoiled of the amount of a whole year's rent. He was still staggering financially under the blow."Do you live there?" she asked."No--no one lives there. Members go to sleep there, but they never go to bed. There are no beds.""Then where do you live?"He turned and looked full in her eyes. If she were to have sympathy, if she were to have confidence and understanding, it must be now."I can't tell you where I live," said John.The clock of St. Mary Abbot's chimed the hour of midday. He watched her face to see if she heard. One--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight nine--ten--eleven--twelve! She had not heard a single stroke of it, and they had been sitting there for an hour.CHAPTER XVWHAT IS HIDDEN BY A CAMISOLEAdd but the flavour of secrecy to the making of Romance; allow that every meeting be clandestine and every letter written sealed, and matters will so thrive apace that, before you can, with the children in the nursery, say Jack Robinson, the fire will be kindled and the flames of it leaping through your every pulse.When, with tacit consent, Jill asked no further questions as to where John lived, and yet continued clandestinely to meet him, listening to the work he read aloud to her, offering her opinion, giving her approval, she was unconsciously, unwillingly, too, perhaps, had she known, hastening towards the ultimate and the inevitable end.It must not be supposed that after this second interview in Kensington Gardens, when John had plainly said that he could not tell her where he lived, she had wilfully disobeyed the unyielding commands of her mother not to see him again. The fulfilment of destiny does not ask for disobedience. With the shuttles of circumstance and coincidence to its fingers, Destiny can weave a pattern in defiance of every law but that of Nature.Jill had said that morning:"Then we mustn't meet again.""You mean that?" said John."I can't help it," she replied distressfully. "After all, I'm living with my people; I must respect their wishes to a certain degree. If you would only tell me----""But I can't," John had interposed. "It's no good. It's much better that I leave you in ignorance. Why won't the Martyrs' Club satisfy you? There are men at the Martyrs' Club who live on Carlton House Terrace. That is a part of their martyrdom. Is it beyond the stretch of your imagination for you to suppose that I might have an abode in--in--Bedford Park or Shepherd's Bush?"She laughed, and then, as that stiff social figure of her mother rose before her eyes and she recalled to her mind remarks about a dressmaker who happened to live in Shepherd's Bush--"Poor thing--she lives at Shepherd's Bush--Life treats some people in a shameful way--" an expression of charity that went no further, for the dressmaker's work was not considered good enough or cheap enough, and she was given nothing more to do--when she remembered that, the laugh vanished from her eyes."Isn't it as good as Shepherd's Bush?" she had asked quite simply.Well, when, in your more opulent moments, you have thought of such a thing as a better address at Shepherd's Bush, and have a question such as this put to you, you have little desire left to reveal the locality of the abode you do occupy. It takes the pride out of you. It silenced John. He recalled to his mind a remark of Mrs. Meakin's when, having invited him to take a rosy-cheeked apple from that little partition where the rosy-cheeked apples lay, she had thought by this subtle bribe to draw him into conversation about himself."Don't you find it very dull livin' 'ere all alone by yourself?" she had asked."Wherever you live," said John evasively, "you're by yourself. You're as much alone in a crowd as in an empty church."She had nodded her head, picked up a large Spanish onion, and peeled off the outer skin to make it look more fresh."But I should have thought," she had added pensively--"I should have thought as 'ow you'd have found this such a very low-cality."And so, perhaps it was--very low. And if Mrs. Meakin had thought so, and Jill herself could talk thus deprecatingly of Shepherd's Bush, where he had hoped to better his address, then it were as well to leave Fetter Lane alone."So you have made up your mind," he had said quietly. "You've made up your mind not to see me again?""It's not I who have made it up," she answered."But you're going to obey?""I must.""You won't be here to-morrow morning, at this hour?""No--I can't--I mustn't.""Not to tell me how you liked my short story?""You know I liked it--awfully.""And you won't come and hear another that's better than that?""How can I? You don't understand. If you came and lived at Prince of Wales' Terrace, you'd understand then.""Then it's no good my coming to-morrow?""Not if you want to see me.""Then good-bye."John stood up and held out his hand.If you know the full value of coercion in renunciation; if you realise the full power of persuasion in the saying of good-bye, you have command of that weapon which is the surest and the most subtle in all the armament of Destiny. It is only when they have said good-bye that two people really come together."But why must you go now?" Jill had said regretfully.John smiled."Well--first, because you said you couldn't come this morning, and we've been here for an hour and a half; and secondly, because if, as you say, we are to see no more of each other, then hadn't I better go now? I think it's better. Good-bye."He held out his hand again. She took it reluctantly, and he was gone.The next morning, Jill had wakened an hour earlier--an hour earlier than was her wont--an hour earlier, with the weight of a sense of loss pressing on her mind. It is that hour in bed before rising that a woman thinks all the truest things in her day; is most honest with herself, and least subtle in the expression of her thoughts. Then she gets up--bathes--does her hair and, by the time a dainty camisole is concealing those garments that prove her to be a true woman--all honesty is gone; she assumes the mystery of her sex.In that hour earlier before her rising, Jill honestly admitted her disgust with life. Romance is well-nigh everything to a woman--for Romance is the Prelude, full of the most sonorous of chords, breathing with the most wonderful of cadences--a Prelude to the great Duty which she must inevitably perform. And this had been Romance. She had just touched it, just set in motion the unseen fingers that play with such divine inspiration upon the whole gamut of the strings, and now, it had been put away.Mind you, she knew nothing of the evolution of the Prelude; she knew little of the history of the Duty to perform. It was not the conscious loss of these that brought the disgust of life into the complaining heart of her; for Romance, when first it comes to a woman, is like the peak of a mountain whose head is lifted above the clouds. It has nothing of this earth; means no such mundane phrase as--falling in love. To the girl of twenty-one, Romance is the spirit of things beautiful, and, therefore, the spirit of all things good. And Jill had lost it. They were not to meet again. She was never to hear another of his stories. He was not coming to Kensington Gardens any more.But suppose he did come! Suppose there were the sense of regret in the heart of him, as it was with her, and suppose he came to see the place where they had sat together! If she could only know that he cared enough to do that! It would make the renunciation more bearable if she could only know that. How could she find out? Send Ronald to the Gardens at about that hour? He would say if he had seen him. But if Ronald went to the Gardens, he would be voyaging on the good shipAlbatross, far away out at sea, out of sight of land, in the dim distance of make-belief. But if she went herself--just casually--just for a walk--just to see, only to see. And, if he were there, she could easily escape; she could easily creep away unnoticed. Well--not quite unnoticed, perhaps. He might see her in the distance, just before she passed out of sight.She got up quickly from her bed. She bathed; she did her hair; she dressed; she put on that dainty camisole with its pale blue ribbon twined through intricate meshes and concealed those little garments which proved her to be a true woman--concealed them with the camisole and the mystery of her sex.At breakfast, she talked of having her hair washed that morning. There was no gloss in it, she said. Ronald cast a glance at it, sniffed and then went on with his hasty mouthfuls of porridge. What fools were girls! As if it mattered! As if anyone noticed whether there were gloss or not! The good shipAlbatrosswanted a new spinnaker, and from whose under-linen that was to be stolen without detection was a far more delicate matter. He had petitioned for white linen shirts for himself for the last six months--white linen shirts are always valuable to a sailor--but he had not got them as yet. This deprivation naturally led to nefarious dealings with the tails of his father's old white shirts. It was impossible to use his own. You cannot have flannel sails to your ship, if she sails on the Round Pond. On the other waters--the Atlantic, for example--it doesn't matter so much. There were one or two things he had begun to fancy he would never be able to get.Quite simply, quite pensively, he had said one day at dinner:"I wonder if I shall ever eat the wing of a chicken."They permitted him to wonder--he and his drumstick. One cannot be surprised, then, that he sniggered when Jill talked about the gloss of her hair."Well, don't go to this place in the High Street," said her mother. "They're terribly exorbitant.""I shall go up to town," said Jill. And, up to town she started.There are various ways of going up to town. She chose to cross the Broad Walk with the intention of going by Bayswater. She even made a detour of the Round Pond. It was nicer to walk on the grass--more comfortable under foot. It was not even an uncomfortable sensation to feel her heart beating as a lark's wings beat the air when it soars.Then the rushing of the wings subsided. He was not there. From that mighty altitude to which it had risen, her heart began to descend--slowly, slowly, slowly to earth. He was not there!But oh! you would never know, until you yourself had played there, the games of hide-and-seek that the big elms afford in Kensington Gardens. On the far side of a huge tree-trunk, she came suddenly upon him, and the slowly fluttering wings of her heart were struck to stillness. There he was, seated upon his chair with a smile upon his lips, in his eyes--spreading and spreading till it soon must be a laugh.And--"Oh!" said she.Then it was that the smile became a laugh."What are you doing here at this time in the morning?" he asked."I--I was just going up to town. I--I wanted to go to Bayswater first."How much had he guessed? How long had he seen her looking here and there, and all about her?"What areyoudoing?" She had as much a right to ask him."I've been waiting to see you go by," said he."But----""I knew you were coming.""How?""We've been thinking just exactly the same things ever since I said good-bye yesterday. I woke up early this morning wondering what had happened.""So did I," she whispered in an awed voice."Then--before I'd got my coat on, I came to the conclusion that I had to live somewhere, and that the only thing that mattered was whether I did it honestly--not where I did it. Then, I sort of felt you might come to the Gardens this morning."She set her lips. Once that camisole is on, every woman has her dignity. It is a thing to play with, much as a child plays with its box of bricks. She makes wonderful patterns with it--noble ladies--imperious dames, who put dignity before humanity as you put the cart before the horse."Why should you think I would come to the Gardens?" she asked.John steadied his eyes."Well, I presume you go up to town sometimes," he said."Yes--but one can get up to town by Knightsbridge.""Of--course. I forgot that. But when you might be wanting to go to Bayswater first."She looked very steadily into his eyes. How long had he seen her before she had seen him?"Perhaps you're under the impression that I came to see you," she said, and she began walking towards the Bayswater Road.He followed quietly by her side. This needed careful treatment. She was incensed. He ought not to have thought that, of course."I never said so," he replied quietly.Then they fought--all the way over to the Bayswater side. Each little stroke was like velvet, but beneath it all was the passion of the claw."I expect it's as well we're not going to see each other any more," she said one moment and, when he agreed, repented it bitterly the next. He cursed himself for agreeing. But you must agree. Dignity, you know. Dignity before humanity.And then he called her a hansom--helped her within."Are you going back to the Gardens?" she asked from inside, not shutting the doors."No--I'm going up to town.""Well----" She pushed the bricks away. "Can't--can't I drive you up?"He stepped inside, and the cab rolled off."Were you going to have walked?" she asked presently, after a long, long silence."No," said John. "I was going to drive--with you."CHAPTER XVIEASTER SUNDAYOne Easter Sunday, soon after his first clandestine meeting with Jill, John was seated alone in his room in Fetter Lane. The family of Morrell and the family of Brown--the plumber and the theatre cleaner--had united in a party and gone off to the country--what was the country to them. He had heard them discussing it as they descended the flights of uncarpeted wooden stairs and passed outside his door."As long as we get back to the Bull and Bush by five," Mr. Morrell had said emphatically, and Mr. Brown had said, "Make it half-past four." Then Mrs. Morrell had caught up the snatch of a song:"I've a tickly feelin' in the bottom of me 'eartFor you--for you,"and Mrs. Brown has echoed it with her uncertain notes. Finally the door into the street had opened--had banged--their voices had faded away into the distance, and John had been left alone listening to the amorous frolics on the stairs of the sandy cat which belonged to Mrs. Morrell, and the tortoise-shell, the property of Mrs. Brown.Unless it be that you are an ardent churchman, and of that persuasion which calls you to the kirk three times within the twenty-four hours, Easter Sunday, for all its traditions, is a gladless day in London. There is positively nothing to do. Even Mass, if you attend it, is over at a quarter to one, and then the rest of the hours stretch monotonously before you. The oppressive knowledge that the Bank Holiday follows so closely on its heels, overburdens you with the sense of desolation. There will be no cheerful shops open on the morrow, no busy hurrying to and fro. The streets of the great city will be the streets of a city of the dead and, as you contemplate all this, the bells of your neighbourhood peal out in strains that are meant to be cheerful, yet really are inexpressibly doleful and sad. You know very well, when you come to think about it, why they are so importunate and so loud. They are only ringing so persistently, tumbling sounds one upon another, in order to draw people to the fulfilment of a duty that many would shirk if they dared.The bells of a city church have need to be loud, they have to rise above the greater distractions of life. Listen to the bells of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. The bell-ringers there know only too well the sounds they have to drown before they can induce a wandering pedestrian within. It was just the same in Fetter Lane. John listened to them clanging and jangling--each bell so intent and eager in its effort to make itself heard.He thought of the country to which the families upstairs had departed; but in the country it is different. In the country, you would go to church were there no bell at all, and that gentle, sonorous note that does ring across the fields and down the river becomes one of the most soothing sounds in the world. You have only to hear it to see the old lych-gate swinging to and fro as the folk make their way up the gravel path to the church door. You have only to listen to it stealing through the meadows where the browsing cattle are steeping their noses in the dew, to see with the eye of your mind that pale, faint flicker of candle-light that creeps through the stained glass windows out into the heavy-laden air of a summer evening. A church bell is very different in the country. There is an unsophisticated note about it, a sound so far removed from the egotistical hawker crying the virtue of his wares as to make the one incomparable with the other. John envied Mrs. Brown and Mr. Morrell from the bottom of his heart--envied them at least till half-past four.For an hour, after breakfast was finished, he sat staring into the fire he had lighted, too lonely even to work. That heartless jade, depression, one can not call her company.Then came Mrs. Rowse to clear away the breakfast things and make his bed. He looked up with a smile as she entered."What sort of a day is it outside?" he asked."Cold, sir; and looks as if we was going to have rain."She caught up the breakfast things, the china clattered in her fingers. He turned round a little in his chair and watched her clear away. This is loneliness--to find a sense of companionship in the woman who comes to look after one's rooms."Whenever a man is lonely," wrote Lamartine, "God sends him a dog." But that is not always so. Some men are not so fortunate as others. It happens sometimes that a dog is not available and then, God sends a Mrs. Rowse to clear away the breakfast things.But Mrs. Rowse was in a hurry that morning. There was no money due to her. You would not have found the faintest suspicion of lingering in anything that she did then. Even the topic that interested her most--her daughters--had no power to distract her attention.She was going to take them out to the country--they were going down to Denham to see her sister, as soon as her work was done--Lizzie, who stuck labels on the jam-jars in Crosse and Blackwell's, and Maud, who packed cigarettes in Lambert and Butler's.There were those living in Peabody Buildings, who said that Lizzie would have a beautiful voice, if she'd only practise. She could sing, "Love Me and the World Is Mine." She could sing that lovely. And Maud--well, Mrs. Rowse had even got a piano in their little tenement rooms for Maud to learn on, but Maud would never practise neither. True, she could pick up just anything she heard, pick it up quite easy with the right hand, though she could only vamp, foolish-like, with the left.Yet upon these portentous matters, Mrs. Rowse would say nothing that morning. They were going to catch a mid-day train from Marylebone down to Denham, and she had no time to waste."Would you mind me coming with you, Mrs. Rowse?" said John suddenly. As suddenly he regretted it, but only because of its impossibility.There is some sort of unwritten law which says that when you accompany ladies on a journey by train, you must pay for their tickets, and all women are ladies if they do not swear or spit on the ground. You should take off your hat to everyone of them you know when in the street. It may be that they are charwomen, that they stick labels upon jam-jars in their spare hours, that they pack up little boxes of cigarettes when there is nothing else to do, but in the street, they are women--and all women, with the restrictions here mentioned, are ladies.Now John could not possibly pay for their tickets. He could ill-afford to pay for his own. It would mean no meal the next day if he did. And here let it be said--lest any should think that his poverty is harped upon--John was always poor, except for five minutes after an excursion to the pawn-shop, and perhaps five days after the receipt of the royalties upon his work. You may be sure at least of this, that John will jingle the money in his pocket and run his finger-nail over the minted edge of the silver when he has any. If he has gold, you will see him take it out under the light of a lamp-post when it is dark, in order to make sure that the sovereign is not a shilling. On all other occasions than these, assume that he is poor,--nay, more than assume, take it for granted.Accordingly, directly he had made this offer to accompany Mrs. Rowse and her daughters to Denham, he had to withdraw it."No," said he, "I wish I could come--but I'm afraid it's impossible. I've got work to do."Quite soon after that Mrs. Rowse departed."Hope you'll enjoy yourselves," said he."We always do in the country," replied she as she put on her hat outside the door. And then--"Good-morning, sir,"--and she too had gone; the door into the street had banged again, and the whole house, from floor to roof, was empty but for the sandy cat, the tortoiseshell cat and John.He sat on there in the stillness. Even the cats grew tired of play and were still. Then came the rain, rain that turned to sleet, that drove against the roofs outside and tried, by hiding in the corners of the chimneys, to look like snow. John thought of the tulips in Kensington Gardens. Spring can come gladsomely to England--it can come bitterly, too. Those poor people in the country! But would the country ever permit such weather as this? Even supposing it did, they would not be lonely as he was. Mr. Morrell had Mrs. Brown to talk to, and Mr. Brown had the company of Mrs. Morrell. There were Lizzie and Maud for Mrs. Rowse. Perhaps going down in the train, they would get a carriage to themselves and Lizzie would sing, "Love Me and the World Is Mine," and Maud would count cigarettes in her mind, and pack them up in her mind, or more probably forget that there ever were such things as cigarettes in the fresh delight of seeing the country with bread and cheese on all the hedges. Those young green buds on the hawthorn hedges are the pedestrian's bread and cheese. But you know that, every bit as well as I.Well, it seemed that everyone had company but John. He took out of his pocket the last letter his mother had written him from Venice--took it out and spread it before him. If only she were there! If only her bright brown eyes were looking at him, what thousands of things there would be to say! What short stories and beginnings of new books would there not be to read her! And how sympathetically would she not listen. How frequently would she not place those dear paralysed hands of hers in his, as he read, at some new passage that she liked!"My darling boy----"He could hear that gentle voice of hers--like the sound you may hear in the ring of an old china tea-cup--he could hear it, as she had dictated it to his father to write----"This is where I begin counting the days to your visit. I dare not begin sooner--too many figures always bewildered me. It is now just about three months. Your father is much better than he was, and is doing a little work these days."And here was added in a quaint little parenthesis of his father's: "She calls it work, my dear boy, just to please me--but when old men play, they like to hear it called work. You've got to do my work. And she is so quick--she has seen I have been writing more than she has said. I shall persuade her to let this stay in nevertheless."Then, uninterrupted for a space the letter continued."I'm so pleased that your work is going on so well. I thought your last story was too sad, though. Must stories end unhappily? Yours always seem to. But I think I guess. They won't always end like that. But your father says I am not to worry you on that point; that you can't paint in a tone of gold what you see in a tone of grey, and that what you see now in a tone of grey, you will as likely as not see one day in a tone of gold."Then, here, another parenthesis."You will understand what I mean, my dear boy. I've read the story, and I don't think it ought to end sadly, and you will no doubt say, 'Oh, he's quite old-fashioned; he does not know that a sad ending is an artistic ending.' But that is not because I am old-fashioned. It is simply because I am old. When you are young, you see unhappy endings because you are young enough to bear the pain of them. It is only when you get older that you see otherwise. When you have had your sorrow, which, you know, only as an artist I wish for you, then you will write in another strain. Go on with your unhappy endings. Don't take any notice of us. All your work will be happy one day, and remember, you are not writing for but because of us. By the way, I think you spelt paregoric wrong."Now again the dictation."Well, anyhow, though I know nothing about it, I feel you write as though you loved. You would tell me, would you not, if you did? I am sure it must be the way to write, the way, in fact, to do everything. Your father says the pictures he paints now lack strength and vigour; but I find them just as beautiful; they are so gentle."Parenthesis."One can't always love as one did at twenty-six--T.G. That sounds like reverential gratitude for the fact, but you understand it is only my initials.""He has written something again, John--and he won't tell me what it is. If he has said he is getting too old to love, don't believe him. He has just leant forward and kissed me on my forehead. I have insisted upon his writing this down. Your story about the girl in the chapel and the last candle amused us very much. It interested me especially. If it had been me, I should have fallen in love with you then and there for being so considerate. What was she like? Have you ever seen her since? I can't feel that you were meant to meet her for nothing. I have tried to think, too, what she could have been praying to St. Joseph for, but it is beyond me. It is not like a woman to pray for money for herself. Perhaps some of her relations have money troubles. That is all I can imagine, though I have thought over it every day since I got your letter. God bless you, my darling. We are waiting eagerly for the reviews of your new book. When will it be out--the exact date? I want to say a novena for it, so let me know in good time. And if you meet the Lady of St. Joseph--as you call her--again, you must promise to tell me all about it. Your father wants the rest of the sheet of note-paper on which to say something to you--so, God bless you always.""Don't read the reviews when they come out, John. Send them along to me, and I'll sort out the best ones and send them back to you to read. As far as I can see, there are so many critics who get the personal note into their criticisms, and to read these, whether praising or blaming, won't do you any good; so send them all along to me before you look at them. The first moment you can send me a copy, of course, you will. Your loving father."Here the letter ended. Long as it was, it might well have been longer. They were good company, those two old people, talking to him through those thin sheets of foreign paper, one breaking in upon the other with all due courtesy, just as they might with a "Finish what you have to say, my dear," in ordinary conversation.And now they had gone to the country, too--they had left him alone. When he had folded up the letter, it was almost as if he could hear the door bang again for the third time.He leant back in his chair with an involuntary sigh. What a few people, after all, there were in the world whom he really knew! What a few people who would seek out his company on such a day as this! He stood up and stretched out his arms above his head--it was----He stopped. A sound had struck to his heart and set it beating, as when the bull's-eye of a target is hit.The bell had rung! His electric bell! The electric bell which had raised him immeasureably in station above Mrs. Morrell and Mrs. Brown, who had only a knocker common to the whole house--one, in fact, of the landlord's fixtures! It had rung, and his heart was beating to the echoes of it.In another second, he had opened his door; in another moment, he was flying down the uncarpeted wooden stairs, five at a time. At the door itself, he paused, playing with the sensation of uncertainty. Who could it be? If the honest truth be known, it scarcely mattered. Someone! Someone had come out of nowhere to keep him company. A few personalities rushed to his mind. It might be the man who sometimes illustrated his stories, an untidy individual who had a single phrase that he always introduced into every conversation--it was, "Lend me half-a-crown till to-morrow, will you?" It would be splendid if it were him. They could lunch together on the half-crown. It might be the traveller from the wholesale tailor's--a man whom he had found begging in the street, and told to come round to Number 39 whenever he was at his wit's end for a meal. That would be better still; he was a man full of experiences, full of stories from the various sleeping-houses where he spent his nights.Supposing it were Jill! A foolish, a hopeless thought to enter the mind. She did not know where he lived. She might, though, by some freak of
CHAPTER XIII
THE INVENTORY
All this had happened more than a year ago, and the sense of shame, accompanying that first confession, had been worn to the dull surface, incapable of reflecting the finer feelings of the mind. Under the very nose of that editor who was considering his last short story, John would have stepped boldly into the suspicious-looking little passage; returning the smile of the girl who sold him stamps in the post-office, he would have entered shamelessly the chapel of unredemption. Such is the reward of the perpetual sin of poverty. It brings with it the soothing narcotic of callousness, of indifference--and that perhaps is the saddest sin of all.
The watch-chain went that morning with the ease of a transaction constantly performed. There was no need to haggle over the price this time. The same price had been paid many times before. It came last but one on the list of things to be pawned. Last of all was the little brass man--the last to be pledged, the first to be redeemed. There is always an order in these things and it never varies. When pledging, you go from top to bottom of the list; when redeeming, it is just the reverse. And the order itself depends entirely upon that degree of sentiment with which each object is regarded.
The following was the list, in its correct order, of those things which from time to time left the world of John's possession, and were hidden in the seclusion of pledged retreat:--
FUR COAT.CUFF LINKS.CIGARETTE CASE.TIE PIN.MATCH BOX.WATCH.CHAIN.LITTLE BRASS MAN.
Reverse the order of this and you arrive at the sequence in which they returned. And here follows a detailed account of the history of each object--detailed, where details are possible and of interest.
Fur Coat. This pretentious-looking article was bought by John as a bargain. One day, when paying his rent to the landlord--a man who smelted and refined the gold that has an acquaintance with false teeth--he was asked if he would like to buy something very cheap. Well--you know what a temptation that is. So great a temptation is it, that you ask first "How much?" and only when you have heard the price, do you inquire the nature of the article. Four pounds ten, he was told. Then what was it? A fur-lined overcoat with astrachan collar and cuffs! There must be a presumption on the part of the seller that you know nothing of fur coats, or he will not talk to you like this. Certainly it was cheap, but even then, it would not have been bought had John not overheard the former possessor offering to buy it back at four pounds five. Such a circumstance as this doubles the temptation. So seldom is it that one comes across a bargain when one has any money in one's pocket, that it is impossible, when one does, to let it go to another man. John bought it. It would be a useful thing to visit editors in when he had no money.
But you would scarcely credit the treachery of a fur-lined coat with astrachan collar and cuffs. John had no idea of it. It played fiendish tricks upon him. Just as he determined to mount upon a 'bus, it whispered in his ear--"You can't do this--you really can't. If you want to drive, you'd better get a hansom. If not, then you'd better walk."
It was of no avail that he complained of not being able to afford a hansom and of being in too great a hurry to walk. That heavy astrachan collar whispered again:
"You can't ride on a 'bus anyway--look at that man laughing at you already----"
And with a fiendish joy, it gave him sudden and magical insight into the jeering minds of all those people in the 'bus. He relinquished the 'bus then. He called a hansom; he was in a hurry and he drove away, while the astrachan collar preens itself with pride and delight as it looks in the little oblong mirror.
And this is not the only treachery which the fur coat played upon him. As he descended from the cab, a man rushed out of nowhere to protect that coat from the wheels, and overcome with pleasure, the fur coat whispered in his ear once more--"Give him twopence--you can't ignore him."
"I could have kept my coat off the wheel quite easily myself," John replied--"He was really only in the way."
"Never mind," exclaimed the astrachan collar--"If you're going to be seen about with me, you'll have to give him twopence."
Reluctantly John took the twopence out.
And then, all the while that he was fumbling in his pocket for the shilling which should have been more than his legal fare, seeing the distance he had come, only that it cannot be less, the astrachan collar was still at him.
"Can't you hear," it says suggestively--"can't you hear what the cabman is going to say when you only give him a shilling!"
Then it imitated his voice, just in the very way John knew he would say it, and he felt the blood tingling to the roots of his hair. Of course, he gave him one and six, for by this time he was the slave of that fur-lined coat. It dominated his life. It ran up bills in his name and he had to pay them. For myself, I would sooner live with an extravagant wife than with a fur-lined coat.
And so was it with John. That bargain he had purchased with the astrachan collar and cuffs treated him shamefully. It was insatiable in its demands, and all under false pretences; for there came one terrible day when John, who knew nothing about these things, learnt that it was only imitation astrachan. Then he asserted himself. He refused to take it out, and one freezing day in the month of February pawned it for two pounds five. Some three months later, on a blazing day in May, he received a notice from the pawnbroker, who said that he must redeem it immediately, for he could not hold himself responsible for the fur. Now, even an extravagant wife would have more consideration for you, more idea of the true fitness of things than that. Eventually that fur coat was pawned in order to save a lady from the last, the most extreme sentence that the law can pass upon the sin of poverty. There comes a time when the sin of poverty can be dealt no longer with by the high priest in the chapel of unredemption. Then it comes into the hands of the law. To save her from this, was a debt of honour and perhaps the most generous action that that fur coat ever did in its life, was to pay that debt: for the three months went by, and on one of the coldest days in winter, it passed silently and unwept into the possession of the high priest.
Cuff Links. No history is attached to these. They realised ten shillings many times, till the ticket was lost, and then, since, under these circumstances, an affidavit must be made, and cuff links not being worth the swearing about, they were lost sight of.
The Watch. For this is the next article on the inventory, of which any substance can be written, and its history is practically known already. John's mother had given it to him. It represented the many times those two bright eyes were tired with counting the stitches of the white lace shawls. It represented the thousands of times that those slender, sensitive fingers had rested in weariness from their ceaseless passing to and fro. It represented almost the last lace-work she had done, before those fingers had at length been held motionless in the cold grip of paralysis. But, above all, it stood for the love of that gentle heart that beat with so much pride and so much pleasure, to see the little boy, whose head her breast had fondled, come to the stern and mighty age of twenty-one. And two pounds five was the value they put upon it all.
The Little Brass Man,--theChevalier d'honneur. His story has already been told--his life, so far as it concerns this history. But of what he had lived through in the hundred years that had gone before--nobody knows. One can only assume, without fear of inaccuracy, that it was the life of a gentleman.
CHAPTER XIV
THE WAY TO FIND OUT
These were the thoughts passing and re-passing idly through John's mind as he sat, waiting, upon the stiff little iron chair in Kensington Gardens, and felt the minted edge of the half-crowns and the florins that lay so comfortably at the bottom of his pocket.
And then came Jill. She came alone.
He saw her in the distance, coming up that sudden rise of the Broad Walk down which hoops roll so splendidly--become so realistically restive, and prance and rear beneath the blow of the stick in the circus-master's hand. And--she was walking alone.
Then, in a moment, the Gardens became empty. John was not conscious of their becoming so. They were--just empty. Down a long road, tapering to the infinite point of distance, on which her figure moved alone, she might have been coming--slowly, gradually, to their ultimate meeting.
He felt no wonder, realised no surprise at their sudden solitude. When in the midst of Romance, you are not conscious of the miracles it performs. You do not marvel at the wonders of its magic carpets which, in the whisk of a lamb's tail, transport you thousands of miles away; you are not amazed at the wizardry of its coats of invisibility which can hide you two from the whole world, or hide the whole world from you. All these you take for granted; for Romance, when it does come to you, comes, just plainly and without ceremony, in the everyday garments of life and you never know the magician you have been entertaining until he is gone.
Even John himself, whose business in life it was to see the romance in the life of others, could not recognise it now in his own. There were women he had met, there were women he had loved; but this was romance and he never knew it.
With pulses that beat warmly in a strange, quick way, he rose from his chair, thinking to go and meet her. But she might resent that. She might have changed her mind. She might not be coming to meet him at all. Perhaps, as she lay awake that morning--it was a presumption to think she had lain awake at all--perhaps she had altered her opinion about the propriety of an introduction afforded by St. Joseph. It were better, he thought, to see her hand held out, before he took it.
So he sat back again in his chair and watched her as she stepped over the railings--those little railings scarcely a foot high, over which, if you know what it is to be six, you know the grand delight of leaping; you know the thrill of pleasure when you look back, surveying the height you have cleared.
She was coming in his direction. Her skirt was brushing the short grass stems. Her head was down. She raised it and--she had seen him!
Those were the most poignant, the most conscious moments of all when, after their eyes had met, there were still some forty yards or so to be covered before they met. She smiled and looked up at the elm trees; he smiled and looked down at the grass. They could not call out to each other, saying--"How-do-you-do." Inexorably, without pity, Circumstance decreed that they must cross those forty yards of silence before they could speak. She felt the blood rising in a tide to her cheeks. He became conscious that he had hands and feet; that his head was set upon his shoulders and could not, without the accompaniment of his body, face round the other way. The correct term for these excruciating tortures of the mind--so I am assured--is platt. When there is such a distance between yourself and the person whom you are approaching to meet, you are known, if you have any sensitiveness at all, to have a platt.
Now, if ever people had a platt, it was these two. That distance was measured in their mind, yard by yard.
At last he held her hand.
"I was," she began at once, "going to write. But I didn't know your address."
"You were going to write----?"
He pulled forward a chair for her, near to his.
"Yes--I was going to write and tell you--I'm terribly sorry, but I can't come this morning----" and she sat down.
A look of deepest disappointment was so plainly written in his face as he seated himself beside her. He made no effort to render it illegible to those eyes of hers.
"Why not?" said he, despondently. "Why can't you come?"
"Oh--you wouldn't understand if I told you."
This was the moment for the ferrule of an umbrella, or the point of an elegant shoe. But she had not brought the umbrella, and her shoes, well--she was unable to come that morning, so it had scarcely mattered what she had put on. The toe of the shoe did peep out for a moment from under the skirt, but not being approved of for elegance, it withdrew. She was forced to fall back upon words; so she just repeated herself to emphasise them.
"You wouldn't understand if I told you," she said again.
"Is it fair to say that," said John, "before you've found me wanting in understanding?"
"No, but I know you wouldn't understand. Besides--it's about you."
"The reason why you can't come?"
"Yes."
"What is it?"
"I'll tell you another time, perhaps."
Ah, but that would never do. You can't tell people another time. They don't want to hear it then.
"You can tell me now," persisted John.
She shook her head.
"There's only one time to tell things," he said.
"When?"
"Now."
She just began. Her lips parted. She took the breath for speech. The words came into her eyes.
"No--I can't tell you--don't ask me."
But he asked. He kept on asking. Whenever there was a pause, he gently asked again. He began putting the words into her mouth, and when he'd half said it for her, he asked once more.
"Why do you keep on asking?" she said with a smile.
"Because I know," said John.
"You know?"
"Yes."
"Then why----"
"Because I want you to tell me, and because I only know a little. I don't know it all. I don't know why your mother objects to me, except that she doesn't approve of the introduction of St. Joseph. I don't know whether she's said you're not to see me again."
That look of amazement in her eyes was a just and fair reward for his simple hazard. Girls of twenty-one have mothers--more's the pity. He had only guessed it. And a mother who has a daughter of twenty-one has just reached that age when life lies in a groove and she would drag all within it if she could. She is forty-eight, perhaps, and knowing her husband as an obedient child knows its collect on a Sunday, she judges all men by him. Now, all men, fortunately for them, fortunately for everybody, are not husbands. Husbands are a type, a class by themselves; no other man is quite like them. They have irritating ways, and no wife should judge other men by their standards. When she would quarrel, theirs is the patience of Job. When she would be amiable, there is nothing to please them. They are seldom honest; they are scarcely ever truthful. For marriage will often bring out of a man the worst qualities that he has, as the washing-tub will sometimes only intensify the strain upon the linen.
In the back of his mind, John felt the unseen judgment of some woman upon him, and from this very standpoint. When he saw the look of amazement in Jill's eyes, he knew he was right.
"Why do you look so surprised?" he said, smiling.
"Because--well--why did you ask if you knew?"
"Do you think I should ask if I didn't know?"
"Wouldn't you?"
"Oh, no. It's no good asking a woman questions when you don't know, when you haven't the faintest idea of what her answer is going to be. She knows very well just how ignorant you are and, by a subtle process of the mind, she superimposes that ignorance upon herself. And if you go on asking her direct questions, there comes a moment when she really doesn't know either. Then she makes it up or tells you she has forgotten. Isn't that true?"
She watched him all the time he spoke. He might have been talking nonsense. He probably was; but there seemed to be some echo of the truth of it far away in the hidden recesses of her mind. She seemed to remember many times when just such a process had taken place within her. But how had he known that, when she had never realised it before?
"What do you do, then, when you don't know, if you don't ask questions?"
He took a loose cigarette from his pocket and slowly lit it.
"Ah--then you have recourse to that wonderful method of finding out. It's so difficult, so almost impossible, and that's why it's so wonderful. To begin with, you pretend you don't want to know. That must be the first step. All others--and there are hundreds--follow after that; but you must pretend you don't want to know, or she'll never tell you. But I am sure your mother's been saying something to you about me, and I really want to know what it is. How did she come to hear about me?"
He knew it would be easy for her to begin with that. No woman will tell unless it is easy.
"Did you tell her?" he suggested gently, knowing that she did not.
"Oh, no--I didn't. It was Ronald."
"Ah--he said something?"
"Yes--at lunch--something about the papers."
"And you had to explain?"
"Yes."
"Was she vexed?"
"Yes--rather. Well--I suppose it did sound rather funny, you know."
"You told her about St. Joseph?"
"I said where I'd met you, in the Sardinia St. Chapel." She smiled up at him incredulously. "You didn't think I'd tell her that St. Joseph had introduced us, did you?"
"Why not? St. Joseph's a very proper man."
"Yes--on his altar, but not in Kensington."
"Well--what did she say?"
"She asked where you lived."
"Oh----"
It is impossible to make comparison between Fetter Lane and Prince of Wales' Terrace without a face longer than is your wont--especially if it is you who live in Fetter Lane.
"And you told her you didn't know."
"Of course."
She said it so expectantly, so hopefully that he would divulge the terrible secret which meant so much to the continuation of their acquaintance.
"And what did she say to that?"
"She said, of course, that it was impossible for me to know you until you had come properly as a visitor to the house, and that she couldn't ask you until she knew where you lived. And I suppose that's quite right."
"I suppose it is," said John. "At any rate you agree with her?"
"I suppose so."
It meant she didn't. One never does the thing one supposes to be right; there's no satisfaction in it.
"Well--the Martyrs' Club will always find me."
This was John's club; that club, to become a member of which, he had been despoiled of the amount of a whole year's rent. He was still staggering financially under the blow.
"Do you live there?" she asked.
"No--no one lives there. Members go to sleep there, but they never go to bed. There are no beds."
"Then where do you live?"
He turned and looked full in her eyes. If she were to have sympathy, if she were to have confidence and understanding, it must be now.
"I can't tell you where I live," said John.
The clock of St. Mary Abbot's chimed the hour of midday. He watched her face to see if she heard. One--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight nine--ten--eleven--twelve! She had not heard a single stroke of it, and they had been sitting there for an hour.
CHAPTER XV
WHAT IS HIDDEN BY A CAMISOLE
Add but the flavour of secrecy to the making of Romance; allow that every meeting be clandestine and every letter written sealed, and matters will so thrive apace that, before you can, with the children in the nursery, say Jack Robinson, the fire will be kindled and the flames of it leaping through your every pulse.
When, with tacit consent, Jill asked no further questions as to where John lived, and yet continued clandestinely to meet him, listening to the work he read aloud to her, offering her opinion, giving her approval, she was unconsciously, unwillingly, too, perhaps, had she known, hastening towards the ultimate and the inevitable end.
It must not be supposed that after this second interview in Kensington Gardens, when John had plainly said that he could not tell her where he lived, she had wilfully disobeyed the unyielding commands of her mother not to see him again. The fulfilment of destiny does not ask for disobedience. With the shuttles of circumstance and coincidence to its fingers, Destiny can weave a pattern in defiance of every law but that of Nature.
Jill had said that morning:
"Then we mustn't meet again."
"You mean that?" said John.
"I can't help it," she replied distressfully. "After all, I'm living with my people; I must respect their wishes to a certain degree. If you would only tell me----"
"But I can't," John had interposed. "It's no good. It's much better that I leave you in ignorance. Why won't the Martyrs' Club satisfy you? There are men at the Martyrs' Club who live on Carlton House Terrace. That is a part of their martyrdom. Is it beyond the stretch of your imagination for you to suppose that I might have an abode in--in--Bedford Park or Shepherd's Bush?"
She laughed, and then, as that stiff social figure of her mother rose before her eyes and she recalled to her mind remarks about a dressmaker who happened to live in Shepherd's Bush--"Poor thing--she lives at Shepherd's Bush--Life treats some people in a shameful way--" an expression of charity that went no further, for the dressmaker's work was not considered good enough or cheap enough, and she was given nothing more to do--when she remembered that, the laugh vanished from her eyes.
"Isn't it as good as Shepherd's Bush?" she had asked quite simply.
Well, when, in your more opulent moments, you have thought of such a thing as a better address at Shepherd's Bush, and have a question such as this put to you, you have little desire left to reveal the locality of the abode you do occupy. It takes the pride out of you. It silenced John. He recalled to his mind a remark of Mrs. Meakin's when, having invited him to take a rosy-cheeked apple from that little partition where the rosy-cheeked apples lay, she had thought by this subtle bribe to draw him into conversation about himself.
"Don't you find it very dull livin' 'ere all alone by yourself?" she had asked.
"Wherever you live," said John evasively, "you're by yourself. You're as much alone in a crowd as in an empty church."
She had nodded her head, picked up a large Spanish onion, and peeled off the outer skin to make it look more fresh.
"But I should have thought," she had added pensively--"I should have thought as 'ow you'd have found this such a very low-cality."
And so, perhaps it was--very low. And if Mrs. Meakin had thought so, and Jill herself could talk thus deprecatingly of Shepherd's Bush, where he had hoped to better his address, then it were as well to leave Fetter Lane alone.
"So you have made up your mind," he had said quietly. "You've made up your mind not to see me again?"
"It's not I who have made it up," she answered.
"But you're going to obey?"
"I must."
"You won't be here to-morrow morning, at this hour?"
"No--I can't--I mustn't."
"Not to tell me how you liked my short story?"
"You know I liked it--awfully."
"And you won't come and hear another that's better than that?"
"How can I? You don't understand. If you came and lived at Prince of Wales' Terrace, you'd understand then."
"Then it's no good my coming to-morrow?"
"Not if you want to see me."
"Then good-bye."
John stood up and held out his hand.
If you know the full value of coercion in renunciation; if you realise the full power of persuasion in the saying of good-bye, you have command of that weapon which is the surest and the most subtle in all the armament of Destiny. It is only when they have said good-bye that two people really come together.
"But why must you go now?" Jill had said regretfully.
John smiled.
"Well--first, because you said you couldn't come this morning, and we've been here for an hour and a half; and secondly, because if, as you say, we are to see no more of each other, then hadn't I better go now? I think it's better. Good-bye."
He held out his hand again. She took it reluctantly, and he was gone.
The next morning, Jill had wakened an hour earlier--an hour earlier than was her wont--an hour earlier, with the weight of a sense of loss pressing on her mind. It is that hour in bed before rising that a woman thinks all the truest things in her day; is most honest with herself, and least subtle in the expression of her thoughts. Then she gets up--bathes--does her hair and, by the time a dainty camisole is concealing those garments that prove her to be a true woman--all honesty is gone; she assumes the mystery of her sex.
In that hour earlier before her rising, Jill honestly admitted her disgust with life. Romance is well-nigh everything to a woman--for Romance is the Prelude, full of the most sonorous of chords, breathing with the most wonderful of cadences--a Prelude to the great Duty which she must inevitably perform. And this had been Romance. She had just touched it, just set in motion the unseen fingers that play with such divine inspiration upon the whole gamut of the strings, and now, it had been put away.
Mind you, she knew nothing of the evolution of the Prelude; she knew little of the history of the Duty to perform. It was not the conscious loss of these that brought the disgust of life into the complaining heart of her; for Romance, when first it comes to a woman, is like the peak of a mountain whose head is lifted above the clouds. It has nothing of this earth; means no such mundane phrase as--falling in love. To the girl of twenty-one, Romance is the spirit of things beautiful, and, therefore, the spirit of all things good. And Jill had lost it. They were not to meet again. She was never to hear another of his stories. He was not coming to Kensington Gardens any more.
But suppose he did come! Suppose there were the sense of regret in the heart of him, as it was with her, and suppose he came to see the place where they had sat together! If she could only know that he cared enough to do that! It would make the renunciation more bearable if she could only know that. How could she find out? Send Ronald to the Gardens at about that hour? He would say if he had seen him. But if Ronald went to the Gardens, he would be voyaging on the good shipAlbatross, far away out at sea, out of sight of land, in the dim distance of make-belief. But if she went herself--just casually--just for a walk--just to see, only to see. And, if he were there, she could easily escape; she could easily creep away unnoticed. Well--not quite unnoticed, perhaps. He might see her in the distance, just before she passed out of sight.
She got up quickly from her bed. She bathed; she did her hair; she dressed; she put on that dainty camisole with its pale blue ribbon twined through intricate meshes and concealed those little garments which proved her to be a true woman--concealed them with the camisole and the mystery of her sex.
At breakfast, she talked of having her hair washed that morning. There was no gloss in it, she said. Ronald cast a glance at it, sniffed and then went on with his hasty mouthfuls of porridge. What fools were girls! As if it mattered! As if anyone noticed whether there were gloss or not! The good shipAlbatrosswanted a new spinnaker, and from whose under-linen that was to be stolen without detection was a far more delicate matter. He had petitioned for white linen shirts for himself for the last six months--white linen shirts are always valuable to a sailor--but he had not got them as yet. This deprivation naturally led to nefarious dealings with the tails of his father's old white shirts. It was impossible to use his own. You cannot have flannel sails to your ship, if she sails on the Round Pond. On the other waters--the Atlantic, for example--it doesn't matter so much. There were one or two things he had begun to fancy he would never be able to get.
Quite simply, quite pensively, he had said one day at dinner:
"I wonder if I shall ever eat the wing of a chicken."
They permitted him to wonder--he and his drumstick. One cannot be surprised, then, that he sniggered when Jill talked about the gloss of her hair.
"Well, don't go to this place in the High Street," said her mother. "They're terribly exorbitant."
"I shall go up to town," said Jill. And, up to town she started.
There are various ways of going up to town. She chose to cross the Broad Walk with the intention of going by Bayswater. She even made a detour of the Round Pond. It was nicer to walk on the grass--more comfortable under foot. It was not even an uncomfortable sensation to feel her heart beating as a lark's wings beat the air when it soars.
Then the rushing of the wings subsided. He was not there. From that mighty altitude to which it had risen, her heart began to descend--slowly, slowly, slowly to earth. He was not there!
But oh! you would never know, until you yourself had played there, the games of hide-and-seek that the big elms afford in Kensington Gardens. On the far side of a huge tree-trunk, she came suddenly upon him, and the slowly fluttering wings of her heart were struck to stillness. There he was, seated upon his chair with a smile upon his lips, in his eyes--spreading and spreading till it soon must be a laugh.
And--"Oh!" said she.
Then it was that the smile became a laugh.
"What are you doing here at this time in the morning?" he asked.
"I--I was just going up to town. I--I wanted to go to Bayswater first."
How much had he guessed? How long had he seen her looking here and there, and all about her?
"What areyoudoing?" She had as much a right to ask him.
"I've been waiting to see you go by," said he.
"But----"
"I knew you were coming."
"How?"
"We've been thinking just exactly the same things ever since I said good-bye yesterday. I woke up early this morning wondering what had happened."
"So did I," she whispered in an awed voice.
"Then--before I'd got my coat on, I came to the conclusion that I had to live somewhere, and that the only thing that mattered was whether I did it honestly--not where I did it. Then, I sort of felt you might come to the Gardens this morning."
She set her lips. Once that camisole is on, every woman has her dignity. It is a thing to play with, much as a child plays with its box of bricks. She makes wonderful patterns with it--noble ladies--imperious dames, who put dignity before humanity as you put the cart before the horse.
"Why should you think I would come to the Gardens?" she asked.
John steadied his eyes.
"Well, I presume you go up to town sometimes," he said.
"Yes--but one can get up to town by Knightsbridge."
"Of--course. I forgot that. But when you might be wanting to go to Bayswater first."
She looked very steadily into his eyes. How long had he seen her before she had seen him?
"Perhaps you're under the impression that I came to see you," she said, and she began walking towards the Bayswater Road.
He followed quietly by her side. This needed careful treatment. She was incensed. He ought not to have thought that, of course.
"I never said so," he replied quietly.
Then they fought--all the way over to the Bayswater side. Each little stroke was like velvet, but beneath it all was the passion of the claw.
"I expect it's as well we're not going to see each other any more," she said one moment and, when he agreed, repented it bitterly the next. He cursed himself for agreeing. But you must agree. Dignity, you know. Dignity before humanity.
And then he called her a hansom--helped her within.
"Are you going back to the Gardens?" she asked from inside, not shutting the doors.
"No--I'm going up to town."
"Well----" She pushed the bricks away. "Can't--can't I drive you up?"
He stepped inside, and the cab rolled off.
"Were you going to have walked?" she asked presently, after a long, long silence.
"No," said John. "I was going to drive--with you."
CHAPTER XVI
EASTER SUNDAY
One Easter Sunday, soon after his first clandestine meeting with Jill, John was seated alone in his room in Fetter Lane. The family of Morrell and the family of Brown--the plumber and the theatre cleaner--had united in a party and gone off to the country--what was the country to them. He had heard them discussing it as they descended the flights of uncarpeted wooden stairs and passed outside his door.
"As long as we get back to the Bull and Bush by five," Mr. Morrell had said emphatically, and Mr. Brown had said, "Make it half-past four." Then Mrs. Morrell had caught up the snatch of a song:
"I've a tickly feelin' in the bottom of me 'eartFor you--for you,"
"I've a tickly feelin' in the bottom of me 'eartFor you--for you,"
"I've a tickly feelin' in the bottom of me 'eart
For you--for you,"
For you--for you,"
and Mrs. Brown has echoed it with her uncertain notes. Finally the door into the street had opened--had banged--their voices had faded away into the distance, and John had been left alone listening to the amorous frolics on the stairs of the sandy cat which belonged to Mrs. Morrell, and the tortoise-shell, the property of Mrs. Brown.
Unless it be that you are an ardent churchman, and of that persuasion which calls you to the kirk three times within the twenty-four hours, Easter Sunday, for all its traditions, is a gladless day in London. There is positively nothing to do. Even Mass, if you attend it, is over at a quarter to one, and then the rest of the hours stretch monotonously before you. The oppressive knowledge that the Bank Holiday follows so closely on its heels, overburdens you with the sense of desolation. There will be no cheerful shops open on the morrow, no busy hurrying to and fro. The streets of the great city will be the streets of a city of the dead and, as you contemplate all this, the bells of your neighbourhood peal out in strains that are meant to be cheerful, yet really are inexpressibly doleful and sad. You know very well, when you come to think about it, why they are so importunate and so loud. They are only ringing so persistently, tumbling sounds one upon another, in order to draw people to the fulfilment of a duty that many would shirk if they dared.
The bells of a city church have need to be loud, they have to rise above the greater distractions of life. Listen to the bells of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. The bell-ringers there know only too well the sounds they have to drown before they can induce a wandering pedestrian within. It was just the same in Fetter Lane. John listened to them clanging and jangling--each bell so intent and eager in its effort to make itself heard.
He thought of the country to which the families upstairs had departed; but in the country it is different. In the country, you would go to church were there no bell at all, and that gentle, sonorous note that does ring across the fields and down the river becomes one of the most soothing sounds in the world. You have only to hear it to see the old lych-gate swinging to and fro as the folk make their way up the gravel path to the church door. You have only to listen to it stealing through the meadows where the browsing cattle are steeping their noses in the dew, to see with the eye of your mind that pale, faint flicker of candle-light that creeps through the stained glass windows out into the heavy-laden air of a summer evening. A church bell is very different in the country. There is an unsophisticated note about it, a sound so far removed from the egotistical hawker crying the virtue of his wares as to make the one incomparable with the other. John envied Mrs. Brown and Mr. Morrell from the bottom of his heart--envied them at least till half-past four.
For an hour, after breakfast was finished, he sat staring into the fire he had lighted, too lonely even to work. That heartless jade, depression, one can not call her company.
Then came Mrs. Rowse to clear away the breakfast things and make his bed. He looked up with a smile as she entered.
"What sort of a day is it outside?" he asked.
"Cold, sir; and looks as if we was going to have rain."
She caught up the breakfast things, the china clattered in her fingers. He turned round a little in his chair and watched her clear away. This is loneliness--to find a sense of companionship in the woman who comes to look after one's rooms.
"Whenever a man is lonely," wrote Lamartine, "God sends him a dog." But that is not always so. Some men are not so fortunate as others. It happens sometimes that a dog is not available and then, God sends a Mrs. Rowse to clear away the breakfast things.
But Mrs. Rowse was in a hurry that morning. There was no money due to her. You would not have found the faintest suspicion of lingering in anything that she did then. Even the topic that interested her most--her daughters--had no power to distract her attention.
She was going to take them out to the country--they were going down to Denham to see her sister, as soon as her work was done--Lizzie, who stuck labels on the jam-jars in Crosse and Blackwell's, and Maud, who packed cigarettes in Lambert and Butler's.
There were those living in Peabody Buildings, who said that Lizzie would have a beautiful voice, if she'd only practise. She could sing, "Love Me and the World Is Mine." She could sing that lovely. And Maud--well, Mrs. Rowse had even got a piano in their little tenement rooms for Maud to learn on, but Maud would never practise neither. True, she could pick up just anything she heard, pick it up quite easy with the right hand, though she could only vamp, foolish-like, with the left.
Yet upon these portentous matters, Mrs. Rowse would say nothing that morning. They were going to catch a mid-day train from Marylebone down to Denham, and she had no time to waste.
"Would you mind me coming with you, Mrs. Rowse?" said John suddenly. As suddenly he regretted it, but only because of its impossibility.
There is some sort of unwritten law which says that when you accompany ladies on a journey by train, you must pay for their tickets, and all women are ladies if they do not swear or spit on the ground. You should take off your hat to everyone of them you know when in the street. It may be that they are charwomen, that they stick labels upon jam-jars in their spare hours, that they pack up little boxes of cigarettes when there is nothing else to do, but in the street, they are women--and all women, with the restrictions here mentioned, are ladies.
Now John could not possibly pay for their tickets. He could ill-afford to pay for his own. It would mean no meal the next day if he did. And here let it be said--lest any should think that his poverty is harped upon--John was always poor, except for five minutes after an excursion to the pawn-shop, and perhaps five days after the receipt of the royalties upon his work. You may be sure at least of this, that John will jingle the money in his pocket and run his finger-nail over the minted edge of the silver when he has any. If he has gold, you will see him take it out under the light of a lamp-post when it is dark, in order to make sure that the sovereign is not a shilling. On all other occasions than these, assume that he is poor,--nay, more than assume, take it for granted.
Accordingly, directly he had made this offer to accompany Mrs. Rowse and her daughters to Denham, he had to withdraw it.
"No," said he, "I wish I could come--but I'm afraid it's impossible. I've got work to do."
Quite soon after that Mrs. Rowse departed.
"Hope you'll enjoy yourselves," said he.
"We always do in the country," replied she as she put on her hat outside the door. And then--"Good-morning, sir,"--and she too had gone; the door into the street had banged again, and the whole house, from floor to roof, was empty but for the sandy cat, the tortoiseshell cat and John.
He sat on there in the stillness. Even the cats grew tired of play and were still. Then came the rain, rain that turned to sleet, that drove against the roofs outside and tried, by hiding in the corners of the chimneys, to look like snow. John thought of the tulips in Kensington Gardens. Spring can come gladsomely to England--it can come bitterly, too. Those poor people in the country! But would the country ever permit such weather as this? Even supposing it did, they would not be lonely as he was. Mr. Morrell had Mrs. Brown to talk to, and Mr. Brown had the company of Mrs. Morrell. There were Lizzie and Maud for Mrs. Rowse. Perhaps going down in the train, they would get a carriage to themselves and Lizzie would sing, "Love Me and the World Is Mine," and Maud would count cigarettes in her mind, and pack them up in her mind, or more probably forget that there ever were such things as cigarettes in the fresh delight of seeing the country with bread and cheese on all the hedges. Those young green buds on the hawthorn hedges are the pedestrian's bread and cheese. But you know that, every bit as well as I.
Well, it seemed that everyone had company but John. He took out of his pocket the last letter his mother had written him from Venice--took it out and spread it before him. If only she were there! If only her bright brown eyes were looking at him, what thousands of things there would be to say! What short stories and beginnings of new books would there not be to read her! And how sympathetically would she not listen. How frequently would she not place those dear paralysed hands of hers in his, as he read, at some new passage that she liked!
"My darling boy----"
He could hear that gentle voice of hers--like the sound you may hear in the ring of an old china tea-cup--he could hear it, as she had dictated it to his father to write----
"This is where I begin counting the days to your visit. I dare not begin sooner--too many figures always bewildered me. It is now just about three months. Your father is much better than he was, and is doing a little work these days."
And here was added in a quaint little parenthesis of his father's: "She calls it work, my dear boy, just to please me--but when old men play, they like to hear it called work. You've got to do my work. And she is so quick--she has seen I have been writing more than she has said. I shall persuade her to let this stay in nevertheless."
Then, uninterrupted for a space the letter continued.
"I'm so pleased that your work is going on so well. I thought your last story was too sad, though. Must stories end unhappily? Yours always seem to. But I think I guess. They won't always end like that. But your father says I am not to worry you on that point; that you can't paint in a tone of gold what you see in a tone of grey, and that what you see now in a tone of grey, you will as likely as not see one day in a tone of gold."
Then, here, another parenthesis.
"You will understand what I mean, my dear boy. I've read the story, and I don't think it ought to end sadly, and you will no doubt say, 'Oh, he's quite old-fashioned; he does not know that a sad ending is an artistic ending.' But that is not because I am old-fashioned. It is simply because I am old. When you are young, you see unhappy endings because you are young enough to bear the pain of them. It is only when you get older that you see otherwise. When you have had your sorrow, which, you know, only as an artist I wish for you, then you will write in another strain. Go on with your unhappy endings. Don't take any notice of us. All your work will be happy one day, and remember, you are not writing for but because of us. By the way, I think you spelt paregoric wrong."
Now again the dictation.
"Well, anyhow, though I know nothing about it, I feel you write as though you loved. You would tell me, would you not, if you did? I am sure it must be the way to write, the way, in fact, to do everything. Your father says the pictures he paints now lack strength and vigour; but I find them just as beautiful; they are so gentle."
Parenthesis.
"One can't always love as one did at twenty-six--T.G. That sounds like reverential gratitude for the fact, but you understand it is only my initials."
"He has written something again, John--and he won't tell me what it is. If he has said he is getting too old to love, don't believe him. He has just leant forward and kissed me on my forehead. I have insisted upon his writing this down. Your story about the girl in the chapel and the last candle amused us very much. It interested me especially. If it had been me, I should have fallen in love with you then and there for being so considerate. What was she like? Have you ever seen her since? I can't feel that you were meant to meet her for nothing. I have tried to think, too, what she could have been praying to St. Joseph for, but it is beyond me. It is not like a woman to pray for money for herself. Perhaps some of her relations have money troubles. That is all I can imagine, though I have thought over it every day since I got your letter. God bless you, my darling. We are waiting eagerly for the reviews of your new book. When will it be out--the exact date? I want to say a novena for it, so let me know in good time. And if you meet the Lady of St. Joseph--as you call her--again, you must promise to tell me all about it. Your father wants the rest of the sheet of note-paper on which to say something to you--so, God bless you always."
"Don't read the reviews when they come out, John. Send them along to me, and I'll sort out the best ones and send them back to you to read. As far as I can see, there are so many critics who get the personal note into their criticisms, and to read these, whether praising or blaming, won't do you any good; so send them all along to me before you look at them. The first moment you can send me a copy, of course, you will. Your loving father."
Here the letter ended. Long as it was, it might well have been longer. They were good company, those two old people, talking to him through those thin sheets of foreign paper, one breaking in upon the other with all due courtesy, just as they might with a "Finish what you have to say, my dear," in ordinary conversation.
And now they had gone to the country, too--they had left him alone. When he had folded up the letter, it was almost as if he could hear the door bang again for the third time.
He leant back in his chair with an involuntary sigh. What a few people, after all, there were in the world whom he really knew! What a few people who would seek out his company on such a day as this! He stood up and stretched out his arms above his head--it was----
He stopped. A sound had struck to his heart and set it beating, as when the bull's-eye of a target is hit.
The bell had rung! His electric bell! The electric bell which had raised him immeasureably in station above Mrs. Morrell and Mrs. Brown, who had only a knocker common to the whole house--one, in fact, of the landlord's fixtures! It had rung, and his heart was beating to the echoes of it.
In another second, he had opened his door; in another moment, he was flying down the uncarpeted wooden stairs, five at a time. At the door itself, he paused, playing with the sensation of uncertainty. Who could it be? If the honest truth be known, it scarcely mattered. Someone! Someone had come out of nowhere to keep him company. A few personalities rushed to his mind. It might be the man who sometimes illustrated his stories, an untidy individual who had a single phrase that he always introduced into every conversation--it was, "Lend me half-a-crown till to-morrow, will you?" It would be splendid if it were him. They could lunch together on the half-crown. It might be the traveller from the wholesale tailor's--a man whom he had found begging in the street, and told to come round to Number 39 whenever he was at his wit's end for a meal. That would be better still; he was a man full of experiences, full of stories from the various sleeping-houses where he spent his nights.
Supposing it were Jill! A foolish, a hopeless thought to enter the mind. She did not know where he lived. She might, though, by some freak of