CHAPTER XIXTHE MR. CHESTERTONIt was always a strain when July came round, for John to amass those seventeen odd pounds for the journey to Venice. But it was a greater strain when, having amassed it, he had some days before him in which to walk about the streets before he departed--it was a greater strain, then, not to spend it. For money, to those who have none, is merely water and it percolates through the toughest pigskin purse, finds it way somehow or other into the pocket and, once there, is in a sieve with as broad a mesh as you could need to find.It was always in these few days before his yearly exodus, that John ran across the things that one most desires to buy. Shop-keepers had a bad habit of placing their most alluring bargains in the very fore-front of the window. Everything, in fact, seemed cheaper in July, and seventeen pounds was a sum which had all the appearance of being so immense, that the detraction of thirty shillings from the hoard would make but little material difference to the bulk of it.But John had learnt by experience that if you take thirty shillings from seventeen pounds, it leaves fifteen pounds ten, an odd amount, demanding that those ten shillings be spent also to equalise matters. Then the fifteen pounds which is left is still immense and the process beginning all over again, there is finally left but a quota of what had been at first. With fifteen pounds in bank notes in his letter-case and two pounds in gold in his pocket, he found himself looking in the window of Payne and Welcome's, where a little Nankin milk jug of some unimpeachable dynasty was standing in all expectation, just waiting to catch the eye of such a person as himself who might chance to pass by.That afternoon, Jill was coming to tea--her first visit to Fetter Lane, made, as he thought, simply in honour of his departure. And that little milk jug was begging to come, too.He stood for a while and stared at it. It would not be more than fifteen shillings--expensive, too, at that. Fifteen shillings would make no impression upon so vast a sum as seventeen pounds. A voice whispered it in his ear, from behind his back,--just over his shoulder."You want a milk jug," said the voice, "and it's a beautiful blue. It will go wonderfully with the teapot and the little blue and white cups and saucers. Get it, man! Get it!" and it reminded him in a joking way, with a subtle, cunning laugh, of his philosophy when he was a boy. "What are sweets for, but to eat?" "What is money for, but to spend?"With sudden decision, he walked in; but it was not through the entrance of the jeweller's shop. He marched into the confessional box in the chapel of unredemption. There, pulling out his three five-pound notes and his two sovereigns, he planked them down upon the counter."I want ten shillings on those," said he.They were used to John's eccentricities there, but they never thought him so mad as this."Why, it's seventeen pounds," said the man."That's quite right," said John. "I counted it myself. And I want ten shillings on it."Ten shillings would feed him for a week. He strode out of the shop again with the ten shillings in his pocket and the seventeen pounds safe in the keeping of the high priest. There was a man who owed him fourteen shillings, and who, when the time came to go to Venice, might possibly be induced to part with that necessary ten, if he were asked for it as a loan. A man will willingly lend you ten shillings if he owes you fourteen; it is the paying you back that he does not like.As he passed out into the street, John kept his face rigidly averted from the little Nankin milk jug. He had played that milk jug a sly, and a nasty trick. It was really nothing to be proud about.When he returned to Number 39, there was a man waiting outside his door, a man dressed in a light-brown tweed, the colour of ripening corn. He had on a shiny-red silk tie, adorned with a pin--a horseshoe set with pearls. His face was round, fat and solemn--the solemnity that made you laugh. He put John in good spirits from the loss of the Nankin milk jug, the moment he saw him. Someone had left the door into the street open and so he had come upstairs."Who are you?" asked John."Well--my name's Chesterton, sir, Arthur Chesterton."John opened his door with the innocence of a babe, and the man followed him into the room, closely at his heels."And what do you want?" asked John.Mr. Chesterton handed him a paper. John looked it through."Yes--of course--my two quarter's rent. They shall be paid," he said easily. "There's money due to me next month."Mr. Chesterton coughed behind his hand."It must be now," he said quietly. "That is to say--I must wait here till I get it."A bailiff! And Jill was coming to tea! In another half hour she would be there! She knew he was poor; she thought Fetter Lane a terrible neighbourhood; but with all her imagination, she had not conceived anything as terrible as this.There was only one way; to explain everything. He had a lady coming to tea with him that afternoon--a lady--did he understand? Anyhow, he nodded his head. Well--it was quite impossible for her to find him there--a bailiff! It was not his fault, of course, that he was a bailiff, but he must see how impossible the position was. The little man nodded his head again. Well, would he go away; just for a short time, till they had had tea. He could return then, John promised he would let him in. He knew that once a bailiff was out of possession, he was powerless; but this was a matter of honour. On his honour he would let him in again.Mr. Chesterton blinked his eyes."Sometimes," he replied quietly--"Sometimes they tell me it's their father as is comin'--then again, if it's a woman, she says her husband'll be back in a minute and her husband's always a man with an 'orrible bad temper what's liable to do dangerous things. And sometimes, they say it's a girl they're sweet on--same as you.""But I'll swear it's true!" cried John wildly.Mr. Chesterton smiled."Wouldn't payin' the money be better than swearin'?" said he. "It's only fifteen pounds. Sometimes they gets rid of me that way--and it's the only successful way of doin' it. You see I'm inside now. I'm the nine points of the law now. If I was outside, I'd be only one--you'd be the nine, then--see. You'd be able to lock your door and make a long nose at me out of the window. Lord! the times I've said that to people--and they don't seem to see the truth of it--not they."John had every sympathy with their obtuseness. If he saw the point of it himself, it was only because he knew it would not be so in his instance."Then you won't go?" he said.Mr. Chesterton shook his head, quite patiently."Do you ever get kicked out of a place into the street?" asked John. The man was so small that the question would rise naturally to the minds of quite a lot of people.He smiled amiably."Yes--they do that sometimes. But two months, without the option, for assault ain't pleasant, you know. I shouldn't care for it myself. I'd sooner 'ave the assault, it's over quicker."There are some tragedies in life in which, if you do not find place for laughter, you become melodramatic--a sin which is unforgivable.John just saved the position in time. He sat down in a chair and laughed aloud."And till I've paid this money," he said. "I've got to put you up. Where are you going to sleep? I've only got a bedroom besides this and a cupboard that holds two hundredweight of coal on the landing."Mr. Chesterton looked about him."That settle looks comfortable enough," said he. "I've slep' worse than that." He crossed the room and felt the springs of it with his fist. "But it's a small place. I'm afraid I shall be a bit in the way.""My Lord!" John jumped up again. "You will this afternoon." He was to have told Jill many things that afternoon. Now this ruined everything. They would have to go out to tea, because there was no paying of the money. He could not redeem his seventeen pounds and settle it with that. There would be nothing left with which to go to Venice and the calculations of that little old white-haired lady who was waiting for him to put his arms about her neck had become so small, so infinitely small, that he had not the heart to add to them by so much as a figure of seven."And you don't believe that a lady's coming to tea with me?" he said excitedly.Mr. Chesterton spread out a pair of dirty hands."I know that lady so well," he said. "She's always every inch a lady who wouldn't understand the likes of me. But I'm quite easy to understand. Tell her I'm a friend of yours. I won't give the game away."Oh! It was ludicrous! The laugh came again quickly to John's lips, but as soon it died away. So much was at stake. He had pictured it all so plainly. She would be disappointed when she heard he was going. He would ask her why that look had passed across her eyes. Her answer would be evasive, and then, word by word, look by look, he would lead her to the very door of his heart until the cry--"I love you"--the most wonderful words to say--the most terribly wonderful words to mean, would be wrung from his lips into her ears.And now this imperturbable fiend of a bailiff, with his very natural incredulity and his simple way of expressing it, had come to wreck the greatest moment of his life.John looked him up and down."What sort of a friend do you think I could introduce you as?" he asked. "Do you think you look like a friend of mine?"The little man glanced down at his boots, at the light-brown tweed trousers, upturned and showing a pair of woollen socks not far removed in colour from that of his tie."Well--you never know," said he, looking up again. "I'm stayin' here, aren't I? They said you was a writer--that you wrote books. Well, have you never seen a person who wrote books, like me? Why there was a woman I 'ad to get the rent from once--a journalist, she called herself. She'd got a bit of a beard and a fair tidy moustache--and by gum, she dressed queerer than anything my old woman would ever put on. I felt quite ashamed to be stoppin' with her."John laughed again; laughed uproariously. Mr. Chesterton was so amused at the remembrance of it, that he laughed as well. Suddenly their laughter snapped, as you break a slate pencil. There came a gentle, a timid knock on the door."This is she," whispered John. "The door below was open. She's come upstairs. What the devil am I going to do?"At last the little man believed him. He really was going to see the lady this time, the lady who would never understand the likes of him, and he began to feel quite nervous. He began to feel ashamed of being a bailiff."Introduce me as a friend," he whispered--"It'll be all right--introduce me as a friend.""Sit down there, then--on that settle."Then John opened the door and Jill stepped hesitatingly into the room. Mr. Chesterton rose awkwardly to his feet.This was the lady, materialised at last. From long habit of summing up in a glance the people with whom he had to deal, he made his estimation of Jill in a moment. The quietness of her voice as she said--"I was rather afraid to knock, for fear I had made a mistake"--that gentleness in the depth of the eyes which admits of no sudden understanding, yet as gently asks for it--the firm repose of the lips already moulded for the strength which comes with maturity, and all set in a face whose whole expression was that innocence of a mind which knows and has put aside until such moment when life shall demand contemplation. This--there was no doubt of it--was the lady who would not understand the likes of him.John shook hands with her. Mr. Chesterton took it all in with his little solemn eyes. He was in the way. Never had he been so much in the way before. As their hands touched, he felt that John was telling her just how much in the way he was."May I introduce you," said John, turning, when that touching of the hands was done with. "This is my friend--Mr. Chesterton. Miss----" he paused. It seemed sacrilege to give her name to a bailiff, and the little man felt sensitively, in his boots every moment of that pause. His red socks were burning him. He could see the colour of his tie in every reflection. It was even creeping up into his cheeks."Miss Dealtry."He was going to come forward and shake hands, but she bowed. Then, when she saw his confusion, out, generously, came her hand."Are you a writer, too?" she asked.John was about to interpose; but the little man wanted to stand well with her. He felt that his socks and his tie and his corn-coloured suit ought all to be explained, and what more lucid or more natural explanation than this."Oh, yes, I'm a writer," he said quickly. "Books, you know--and a little journalism--just to--to keep me goin'--to amuse myself like. Journalism's a change, you know--what you might call a rest, when your always writin' books----" Then he remembered a quotation, but where from, he could not say, "Of the writin' of books, you know--at least, so they say--there's no end." And he smiled with pleasure to think how colloquially he had delivered the phrase."Why, of course, I know your work," said Jill--"Aren't youtheMr. Chesterton?"The little man's face beamed. That was just what they all called him--theMr. Chesterton."That's right," said he delightedly, "the one and only." And under the mantle of genius and celebrity his quaintnesses became witticisms, his merest phrase a paradox.CHAPTER XXWHY JILL PRAYED TO ST. JOSEPHLittle as you might have imagined it, there was a heart beneath that corn-coloured waistcoat of Mr. Chesterton's. His old woman, as he called her, would have vouched for that."He may have to do some dirty tricks in his job," she had said of him. "But 'e's got a 'eart, 'as my young man, if you know where to touch it."And seemingly, Jill had known; tho' the knowledge was unconscious. It was just that she had believed--that was all. She had believed he was the Mr. Chesterton, presumably a great writer, a man to command respect. He had never commanded respect before in his life. Abuse! Plenty of that! So much of it that his skin had become hardened and tough. But respect--never.Ah! She was a lady, certainly--a delightful, a charming young lady. He could quite believe that she would not understand the likes of him. He would even dare to swear, and did, when eventually he went home to his old woman, that she had never heard of a bailiff in her life.And while John laid out the tea things, she talked to him all the time as if he were a great man--bless her little heart! He was a fine fellow, whoever this Chesterton was, and he seemed to have said some mighty smart things. Anyhow, if writing books was not a paying game, as, judging by this young Mr. Grey, it would not seem to be, it certainly brought one a deal of credit. The little bailiff basked in the light of it, feeling like a beggar who has awakened in the King's bed-chamber, ensconced in the King's bed. Only when, occasionally he caught sight of the expression on John's face, did he realise how abominably he must be in the way.At last, when tea was ready, the kettle spitting on the little spirit stove in the grate, Mr. Chesterton rose to his feet. A look had passed between those two, a look unmistakable to his eyes--a look of mute appeal from her, an answering look of despair from John. Had it been John alone, he would have taken no notice. John had been making grimaces to himself for the last quarter of an hour; besides, he had brought it on himself. Young men should pay their rent up to time. He had little or no sympathy for John. But when he saw that look in Jill's eyes, realising that it was only her gentle politeness which made her talk to him so nicely--only her gentle politeness and the kudos which he had stolen from the name of Chesterton--then, he felt he could stay there no longer. He had always had a tender heart for women, so long as they were not unsexed by journalism, by a bit of a beard and a fair tidy moustache. He had no sympathy for them then if their rents were overdue. But now, this was a different matter. That look in Jill's eyes had cut him to the quick."I've got to be goin' now, Mr. Grey," he said.John's mouth opened in amazement. He had just decided in his mind that Kensington Gardens was the only place left to them from this abominable interloper."Going?" he echoed. It might almost have seemed as if he were intensely sorry, his surprise was so great."Yes--goin'," said Mr. Chesterton with a look that meant the absolute certainty of his return. "Good-bye, Miss Dealtry--you'll excuse me runnin' away, won't you? Time and tide--they won't wait, you know--they're just like a pair o' children goin' to a circus. They don't want to miss nuthin'."Now that was his own, his very own! He had been determined all through their conversation to work in something of his own.The greatMr. Chesterton had never said that! This credit of being another man, and gleaning all the approbation that did not belong to him, had brought with it its moments of remorse, and he longed to win her approval for something that was truly, really his.He looked proudly at John as he said it. He laughed loudly at the thought of the two children dragging at their mother's hands all the way to the circus. It was a real picture to him. He could see it plainly. He had been one of those children himself once. Time and tide--like a pair o' children goin' to a circus! He thought it excellent--good, and he laughed and laughed, till suddenly he realised that John was not even smiling. Then wasn't it funny after all? Wasn't it clever? Yet the things which this Mr. Chesterton was reputed to have written, were quite unintelligible to him."The apple which Eve ate in the Garden of Eden was an orange and the peel has been lying about ever since."Where was the sense in that? How could an apple be an orange. But Time and Tide, like a pair o' children going to a circus! Oh--he thought it excellent.Then, with a pitiable sensation of failure, he turned in almost an attitude of appeal to Jill. But she was smiling. She was amused. Then there was something in it after all! It had amused her. He held out his hand, feeling a wild inclination to grip it fiercely and bless her for that smile."Good-bye," said he in his best and most elaborate of manners. "I'm very pleased to have made your acquaintance," and he marched, with head erect, to the door.John followed him."I'll just come down with you," he said.As soon as they were outside and the door was closed, he caught the little man's hand warmly in his."You're a brick," said he. "You're a brick. I'll let you in whenever you come back--you needn't be afraid."Mr. Chesterton stopped on the stairs as they descended."I wouldn't have done it," he said emphatically--"if it wasn't that she was a lady as wouldn't understand the likes of me. I tell you, she's a sort of lady as I shall never come across again,--not even in my line of business,--bless her heart." He descended another step or so, then stopped once more. "See the way she smiled at that what I said. I tell you, she's got a nicer sense of understandin' than what you have."John smiled."I know she has," said he."I suppose you didn't think that clever, what I said?""Oh, yes, I do--I do. I don't even thinktheMr. Chesterton would have thought of that.""Don'tcher really, now? Don'tcher really?"John had not smiled; but this--well, of course, this made up for everything.TheMr. Chesterton would not have thought of Time and Tide being like a pair of children goin' to a circus! Now, if he were to write that and a few other things like it, which he dared say he could think of easily enough, he, too, might be a great man whose name would be on the lips of such women as that perfect little lady upstairs. Then shewouldunderstand the likes of him."Then you think I suited the part?" he said cheerfully at the door."I think, under the circumstances and everything being considered, you did it wonderfully," said John. "And as for your being good enough to trust me--well--it's finer than all the epigrams in the world."He wrung his hand once more and the little man departed happily down the Lane, thinking of all the clever things that he would say to his old woman when eventually he got home. But--Time and Tide, like a pair of children--he knew he'd never beat that. She had smiled at it. She had thought it clever. The other things that came laboriously into his mind as he walked down the Lane, were not a patch on it.The moment John had closed the door, he flew upstairs."Well--what do you think ofthe greatMr. Chesterton?" he asked with a laugh."I do not think his conversation is nearly as good as his writing," said Jill."But you smiled at that last thing he said.""Yes, I know." She explained it first with her eyes and then, "He was going," she added--"and I think it must have been relief."John's heart thumped. A light of daring blazed in his eyes. It was relief! She was glad to be alone with him! This meant more than the look of disappointment. He had crossed the room, found himself beside her, found her hand gripped fiercely in his before he realised that he had obeyed the volition to do so."You wanted us to be alone?" he whispered."Yes--I've got a lot I want to say."Had the moment not been such as this, he would have caught the note of pain that vibrated in her voice; but he was in the whirlwind of his love. It was deafening in his ears, it was blinding in his eyes; because then he knew she loved him also. He heard nothing. He saw nothing. Her hand was to his lips and he was kissing every finger.Presently he held her hand to him and looked up."You knew this," he said--"didn't you? You knew this was bound to be?"She bent her head."I don't know what it means," he went on passionately. "I haven't the faintest idea what it means. I love you--that's all. You mean everything to me. But I can't ask you to marry me. It wouldn't be fair." A thought of Mr. Chesterton rushed across his mind. "I--I can barely keep myself in rooms like these. I couldn't keep you. So I suppose I haven't a moment's right to say one of these things to you. But I had to say them. You knew I was going to say them--didn't you--Jill--my Jill--you knew--didn't you?"She let him take both her hands in his; she let him drag them to his shoulders and press them there. But she bent her head forward. She hid her face from his. There was that which she had to tell him, things which she had to say, that must be told before he could blame himself any more for the love he had offered. She had known it was coming. He was quite right; she had known all he was going to say, realised it ever since that day when they had quarrelled in Kensington Gardens. All the moments between until this, had been a wonderful anticipation. A thousand times her breath had caught; a thousand times her heart had thumped, thinking he was about to speak; and through it all, just these few weeks or so, the anxious longing, the tireless praying that what she had now to say need never be said.For a little while she let him hold her so. It would be the last time. God had been talking, or He had been sleeping, and St. Joseph--perhaps he had taken John's gift of generosity rather than that last candle of her's, for the petition she had made on that 18th of March in the Sardinia St. Chapel had not been answered.Presently she looked up into his eyes."You mustn't blame yourself, John," she said gently. "It is I who deserve all the blame.""Why?" he said--"why?""Because--not for the reason you said--but for something else, this is all impossible. I know it is the most wonderful thing that will ever be in my life. I know that. I'm sure of it. But something has happened since I saw you last, which makes it impossible for us to see each other again.""Your people have found out? They forbid it?"She shook her head."No--no--it's not that. They know nothing. I must go back in order to explain it to you."Still holding his hand, she slipped into a chair, motioning him to draw up another beside her."You remember when we first met?"He nodded."Did you ever wonder why I was praying to St. Joseph?""Wonder?" he echoed. "I've thought of a thousand different things.""I don't suppose you've thought of the right one," said Jill. "My father's not rich, you know; not so rich as you might expect from his position and the house where we live. At one time we were better off, but they still try to live on at Prince of Wales' Terrace, though they can't really afford it. Father lost money in speculation, and, before that, he had put down Ronald's name for Eton. Then the chances of his ever going there seemed to dwindle to nothing. It was when it almost seemed as if we must leave the house in Kensington, that a friend of father's asked me to marry him. He was over forty--some years older than me and I----""You refused him, of course," said John quickly. At twenty-six, forty years can seem the millennium when they stand in your way."Yes--I--I refused. But he did not take my refusal. He asked me to think about it; that he would wait--would even wait a year. Then, I believe, he must have said something to father, besides telling him that I had refused, because father talked for a long while to me afterwards and mother, too. They showed me as plainly as they could, though, from their point of view alone, what an excellent match it would be. Father told me exactly what his financial position was--a thing he had never done before. I had always thought him to be quite rich. Then, at the end, he said he had invested in some speculation which he believed was going to set him quite right again, enable us to stay on in Kensington and make it quite possible for Ronald to go to Eton. But that if this failed, as he did not believe it would, then he hoped that I would reconsider my refusal to his friend. I say he hoped; but he did not put it in that way. He showed me that it would be my duty--that I should be spoiling Ronald's chances and mother's life and his, if I did not accept."She paused. She waited for John to say something; but he sat there beside her with his lips set tight and his eyes unmoving."It was on the 18th of March, he told me that," she continued--"the day that I went to pray to St. Joseph that his speculation might not fail--the day I met you. Then--only the day before yesterday--they told me. The prayer had been no good. I always said poor St. Joseph was no good to me.""He's lost his money?" said John hoarsely. He let her hand fall and moved away."Yes. I--I've got to accept."CHAPTER XXITHE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL NONSENSE"Then you'll never know my people in Venice," said John presently. He had suddenly remembered that there was nothing to tell the little old white-haired lady now. To all the thousand questions which she would whisper into his ears, only evasive answers could be given her."I told my mother about you," he went on slowly. "I told her how we met. I told her that you were praying to St. Joseph and she's been wondering ever since--like me"--the emotion rose in his throat--"she's been wondering what you could have had to ask."He came back to the arm-chair--the arm-chair in which he did his work--and quietly sat down. Then, as quietly, as naturally as if she had done it a thousand times before, Jill seated herself on the floor at his feet and his arm wound gently round her neck."Did your mother know we met again?" she asked presently."Yes--I told her about the first time in Kensington Gardens. I haven't told her any more. I dared not.""Dared not?" She looked up quickly."No--it's the hope of her life to see me happy--to see me married. They think I make more money than I do, because I won't take anything from them. They believe I'm in a position to marry and, in nearly every letter she writes, she makes some quaint sort of allusion to it. I believe already her mind is set on you. She's so awfully cute. She reads every single word between the lines, and sometimes sees more what has been in my mind when I wrote to her, than I even did myself."Jill's interest wakened. Suddenly this old lady, far away in Venice, began to live for her."What is she like?" she asked--"Describe her. You've never told me what she's like."Diffidently, John began. At first it seemed wasting their last moments together to be talking of someone else; but, word by word, he became more interested, more absorbed. It was entering Jill into his life, making her a greater part of it than she would have been had she gone away knowing nothing more of him than these rooms in Fetter Lane. At last the little old white-haired lady, with those pathetically powerless hands of hers, was there, alive, in the room with them.Jill looked up at him with such eyes as concealed their tears."She means a lot to you," she said gently."Yes--she means a great deal.""And yet, do you know, from your description of her, I seemed more to gather how much you meant to her. She lives in you.""I know she does.""And your father? Thomas Grey--of the port of Venice?" She tried to smile at the remembrance which that brought."Yes--he lives in me, too. They both of them do. He, for the work I shall do, carrying on where he left off; she, for the woman I shall love and the children I know she prays I may have before she dies. That is the essence of true fatherhood and true motherhood. They are perfectly content to die when they are once assured that their work and their love is going on living in their child."She thought of it all. She tried in one grasp of her mind to hold all that that meant, but could only find herself wondering if the little old white-haired lady would be disappointed in her, would disapprove of the duty she was about to fulfil, if she knew.After a long pause, she asked to be told where they lived; to be told all--everything about them; and in a mood of inspiration, John wove her a romance."You've got to see Venice," he began, "you've got to see a city of slender towers and white domes, sleeping in the water like a mass of water lilies. You've got to see dark water-ways, mysterious threads of shadow, binding all these flowers of stone together. You've got to hear the silence in which the whispers of lovers of a thousand years ago, and the cries of men, betrayed, all breathe and echo in every bush. These are the only noises in Venice--these and the plash of the gondolier's oar or his call--'Ohé!' as he rounds a sudden corner. You've got to see it all in the night--at night, when the great white lily flowers are blackened in shadow, and the darkened water-ways are lost in an impenetrable depth of gloom. You've got to hear the stealthy creeping of a gondola and the lapping of the water against the slimy stones as it hurries by. In every little burning light that flickers in a barred window up above, you must be able to see plotters at work, conspirators planning deeds of evil or a lover in his mistress' arms. You've got to see magic, mystery, tragedy, and romance, all compassed by grey stone and green water, to know the sort of place where my mother and father live, to know the place where I should have taken you, if--if things had been different.""Should we have gone there together?" she said in a breath."Yes--I've always sort of dreamed, when I've thought of the woman with God's good gift of understanding, I've always sort of dreamed of what we should do together there."She looked up into his face. The picture of it all was there in his eyes. She saw it as well. She saw the vision of all she was losing and, as you play with a memory that hurts, as a mother handles the tiny faded shoe of the baby she has lost, she wanted to see more of it."Should we have gone there together?" she whispered.He smiled down at her--mock bravery--a smile that helped him bear the pain."Yes,--every year--as long as they lived and every year afterwards, if you wished. Every morning, we'd have got up early--you know those early mornings when the sun's white and all the shadows are sort of misty and the water looks cleaner and fresher than at any other time because the dew has purged it. We'd have got up early and come downstairs and outside in the little Rio, the gondolier would be blowing on his fingers, waiting for us. They can be cold those early mornings in Venice. Then we'd have gone to the Giudecca, where all the ships lie basking in the sun--all the ships that have come from Trieste, from Greece, from the mysterious East, up through the Adriatic, threading their way through the patchwork of islands, past Fort San Nicolo and Lido till they reach the Giudecca Canal. They lie there in the sun in the early mornings like huge, big water-spiders, and up from all the cabins you'll see a little curl of pale blue smoke where the sailors are cooking their breakfasts.""And how early will that be?" asked Jill in a whisper."Oh--six o'clock, perhaps.""Then I shall be awfully sleepy. I never wake up till eight o'clock and even then it's not properly waking up.""Well, then, you'll put your head on my shoulder and you'll go to sleep. It's a wonderful place to sleep in, is a gondola. We'll go away down towards Lido and you can go to sleep.""But the gondolier?""Oh"--he laughed gently. "The hood's up--he stands behind the hood. He can't see. And if he can, what does that matter? He understands. A gondolier is not a London cabby. He plies that oar of his mechanically. He's probably dreaming, too, miles away from us. There are some places in the world where it is natural for a man to love a woman, where it isn't a spectacle, as it is here, exciting sordid curiosity, and Venice is one of them. Well, then, you'll go to sleep, with your head on my shoulder. And when we're coming back again, I shall wake you up--how shall I wake you?"He leant over her. Her eyes were in Venice already. Her head was on his shoulder. She was asleep. How should he wake her? He bent still lower, till his face touched hers."I shall kiss you," he whispered--"I shall kiss your eyes, and they'll open." And he kissed her eyes--and they closed."We'll go back to breakfast, then," he went on, scarcely noticing how subtly the tense had changed since he had begun. "What do you think you'd like for breakfast?""Oh--anything--it doesn't matter much what one eats, does it?""Then we'll eat anything," he smiled--"whatever they give us. But we shall be hungry, you know. We shall be awfully hungry.""Well," said Jill under her breath--"I'm sure they'll give us enough. And what do we do then?""After breakfast?""Yes.""Well--I finish just one moment before you do, and then I get up, pretending that I'm going to the window."She looked up surprised."Pretending? What for?""Because I want to get behind your chair.""But why?""Because I want to put my arms round your neck and kiss you again."He showed her how. He showed her what he meant. She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes once more."When, without complaint, you take whatever is given you, that's the only grace for such a meal as that. Well--when we've said grace--then out we go again.""In the garden?""Yes--to the Palazzo Capello in the Rio Marin.""That's where your people live?""Yes. Well, perhaps, we take them out, or we go and sit in the garden. I expect father will want us to go and sit in the garden and see the things he's planted; and mother of course'll consent, though she'll be longing to go out to the Piazza San Marco and look at the lace in the shops under the Arcade.""Well, then, I'll go out with her----" said Jill."If you go, I go," said John.She laughed, and forced him to a compromise. He would stay in the garden for half an hour; it need not be more."There might be things we wanted to buy in the shops," she said--"shops where you might not be allowed to come." So he could understand that it ought to be half an hour. But it must not be more."And then--what then?" she asked."Well, then, directly after lunch, we'd take a gondola once more and set off for Murano.""Directly after? Wouldn't it be cruel to leave them so soon? If we only go for a month every year, wouldn't it be cruel?"This is where a man is selfish. This is where a woman is kind. It was natural enough, but he had not thought so much of them.He consented that they should stay till tea-time was over--tea in those little, wee cups without any handles, which the little old white-haired lady could just manage to grasp in her twisted hands, and accordingly, loved so much because they did not jeer at her powerlessness as did the many things which she had once been able to hold."You didn't want not to come out with me--did you?" he asked when the tea-time picture had passed before his eyes."Not--not want--but you'd get tired, perhaps, if you saw too much of me alone.""Get tired!"Three score years and ten were the utmost that a man might hope for in this life. Get tired!Well, then, tea was over at last. The light of a pearl was creeping into the sky. That was the most wonderful time of all to cross the Lagoon to Murano."Then it was much better we stayed to tea," she whispered.Much better, since the shadows were deepening under the arches, and he could take her head in his hands and kiss her--as he kissed her then--without being seen. Oh--it was much better that they had stayed to tea.Now they had started, past the Chiesa San Giacomo into the Grand Canal, down the broad waterway, past the Ca' d'Oro, which the Contarini built, to the narrow Rio di Felice; then out into the Sacca della Misericordia, and there, before them, the broad stretch of the silent Lagoon--a lake of opal water that never ended, but as silently became the sky, with no line of light or shade to mark the alchemy of change."And across this," said John,--"with their hour glasses spilling out the sand, come the gondolas with the dead, to the cemetery that lies in the water in the midst of the Lagoon. They churn up the water with the speed they go, and if you ask a gondolier why they go so fast, he will tell you it is because the dead cannot pay for that last journey of theirs. That is their humour in the city they callLa citta del riso sangue. But we shall creep through the water--we can pay--at least----" he thought of his two quarters' rent--"I suppose we can. We shall steer through the water like the shadow of a little cloud gliding across the sea. Oh----" he pressed his hands to his eyes--"but it would be wonderful there with you! And at night, when the whole city is full of darkness--strange, silent, mysterious darkness--where every lighted taper that burns and every lamp that is lit seems to illuminate a deed of mystery, we would go out into the Grand Canal, when we had said good-night to those dear old people of mine and we'd listen to them singing--and, oh,--they sing so badly, but it sounds so wonderful there. At last--one by one, the lights would begin to flicker out. The windows that were alive and awake would close their eyes and hide in the mysterious darkness; a huge white lamp of a moon would glide up out of the breast of the Adriatic, and then----""Then?" she whispered."Then we should turn back to the little room amongst all those other little rooms in the great darkness--the gondolier would row home, and I should be left alone with my arms tight round you and my head resting on the gentlest place in the world."He lifted his hands above his head--he laughed bitterly with the unreality of it all."What beautiful nonsense all this is," said he.She looked up with the tears burning in her eyes. She looked up and her glance fell upon a picture that his father had painted and given him--a picture of the Rialto lifting with its white arches over the green water. She pointed to it. He followed with his eyes the white line of her finger."Then that," said Jill, and her voice quivered--"that's the City--the City of Beautiful Nonsense."
CHAPTER XIX
THE MR. CHESTERTON
It was always a strain when July came round, for John to amass those seventeen odd pounds for the journey to Venice. But it was a greater strain when, having amassed it, he had some days before him in which to walk about the streets before he departed--it was a greater strain, then, not to spend it. For money, to those who have none, is merely water and it percolates through the toughest pigskin purse, finds it way somehow or other into the pocket and, once there, is in a sieve with as broad a mesh as you could need to find.
It was always in these few days before his yearly exodus, that John ran across the things that one most desires to buy. Shop-keepers had a bad habit of placing their most alluring bargains in the very fore-front of the window. Everything, in fact, seemed cheaper in July, and seventeen pounds was a sum which had all the appearance of being so immense, that the detraction of thirty shillings from the hoard would make but little material difference to the bulk of it.
But John had learnt by experience that if you take thirty shillings from seventeen pounds, it leaves fifteen pounds ten, an odd amount, demanding that those ten shillings be spent also to equalise matters. Then the fifteen pounds which is left is still immense and the process beginning all over again, there is finally left but a quota of what had been at first. With fifteen pounds in bank notes in his letter-case and two pounds in gold in his pocket, he found himself looking in the window of Payne and Welcome's, where a little Nankin milk jug of some unimpeachable dynasty was standing in all expectation, just waiting to catch the eye of such a person as himself who might chance to pass by.
That afternoon, Jill was coming to tea--her first visit to Fetter Lane, made, as he thought, simply in honour of his departure. And that little milk jug was begging to come, too.
He stood for a while and stared at it. It would not be more than fifteen shillings--expensive, too, at that. Fifteen shillings would make no impression upon so vast a sum as seventeen pounds. A voice whispered it in his ear, from behind his back,--just over his shoulder.
"You want a milk jug," said the voice, "and it's a beautiful blue. It will go wonderfully with the teapot and the little blue and white cups and saucers. Get it, man! Get it!" and it reminded him in a joking way, with a subtle, cunning laugh, of his philosophy when he was a boy. "What are sweets for, but to eat?" "What is money for, but to spend?"
With sudden decision, he walked in; but it was not through the entrance of the jeweller's shop. He marched into the confessional box in the chapel of unredemption. There, pulling out his three five-pound notes and his two sovereigns, he planked them down upon the counter.
"I want ten shillings on those," said he.
They were used to John's eccentricities there, but they never thought him so mad as this.
"Why, it's seventeen pounds," said the man.
"That's quite right," said John. "I counted it myself. And I want ten shillings on it."
Ten shillings would feed him for a week. He strode out of the shop again with the ten shillings in his pocket and the seventeen pounds safe in the keeping of the high priest. There was a man who owed him fourteen shillings, and who, when the time came to go to Venice, might possibly be induced to part with that necessary ten, if he were asked for it as a loan. A man will willingly lend you ten shillings if he owes you fourteen; it is the paying you back that he does not like.
As he passed out into the street, John kept his face rigidly averted from the little Nankin milk jug. He had played that milk jug a sly, and a nasty trick. It was really nothing to be proud about.
When he returned to Number 39, there was a man waiting outside his door, a man dressed in a light-brown tweed, the colour of ripening corn. He had on a shiny-red silk tie, adorned with a pin--a horseshoe set with pearls. His face was round, fat and solemn--the solemnity that made you laugh. He put John in good spirits from the loss of the Nankin milk jug, the moment he saw him. Someone had left the door into the street open and so he had come upstairs.
"Who are you?" asked John.
"Well--my name's Chesterton, sir, Arthur Chesterton."
John opened his door with the innocence of a babe, and the man followed him into the room, closely at his heels.
"And what do you want?" asked John.
Mr. Chesterton handed him a paper. John looked it through.
"Yes--of course--my two quarter's rent. They shall be paid," he said easily. "There's money due to me next month."
Mr. Chesterton coughed behind his hand.
"It must be now," he said quietly. "That is to say--I must wait here till I get it."
A bailiff! And Jill was coming to tea! In another half hour she would be there! She knew he was poor; she thought Fetter Lane a terrible neighbourhood; but with all her imagination, she had not conceived anything as terrible as this.
There was only one way; to explain everything. He had a lady coming to tea with him that afternoon--a lady--did he understand? Anyhow, he nodded his head. Well--it was quite impossible for her to find him there--a bailiff! It was not his fault, of course, that he was a bailiff, but he must see how impossible the position was. The little man nodded his head again. Well, would he go away; just for a short time, till they had had tea. He could return then, John promised he would let him in. He knew that once a bailiff was out of possession, he was powerless; but this was a matter of honour. On his honour he would let him in again.
Mr. Chesterton blinked his eyes.
"Sometimes," he replied quietly--"Sometimes they tell me it's their father as is comin'--then again, if it's a woman, she says her husband'll be back in a minute and her husband's always a man with an 'orrible bad temper what's liable to do dangerous things. And sometimes, they say it's a girl they're sweet on--same as you."
"But I'll swear it's true!" cried John wildly.
Mr. Chesterton smiled.
"Wouldn't payin' the money be better than swearin'?" said he. "It's only fifteen pounds. Sometimes they gets rid of me that way--and it's the only successful way of doin' it. You see I'm inside now. I'm the nine points of the law now. If I was outside, I'd be only one--you'd be the nine, then--see. You'd be able to lock your door and make a long nose at me out of the window. Lord! the times I've said that to people--and they don't seem to see the truth of it--not they."
John had every sympathy with their obtuseness. If he saw the point of it himself, it was only because he knew it would not be so in his instance.
"Then you won't go?" he said.
Mr. Chesterton shook his head, quite patiently.
"Do you ever get kicked out of a place into the street?" asked John. The man was so small that the question would rise naturally to the minds of quite a lot of people.
He smiled amiably.
"Yes--they do that sometimes. But two months, without the option, for assault ain't pleasant, you know. I shouldn't care for it myself. I'd sooner 'ave the assault, it's over quicker."
There are some tragedies in life in which, if you do not find place for laughter, you become melodramatic--a sin which is unforgivable.
John just saved the position in time. He sat down in a chair and laughed aloud.
"And till I've paid this money," he said. "I've got to put you up. Where are you going to sleep? I've only got a bedroom besides this and a cupboard that holds two hundredweight of coal on the landing."
Mr. Chesterton looked about him.
"That settle looks comfortable enough," said he. "I've slep' worse than that." He crossed the room and felt the springs of it with his fist. "But it's a small place. I'm afraid I shall be a bit in the way."
"My Lord!" John jumped up again. "You will this afternoon." He was to have told Jill many things that afternoon. Now this ruined everything. They would have to go out to tea, because there was no paying of the money. He could not redeem his seventeen pounds and settle it with that. There would be nothing left with which to go to Venice and the calculations of that little old white-haired lady who was waiting for him to put his arms about her neck had become so small, so infinitely small, that he had not the heart to add to them by so much as a figure of seven.
"And you don't believe that a lady's coming to tea with me?" he said excitedly.
Mr. Chesterton spread out a pair of dirty hands.
"I know that lady so well," he said. "She's always every inch a lady who wouldn't understand the likes of me. But I'm quite easy to understand. Tell her I'm a friend of yours. I won't give the game away."
Oh! It was ludicrous! The laugh came again quickly to John's lips, but as soon it died away. So much was at stake. He had pictured it all so plainly. She would be disappointed when she heard he was going. He would ask her why that look had passed across her eyes. Her answer would be evasive, and then, word by word, look by look, he would lead her to the very door of his heart until the cry--"I love you"--the most wonderful words to say--the most terribly wonderful words to mean, would be wrung from his lips into her ears.
And now this imperturbable fiend of a bailiff, with his very natural incredulity and his simple way of expressing it, had come to wreck the greatest moment of his life.
John looked him up and down.
"What sort of a friend do you think I could introduce you as?" he asked. "Do you think you look like a friend of mine?"
The little man glanced down at his boots, at the light-brown tweed trousers, upturned and showing a pair of woollen socks not far removed in colour from that of his tie.
"Well--you never know," said he, looking up again. "I'm stayin' here, aren't I? They said you was a writer--that you wrote books. Well, have you never seen a person who wrote books, like me? Why there was a woman I 'ad to get the rent from once--a journalist, she called herself. She'd got a bit of a beard and a fair tidy moustache--and by gum, she dressed queerer than anything my old woman would ever put on. I felt quite ashamed to be stoppin' with her."
John laughed again; laughed uproariously. Mr. Chesterton was so amused at the remembrance of it, that he laughed as well. Suddenly their laughter snapped, as you break a slate pencil. There came a gentle, a timid knock on the door.
"This is she," whispered John. "The door below was open. She's come upstairs. What the devil am I going to do?"
At last the little man believed him. He really was going to see the lady this time, the lady who would never understand the likes of him, and he began to feel quite nervous. He began to feel ashamed of being a bailiff.
"Introduce me as a friend," he whispered--"It'll be all right--introduce me as a friend."
"Sit down there, then--on that settle."
Then John opened the door and Jill stepped hesitatingly into the room. Mr. Chesterton rose awkwardly to his feet.
This was the lady, materialised at last. From long habit of summing up in a glance the people with whom he had to deal, he made his estimation of Jill in a moment. The quietness of her voice as she said--"I was rather afraid to knock, for fear I had made a mistake"--that gentleness in the depth of the eyes which admits of no sudden understanding, yet as gently asks for it--the firm repose of the lips already moulded for the strength which comes with maturity, and all set in a face whose whole expression was that innocence of a mind which knows and has put aside until such moment when life shall demand contemplation. This--there was no doubt of it--was the lady who would not understand the likes of him.
John shook hands with her. Mr. Chesterton took it all in with his little solemn eyes. He was in the way. Never had he been so much in the way before. As their hands touched, he felt that John was telling her just how much in the way he was.
"May I introduce you," said John, turning, when that touching of the hands was done with. "This is my friend--Mr. Chesterton. Miss----" he paused. It seemed sacrilege to give her name to a bailiff, and the little man felt sensitively, in his boots every moment of that pause. His red socks were burning him. He could see the colour of his tie in every reflection. It was even creeping up into his cheeks.
"Miss Dealtry."
He was going to come forward and shake hands, but she bowed. Then, when she saw his confusion, out, generously, came her hand.
"Are you a writer, too?" she asked.
John was about to interpose; but the little man wanted to stand well with her. He felt that his socks and his tie and his corn-coloured suit ought all to be explained, and what more lucid or more natural explanation than this.
"Oh, yes, I'm a writer," he said quickly. "Books, you know--and a little journalism--just to--to keep me goin'--to amuse myself like. Journalism's a change, you know--what you might call a rest, when your always writin' books----" Then he remembered a quotation, but where from, he could not say, "Of the writin' of books, you know--at least, so they say--there's no end." And he smiled with pleasure to think how colloquially he had delivered the phrase.
"Why, of course, I know your work," said Jill--"Aren't youtheMr. Chesterton?"
The little man's face beamed. That was just what they all called him--theMr. Chesterton.
"That's right," said he delightedly, "the one and only." And under the mantle of genius and celebrity his quaintnesses became witticisms, his merest phrase a paradox.
CHAPTER XX
WHY JILL PRAYED TO ST. JOSEPH
Little as you might have imagined it, there was a heart beneath that corn-coloured waistcoat of Mr. Chesterton's. His old woman, as he called her, would have vouched for that.
"He may have to do some dirty tricks in his job," she had said of him. "But 'e's got a 'eart, 'as my young man, if you know where to touch it."
And seemingly, Jill had known; tho' the knowledge was unconscious. It was just that she had believed--that was all. She had believed he was the Mr. Chesterton, presumably a great writer, a man to command respect. He had never commanded respect before in his life. Abuse! Plenty of that! So much of it that his skin had become hardened and tough. But respect--never.
Ah! She was a lady, certainly--a delightful, a charming young lady. He could quite believe that she would not understand the likes of him. He would even dare to swear, and did, when eventually he went home to his old woman, that she had never heard of a bailiff in her life.
And while John laid out the tea things, she talked to him all the time as if he were a great man--bless her little heart! He was a fine fellow, whoever this Chesterton was, and he seemed to have said some mighty smart things. Anyhow, if writing books was not a paying game, as, judging by this young Mr. Grey, it would not seem to be, it certainly brought one a deal of credit. The little bailiff basked in the light of it, feeling like a beggar who has awakened in the King's bed-chamber, ensconced in the King's bed. Only when, occasionally he caught sight of the expression on John's face, did he realise how abominably he must be in the way.
At last, when tea was ready, the kettle spitting on the little spirit stove in the grate, Mr. Chesterton rose to his feet. A look had passed between those two, a look unmistakable to his eyes--a look of mute appeal from her, an answering look of despair from John. Had it been John alone, he would have taken no notice. John had been making grimaces to himself for the last quarter of an hour; besides, he had brought it on himself. Young men should pay their rent up to time. He had little or no sympathy for John. But when he saw that look in Jill's eyes, realising that it was only her gentle politeness which made her talk to him so nicely--only her gentle politeness and the kudos which he had stolen from the name of Chesterton--then, he felt he could stay there no longer. He had always had a tender heart for women, so long as they were not unsexed by journalism, by a bit of a beard and a fair tidy moustache. He had no sympathy for them then if their rents were overdue. But now, this was a different matter. That look in Jill's eyes had cut him to the quick.
"I've got to be goin' now, Mr. Grey," he said.
John's mouth opened in amazement. He had just decided in his mind that Kensington Gardens was the only place left to them from this abominable interloper.
"Going?" he echoed. It might almost have seemed as if he were intensely sorry, his surprise was so great.
"Yes--goin'," said Mr. Chesterton with a look that meant the absolute certainty of his return. "Good-bye, Miss Dealtry--you'll excuse me runnin' away, won't you? Time and tide--they won't wait, you know--they're just like a pair o' children goin' to a circus. They don't want to miss nuthin'."
Now that was his own, his very own! He had been determined all through their conversation to work in something of his own.The greatMr. Chesterton had never said that! This credit of being another man, and gleaning all the approbation that did not belong to him, had brought with it its moments of remorse, and he longed to win her approval for something that was truly, really his.
He looked proudly at John as he said it. He laughed loudly at the thought of the two children dragging at their mother's hands all the way to the circus. It was a real picture to him. He could see it plainly. He had been one of those children himself once. Time and tide--like a pair o' children goin' to a circus! He thought it excellent--good, and he laughed and laughed, till suddenly he realised that John was not even smiling. Then wasn't it funny after all? Wasn't it clever? Yet the things which this Mr. Chesterton was reputed to have written, were quite unintelligible to him.
"The apple which Eve ate in the Garden of Eden was an orange and the peel has been lying about ever since."
Where was the sense in that? How could an apple be an orange. But Time and Tide, like a pair o' children going to a circus! Oh--he thought it excellent.
Then, with a pitiable sensation of failure, he turned in almost an attitude of appeal to Jill. But she was smiling. She was amused. Then there was something in it after all! It had amused her. He held out his hand, feeling a wild inclination to grip it fiercely and bless her for that smile.
"Good-bye," said he in his best and most elaborate of manners. "I'm very pleased to have made your acquaintance," and he marched, with head erect, to the door.
John followed him.
"I'll just come down with you," he said.
As soon as they were outside and the door was closed, he caught the little man's hand warmly in his.
"You're a brick," said he. "You're a brick. I'll let you in whenever you come back--you needn't be afraid."
Mr. Chesterton stopped on the stairs as they descended.
"I wouldn't have done it," he said emphatically--"if it wasn't that she was a lady as wouldn't understand the likes of me. I tell you, she's a sort of lady as I shall never come across again,--not even in my line of business,--bless her heart." He descended another step or so, then stopped once more. "See the way she smiled at that what I said. I tell you, she's got a nicer sense of understandin' than what you have."
John smiled.
"I know she has," said he.
"I suppose you didn't think that clever, what I said?"
"Oh, yes, I do--I do. I don't even thinktheMr. Chesterton would have thought of that."
"Don'tcher really, now? Don'tcher really?"
John had not smiled; but this--well, of course, this made up for everything.TheMr. Chesterton would not have thought of Time and Tide being like a pair of children goin' to a circus! Now, if he were to write that and a few other things like it, which he dared say he could think of easily enough, he, too, might be a great man whose name would be on the lips of such women as that perfect little lady upstairs. Then shewouldunderstand the likes of him.
"Then you think I suited the part?" he said cheerfully at the door.
"I think, under the circumstances and everything being considered, you did it wonderfully," said John. "And as for your being good enough to trust me--well--it's finer than all the epigrams in the world."
He wrung his hand once more and the little man departed happily down the Lane, thinking of all the clever things that he would say to his old woman when eventually he got home. But--Time and Tide, like a pair of children--he knew he'd never beat that. She had smiled at it. She had thought it clever. The other things that came laboriously into his mind as he walked down the Lane, were not a patch on it.
The moment John had closed the door, he flew upstairs.
"Well--what do you think ofthe greatMr. Chesterton?" he asked with a laugh.
"I do not think his conversation is nearly as good as his writing," said Jill.
"But you smiled at that last thing he said."
"Yes, I know." She explained it first with her eyes and then, "He was going," she added--"and I think it must have been relief."
John's heart thumped. A light of daring blazed in his eyes. It was relief! She was glad to be alone with him! This meant more than the look of disappointment. He had crossed the room, found himself beside her, found her hand gripped fiercely in his before he realised that he had obeyed the volition to do so.
"You wanted us to be alone?" he whispered.
"Yes--I've got a lot I want to say."
Had the moment not been such as this, he would have caught the note of pain that vibrated in her voice; but he was in the whirlwind of his love. It was deafening in his ears, it was blinding in his eyes; because then he knew she loved him also. He heard nothing. He saw nothing. Her hand was to his lips and he was kissing every finger.
Presently he held her hand to him and looked up.
"You knew this," he said--"didn't you? You knew this was bound to be?"
She bent her head.
"I don't know what it means," he went on passionately. "I haven't the faintest idea what it means. I love you--that's all. You mean everything to me. But I can't ask you to marry me. It wouldn't be fair." A thought of Mr. Chesterton rushed across his mind. "I--I can barely keep myself in rooms like these. I couldn't keep you. So I suppose I haven't a moment's right to say one of these things to you. But I had to say them. You knew I was going to say them--didn't you--Jill--my Jill--you knew--didn't you?"
She let him take both her hands in his; she let him drag them to his shoulders and press them there. But she bent her head forward. She hid her face from his. There was that which she had to tell him, things which she had to say, that must be told before he could blame himself any more for the love he had offered. She had known it was coming. He was quite right; she had known all he was going to say, realised it ever since that day when they had quarrelled in Kensington Gardens. All the moments between until this, had been a wonderful anticipation. A thousand times her breath had caught; a thousand times her heart had thumped, thinking he was about to speak; and through it all, just these few weeks or so, the anxious longing, the tireless praying that what she had now to say need never be said.
For a little while she let him hold her so. It would be the last time. God had been talking, or He had been sleeping, and St. Joseph--perhaps he had taken John's gift of generosity rather than that last candle of her's, for the petition she had made on that 18th of March in the Sardinia St. Chapel had not been answered.
Presently she looked up into his eyes.
"You mustn't blame yourself, John," she said gently. "It is I who deserve all the blame."
"Why?" he said--"why?"
"Because--not for the reason you said--but for something else, this is all impossible. I know it is the most wonderful thing that will ever be in my life. I know that. I'm sure of it. But something has happened since I saw you last, which makes it impossible for us to see each other again."
"Your people have found out? They forbid it?"
She shook her head.
"No--no--it's not that. They know nothing. I must go back in order to explain it to you."
Still holding his hand, she slipped into a chair, motioning him to draw up another beside her.
"You remember when we first met?"
He nodded.
"Did you ever wonder why I was praying to St. Joseph?"
"Wonder?" he echoed. "I've thought of a thousand different things."
"I don't suppose you've thought of the right one," said Jill. "My father's not rich, you know; not so rich as you might expect from his position and the house where we live. At one time we were better off, but they still try to live on at Prince of Wales' Terrace, though they can't really afford it. Father lost money in speculation, and, before that, he had put down Ronald's name for Eton. Then the chances of his ever going there seemed to dwindle to nothing. It was when it almost seemed as if we must leave the house in Kensington, that a friend of father's asked me to marry him. He was over forty--some years older than me and I----"
"You refused him, of course," said John quickly. At twenty-six, forty years can seem the millennium when they stand in your way.
"Yes--I--I refused. But he did not take my refusal. He asked me to think about it; that he would wait--would even wait a year. Then, I believe, he must have said something to father, besides telling him that I had refused, because father talked for a long while to me afterwards and mother, too. They showed me as plainly as they could, though, from their point of view alone, what an excellent match it would be. Father told me exactly what his financial position was--a thing he had never done before. I had always thought him to be quite rich. Then, at the end, he said he had invested in some speculation which he believed was going to set him quite right again, enable us to stay on in Kensington and make it quite possible for Ronald to go to Eton. But that if this failed, as he did not believe it would, then he hoped that I would reconsider my refusal to his friend. I say he hoped; but he did not put it in that way. He showed me that it would be my duty--that I should be spoiling Ronald's chances and mother's life and his, if I did not accept."
She paused. She waited for John to say something; but he sat there beside her with his lips set tight and his eyes unmoving.
"It was on the 18th of March, he told me that," she continued--"the day that I went to pray to St. Joseph that his speculation might not fail--the day I met you. Then--only the day before yesterday--they told me. The prayer had been no good. I always said poor St. Joseph was no good to me."
"He's lost his money?" said John hoarsely. He let her hand fall and moved away.
"Yes. I--I've got to accept."
CHAPTER XXI
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL NONSENSE
"Then you'll never know my people in Venice," said John presently. He had suddenly remembered that there was nothing to tell the little old white-haired lady now. To all the thousand questions which she would whisper into his ears, only evasive answers could be given her.
"I told my mother about you," he went on slowly. "I told her how we met. I told her that you were praying to St. Joseph and she's been wondering ever since--like me"--the emotion rose in his throat--"she's been wondering what you could have had to ask."
He came back to the arm-chair--the arm-chair in which he did his work--and quietly sat down. Then, as quietly, as naturally as if she had done it a thousand times before, Jill seated herself on the floor at his feet and his arm wound gently round her neck.
"Did your mother know we met again?" she asked presently.
"Yes--I told her about the first time in Kensington Gardens. I haven't told her any more. I dared not."
"Dared not?" She looked up quickly.
"No--it's the hope of her life to see me happy--to see me married. They think I make more money than I do, because I won't take anything from them. They believe I'm in a position to marry and, in nearly every letter she writes, she makes some quaint sort of allusion to it. I believe already her mind is set on you. She's so awfully cute. She reads every single word between the lines, and sometimes sees more what has been in my mind when I wrote to her, than I even did myself."
Jill's interest wakened. Suddenly this old lady, far away in Venice, began to live for her.
"What is she like?" she asked--"Describe her. You've never told me what she's like."
Diffidently, John began. At first it seemed wasting their last moments together to be talking of someone else; but, word by word, he became more interested, more absorbed. It was entering Jill into his life, making her a greater part of it than she would have been had she gone away knowing nothing more of him than these rooms in Fetter Lane. At last the little old white-haired lady, with those pathetically powerless hands of hers, was there, alive, in the room with them.
Jill looked up at him with such eyes as concealed their tears.
"She means a lot to you," she said gently.
"Yes--she means a great deal."
"And yet, do you know, from your description of her, I seemed more to gather how much you meant to her. She lives in you."
"I know she does."
"And your father? Thomas Grey--of the port of Venice?" She tried to smile at the remembrance which that brought.
"Yes--he lives in me, too. They both of them do. He, for the work I shall do, carrying on where he left off; she, for the woman I shall love and the children I know she prays I may have before she dies. That is the essence of true fatherhood and true motherhood. They are perfectly content to die when they are once assured that their work and their love is going on living in their child."
She thought of it all. She tried in one grasp of her mind to hold all that that meant, but could only find herself wondering if the little old white-haired lady would be disappointed in her, would disapprove of the duty she was about to fulfil, if she knew.
After a long pause, she asked to be told where they lived; to be told all--everything about them; and in a mood of inspiration, John wove her a romance.
"You've got to see Venice," he began, "you've got to see a city of slender towers and white domes, sleeping in the water like a mass of water lilies. You've got to see dark water-ways, mysterious threads of shadow, binding all these flowers of stone together. You've got to hear the silence in which the whispers of lovers of a thousand years ago, and the cries of men, betrayed, all breathe and echo in every bush. These are the only noises in Venice--these and the plash of the gondolier's oar or his call--'Ohé!' as he rounds a sudden corner. You've got to see it all in the night--at night, when the great white lily flowers are blackened in shadow, and the darkened water-ways are lost in an impenetrable depth of gloom. You've got to hear the stealthy creeping of a gondola and the lapping of the water against the slimy stones as it hurries by. In every little burning light that flickers in a barred window up above, you must be able to see plotters at work, conspirators planning deeds of evil or a lover in his mistress' arms. You've got to see magic, mystery, tragedy, and romance, all compassed by grey stone and green water, to know the sort of place where my mother and father live, to know the place where I should have taken you, if--if things had been different."
"Should we have gone there together?" she said in a breath.
"Yes--I've always sort of dreamed, when I've thought of the woman with God's good gift of understanding, I've always sort of dreamed of what we should do together there."
She looked up into his face. The picture of it all was there in his eyes. She saw it as well. She saw the vision of all she was losing and, as you play with a memory that hurts, as a mother handles the tiny faded shoe of the baby she has lost, she wanted to see more of it.
"Should we have gone there together?" she whispered.
He smiled down at her--mock bravery--a smile that helped him bear the pain.
"Yes,--every year--as long as they lived and every year afterwards, if you wished. Every morning, we'd have got up early--you know those early mornings when the sun's white and all the shadows are sort of misty and the water looks cleaner and fresher than at any other time because the dew has purged it. We'd have got up early and come downstairs and outside in the little Rio, the gondolier would be blowing on his fingers, waiting for us. They can be cold those early mornings in Venice. Then we'd have gone to the Giudecca, where all the ships lie basking in the sun--all the ships that have come from Trieste, from Greece, from the mysterious East, up through the Adriatic, threading their way through the patchwork of islands, past Fort San Nicolo and Lido till they reach the Giudecca Canal. They lie there in the sun in the early mornings like huge, big water-spiders, and up from all the cabins you'll see a little curl of pale blue smoke where the sailors are cooking their breakfasts."
"And how early will that be?" asked Jill in a whisper.
"Oh--six o'clock, perhaps."
"Then I shall be awfully sleepy. I never wake up till eight o'clock and even then it's not properly waking up."
"Well, then, you'll put your head on my shoulder and you'll go to sleep. It's a wonderful place to sleep in, is a gondola. We'll go away down towards Lido and you can go to sleep."
"But the gondolier?"
"Oh"--he laughed gently. "The hood's up--he stands behind the hood. He can't see. And if he can, what does that matter? He understands. A gondolier is not a London cabby. He plies that oar of his mechanically. He's probably dreaming, too, miles away from us. There are some places in the world where it is natural for a man to love a woman, where it isn't a spectacle, as it is here, exciting sordid curiosity, and Venice is one of them. Well, then, you'll go to sleep, with your head on my shoulder. And when we're coming back again, I shall wake you up--how shall I wake you?"
He leant over her. Her eyes were in Venice already. Her head was on his shoulder. She was asleep. How should he wake her? He bent still lower, till his face touched hers.
"I shall kiss you," he whispered--"I shall kiss your eyes, and they'll open." And he kissed her eyes--and they closed.
"We'll go back to breakfast, then," he went on, scarcely noticing how subtly the tense had changed since he had begun. "What do you think you'd like for breakfast?"
"Oh--anything--it doesn't matter much what one eats, does it?"
"Then we'll eat anything," he smiled--"whatever they give us. But we shall be hungry, you know. We shall be awfully hungry."
"Well," said Jill under her breath--"I'm sure they'll give us enough. And what do we do then?"
"After breakfast?"
"Yes."
"Well--I finish just one moment before you do, and then I get up, pretending that I'm going to the window."
She looked up surprised.
"Pretending? What for?"
"Because I want to get behind your chair."
"But why?"
"Because I want to put my arms round your neck and kiss you again."
He showed her how. He showed her what he meant. She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes once more.
"When, without complaint, you take whatever is given you, that's the only grace for such a meal as that. Well--when we've said grace--then out we go again."
"In the garden?"
"Yes--to the Palazzo Capello in the Rio Marin."
"That's where your people live?"
"Yes. Well, perhaps, we take them out, or we go and sit in the garden. I expect father will want us to go and sit in the garden and see the things he's planted; and mother of course'll consent, though she'll be longing to go out to the Piazza San Marco and look at the lace in the shops under the Arcade."
"Well, then, I'll go out with her----" said Jill.
"If you go, I go," said John.
She laughed, and forced him to a compromise. He would stay in the garden for half an hour; it need not be more.
"There might be things we wanted to buy in the shops," she said--"shops where you might not be allowed to come." So he could understand that it ought to be half an hour. But it must not be more.
"And then--what then?" she asked.
"Well, then, directly after lunch, we'd take a gondola once more and set off for Murano."
"Directly after? Wouldn't it be cruel to leave them so soon? If we only go for a month every year, wouldn't it be cruel?"
This is where a man is selfish. This is where a woman is kind. It was natural enough, but he had not thought so much of them.
He consented that they should stay till tea-time was over--tea in those little, wee cups without any handles, which the little old white-haired lady could just manage to grasp in her twisted hands, and accordingly, loved so much because they did not jeer at her powerlessness as did the many things which she had once been able to hold.
"You didn't want not to come out with me--did you?" he asked when the tea-time picture had passed before his eyes.
"Not--not want--but you'd get tired, perhaps, if you saw too much of me alone."
"Get tired!"
Three score years and ten were the utmost that a man might hope for in this life. Get tired!
Well, then, tea was over at last. The light of a pearl was creeping into the sky. That was the most wonderful time of all to cross the Lagoon to Murano.
"Then it was much better we stayed to tea," she whispered.
Much better, since the shadows were deepening under the arches, and he could take her head in his hands and kiss her--as he kissed her then--without being seen. Oh--it was much better that they had stayed to tea.
Now they had started, past the Chiesa San Giacomo into the Grand Canal, down the broad waterway, past the Ca' d'Oro, which the Contarini built, to the narrow Rio di Felice; then out into the Sacca della Misericordia, and there, before them, the broad stretch of the silent Lagoon--a lake of opal water that never ended, but as silently became the sky, with no line of light or shade to mark the alchemy of change.
"And across this," said John,--"with their hour glasses spilling out the sand, come the gondolas with the dead, to the cemetery that lies in the water in the midst of the Lagoon. They churn up the water with the speed they go, and if you ask a gondolier why they go so fast, he will tell you it is because the dead cannot pay for that last journey of theirs. That is their humour in the city they callLa citta del riso sangue. But we shall creep through the water--we can pay--at least----" he thought of his two quarters' rent--"I suppose we can. We shall steer through the water like the shadow of a little cloud gliding across the sea. Oh----" he pressed his hands to his eyes--"but it would be wonderful there with you! And at night, when the whole city is full of darkness--strange, silent, mysterious darkness--where every lighted taper that burns and every lamp that is lit seems to illuminate a deed of mystery, we would go out into the Grand Canal, when we had said good-night to those dear old people of mine and we'd listen to them singing--and, oh,--they sing so badly, but it sounds so wonderful there. At last--one by one, the lights would begin to flicker out. The windows that were alive and awake would close their eyes and hide in the mysterious darkness; a huge white lamp of a moon would glide up out of the breast of the Adriatic, and then----"
"Then?" she whispered.
"Then we should turn back to the little room amongst all those other little rooms in the great darkness--the gondolier would row home, and I should be left alone with my arms tight round you and my head resting on the gentlest place in the world."
He lifted his hands above his head--he laughed bitterly with the unreality of it all.
"What beautiful nonsense all this is," said he.
She looked up with the tears burning in her eyes. She looked up and her glance fell upon a picture that his father had painted and given him--a picture of the Rialto lifting with its white arches over the green water. She pointed to it. He followed with his eyes the white line of her finger.
"Then that," said Jill, and her voice quivered--"that's the City--the City of Beautiful Nonsense."