ANNE lived for Sam: and if she rarely showed it, if, for instance, it appeared sometimes that she lived to make her house the cleanest in the row, that was no more than a symptom of her stoicism. She lived for Sam, and he knew it. She belonged to a race which hates ostentation like the devil and keeps its feelings veiled behind a grim reserve. It conceals emotion as a hidden treasure and wears a mask which strangers take to indicate a want of sensibility. She had not the habit of caressing Sam; she chastened whom she loved; and Sam was very well aware of the strength of Anne’s love.
She was ready, at the proper time, to give him to the proper woman, but she held that Ada was not the woman nor this the time. She was ready to go her ways from Sam, and from life itself, when he made a marriage of which she could approve, but she was not ready to leave him to Ada Struggles of whom she disapproved. She was not ready to die for the likes of Ada Struggles. Let Sam marry Ada, and Anne, meant to live, because some day he would have need of her and, when the day came, she would be there.
Now, Sam would have been pleased if he could have told Anne about the pamphlet and the legacy. He had hoped after the Minnilie affair that his next “stroke” would be one of which he could tell Anne, but he did not see this as tellable. She would naturally ask what the pamphlet was about, and if Peter could not speak of it to his daughter, Sam could speak of it even less to his mother. And as to the legacy, what was the use of mentioning that to a woman who would point out that security was only to be had with two and a half per cent? Which wasn’t at all Sam’s notion of the uses of a thousand pounds.
After all, he was grown up and a man does not tell his mother everything. But unless he is a fool, he tells her the things which she is bound in any case to find out, and if he had foreseen the certainty of her finding out he would, not being a fool, have told her these. He did not foresee, because Anne did not read newspapers, but she had neighbours who did and who told her, with comments, of the storm which presently broke out in the columns of theSunday Judge, and of Mr. Travers’ will, which received a small paragraph in the paper when it was proved.
“There was a time when you and me didn’t go in for secrets,” she said to him. “You’ve not had much to say to me of late and I’ve not seen much of you, either, with the hours you’re keeping, but I’d put it down to love. I know a man’s not rational when he’s courting, but it seems there’s a lot about my son that I’ve to learn. Why didn’t you tell me about Mr. Travers? Did you think I’d steal the money off you?”
“Of course not, mother, but I meant to come to you with a finished tale, not one that’s only just begun. I’m engaged in a business affair of which I was going to tell you when it was complete.”
“Yes,” she said, “I see. You’re risking your money. If you came out on the right side, you’d tell me about it, and if you lost you’d forget to tell me. Are you losing?”
“It’s early days to say.”
“Then maybe I’m still in time to nip this in the bud. What’s this about theSunday Judge?”
“I Have you seen it?” he asked.
“Aye. You’re the talk of the street.”
“That’s splendid,” he let slip before he was aware of it.
“Splendid! There’s a gentleman writing to the paper to say that you’re trading in immorality.”
“I wrote that letter myself,” grinned Sam.
“You did what?”
“I’m afraid I shall never make you understand.”
“I doubt you won’t. Lying to me like that. Expecting me to believe you write to the paper about yourself and call yourself hard names. And the letter’s signed ‘Truth-teller,’ too. It’s printed in the paper that my son has lifted the lid from the cesspool and let loose a smell to make decent people vomit.”
“Yes. I know. Advertising is a coarse art.”
“Your name’s blackened for ever. And it’s my name, Sam, and the name your father gave me. It’s the name of honest folk and——”
“Mother, mother, don’t I tell you that it’s all advertisement?”
“What you tell me and what I can believe are coming to be two different things. I know what an advertisement in the paper is and I know what a letter is. This is a letter.”
Sam felt the hopelessness of further argument.
She had a simple-minded faith in the integrity of newspapers and the printed word, but he could at least show that the word could contradict itself. “Very well,” he said, “it’s a letter, and so is this.” He took a copy of the paper from his pocket. Stewart had kept his word, no great feat since he had a good idea of what his editor supposed the Sunday public to want, and a column of fervent correspondence flared under the heading of “The Social Evil.—Is the Pamphlet Justified?” Sam chose a letter which described Adams as a crusader and Branstone, his publisher, as a high-souled social reformer courageously risking misapprehension for principle and the right, calling the endorsement of the Rev. Peter Struggles to witness in proof of his irreproachable motives. “Well,” said Sam, “am I to be misapprehended after all, and by you?”
“You told me you wrote the other letter,” she said. “Don’t you mean that you wrote this one?”
“I don’t,” he said truthfully. He wrote his, attacking himself, on one side of Stewart’s desk, while Stewart at the other defended him. It had been great fun.
“And what,” she asked, “is the business affair you say you’re engaged on?”
“Why,” he said unguardedly, “it’s this.”
“Then I don’t misapprehend at all, my son. I apprehend very well. And you’ve worked Peter Struggles into it. Was that why you got engaged to Ada?”
“Mother!” he protested. “Doubt me if you like, but you must not doubt Mr. Struggles. He surely is above suspicion.”
“He’s keeping bad company just now,” said Anne, “and I doubt you’ve been too clever for him.”
Sam chose to be offended. “Is that what you think of me?” he asked.
“That you’re clever. Aye. I think that all right. I’ve known it since the time when you tricked a parcel of schoolboys out of a house of furniture and put George Chappie into it. You’re clever in the wrong places, Sam. When you were at school, you were clever out of school. You’re at business now and you ought; to be clever in honesty, and I’ve the notion that you’re being clever in dishonesty.”
“Of course,” he said, “this only shows how right I was not to tell you. It’s the old story. Women don’t understand business.”
“I know. Business is a pair of spectacles that makes black into white, but I don’t wear spectacles myself. Are you going to tell me what you’re doing with that thousand pounds?”
“I told you it isn’t decided yet. But if the sales of that pamphlet go up this week as they did last, I’m going into the publishing business with it.”
“So that you can publish more of the same sort?”
“If I can get them. There’s a lot of money in it.”
“Sam,” she said earnestly, “is that all you’re caring about?”
“You told me yourself that Ada was not the wife for a poor man.” He considered that a very neat score, to seem to make Anne responsible, but Anne was not to be deceived by any such seeming. As she saw it, Ada had corrupted Sam, Ada was the motive of this misuse of his cleverness; and the bitterness for Anne was doubly poignant. She believed in Sam, with a faith which had never swerved in spite of her disappointment in his school career; but she realized now that he had been marking time in Travers’ office, that it was Ada and not she who had quickened his energies to rapid action. Ada had quickened them, where under Anne they had lain dormant but the quickening had been corrupt. It came from Ada, poisoned at the source, and took to poisonous ways.
They had touched bottom now and reached essentials. “Sam,” she said, “I was joking like when I said a man’s not rational when he’s in love. But it was a true word spoken in jest. You’re not rational or you wouldn’t be doing these things and making a byword of the name of Branstone, and the reason you’re not rational is Ada. If you were in love with a good woman, you could no more do dishonourable things than fly. But you’re in love with a bad woman and it leads to bad results. Sam, do you think I like to tell you that you’ve made a mistake? And do you think I don’t know? Lad, lad, I love you, and I’ve never reckoned myself a fool. Choose now, I’m not the sort of fool to be jealous just because you get wed. I’d none be jealous of the right lass, Sam. I’d take her and welcome her and know she had a better right to you than me. But Ada Struggles has no right: she’s mean and grasping and she’s small in every way there is. She’s——”
“Stop, mother. Don’t forget that I am marrying Ada.”
“And nothing that I say will alter you? Sam, she’ll go on as she’s begun by sending you to this.” She put her hand on the lurid polemics of theSunday Judge. “She’ll drive you down and down. You may make money and you may be rich, but there’ll be a curse on your riches and on all you do, and Ada Struggles is the name of the curse.”
Sam attempted a small levity. “That will be all right,” he said. “She’s going to change her name.” Anne shook her head. “A change of name’ull none change Ada’s nature. It’s the best part of your life that’s before you, and life with Ada spells ruin. I’m not telling you what I think. It’s what I know, and I ask you, Sam, to heed my words.”
“I’m heeding them,” he said, “but I know you’re wrong.”
“That’s the last you’ve got to say?”
“I’m sorry we don’t agree, mother.”
“Agreeing’s nowt,” she said, “and I’m nowt against your happiness. See, Sam, I’ll prove it. There’s a thought at the back of your mind that I’ve nothing against Ada but a grudge because she’s come between you and me. I say that girl’s no good for you, and I say I’ll do anything to force you to see it. There’s nowt of myself in this and maybe this will make you believe it.”
There was a good fire in the room and she put her hand into it. Sam was alert enough to drag her away before much damage was done, and he had oil on the hand in a moment.
“Don’t fuss,” said Anne, “but tell me what you think.”
“I think,” he said, “that you’re plumb crazy—with jealousy.”
It was not craziness, but fanatic devotion to an idea: and the idea was Sam, Sam’s happiness, Sam’s future. She put her hand into the fire hoping to convince, and she would have sat on the fire if she had thought the larger act would carry a fuller conviction. But he did not need to be convinced that she objected to Ada; the point was that her objections were unfounded, and, in the face of Ada’s sublime and stunning merits, idiotic.
One cannot put a hand into the fire without suffering for it, and Anne was suffering acutely. Her face was drawn with pain and her lips were trembling uncontrollably, but her voice was firm.
“I’ve done my best to save you, Sam. If you’ve nothing better to say than that, you and me have come to a parting.”
“Then,” said Sam, “we’ve come,” and turned his back on her. He thought she would come round, that she would get over her attack of frenzied jealousy. It was idle threat to talk of a parting. Why, she was dependent on him, and in more ways than one. He housed and kept her, but, more than that, she needed him. His presence was the breath of life to her. He knew that, and he let her go!
Of course, he thought she would come back, with a sharp lesson well learnt. She had to learn that he was grown-up, of an age to act for himself and choose and think without her tutelage. Only, she did not come back. She went to Madge and stayed with Madge; and the terms on which she stayed were her terms. “I furnish the room,” she said, “and I pay you a rent for it. Also, I pay for what I eat.”
She paid. At the age of fifty-two the mother of Sara Branstone, of Branstone and Carter, and the mother-in-law of George Chappie, of the Chappie Window-Cleaning and Bill Posting Company (a smaller affair than its name, but the source of a regular five pounds a week), was a charwoman on three days out of the seven, and it was not lack of offers which limited her to three days, but the fact that she paid her way on three days’ result. She kept other people’s houses as clean as she had kept her own.
It was suggested to George Chappie that it was hardly decent in him to allow his mother-in-law to go out charring at her age—a prosperous man like him. “I know,” he was reported to have replied, “and we’ve tried all ways we can. But you can’t argue with Mrs. Branstone.”
“She’s one of the old sort, isn’t she?” said his gossip, who, perhaps, endured a mother-in-law of another kind.
“All that,” said George succinctly.
ONLY by long service does one become an artist, but one becomes married by a simple ceremony. It is the tragedy of marriage, which is the most difficult of all the arts, that most people come to it without apprenticeship. Perhaps the popularity of widows as brides is due to the fact that the widow is a widow: that she has been broken in to marriage: that she has not everything to learn: that one, at any rate, of the contracting parties, is expert. There is much to be said for the policy of the “trial trip.”
Courtship, if intimate enough, may be a fairish substitute, bowdlerized, as it were, for a “trial trip,” but when Sam married Ada he knew pitiably little about her.
He thought that she was wonderful. Not only had he to think it, but he actually did think it. He had to think it because only for a prodigy among women could he have treated his mother as he did. He had thought her crazy when she put her hand into the lire, but he knew it was heroic. If she were crazy, it was for love for him, and at the core, he loved her too and felt ashamed of himself, but Ada stood between them, and he was not going to give up Ada. Then he was busy, time wore on, custom blunted the prick of conscience, and it finally became a habit either not to think of Anne at all, or to think comfortably of her as happy enough with Madge.
And he actually thought Ada wonderful because the conditions of his courtship fought for her. He was visibly prospering; he liked prosperity; it was Ada who had initiated his prosperity; and she was glamorous for that. Again, he was very busy in those days with the first steps of his new business, too occupied to play the diligent lover, and saw her very fitfully. So seen, she did not lose the wonder of surprise, but came upon him freshly with each of their meetings, able to parade for each some new attraction from her slender stock of charm. She kept their intercourse egregiously correct, and he thought her mystery was infinite. She hid her shallowness behind affected modesty, knowing that an intimate courtship would discover to him that there was nothing to discover, and attracted by aloofness. It was immensely clever in its short-winded way: a cleverness that lasted the course of courtship, but evaporated when the tape—the altar—was reached. It did not seem necessary to Ada to go on being clever once that ring was on her finger. She was married, she had achieved: she was clever for the spurt, and had no cleverness left, for the Marathon Race. And Sam had many preoccupations in those days which prevented him from thinking too much about Ada.
If he was dull about his courtship, his wits were sharp enough for other matters. He had the satisfaction, almost from the day of its issue, of seeing the pamphlet sell steadily. Very quickly it ceased to be a case of getting his money back, and became merely a question of how many cents per cent he was going to make. His first edition of five thousand (thesoi-disantthousand) was rapidly exhausted, and the presses of Carter Meadowbank worked overtime to cope with the demand. He cast bread upon the waters by sending copies to every name in the Clergy List and every Member of Parliament; and did not cast in vain. Free advertisement was lavished upon him. Somehow, he had found one of those times when the social conscience is stirred: he published, without knowing it, opportunely, and the diabolic cleverness of Gerald Adams’ writing steered him safely past the rocks of the Public Prosecutor. It seemed only to stimulate demand when he raised the price to a shilling.
He had no further trouble with the pamphlet. It sold itself, but sitting still watching the wheels go round did not appeal to Sam, who had a thousand pounds to multiply. He hadn’t quite the hardihood to believe that he could multiply his thou sand as rapidly as he had the twenty-five which he paid Adams, but he felt that he was launched as a publisher and had nothing to publish.
His thoughts were diverted from that solecism one day when he went into Carter’s printing-office to speed up the foreman. The foreman admitted that the pace could be improved. “But I dunno, sir, that the boss wants it improved. There’s nothing in to follow this job of yours. You might say you’ve been the saving of Mr. Carter.”
Sam was thoughtful for a minute. He had not looked upon himself as the saviour of Mr. Carter and did not appreciate that character when it was thrust upon him. He went into Carter’s office.
“This little tract of mine,” he said (“tract” seemed the light description in that text-hung room), “is selling remarkably well, and the demand increases. Now, I’ve nothing to say about the past.-I came in here a total stranger and you quoted me accordingly. But it’s only fair to warn you that I have gone into prices with other printers and I may find it necessary to make a change.”
Carter made no effort to hide his dismay. “I hope you won’t do that, Mr. Branstone. At least, give me a chance of revising my price.”
“Once bitten,” said Sam, “is twice shy, and you don’t deny that you bit.”
“But surely business,” argued Carter, “is business.”
“It is,” said Sam grimly, “and if you’ll answer me a few questions on the understanding that this is a business interview and I’m not being impertinently inquisitive, I shall be obliged.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Carter.
“Thank you. How old are your printing-presses?”
“Twenty years.”
“Consequently they are almost hopelessly out of date?”
Carter had a tenderness for those presses. They had been young when he was young, were bought when the world smiled on him and his business had its hedyay. They had kept him and he could not be disloyal now. “I believe that they have printed your tract efficiently, Mr. Branstone,” he defended them.
“Oh, there’s life in the old dogs yet,” said Sam. “I’m not proposing to make scrap-iron of them.”
“As they belong to me,” said Carter tartly, “it would not make such difference if you did propose it.”
“Therefore,” said Sam, “I don’t propose it—yet. Please remember that I’m talking business. Do you care to tell me what that text cost to produce and what you get for it?”
Carter did not care, but, though he wondered at himself, he told. “And that?” Sam asked, pointing to another; and again Carter told.
“Then,” said Sam, “there are two religious papers which you print for the proprietors. What——?”
“Young man,” interrupted Carter, “are you proposing to buy my business?”
“No,” said Sam coolly, “only to become your partner in it. What profit were you going to tell me you made on the papers?”
Carter told: he was too stupefied to do anything else. “Um,” said Sam. “It isn’t much.”
“They are a good work,” said Carter, and Sam looked at him sharply, but the old man was perfectly sincere. It was good work to print religious magazines and he did it for next to nothing.
“Well,” said Sam, “thank you. Now I won’t mince matters: When I came along with my—tract, I enabled you to postpone filing your petition, but it was only a postponement, and if you’ll look facts in the face the one big fact for you is bankruptcy.”
“The Lord will provide.” Carter had lived from hand to mouth for many months in that belief.
“If you like to look at it that way. He has provided: He has provided me. I will make you a good offer, Mr. Carter. I will introduce five him dred pounds capital into the business for a halfshare in the plant, goodwill and future profits of this concern. That is, the printing business. What I, as publisher, do has nothing to do with you.”
“... I must think it over,” said Carter; but they both knew that he had already decided to accept.
“The Lord,” Carter was thinking, “hasprovided.” Sam, on the contrary, was thinking, “I may or may not be a fool to go into this without getting an accountant’s report on the books, but I believe in rapid action, and if I’d offered too high a price I’m certain that he’s imbecile enough to have told me.”
It remained to find something to print, and he wanted Stewart’s advice, but, with the idea of being first on the side of the angels, went to see Peter Struggles. The battle which had raged round the pamphlet had left Peter untouched, even though more than one of the clergy who received it from Sam had thought it their duty to write to Peter’s bishop. The bishop failed to see a case for disciplinary measures: Peter might have been sinned against but he had not sinned. And theSunday Judgewas read by neither Peter nor his bishop. (The Church is notoriously out of touch with modern life, but, after all, it is hardly reasonable to expect the Church to compliment its rival, theSunday Press, by reading it.)
Nevertheless, Peter had, on reflection, felt some wavering doubts about the pamphlet. His intermittent shrewdness threw a flickering light through the haze of his charity and gave him moments of discomfort.
Sam’s attitude during this call was admirably calculated to resolve his doubt. He wanted, with an eye to the future, to make sure of Peter, whose name he might require another day, and was ready, even if it were not immediately profitable, to placate Peter now. He explained that he had joined forces with Mr. Carter, and at once acquired merit in Peter’s eyes. Carter was irreproachable. He did not explain by what means he had been able to join Carter and it did not occur to Peter to ask. Sam was not going to tell Peter, who would tell Ada, of his legacy. If she found out, as Anne had found out, he could not help it, but, meantime, it was his secret. Ada, like Anne, belonged to the sex which had no understanding of business.
“And the point,” said Sam, “with a business like Mr. Carter’s, is to use it for good. I take it that the texts do good, but perhaps they are only for the simple-minded. I hope I don’t despise people for their simplicity, but my own taste runs rather to books and I think you will agree with me.”
Peter agreed, with a quotation which rather dashed Sam; he had an idea that poetry did not sell.
“‘Poets are the trumpets which sing to battle. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.’”
“Yes,” said Sam. “Quite so. But isn’t poetry going to the opposite extreme? I had the thought of something more direct. Good prose with a good moral.”
“Excellent,” said Peter, off again.
“‘Were not God’s laws,
His gospel laws, In olden time held forth
By types, shadows and metaphors?’”
“Of course they were,” said Sam, wondering when Peter would close his mental dictionary of quotations and come down to business, “and that quotation is very apt because I was thinking of classics. English classics, you know,” he explained hurriedly, “and classics because they are not copyright.”
“And have stood the test of time,” said Peter.
“Yes. Do you think you could propose a list? I should like to know that the first books I publish had been selected by you. I don’t think they ought to be exactly theological, but they must be good in every sense of the word.”
“Why not begin with the book from whose in traduction I just quoted?”
“Why not indeed?” said Sam, who hadn’t the faintest idea of the source of the quotation.
“Very well,” said Peter. “Suppose you put that down for one.”
Same made vague scratches on paper. He had a bookish reputation to sustain and he was not going to betray ignorance prematurely. “Then,” said Feter, “there is Law’s ‘Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.’”
“I’m letting myself in for something,” thought Sam, but he wrote it down.
“‘The Imitation of Christ,’ and ‘The Little Flowers of St. Francis,’” Peter went on.
“I think those should be enough to begin with,” said Sam hurriedly.
“Four, isn’t it?” said Peter, recapitulating.
“The ‘Pilgrim’s Progress ‘“——(“Thank God,” thought Sam, “I needn’t give myself away.”)
“Yes, four,” he interrupted, reading the now completed list. “And I am very much obliged to you.”
He wasn’t, though, quite sure about it. He had “nobbled” Peter, but he feared those books would be a millstone round his neck. There might be a steady sale for the “Pilgrim’s Progress” as a prize, but the others——! Still, he need not print many copies of them, and—consoling thought—they would be good window-dressing tor his list. He hoped it would include other, very different, books.
“I’m sorry Ada is out,” Peter was saying, and Sam was rather startled to realize that he had not missed her. But he was sure of his position with her: it was his position for her which he had to consolidate. He proceeded to consolidate it by going in search of Stewart, and found him where he expected to find him, in a bar.
“I want your advice,” said Sam.
“Whisky for the gentleman, Flora,” said Stewart. “That’s my advice and you’ll get no other till you’ve taken this.”
Sam took it. Business is business and, beyond that, his thrifty prejudices were less necessary now.
“You’re not unteachable,” said Stewart. “It’s a point in your favour. The proper thing when you’ve drunk that is to ask me if I will have another. My reply will be in the affirmative and we shall then retire, with sustaining refreshment, into that corner, where I will advise you for as long as you can continue to buy whisky for me and drink level. I hate a shirker.”
Sam told him of his partnership with Carter. “I’m always troubled about you,” said Stewart. “I can never make up my mind whether you’re too clever to live or whether you were born with luck instead of brain. Obviously, you will publish novels.”
“There are so many kinds,” said Sam.
“No. Only two. Mine and the rest. But I suffer from honesty. Therefore I tell you that my novel has been refused by every publisher in London. It is waiting,” he said hopefully, “for a man with courage. The difference between it and the Yellow Book is that my bookisyellow.”
“I see,” said Sam. “But I have gone into the publishing trade to make my living.”
“On the whole,” decided Stewart, “you are more knave than fool. And you would call it the publishing trade. It’s a benighted world, but there are still some publishers who aren’t in trade—beyond the midriff. Do you seriously come to me to ask what sort of novels to publish?”
“Yes.”
“The sort,” he said, “that is written for nursemaids by people who ought to be nursemaids.”
“That’s jealousy,” said Sam. “They get published and you don’t.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Stewart. “But I’ve always heard that seeing is believing. Do you ever go to the theatre?”
“Not often.”
“It’s a pity, because if you did, I’ve a tragedy in blank verse that you might care to publish. It is great art and will never be produced. Still, I’m a philanthropist to-night and you will come to the theatre with me. I happen to be going for theWarden.”
“Are you a dramatic critic for theWarden?” asked Sam, rather awed.
“I’m a reporter, old son. This isn’t the kind of play they waste a critic on. Drink up, and we’ll go.”
Sam found, to his relief, that he was able to go and decided he had a strong head. The theatre was crowded when they reached it and Stewart was young enough to sit self-consciously in one of the two seats kept for theManchester Warden. Dramatic criticism was taken seriously on that journal; at least two of the paper’s regular critics were men of genius, and Stewart hoped that he might be mistaken for one of them. But the audience that night was not the kind which interests itself in the lions of the higher journalism; rather it justified the contemptuous reference to drama as the “art of the mob.” It would have made a sincere democrat weep for his convictions. “Behold them,” said Stewart. “The Public.”
Sam beheld them more than he beheld the play. He reminded himself that he was there on business, to be shown something which Stewart wanted him to see, and if he had not the gift of detachment, he assumed it.
When Adams had read his paper to the Concentrics, Sam had listened but kept his eyes on the audience. In a darkened theatre, the audience was more difficult to watch, but he could feel its quick response to the play, could hear its ready laughter and its quite eager ears. Emphatically, here was a play which seized its audience, gripped them, tickled them, beslavered them, throttled them, did with them what it liked and when it liked; all to their immense and vociferous delight. He tried to keep his aloofness, to see how it was done, to tear the heart out of this mystery. Here was something which the public wanted; he had only to diagnose it, and the Open Sesame to fortune was his.
He couldn’t do it. Detachment slipped from him, never to return till the curtain fell. He wasn’t a superman, immune from other men’s emotions. The play took hold of him and swayed him with the rest. He tried resistance, vainly; told himself that he was here, not, as these others were, for pleasure, but to learn, to learn; and the play gripped him the harder for his attempt to take it coldly.
At the end, Sam was applauding wildly while Stewart watched him with cynical amusement. “Caught you all right,” he said, “and by way of a confession I’ll own that the damned thing nearly got me once. Rum place, the theatre, isn’t it? But,” he grew more serious, “I’ve to write about that, write without being libellous about that maudlin, sentimental, erotic, religious trash. It’s enough to make a man give up journalism and take to something honest, like coal-heaving. But I’m forgetting. I brought you here to teach you something. Have you learnt it? That’s a play, but the same thing applies to a novel. You find novels with ‘The Sign of the Cross’ in them, my boy. Queasy sentimentality to sicken a bee, and, for the rest, don’t forget that Jesus died for you to make money out of novels. This play makes me blasphemous, but I’m doing the devil’s advocate to you to-night, so it’s all in the picture. When I’ve finished my notice I think I’ll try a ‘short’ on ‘The Tradesman Publisher’ or ‘The Dignity of Letters.’ It will be good for my conscience.”
“I wish you would,” said Sam. “I’ll reply to it, with a list of the classics I am going to publish.”
“Sometimes,” said Stewart, “you rather sicken me. I am speaking of theManchester Warden, not theSunday Judge. Good-night.”
But the vacillations of a journalist with a foot in two camps and an idealistic standard which he hardly pretended to take seriously himself left Sam unimpressed. The play and Stewart’s description of its essence had given him furiously to think. He imagined that he knew the sort of novel he wanted and he was not troubled by Stewart’s disease of dual standards. Sam had one standard, the success standard; and anything else was muddle-headedness. At the same time he felt most grateful to Stewart who had advertised the pamphlet and now presented him with a policy.
It was a policy, but not one for immediate application.Festina lentewas his watchword for the moment, and he devoted himself to putting new life into the sales of texts and to the issue of the “Branstone + Classics.” They were, one might note in passing, the Branstone + Classics: his name loomed large and the names of their authors, the insignificants like à Kempis and Bunyan, were properly small; and he put the sign of the cross between the Branstone and the Classics. He intended it to be his trade-mark, and if it were his trade-mark, why not use it? It infringed nobody’s copyright.
Amongst it all, he had little enough time for Ada, and she knew how much she gained by being a luxury instead of a habit. But Sam was not engaged for the sake of being engaged, and as soon as he knew he had made no mistake in his business venture was eager to be married. There were no objections from Ada. This intermittent courtship, in which his duties as a lover took second place to his activities as a business man, suited Ada well, but marriage, finality, the bond suited her better.
Even to the end of that engagement it was things for Ada which preoccupied him, rather than Ada herself, and he took the matter of furnishing seriously—from a business point of view, interested less in the furniture he bought than in the discounts he might, by this means or that, secure. He suffered the usual surprise at the cost of mattresses and kitchen equipment, but, to Ada, he appeared royally lavish. Ada did not know of his legacy: she knew that Anne had told her on the top of a fantastic tram-car that Sam had earned two pounds ten a week with Travers, and the scale of this furnishing did not square with what a man could save out of two pounds ten a week. It followed in Ada’s mind that Anne had lied to her, malignantly misrepresenting Sam’s position to frighten her; and the breach between Anne and Ada, which never had much chance of closing, was permanently open.
One does not have old connections with an estate agency without being able to rent a good house cheaply. She was going to be mistress of a house which fell little short of the dreams of her boarding-school days. It was certainly “stylish”; she was not sure that it was not positively “smart.”
Madge wept on the night before her wedding. Ada did not weep. She was too busy hugging herself because she had surmounted the perils of courtship. She had accomplished her aim in life. She was going to be married.
ADA was married in white satin, though Peter sold books to do it and her trousseau lacked essentials. It depends, though, on one’s point of view. Ada thought white satin essential, while another might have put underclothing first. But it is fitting to wear a crown at a coronation and, when the object of one’s life has been to get married, to celebrate in satin the attaining of one’s aim.
It also reminded the congregation that the bride is the central figure at a wedding. People might otherwise have remembered that they did not come because Ada was Ada, but because she was Peter’s daughter.
She entered withréclameinto the state of being Mrs. Samuel Branstone, resenting a little the tweeds of Stewart, Sam’s best man, but liking his manners and liking, too, the way in which Sam took it for granted that the day was hers, not his. He did not even obtrude a family.
George was, in fact, obscurely there, hidden among the congregation. He was there in the spirit of schoolboy, playing truant from Anne, who was at home with Madge. Ada thought that the conspicuous absence of Branstones added lustre to her satin. None but the necessary Sam was there.
They went to London, where neither of them had been before, and since it is a bitter thing to have to look back to a boring honeymoon, the choice of place had great discretion. There was so much besides themselves to see in London that they postponed looking at each other till they came home. They saw sights and went to theatres, but though they slept together and rose together and saw the sights (all but one) together there was no realization of “togetherness,” no birth of a new life in which they were not Sam and Ada, but these two in one. They were furiously modest about things which no honeymooner has any right to be modest about. If they are modest about them, they have no right to be honeymooners. It may have been in their case something both worse and better than modesty. It may have been downright shame. Perhaps subconsciously they knew that this was not a marriage, not the coming together of two fit mates. It had no passion in it. There was self when they should have been ecstatically selfless. They were two when they should have been most one.
But Sam, if he fell immensely short of ecstasy, was still too much under her spell to be critical. He wondered a little at the frank delight in being married which she displayed in public, at her flaunting of her new wedding ring, at her advertisement that this was a honeymoon, and contrasted this outward relish with her intimate frigidity; but even this seemed a disloyalty, and he told himself that Ada in a hotel was one person and at home would be another. Ada would “settle down,” and meantime they were in London, and London was waiting to be explored with her.
They explored chiefly the London which Londoners do not know, the London of the guide-books, and felt tremendously metropolitan because they went to the Tower, the British Museum and the National Gallery. The shops seared Ada. Their windows fascinated but their doors repelled. Probably Sam would have held her back by main force had she attempted to go in, but, as it was, she had the same satisfaction in identifying them that social snobs find in recognizing, at a distance, famous people. These were the authentic shops which advertised in the papers and they had a game called “hunting the Harrod” or “looking for Barkers,” which led to a lot of fun with ‘buses after they had quartered Oxford Street and Regent Street. It was all very gay, and gayer, almost naughtily gay, to go one night to a place called the Coliseum—a music-hall; a thing to do audaciously, not to be spoken of at home; and yet the place was very full of really most respectable people. They marvelled at the emancipation of the Londoner.
On his honeymoon, Sam became possessed of an ambition. It was not an extraordinarily fine ambition, but he came to care about, it greatly and it repaid his care a thousandfold. The way to sanity is to desire very keenly something which it is just possible one may get, and Sam’s ambition kept him sane in the days when he knew that Ada had failed him.
Struggles had suggested to our debater of the Concentrics that he ought to see the House of Commons at debate, and had written to their local Member for a pass to the Gallery. The result was the most thrilling experience of Sam’s honeymoon! It was, for one thing, unique that Ada could not be with him: these were the first hours since he married her that they spent apart and perhaps that, all unconsciously, had gilded them for Sam. They had almost a tiff before she let him go: not quite, but she resented his desertion of her and considered it his fault that she was not allowed to sit with him to hear the legislators who made laws for her as for him. Not that Ada cared who made her laws, nor cared to watch the makers at their work, but she managed to put enough snap into her resentment at his going to lend the added quality of a stolen pleasure to his experience.
That gallery, with its foreshortened view of the dingy cock-pit, is not the first choice of the connoisseur in thrills, but on Sam its effect was amazing. He must have had some gift, quite undisclosed till now, of veneration, for it is almost beyond belief that the reality of the House of Commons can impress. But the idea can and perhaps (to be just) the reality is more impressive than that of any other Chamber on earth. Imagination helping him, it caught and held his mind.
A small stout man of undistinguished appearance was speaking in a conversational tone not easy to hear from the Gallery, but presently the orator warmed to his subject and poured out living words in a spate of real emotion. He was one of those rare men, and this one of those rare speeches, that really convert an opponent: and Sam’s ambition to speak as this politician spoke, and from those benches, came instantly to birth.
Not only did he want to be a Member of Parliament, but a Liberal Member, because this man of words was Liberal. Up to this time, Sam had not been a political animal although he had voted, and voted Tory because that was in general the line of Mr. Travers and the property-owning class he represented. Now with a swift enthusiasm he was Liberal, knowing nothing of either side, but caught by sudden hero-worship for a little, pudgy, snubnosed politician who spoke in sentences of prodigious length and never lost his way in them.
In a twinkling he acquired the bias of the politician: his hero’s opponent was palpably a fool; he had no gifts, no argument. Yes, Sam was doubly right to be a Liberal. They had so obviously all the brains, they were so undeniably the winning side. He did not understand the technique of a division and was surprised when he looked at the paper next day to find that the Liberals were outvoted. It gave him pause, but did not shake him. When the Liberals came back to power, as with their superiority in brain they were certain to do, he, Sam Branstone, would come with them. Let it be only a year or two and he would be ready. He too would loll upon those padded benches, and catch the Speaker’s eye, and be an orator.
He walked along the Embankment towards his hotel, and it came into his mind that he had spent four hours in the Gallery and had not thought of Ada. Nor could he, though he tried, think of her now.
Sky-signs still flashed across the river, and as he paused and leaned against the parapet a young policeman kept a wary eye on him. But Sam was meditating life, not death. The lights of London gleamed upon the Thames and made it magical for him. He conquered London in his reverie, and stepped, a member, from the House to his automobile. His home, he supposed, was somewhere in Park Lane.
He thought back now to the theatre where he had seenThe Sign of the Cross. It was different from the London Theatres he had seen where audiences seemed afraid of emotion. Or was it that the plays had not been right? That was it: they had not the note: they weren’t—what was Stewart’s phrase?—erotic religious plays. He wanted to move audiences as that play had moved its audience. Power! The power of the spoken word. That was the thing, and since he could not write a play he must rely upon himself, his oratory, his single voice. He saw himself on platforms facing crowded halls, gripping his hearers, leading them where he would, taming the mob till it made an idol of its master. As to where he would lead, why, he would lead and that was what mattered. Branstone was Prime Minister that night.
It was one o’clock before the young policeman felt at liberty to resume his beat, and Sam left the enchanted river for his little hotel in Norfolk Street. Ada had her back to him and apparently she slept. Actually she was wide awake; she was wondering whether it had happened to any other woman to be treated so abominably on her honeymoon.
She brushed her hair nest morning with a notable viciousness. Hair has uses beyond those of mere adornment. It is an admirable veil through which one can watch without being seen to watch. Ada was watching Sam and she was also listening to him.
She listened not because his enthusiasm for the House of Commons interested her, but because she was waiting for some word of apology. It did not come. He was full of regret, but only because this was their last day in town and he could not go to the House again.
“What time is our train?” she asked.
He told her.
“Then I have time to do some shopping first.”
“Shopping?” he asked, but unsuspiciously.
She nodded. Sam was going to pay for his pleasures. Those blouses she had seen at Peter Robinson’s no longer seemed impossibly expensive. If Sam chose to enjoy himself in his own way, without her, she would enjoy herself in hers—with Sam to pay the piper.
Shopping is a loose term; one shops when one buys a kipper or a diamond tiara. Ada was putting her hair up and he imagined her to mean that she wanted a packet of hair-pins. “Oh, yes,” he said pensively. “And while you go, I think I will just slip down to the House of Parliament again.” The House would not be sitting and he could not get in. He knew that, but he wanted to gaze, to look at the frame which was some day to contain him. He wanted to be certain that it was still there.
“I think,” she said, “that you will come with me to the shop. I shall want you there to pay.”
Sam paused in the act of fastening his collar. “To pay?” he asked, not unsuspiciously now.
“Are your selfish pleasures all you think about?” Ada wanted to know. “Isn’t it a privilege to be allowed to buy me nice clothes?”
He had not looked upon it in that light. In budgeting for their future he had indeed assumed that a trousseau lasted a bride for her first year. “I see,” he said gloomily; then remembering that he was in love with her, “of course,” he added with a smile which might count to him for heroism. “But we must not forget the fares, and after I have paid the bill here I shall not have more than two pounds left to spend.”
“Then I spend two pounds on blouses,” she said.
He made a monosyllabic noise which might have been “Yes.” It might also have been “Damn.”
The truth was that he had deliberately kept those two pounds back, intending to spend some, but not, he hoped, all of it, on a present for Ada. He had thought of a hand-bag, had imagined her gasp of delight when he audaciously entered with her one of those forbiddingly inviting shops, her appreciation of his generosity.
Last night had driven the thought entirely from his mind, and he was annoyed now not only at his forgetfulness, but at Ada. She did not ask, she demanded. A night in the Gallery may be regarded as dissipation, but at least it is not a crime. It is even patriotic, and he was asked to foot a bill for two pounds as the price of his patriotism. Ambition, he thought, would be an expensive luxury if he had to pay in clothes for Ada every time he went to a political meeting. For that, plainly, was her attitude: she demanded aquid pro quo: she announced a policy of retaliation.
There is a queer perverted pleasure in scratching an open wound, in cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. He had meant to be generous and he wanted still to be generous, but the money he had laid aside for generosity was now hypothecated to meet her claim. He would give her her pound of flesh, but wanted very badly to roast it for her with coals of fire.
Gloom lifted from him suddenly. He took off the old tie which he had put on as being good enough to travel in, and fastened very carefully one which he had bought “for London.”
“I’ll do it,” he was thinking. “It is—almost—a stroke.”
At breakfast he was positively gay, so that Ada wondered furtively what he was up to, and whether the way to raise his spirits would always be to demand new clothes of him. It did not seem likely, but she proposed at any rate to experiment freely in that direction.
He divided his attention between her, breakfast, and the Parliamentary report of theTimes. He felt that he had virtually participated in that debate, and even the shock of reading that the division had gone against his hero did not spoil the pleasure he found in reading of it. He read with a prophetic eye. He, too, would be reported in theTimessome day.
He called the waiter. “Marmalade, sir?” asked the man.
“No, thanks. Bring me the directory.”
“The directory,” protested the waiter, “is in the reading-room.”
“And I,” said Sam superbly, “am in the coffee-room.”
The waiter brought him the directory.
Sam smiled broadly. He was testing his form, and decided that if it were equal to coercing a waiter into carrying a directory to his breakfast-table, it would probably not fail him in what he proposed to do. He consulted the book and noted an address which was not, he observed, in Park Lane. His respect for Sir William Gatenby suffered a slight decline.
Half an hour later he rang the hell of that gentleman’s house. Gatenby was the local member, to whom Peter Struggles had written for Sam’s pass to the Gallery.
“Sir William in?” he asked.
“Yes, but——” A trained eye observed his clothes. They were not cut in Savile Row.
“He will see me,” said Sam serenely. Some people are at their best in the early morning.
His card was accepted from him, and he was shown into a library of severe Blue Books, possibly qualified by a reproduction of Millais’ portrait of Gladstone. Ordinarily, Sam would have been met in the library by a secretary who earned his salary by his talent for administering polite snubs to unwanted callers. The secretary was not earning his salary to-day, but, probably, spending it. It was Derby Day.
After all, a vote is a vote, and Sir William came in with a show of geniality. “Good morning, Mr. Branstone,” he said, reading Sam’s card. “From the old town. I see.”
“Is that all you remember about me?” asked Sam.
“At the moment,” confessed Sir William warily. His majority was not large.
“Well,” said Sam, “the Reverend Mr. Struggles is my father-in-law.”
“Sit down,” said Sir William. “I am very glad you called. How is Mr. Struggles?”
“T left him well, thank you. Perhaps you remember that he wrote to you to ask you for a pass to the Gallery for me.”
“I was happy to be lucky in the ballot,” said the Member.
“Yes,” said Sam, “I went last night. But I mentioned that to establish my identity. My object in calling upon you is to ask you to lend me five pounds.”
Sir William thought of his secretary, who should have saved him this. Thinking of his secretary, he thought of Derby Day and the probable intentions of a man who chooses that day to ask for a loan. “My dear sir!” he said.
“Quite,” agreed Sam. “Life would be unbearable to you if every constituent who came to London tried to borrow money off you. But I am Branstone. I run the Branstone Press and the Branstone Classics. I published the ‘Social Evil’ pamphlet and sent you a copy which, I regret to say, you did not acknowledge.” Sir William thought again of his secretary, and unkindly. “This,” said Sam, “is merely to indicate that I am a man of substance.”
Sir William Gatenby wore side-whiskers. He was an old man and there was little left of him besides pomposity and a determination to hold his seat. He looked, what at this moment he felt, some one in a farce. He was quite sure that Sam was some one in a farce. They were both in a farce, and of course five-pound notes fly in farces like gnats in August. It did not seem to him that there was anything to do but to produce a five-pound note.
“Thank you,” said Sam, and sat at a desk. “I will give you my cheque for this.”
It staggered Sir William. He nearly warned Sam of the danger of issuing a cheque which was not likely to be honoured, but refrained in time. “Then,” he said, “there was really no need for you to come to me at all?”
“Only,” said Sam, “that I wanted you to remember me.”
“I think I shall do that,” said Sir William.
“Thank you,” said Sam calmly. “I wanted to know you because I intend to go into politics.”
“The Cause,” said Sir William solemnly, “demands his best from every earnest worker.”
“I will work for the Cause,” said Sam. Neither of them attempted to define the Cause, and Sam left without further remark, but his call had this result: that on finding the cheque honoured Sir William wrote to his agent to tell him of “a queer fish called Samuel Branstone who called on me the other day, and offered to work for the Cause. A young man whom I think you should encourage. He is the son-in-law of Mr. Struggles, and the Church, alas, is so tepid towards our great Principles that we must not neglect a promising recruit from that fold.”