And she did not repent the promise, nor did her mother's consternation have any effect upon her, other than making her lend a willing ear to Lee's entreaties for a speedy marriage. She agreed to marry him at the end of the following month. She even came to accept his kisses without shrinking much, and to offer her own in return for the jewellery that he brought her. Only once during the engagement her reflections terrified her. The thought crossed her mind that he might lose his voice. He might lose his voice and she would have done it all for nothing! He would be helpless; she would have yoked herself for life to a negro dependent on her exertions. What a future! What a hell! In the moment of alarm it even occurred to her—because she attended church punctiliously every Sunday—that the disaster would be a fitting punishment for the sin she was committing in stifling her better instincts. She was abasing herself under a temptation—she might be bowed under a burden as the result. Characteristically she ignored the fact that to afflict her husband in order to point the moral would be a shade unjust; there are many Christians who would figuratively fire the house to roast the pig, like Ho-ti in the Dissertation. And quite as many who can reconcile their interests and their conscience by judicious prayer. The name of "Vivian" figured in Ownie's prayer. She prayed for strength to act a mother's part to Vivian.
Also she determined that before she had been Lee's wife long she would persuade him to assure his life. Experience teaches; and this precautionary measure had been neglected during her first marriage. She was naturally ignorant of the negro temperament, or she would have known that there is nothing from which it is quite so averse as providing for emergencies, and that she might almost as hopefully have begged him to acquire a cream-and-roses complexion.
Meanwhile there were paragraphs in the papers; and presents were delivered from his fellow-artists, and from some of the Musical Societies; and there were presents from the Public. Even Mrs. Tremlett began to say, "It might be all for the best," now. A man who received big silver teapots from total strangers, she felt, was entitled to more respect than she had shown to him. Her grandchild and the adolescent nurse were to remain with her until the honeymoon was over. The wedding took place in London, and Ownie and Lee departed for Paris, where he was to sing.
If Mrs. Lee had kept a journal at this period, it would have been one of the most fascinating of human documents, though much of its fascination would have lain between the lines, since she inherited nothing of her father's gift for expression. It would have been the gradual diminuendo, that told the tale, the change of key. They stayed in Paris nearly five weeks, and before a fortnight had passed, the outcry in her heart was still. She was resigned. She did not acknowledge it to herself yet; that would not have been written in the diary; she did not look it; but her avaricious little soul was gratified, although her eyes claimed sympathy.
Strangers gave it to her. She was prettier still in the extravagant gowns that Lee paid for—that true loveliness unadorned is adorned the most is as silly a thing as the poet of "The Seasons" could have said—and the Englishmen and Americans in Paris spoke feelingly of "that pretty woman married to a nigger." There are women to whom pity is as sweet as noise to the masses, and Ownie Lee's abortive conscience found all the anodyne it needed in the perception that she was held a pathetic figure. The appealing smile which had always become her so well, gained in intensity. Lucretia might have worn that expression in time, if she had taken drives in the Bois instead of stabbing herself.
And Lee? Lee was intoxicated. If he had wooed her in a fool's paradise, at least the shadow of the tree of knowledge had been in it; he had had no illusions. He had not looked for passion, or for tenderness, or for understanding. It was enough for him as yet to squander devotion on indifference. He shook at the touch of the languid woman who accepted his transports with such sovereign calm. To pour out money for her adornment, to buy diamonds to flash on her fingers and her breast, was his delight. He had a contract for a six weeks' tour in England at six hundred a week, and he spent a fortnight's fees on jewels for her one morning. In the foyers and the streets, when he read the men's eyes, exultance swelled him; they envied his possession of her, these blatant fools who were consequential because they had been born with a white skin. He cursed them cheerfully in his thoughts, arrogant with power—the woman who attracted them was his wife!
Yet there was one occasion before the honeymoon ended when he seemed almost to stultify himself, when the admiration that she roused enraged him instead, and was responsible for a burst of resentment. They had met a Londoner of his acquaintance, a singer; and Lee the elated had presented him to her gaily. The singer, who was a handsome man, and not a gentleman, was too bent on being gallant to remember to be polite as he ogled her, and curled his moustache, and propped his elbows on the café table. His shoulder excluded Lee more and more; the conversation became frankly a duologue. The art of rebuffing a man without gaucherie is not known to every woman; it is, in fact, the peculiar attribute of the well-bred. Still Ownie was to blame; she regarded such impertinence as a compliment, and she made no attempt to check it with dignity or otherwise. Lee's scowl grew fiercer and fiercer, his lips bulged appallingly; and the Englishman had no sooner bowed himself away than she beheld her husband in a new light.
He rose from his chair, and put his hand on her arm. She could feel that he was trembling, but he said nothing until they had walked some steps. She turned to him, half frightened and half defiant.
"What is it?" she asked. "What's the matter with you?"
"Don't you ever speak to that fellow again," he exclaimed hoarsely. "Do you hear? I won't have it. Don't you ever dare to speak to him again. If you meet him, you're to pass him by. Is that the way you think a respectable woman ought to behave? Sitting there and——Blast him, I wish I'd thrown the glasses in his face!"
She was alarmed and angry too now. She tried to subdue him by her tone.
"Have you gone out of your mind?" she said, as steadily as she could speak. "I think you forget who it is you're talking to."
"I'm talking to you," he gasped; "I'm talking to my wife; don't you forget it either! You flirted with him, you know you did. You sat there flirting with him—and in front of your husband; you sat flirting with a skunk you'd never seen before, in front of your husband." He came to a standstill, gesticulating excitedly. "You weren't so ready withme, were you? I suppose any man may make love to you if he's white, eh? But take care—you don't know me yet. By God——"
"Hush," she said, "for Heaven's sake; the people are staring at you."
She signalled nervously to a cabman, and gave him the name of the hotel. In the cab Lee's reproaches were so furious that she drew up the windows to muffle his voice from the passers-by. The distance between the café and the hotel was short, and in less than five minutes the courtyard was reached. She sprang out, and hurried to the bedroom while he paid the fare. When he tried the door he found that she had locked it. He called to her, but she made no answer. Then he beat at the panels, and to avoid a scandal she turned the key.
"Is this going on all night?" she demanded, running to the bell-pull. "If you try to hit me, I'll ring for the manager." Her dread of receiving a blow was of the slightest—such fear of personal violence as she had known had faded during the drive—but it was the cruellest thing that she could invent to say on the spur of the moment. She clung to the bell-pull, a picture of agitation.
The threat, the idea that she thought him capable of striking her, sobered him. He entered shamefacedly.
"You needn't be afraid that I shall hurt you," he muttered.
"Needn't I?" she said. "How do I know that? I don't know what you might do, you bully, you—you coward!"
He winced, and stood looking at the ground in silence. Then:
"I didn't mean to bully you," he said huskily. "I—I'm sorry, Ownie, I'll never do it again."
She saw that she was mistress of the situation. Her hold on the bell-pull relaxed; her tone acquired a tinge of shrewishness.
"You won't ever have the chance again," she retorted, "don't flatter yourself! You've shown me what I might expect—I won't live with you."
Though the words were empty enough, they frightened him. He took a step towards her in a panic.
"Ownie!" he cried. And again: "Ownie, I'm sorry!"
"It's not the least consequence whether you're sorry or not," she sneered; she was quite composed now. "I'm sureIdon't care. It's very easy to say you're sorry after you've shouted at me, and insulted me as much as you want to. Yes, insulted me, you——Ah, it's what I might have expected! I'm ashamed of having married you. Only a man—a manlike youwould talk so to a woman."
She saw him shiver. She was reminded suddenly of a dog that Harris used to beat. There was a pause, in which she observed the effect of her taunt with satisfaction. After a few seconds she turned away, and began to unpin her hat at the toilet-table.
"It was because I was jealous," he stammered; "I couldn't help it—I didn't mean to insult you. Ah, take that back—don't say you're ashamed of me! Trust me, and you shall see how good I'll be to you in future. I love you, I love you, you don't know how I love you. Look at yourself in the glass. See how beautiful you are. How can you wonder that I'm jealous? Look at your hair—how soft it is! And your skin—it feels like a flower. I'd die for you. It drove me mad to see you look at another man like that. I know, I know you didn't mean anything by it, but I couldn't bear it. Ownie, forgive me!"
She made no answer. She moved carelessly across the room, tossing her cloak on to the bed. Her slippers lay by an armchair, and she sat down in it, bending over her boots. He was on his knees before her in an instant, trying to seize her hands. She snatched them away with a gesture of aversion, and clasped them behind her head.
"Iamashamed," she repeated. "You've disgusted me. I'd let any white man make love to me, would I? Anyhow no white, man would be beast enough to say such a thing."
He put out his hands again—not to caress her this time, but as if to ward off the daggers she was planting in him. The tears welled into his eyes, and, with a thrill of power, she watched one trickle down the black face.
"Forgive me," he implored.
"It serves me right for not listening to advice," she went on. "I ought to have known what you would be. You can't help being jealous? What right have you got to be jealous—how dare you use such a word to me? Do you suppose that I'm never going to speak to any other man again because I married you?"
"I was wrong," he cried, "I know I was wrong—don't say you're 'ashamed'! It's just because I'm a coloured man that the jealousy comes. Oh, can't you understand? Try to make allowances for me. Don't you see, don't you see?—I remember my colour all the time, I never forget it; and when you sat there talking so—talking like that to him, I hated him because he was white. But I'll never complain any more, I swear I won't! You shall do as you like—I know how good you are."
"There aren't many women who would forgive such behaviour, I can tell you," she said sulkily. She thrust out her foot, and he began to unbutton her boot. "How do I know you'll keep your word?"
"Trust me," he begged. "Be kind to me—only trust me."
She lay back in the chair without replying; her pretty face was stubborn still. He drew off her boots. "Be kind to me," he entreated, "be kind to me." He covered her feet with kisses. He knelt there, suing to her, until she said at last that she forgave.
But it was not in the woman's nature to refrain from accepting attentions and showing that they pleased her; and it was not in human nature for a husband who loved her to keep his oath and be tolerant. Before six months had passed there had been half-a-dozen such scenes. Lee upbraided more violently—the reconciliations did not always follow so soon, but the order of things was always the same; she flirted, and he abused her, and then grovelled for pardon till her resentment was assuaged. Her perception of the extent to which she could make him grovel awoke a savage instinct in the woman. Though her faults were the outcome of weakness, not of strength, the taste of power excited her, and she often remained obdurate merely to prolong the enjoyment of it. Once she even wounded him for no other reason than to gratify the taste. They had returned from a concert, and to see the man, fresh from his triumph, abasing himself before her so shamelessly, gave her a vicious pleasure.
They had taken a house at Hampstead, a house with an ample garden, and the necessary stabling. Except the practice-room, with its bare, polished floor, its windows curtainless—containing nothing but the piano and two chairs—she had revelled in the furnishing of every corner. She wrote to her mother with pride that "there wasn't a cheap thing in the place." With almost equal truth she might have added that there wasn't a thing beautiful. She and Lee had one point in common: both admired the ostentatious, and he found his surroundings nearly ornate enough to justify the amount that had been wasted on them.
And she had half-a-dozen servants; the tenor's stepchild was wheeled to the Heath now in fine apparel by a competent nurse. In her servants Mrs. Lee aroused less sympathy than in the men whom her husband called his "friends"; they looked down upon her for having married "that blacky," who was so much more considerate to them as a master than was she as a mistress. Instinctively she knew it, and it was a frequent thing for a maid at The Woodlands to be discharged on the grounds of being "disrespectful in her manner." A landlady's daughter and negro's wife was the last person likely to submit to disrespect.
One or two women whom she met had also appeared to take a different view of her position from that taken by the men; she found feminine society a shade irksome after her marriage. There were a few mortifying incidents from the first; still she knew that people who were envious always pretended to be disdainful; and the benefits were countless, she reminded herself as time went by. But for the knowledge of what was in store, it would have sufficed for composure to reflect that the other women would act just the same, assuming they had the chance. Her real humiliation came in the form of a baby.
It was a little yellow baby who in the hour of its birth was not expected to live. She did not hear that until some days later—and when she was told, she closed her eyes, for fear they should betray her thought. It was a little yellow baby that she sickened to know her own, and when they put it in her arms, her flesh shrank from it. Lee's joy enraged her. She hated him as he hung smiling over the pillow, was angered by what she felt to be his callousness in supposing she could be glad.
He was enraptured: the child was hers and his. With the passing of the months, he had come to seek more of her than acceptance, and it seemed to him that henceforth they must be one. She was no longer merely the sovereign who permitted—she was the mother of his boy.
But his mistake was very brief, and it was his child who proclaimed to the man that his marriage had been a madness. It was when he saw that she was ashamed of her motherhood that he was ashamed of his passion; it was her contempt for their baby that showed him how he himself was despised.
For her humiliation did not fade, and though she tried to hide the feeling, all the household knew that she never touched the child without an effort. She was humiliated as often as she saw him. The pomp of robes and ribbons, the lace, the paraphernalia of infancy, was painful to her. When he was carried into the air, she winced in imagining the neighbours' comments at their windows. Each time she bent over the bassinet the little face inside looked to her swarthier and more grotesque.
He was christened "David." It was Lee's wish, and the matter had no interest for her. It was Lee who brought him his first toy, and who haunted the nurseries in dread of draughts; it was Lee to whom the nurse soon learnt to turn when she had expensive suggestions to make. Ownie's affection for the other boy had hitherto been somewhat careless, but now she was stung to jealousy, and knew spasms of devotion which were the outcome of resentment. Though the man remained as gentle and generous as ever to him, she called him, "poor little Vivie" in her oughts, and a giggling servant, who was overheard to remark that "his nose was out of joint with somebody," was dismissed tempestuously at an hour's notice.
The baby's unsightliness increased with its length. The stain of the skin deepened; only the tiny palms and the soles of the flat little feet retained the yellowish tint. The spread nostrils gradually widened; the bunch of lip and the high cheek-bones took more and more distressfully the negro type. Vivian had a complexion like a peach, and his head was crowned with damp little flaxen curls that had been coaxed round a comb; David's face became the colour of a medlar, and his hair threatened to be as kinky as his father's. Even for a mulatto he was ill-favoured, and the mulatto and his half-brother were a queer contrast opposite each other in the perambulator. Strangers used to stop the nurse in the street and ask questions—which she seldom failed to repeat to her mistress. Vivian was robust, and had "taking ways"; David was delicate, and the most that the maids found to say for him was that he was "a very patient baby." He made known his desire for food by the whimper which served him for speech, but if the bottle didn't come, the whimper ceased. A faint bleat, and he gazed at the undesired world with resignation.
There was no resignation in Lee. He rebelled furiously—rebelled against his wife's disdain and his own weakness, for he remained the slave to a passion which he knew degraded him. This commonplace woman without intellect, without gratitude, without pretences, held him captive by a purely physical attraction against his will. There were hours when he hated her, yet she retained the power to fire him with a look, and torture him with a glance at another man.
She was not the woman to be unfaithful—for one thing, she appreciated the advantages of virtue too deeply to jeopardise them—but recriminations lost their terror for her soon, and she humoured her vanity without pity or fear. And Lee was no judge of character: in his hell, suspicion smouldered too. The recriminations were so frantic sometimes that the servants, startled from their sleep, hung trembling over the banisters; and there were crashes heard, and broken ornaments were swept up in the morning. "The nigger" was supposed to have thrown them in "the missis's face." In truth the madman shattered them to keep his hands off her.
By slow degrees he began to drink, not heavily—enough to give the situation a cheerier aspect for awhile; enough to shorten his career if he didn't check the habit. It was surprising how much brighter the world looked if he took a little whisky-and-water—especially if he took a little more whisky-and-water. Often after one of his frenzies of resentment he would remain away from the house for a week, though his engagements permitted him to return in two or three days. He would sing at Exeter, or Worcester, or Newcastle, as the case might be, and then go back to town, but not to Hampstead. Moralists in his profession who came upon him dissipating, said that he "treated his wife damned badly." And while he laughed and filled the glasses, the thought of her contempt burned in the man, and at last the suspicion that he could not drown drove him home.
As the child grew old enough to be played with, there came another influence; Lee's love for his child saved him from many excesses. The remembrance of something the boy had said or done would rise in him suddenly and fill him with tenderness. The truest pleasure in the singer's life was when he walked abroad holding his little son's hand, to pick blue-bells where Fitz-John's Avenue stands now, or to bear him westward from the Swiss Cottage in a cab.
David was not mercenary. He jumped at the blue-bells as eagerly as at the cab, though he had learnt already that hansoms always went to the fairyland where presents hung. He was very solicitous about Lee's safety, and lisped cautions against crossing a road when a horse was in sight, and the danger of falling through a cellar-plate into a coal-cellar. Once the nurse told David that the fascinating berries in the hedge were called "deadly nightshade," and that "if he fiddled with them he would die." He was impressed, and "Must never figgle with deadly nightshirt!" was his next warning to his father.
At a very early age there were signs that he was ambitious to secure a reputation as a humorist, notably an evening when he said his prayers in a facetious voice, and met rebuke by explaining that he was only trying to make God laugh. But the phase was a brief one, and he developed into a mournful child who was found to be more like a girl in his character than a boy. "Now Vivian was such an 'igh-spirited little feller!"
David called the lady downstairs "mamma," because he had been told that was her name; and he called his father "pops," because the diminutive came naturally to him. When he was nearly six years old, Ownie closed a door too swiftly and jammed his finger in it. The circumstance caused him to take an unusual liberty—he clung to her knees, howling for comfort. She looked at the finger, and patted him on the frizzy head, and said, "There, there, it isn't bad; suck it—it'll soon be well!" She meant to be gracious. Lee, who watched her face, caught him in his arms, and fondled him till the sobs ceased; and there were tears in the man's eyes which the child was too young to understand.
"I'm so glad you married pops, mamma," said David—"I do like him so!"
It was about this time that he began to understand, in a wordless, instinctive way, that his mother found him disgusting.
The two boys had a daily governess, and Vivian was her favourite. She was an unsympathetic person, who prided herself on being extremely just, and she was careful to explain that as David was much younger than Vivian, she set him much shorter tasks. She also talked a great deal about "the spirit of emulation, which she was afraid he lacked." To supply the deficiency she offered a prize to the child who earned the greater number of marks by the end of the term. Vivian took the lead, and kept it; and when David knew hopeful moments and promised to catch him up yet, Miss Fewster always answered reprovingly that "she feared he had let his half-brother get too far ahead." After which David the downcast made less progress still.
She found him inattentive. She told him once how bewilderingly far from the earth the sun was, and how comparatively close was the moon. In the same minute he asked her if the moon wasn't "much the nearest to Heaven." She sighed, and recapitulated figures.
David's most violent emotions at this period shook him on the mornings when she was late. It occasionally happened that she did not arrive at all, and then he was free to sit in the garden, doing nothing—"like a girl." (He was always hearing now that he was like a girl; he began to think it would be rather nice to know one.) His feverish hope, as the clock ticked on; the passion of suspense in which he went out to watch for Miss Fewster, praying that she wouldn't appear; the sickening thud of his heart as she turned the corner, seemed physically to weaken him. And always she exclaimed briskly, "So you came to meet me, eh?" And knowing that she saw through him, he would force a hopeless smile and murmur that he had. His thought of the lost garden tied a knot in his throat during the lesson hours, and the droning of the bees grew so loud sometimes that it was impossible to understand what she said. It was really the garden that stood in the way of his writing his exercises, so full was it of sounds, and scents, and of fluttering shadows that he liked to see. In the drawing-room there was a silver inkstand which he knew the Queen had given to his "pops," and one day he thought that if he could have this royal object to dip his pen in, the exercises might be easier. So Lee, who was nettled by the comparisons, lent it to him gladly, and Miss Fewster shuddered. But the Queen's inkstand did not win David the prize.
"Isn't it strange that he never sings?" Ownie asked Lee reproachfully. "Nearly every child sings, or tries to, when he's playing about; they say this boy can't hum a bar."
Lee frowned, and looked away. She was telling him something that he knew already.
"Well, what of it?" he said.
"Well, isn't it strange? If he is going to sing at all——" She felt that if he had sung, he would have done something to justify his existence.
"Nobody can tell if he'll sing, as a man, till he's about eighteen. He won't sing as a child, of course."
"Humph," she said.
"What do you mean by 'humph'? Who wants him to sing as a child?" exclaimed Lee angrily; "why the hell should he?"
"One would thinkyouwanted him to, by your tone!" said the woman. "I'm sorry I inquired, I'm sure. I was wondering what he would do when he grew up if he hadn't a voice."
"He'll do better thanI've done, I hope, anyhow. There are worse troubles than having no voice."
"That's lucky for you," she retorted; "if you go on in the way you're going, you won't have one long!"
He rapped out an oath:
"Which skunk said that?"
"Which?" she sniggered. "Everybody!"
"Some man, of course! Drinks my champagne, and runs me down to my wife behind my back."
"Runs you down?" she echoed. "Do you think any man—or any woman either—could tell me more about you than I know?"
"And a lot you care, don't you?"
"I should care if you lost your voice," she said shamelessly. David was all ears behind a picture-book during this conversation.
As the boys grew older, they knew that their parents constantly quarrelled, just as the servants, and the tradespeople, and the neighbours knew it. Vivian, as was natural, had imbibed the servants' view, and held his stepfather a brute who beat "poor mamma" in the night. He called him to David once "a black beast," and in the scuffle that followed, the younger child got badly beaten; his indignation was stronger than his arms. David understood quite early that his father was looked down on because he was black; he realised that it was a disgrace not to be white. That explained why grandmamma had called him "poor little fellow," and why mamma only kissed him when visitors were present. It explained why her rare kisses fell on his cheek like the flick of a wet flannel. He began to see things. And in gabbling his Collects to Miss Fewster, he pronounced with fervour the petition: "Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord!"
Once he asked Lee where he was born.
"In Savannah, sonny."
Miss Fewster's geography lessons had not extended to Savannah. David wanted to know where it was.
"In America, my boy."
"Are there other people like you and me in America, pops?"
"Oh yes, heaps of them," said Lee after a stare.
David was puzzled. He had always believed his pops so wise, and really he seemed to have done a very thoughtless thing indeed. He would have been more sensible himself.
"If I'd been you, I should have stopped there," he said at last. "Then nobody would have noticed you so much."
Lee laughed, without being amused.
"You see I wanted to be noticed," he answered; "all artists do."
"Is that why you came to England?"
"Well, it's why I stayed here. I came with my father and mother when I was no bigger than you are."
"Shall I be an artist too, pops, when I'm a man?"
"I hope you will."
"And shall I marry a white girl, like you did?"
"I hope you won't," said Lee from his heart.
"Why?" asked David.
"Because the coloured man who marries a white girl is a fool, David. He won't be happy."
"I don't think I should like to marry a black one, pops."
"Then you'd better not marry at all," replied Lee. He reflected. "Don't tell your mamma what I've said."
This was before David went to school. Vivian and he were sent to a day-school in the neighbourhood after Miss Fewster turned the corner for the last time, and the elder child reported that "David was an awful little duffer in the playground." The authorities were not much more flattering about his mental attainments. The only high marks that he ever secured were in the composition-class, in which he generally got "double-six"—and was humbled if he didn't. For the rest, he was not ambitious. It was always "Harris" who brought home a prize bound in calf at the end of the term, though it was "Lee" who used to read it. "Harris" was popular, and conspicuous in the lower-school Eleven; "Lee" was a solitary, and usually went out with a "duck's egg." On the horizontal bar "Harris" was as good as many of the boys in trousers; "Lee" could barely manage to pull himself up to his chin.
He was just ten when he fell in love. She was a governess, who took some of the junior classes. Before he left in the evening he used to steal back into the silent schoolroom to say "good night" to her. He always found her standing at the wide window, looking out at the sunset, or the stars. She was still young enough to have her dreams—old enough to be weary. He never told her that he loved her, but she used to lend him her own books, and once she called him "David," and that day he walked up Belsize Park Gardens quivering with joy. Vivian said: "Can't you talk, fat-head?"—and he couldn't.
From the fly-leaves of the books he learnt that her name was Minnie. The knowledge was rapture; for a week he felt that he moved in a different world from the other boys, who only knew her as "Miss Pugh." Once she asked him if he was fond of poetry. He associated it with "Casabianca" and "The Collier's Dying Child," but he would not have sunk in her esteem for a whole holiday, and he said "Yes." So she lent him Tennyson—a shabby volume, with her favourite passages marked. The pencil-marks were very scholastic and precise, and the passages were very sad and sentimental. Poor Miss Pugh! The hardest duty of the governess was to discipline the woman. But David was too young to read the poetry in the margin.
And he was too young to understand the book, but parts of "Maud" he read again and again, and they throbbed in him. They translated what he felt while his father sang, and what the shadows were always hinting in the garden. It was as if he had been waiting for a chord, and it had come. The melody of sense intoxicated him. To put the garden into words, and make music at the same time—how wonderful! Not long afterwards a master discovered him poring dejectedly over original and precocious verse when he ought to have been engaged with declensions, and passed sentence, whereat the versifier gave way to tears.
"I don't like to see boys cry when they're punished, Lee; it isn't English!" said the Englishman, meaning that it wasn't brave.
David looked at him, aggrieved.
"I am crying," he explained, "because I couldn't say what I meant." But henceforth he spoiled his paper more guardedly.
When Vivian was thirteen, Ownie complained that he ought to be at a public school, instead of at Belsize Manor. It was "only right," she declared—"they owed him such advantages"—and Elisha, who had never refused her anything but men to flirt with, answered carelessly, "All right, my dear. Why didn't you say so before? Let him go to Eton or Harrow then, where the swells go. Send him to any place you like." The boy's own wish was to accompany one of his chums to a college on the south coast, and though Ownie parted reluctantly with the idea of Eton or Harrow where the swells went, she gave him his way in the end. She told the cook to see that his playbox was properly filled, and his stepfather presented him with a five-pound note. He made joyous adieux. David, it was understood, would follow him about two years later.
It was when the time came for David to proceed to the college that Vivian began to unburthen his mind to Ownie. The confidential period was not long-lived, but during that Easter recess they used to walk up and down the garden together, disparaging the man who kept them. In one of their conversations, the lad said impetuously:
"I do wish that Dave could be sent somewhere else, you know, mater! I shall get awfully boshed when he joins—it's rather hard lines on a fellow. Why can't he stop at the Manor?"
She sighed. "Will it be very bad for you, dear?"
"Well, a fellow's bound to be boshed. Of course he won't be in my form, but everybody 'll know who he is. It's rather hard lines, having a half-brother who's a blacky."
"Hush! Try and make the best of it," she said, squeezing his arm; "I'm afraid it's too late to send him anywhere else now. We all have things to put up with, Vivie;Ihave, as well as you."
"Y-e-s," he returned. "It's a good job he won't be in my form. I don't mind so tremendously much. The first time anybody gives me any cheek I'll jolly well sock their heads. Oh, I know you have things to put up with; by Jove, I wonder how you stand the governor sometimes!"
"We learn to stand things as we get older," she replied. "What can't be cured must be endured, Vivie."
"He's such a—I mean leaving his being a negro out of it altogether—he's such a cad. It does lick me how you ever did it, mater!"
"Did it?" she murmured. Her heart missed a beat.
"Well, married him! You never got on with him—I don't see how you could have expected to. Why, I can remember your rows when I was a kid. I think it was awful. I can't make out how you could do it, I'm hanged if I can!"
She winced—the colour in her face fluttered a little. For an instant she was ashamed. Her son looked very tall to her, and her sale looked very foul. But when she answered, her tone was saint-like.
"I had a great deal to consider, dear," she said, "more than you are old enough to understand. To begin with, there wasyou. And another thing: I was very young, and your grandmother——Anyhow I did do it, and we must make the best of it, Vivie, while it lasts."
She drew his arm round her waist, and was humiliated to feel that it lay there limply. They strolled for a minute in silence, both thinking of the last words that had escaped her.
"It's beastly, going out with him, you know," went on the boy. "And he's got no tact—you'd think he'd know a fellow didn't like it! We met some chaps in Regent Street the other day—chaps in the Fourth; I saw 'em grin as they went by.Hedidn't see. He was as cool as a cucumber—lugged me into a shop and stood tuck. He'd have lugged them in too, if I'd given him half a chance. You'd have been much happier if you hadn't taken him, mater; it would have been a jolly sight better for both of us."
"Not for you," she said; "I'm sure of that, I've always felt that. Of course there are drawbacks for you now, but, later on, you'll appreciate the benefits. I'm sure that when you're older you'll say I didn't make the sacrifice for nothing. I found it hard to do—I prayed to God to make me strong enough; but the knowledge that I was able to bring you up to be a gentleman has helped me to bear it all." She nodded sadly. "When you're a man, and getting on, you needn't see any more of him than you want to!" she added.
So when Vivian went back to the school, David went too; and the little mulatto's experiences there did nothing to lessen the sensitiveness that had been bred in him. He found his form-mates brutal, and his masters contemptuous. Probably he exaggerated their contempt—circumstances had made him morbid—but those with whom he was brought in contact were not magnanimous, and neither his race nor his temperament was any passport to their favour.
He was bullied atrociously. The taunt of "dirty nigger" embittered his life. When it could not be made aloud, it was written on scraps of paper and passed to him under cover of Latin grammars. A favourite amusement of the form was to pin him to the ground while one of the number set fire to his hair, and when it was discovered that he was the weakest among them, they punched his head and wrenched his ears twenty times a day. Often he used to drag himself away from their sports, to hide in the Gothic corridors, or slink round the great cricket field, crying with pain; but to be found "blubbing" meant worse pain to follow, for then half-a-dozen stalwart lads would hack his shins, and twist his puny arms till he writhed on his knees in agony.
What he dreaded most were the classes which were held twice a week in an annexe of the college. The master who took these always withdrew for five or ten minutes in the middle of the afternoon, and no sooner had he gone than a shower of blows drove David to mount a desk by the window and keep watch, while the other boys had larks. The outcome was always the same. His cry of "Cave!" suppressed the frolics in good time, but the uplifted face of the little beaten sentry through the glass met the master's eyes the instant he set foot in the courtyard, and he re-entered with a stereotyped inquiry:
"Has anybody moved here besides Lee?"
To this there was a chorus of "No, sir."
Then he said, "Lee, fifty lines;" and by-and-by he came to say, "Two hundred lines." So twice a week David got an imposition as well as the kicks and blows. Apparently it never struck the man as noteworthy that the undesirable post of sentinel was always filled by the same boy; it never occurred to him to draw deductions from the fact. He was abnormally obtuse, even for a schoolmaster.
Elisha had not been sent to a public school himself, and when David went home, a false shame kept him from-owning that he was ill-treated. However, as he got bigger, the worst of his physical sufferings ceased. But he was always twitted with his colour, always made to feel that he was a lower thing than the lusty young English lads who insulted him with filthy verses and obscene cartoons. He never found a chum in the college in all the terms that he was there; his real companion was his father in the holidays.
It was a queer fellowship between the morbid youth and the despised husband. Before David was sixteen, he was Lee's confidant in all matters. He heard about his debts and debauches, and his difficulty in reconciling the diminished income with the expenses. He also advised. Though the fees remained the same, the engagements were far fewer, and the prodigal father waded in a sea of debt perpetually now; he talked of the money "I used to make," and of "What my voice was once." There was an afternoon in the practice-room when he gave way to despair, sobbing across the piano like a mourner across a grave; but that was after a late night when his nerves were out of order. David prescribed a couple of glasses of port and a cigar for him, and he was soon cheerful enough to suggest a dinner up West. The tenor and his ugly son were familiar figures in the Regent Street restaurants, "Café, and Café-au-lait" somebody had nick-named them.
At the age of sixteen "Café-au-lait" was a man in his knowledge of one side of life—a man in his reflections and self-restraint—though he still trembled under the masters' glances, and boggled over his Cæsar. He boggled, indeed, over everything except the very occasional essays that demanded no dry-as-dust facts; when he was at liberty to draw on his imagination the essays were a pleasure to him. Lee's was not the nature to expurgate the subject which rankled in him most, and the warning that had escaped him to the child was amplified a thousandfold to the boy.
David understood. Marriage had spoilt his father's life; marriage was the forbidden fruit in his own. The warnings seemed superfluous to him, after what he had seen at home and at school. He no longer wanted to know a girl; he laughed when Lee said, "Remember all I've told you when you're mad about some woman yourself. Your wife would treat you as your mother has treated me. You'd suffer hell every time a white man spoke to her."
"There's no fear ofmyever marrying, father."
"Ah!" said Lee, who knew more of temptation.
"I've seen too much."
"But you haven't seen the woman. When she comes along you'll fool yourself. She'll be 'so different' from everybody else; I thought your mother 'so different' before I got her. By God, we hadn't been married a month when she threw it in my face that I was a negro!"
David brought him some verses one day, and asked him nervously if they could be set and sung. For the first time he was timid with his father.
Lee said, "Why do you break your head in your holidays writing things? You're always scribbling in your bedroom, I hear. What do you write about, sonny?"
David looked more confused still.
"Things come," he said; "there's so much to write about. I hope——"
"What do you hope?"
"I hope I shall always write. I've got it in me," he blurted.
"You just pray for a voice instead," his father answered; "it will pay you a heap better. Let fools hammer out the words foryou! It's not the chaps that write things who have good times, my boy; it's the fellows that sing, or publish 'em." He read the lines slowly, while the author trembled. "I don't understand what it's meant to be," he said; "is it a hunting song? It's all about the fox's suffering, instead of the people's sport."
David winced: "The fox does suffer, doesn't he?"
"I daresay; but the people enjoy themselves. A hunting song must be jolly—Pink and Tallyho! Have you ever been to a meet? It's a very pretty sight, let me tell you."
"I know it is; but I didn't try to feel like the people who dress up to kill the fox—I tried to feel like the fox they all want to kill."
"What's the good of that? Foxes don't, buy songs. You should have thought about the fun and the cheers. It's all on the wrong side; it's wrong-headed, that's what it is."
"I did think about the cheers—I thought how they must sound to the fox. And I thought when he sees a crowd of big men and women on horses, with a pack of hounds, chasing him to death, the field must look like the world to his fright. He has run till he's breathless, his legs 'll hardly carry him. The crowd are gaining on him and his heart feels as if it's going to burst. They swoop nearer and nearer, and he's bedraggled, and panting, and dead beat. Oh yes, I thought of the cheers—he hears them right to the end. And then the dogs fall on him—such a lot of dogs—and a man sticks a knife into his body, and the lady who's there when he dies carries away a piece of the corpse, and feels proud. It sounds like a game of savages, father."
"Whatever it is, you won't alter it, sonny. You don't suppose you're going to make the world any better?"
This was really David's most sanguine hope. But he looked modest.
"Anyhow, I can write the truth," he said.
"The truth? Who the devil wants the truth?" replied the nigger. "People hate the truth, especially English people; there's nothing English people detest so much. And they always deny it.... I'll tell you what you might do if you feel like that—you might make it a bull-fight and go for the brutality of foreigners. But even then it would be no good for music. If you want to do lyrics, you must write about love, or the valour of Englishmen. Nothing else is any use. Nobody would sing this."
"I don't want to write about love," said David; "I only write what I feel. There are plenty of things in the world besides women and war. 'No good for music'? Why, some of itismusic! Listen to this." He declaimed his pet stanza entreatingly, and waxed boastful. "Can't you hear it? They came, the last two lines, all by themselves; they just ran into my head, and sang themselves on to the paper. I know they're good. You'll see! Wait till I'm famous. When I bring out a volume of poems, and everybody is talking about it, you won't think I'm so stupid for wanting to write. I tell you I've got it in me."
"Lord! I wish you had had a better mother," said Lee, dismayed at literary ambition.
Ownie, grown rather stout, and puffy under the eyes, used to read novels in the drawing-room, while the pair strolled up and down the garden, talking. She was forty-nine now. When they turned, the lad could see her—the woman who was contemptuous of them both. She wore black; Mrs. Tremlett had recently died. The crape recalled to Lee the little parlour in Regency Square, the period of his courtship.
Her mind was at this time chiefly occupied by the thought of Vivian. He had left school, and she wondered what was to be done with him. He himself had no definite views on the subject. When she broached the matter to him, he said lightly that he was hanged if he knew. On the whole, he thought he preferred the Army, and as the Army was out of the question, he would try his hand at anything they liked. He was cheerful and indifferent.
"Business?" she suggested.
"I don't mind," he said. "Where's the oof to come from, though? Will he part?" Between Ownie and Vivian, Lee was generally referred to as "he."
"I daresay a little could be found to give you a start with, dear, but I don't know what you could do. I had better speak to him about it. You're so young, and you see we don't know many business people."
"I'll tell you what—I'll go to the Cape," he said. "Singleton, a fellow who left last term, is going out there. That would be rather jolly. It would suit me better than an office."
"Go to the Cape?" exclaimed Ownie. "Whatever would you do at the Cape? Don't talk nonsense; I'm not going to have you packed off to the world's end like that. You must stop in London, where I can see you. You're all I've got, remember!" She was hurt that he could propose such a thing.
"Oh, well," he demurred, "that's rot, you know, mater! A fellow can't sit in his mother's lap all his life. Singleton has got a mother too, I suppose, but it doesn't prevent him doing the best he can for himself."
Ownie was silent for a moment. Then she said: "We must try to find you something that you'll like quite as well, dear," and there was a little touch of sadness in her voice. She was reluctant to acknowledge it, but it had forced itself upon her more than once that her handsome young son was a shade selfish. It was the fault that jarred upon her most in others.
Time had not left her complacence unimpaired. The menace of the future was in her reveries, and she had lost her youth, and her figure, and her admirers. Decrepit foreigners who smelt of pomatum, and dyed their moustaches purple, were the only men who languished at her now. Even her youngest captives had ceased to adore her when they heard Vivian, five feet ten in his socks, calling her "Mater." And she had never reproached him, even in her thoughts; she felt it was rather cruel that he wasn't more attached to her.
She very often attempted to discuss the subject of his career with Lee; but Lee found it easier to tip his stepson an occasional sovereign and let him loaf, than to give the matter serious consideration. Vivian was idle for the best part of a year; and when he made a beginning it was only in a West-End concert-hall as assistant business-manager. It was a depressing drop from the altitude on which his mother had foreseen him—he was paid thirty shillings a week, and the position was quite subordinate. But unless she sold some of her jewellery to put him into a profession, there seemed to be nothing else for him to do—and he did not incline to any profession except the Army.
So the elder boy went to town every day now and began to cultivate the air of an impresario, and the younger continued to meet his Muse clandestinely in the college grounds and write surreptitious verse. Then, in the middle of a term—one morning during the Euclid hour—he was summoned from the college by telegram, and sped to the station sick with fear. Lee was in the provinces, very ill.
In the first days of an intended tour he had taken a slight cold. He had to leave for Birmingham on the morrow, and he reached it chilled and shivering. To sing was out of the question. He remained in the hotel, and ordered hot drinks and additional blankets. Next morning he woke with a cough, and sent for a doctor; but the cough grew worse in spite of medical aid, and when he was joined by a companion whom he had been expecting, he was found in bed with pneumonia.
He was asleep when David arrived. In the sitting-room the companion was having dinner. David accepted her presence without astonishment. She said she supposed he must be hungry, and told him to ring the bell; he answered that he was not hungry in the least. She had peroxide-of-hydrogen hair, and painted cheeks, and a coarse voice. He sat in an armchair by the fire, and looked at her.
"How soon shall I be able to go in?" he asked, trembling.
"They'll tell 'im you're here when 'e wakes up," she said, with her mouth full. "You'd better have something to eat, you know. 'David' your name is, isn't it?"
"Yes. I couldn't eat anything, thank you. Who is taking care of him?" He knew already that the companion wasn't.
"The doctor sent round two nurses from the hospital—a day nurse and a night nurse. He's in a bad way. You should see how thin 'e's got."
"Will he—get well?" inquired his son, with a jerk.
"Let soap so," said the woman. She refilled her glass, and emptied the bottle. "Have some champagne?"
He shook his head. "I wish he'd wake."
"You better had," she rejoined; "there's nothing like champagne when you're feeling low." The waiter reappeared with the sweets. "Bring up another bottle," she said, "and a green chartrooze. I don't think I'll take any of those. What's that one—the floppy thing with the pink-and-white stuff on it?"
The waiter murmured that it was trifle.
"No, I don't want any." She made a wretched pun, and told him to pass her the cigarettes. The box was a silver one that belonged to the sick man; the boy winced to see her careless hand thrust in it. He wondered what the waiter thought of her, wondered that his father wasn't ashamed—and knew a gust of self-reproach for condemning him to-night. A lump rose suddenly in his throat, his eyeballs pricked; he stared hard at the fire in a struggle to keep back the tears that were starting.... To his shame he felt one trickling down his cheek.
"Don't you smoke?" asked the woman.
"Not now," he muttered, and knew that his voice had betrayed him.
She turned to him surprised. "What's the matter with you?"
"Nothing," he said angrily; "what should there be?"
In the road, a piano-organ reeled out a cadenza, and then stopped short. After the sharp silence that ensued, the roll of the traffic seemed to fill the room. The cork popped, and he drank his wine at a draught.
"Go on."
"I don't want any more."
"Sure?" She tilted her glass. "Well, here's to Temperance, and down with champagne!"
Though he no longer watched her, he was intensely conscious of her presence; it weighed upon his senses, he resented it with every nerve. The odour of her cigarette permeated his thoughts while he waited, and he fancied that he could hear her breathe.
The nurse came in, and said that Lee was asking for him. She warned him not to remain more than a few minutes. The sight of her strengthened the boy. As he followed this clean-faced woman in her sober dress, a tinge of confidence lightened his apprehension.
Lee had altered painfully. His words were whispers. In the first moments there seemed something unreal in seeing him lying there so weak.
"Davie."
"Father."
"Sit down."
"Why didn't you wire before, father?"
"It was time enough."
"You're getting on nicely, they say."
"Perhaps."
"Do they know at home?"
Lee bent his head. "The papers. But I don't want her here. I told her she needn't come."
"But she may, and——"
"Oh no; she won't want to."
There was a pause. Then he said in firmer tones:
"This is a bad business, sonny."
"It'll be all right."
"Have you seen Julia?"
"The woman in there? Yes."
"She's a good sort, Julia—looks after everything. Most of 'em would have cleared out and left me."
David wondered what awaited her elsewhere. He turned very cold—the illusion frightened him, for in health Lee had had no illusions.
"A good sort," murmured the man, "eh?"
"Yes," said the boy, faintly.
"She's got a friend here now—comes in to see her sometimes—but it must be very slow for her; not many women would have stopped. See that she's comfortable, Davie."
"I'll see to it, father."
Lee closed his eyes, and his thoughts wandered through the years to a morning when he followed a widow about Brighton, and overtook her on Marine Parade. The sun shone out to him again, and he heard the wash of the waves on the beach. He came back to David.
"If I don't pull through, it'll be an awful mess," he said. "God knows what I owe I I wish I'd put a bit by for you."
"You'll have plenty of time to put by in, father. Don't talk nonsense about not pulling through; in a month you'll be as strong as ever."
The woman who was called Julia opened the door, and whisked over to the dressing-table.
"Sorry to bother," she said; "there's another bill from the chemist's come in; I've got no money left."
"Take some," said the dying man. "Where do you keep the key?"
She unlocked the drawer, and whisked out again. There had been a rustle of bank-notes.
"A good sort, Julia," he repeated; "looks after everything. I must give her something, Davie.... There's my scarf-pin somewhere about—it'll do for her tie."
David left him soon, mindful of the nurse's instructions, and at nine o'clock the doctor paid another visit.
"I should like to have a physician down from town, if you don't mind," stammered the lad; "the best we can get."
"Just as you please," said the practitioner, stiffly. "But the treatment in these cases——"
David felt shy, and was annoyed with himself for being so. The sense, inherited and acquired, of racial inferiority cowed him as he opposed his opinion to the authoritative stranger's.
"Yes, if you don't mind, I should like a physician," he insisted, after an inward struggle. Embarrassment lent a ring of defiance to his voice, and the doctor thought him a cub.
So the telegram was written, and the cub went out with it himself.
When he returned to the sitting-room, Julia was playing cards for coppers with a faded woman in shabby black, who was presented to him as "Mrs. Hayes." A brandy bottle and a syphon stood between the glasses on the table; and when Mrs. Hayes won a shilling she tittered: "Lucky at love, unlucky at cards, my dear!" As she put on her bonnet, she gave a start. "There! I meant to 'ave bought sixpenn'orth, against my being bad again in the night, dear," she exclaimed; "the pubs 'll be shut by now!" And then her hostess summoned the waiter, and Mrs. Hayes carried another bottle home under her cape.
It was in these surroundings, rather more than a week after the consultation, that the tenor died.
And Ownie—in weeds for the second time in her life—sighed as she had sighed when she lost Harris, "I don't know what will become of me!" Though her youth was gone, her egoism remained, and even the solicitor was touched by the pathos of her helplessness. "I was a good wife," she said, having had a week to convince herself of it; "it's hard that he never made any provision for the future."
David did not return to school, and Vivian, who found his mother's lamentations wearisome when he was at home, began to thaw towards his half-brother, and discussed matters with him.
"The mater is selfish, you know," he said; "she only thinks of herself. It's deuced rough on you and me, but she never talks aboutthat. I suppose we shall have to go into a poky little house somewhere, and pig along with one or two servants eh?" He was unconsciously picturing the environment in which he had been born.
"I suppose so," said David.
"Good Lord! When one remembers all the money that was made, you know, it's awful. They ought to have saved. The idea of spending every bob, and never thinking about to-morrow! I don't blame him any more than her, of course," he added hastily; "it was her fault too; but I wish they had let me go to the Cape. It isn't a lively look-out to live in a tin-pot house here, and come home to find the mater fretting over her lost splendours. That's what it will be—she isn't the woman to be cheerful when things go wrong. I shan't be able to stand it; I know I shan't. I shall cut it after a bit, and take a room up West."
"She won't let you. Besides, she may need your salary."
"What?"
"Well, who's going to keep her ifwedon't?"
"Oh, I say!" exclaimed Vivian, "do you mean to tell me we shall be as poor as all that?"
"I don't know. I hope we shan't. I'm sureIdon't want to live at home either now; but it's likely enough, isn't it?"
Vivian pondered.
"There's her jewellery," he said at last; "that's worth a lump, you know. As to your not living at home either, one of us will have to, it's certain! She can't be left by herself; it wouldn't be right."
"I don't think thatmygoing would trouble her; she has never wantedme. If she does, of course I'll stop. The thing is, I don't know what sort of berth I can expect to get. I'm afraid it won't be very easy for—for a fellow like me to get anything to do, will it?" He tried to force a laugh. "I've never been in demand so far."
"No, thereisthat," said Vivian. "She was talking about it yesterday."
"What did she say?"
"Only that. It won't be so easy as if you were—you know! You ought to have sung, Dave, then you'd have been all right. Fancy, if you'd had the governor's voice; by Jove, there would have been none of this bother at all! Of course, if you can write, it'll be better than nothing." He hesitated, and looked a little sheepish, for such confidences were new between them. "You want to go in for being an author, don't you?"
David nodded. "I've sent verses to magazines already; only, they weren't taken."
"I should peg away at it if I were you. I always told the mater it wasn't half a bad idea for you when she called it 'rot.' It doesn't matter what an author looks like, you see; if he's as hideous as the veiled Johnny in what's-its-name, it doesn't show in his books. Just you go on turning it out; that's my advice. I'd like to see some of your things one day."
"Still," said David, "I shall have to get a berth at first, you know. I shall give it up before long, of course, but I must have one at the start."
A sincere belief in oneself generally inspires conviction in somebody. That is why Ownie had never failed to find supporters. Vivian regarded his half-brother a shade enviously.
"It's my opinion you're not half such a fool as the mater thinks, old chap," he murmured. "I wish I could do something of the sort myself, though I can't say I'm nuts on poetry. Just you swot away. If you write enough, some of it's bound to bring in some coin sooner or later. Now, what have J got to look forward to? Why, nothing at all! I can stick on where I am for ever. If I'd gone to the Cape, I might have come back a millionaire; but how on earth can I hope to make any money in a billet in London?"
"I thought," David said, "that what you really wanted was to go into the Army?"
"Oh, well, I did—I was younger then; we all want to do something silly at that age. I've changed my mind about that. I want to make money, that's allIwant; I'd like to be a manager. There's plenty of oof to be made in the musical business, I can tell you, even if you don't sing or play yourself. There are lots who do—and brains are as good as a voice, if it comes to that. Of course the swell artists get deuced big terms, but if you're smart you can get the others to payyou. I'm keeping my eyes open, what doyouthink? It isn't difficult to make a profit on a concert if your rent's not too high, and you go the right way to work; it's like making a book on a race. And, after a bit, you get cracked up in the papers for your 'services to musical art in England,' too. If I had something to start with, I'd have a shot at the game to-morrow."
He stroked an incipient moustache, and David looked at him with respect. Himself, he panted to be famous—fortune was a detail—but the flourish of qualities that he didn't possess impressed him.
Some little time passed before Vivian was relieved of his fear of having to contribute immediately towards his mother's support. Then, when light was shed, it was evident that if she sold her diamonds, she could withdraw from The Woodlands with a considerable sum, and the earliest idea was to remove to a villa at Balham or Wandsworth. On the advice of one of the decrepit foreigners, however, who promised her a clientèle, she talked presently of taking a boarding-house at Regent's Park as soon as she was able to sub-let. The fall was crushing, but at least it was better than solitude in a suburb and living on her capital. Privately, too, as she foresaw herself ministering to the palates of bachelors, with a red lampshade over the dinner-table, she considered the possibility of marrying again. She was prepared to view purple moustaches with a more lenient eye now, and she contemplated a business run on good lines with more complacence than she permitted to appear.
In the meantime, before a tenant was forthcoming, several attempts were made to find David employment. The decrepit, but faithful, rallied round her—the least deserving generally receive the most sympathy—and though a coloured boy of forbidding countenance was no acquisition, he at last obtained a clerkship at a music publisher's.
When he had been engaged at Panzetta's a few days, he broached to his mother his desire to live alone. He didn't allude to her lack of affection for him; he put the matter on grounds of expedience.
"I don't think my money would be any help to you, would it?" he said; "fares and lunches run away with a good deal. I couldn't give you any more out of a pound a week than it would cost you to keep me. If I took a bedroom near Panzetta's, there wouldn't be any fares to pay. I saw one advertised for seven shillings, quite close by; I might go and look at it, if you don't mind."
Now she had reflected already that he would be no acquisition to a boarding-house either, and in her heart she was relieved by his proposal. Still her hesitation was not wholly insincere.
"You're very young to go away by yourself, David," she demurred; "you're not seventeen, you know. I don't think you ought to do that yet."
"I'm quite old enough to take care of myself. If you have no objection, I should prefer to go." He spoke in the tone that was natural to him when he addressed his mother, and it sounded as if he were resigning a situation. It pierced even her coldness. She flushed, and looked down.
"I know you've never been very fond of me, of course," she faltered. "Now your father is dead, I suppose there's nothing to keep you with me?"
"I never said that," replied David. But she observed that he did not deny it. "I don't see what use there is in stopping here—and in a boarding-house you would find me in the way, too."
She was startled. It came upon her as a shock, to discover how well she was understood by the son to whom she had voluntarily revealed herself so little. For almost the first time she felt remorseful; something of tenderness moved her towards the boy whom she had taught to regard her as a stranger.
"If you'll be happier away, go," she returned, in a low voice; "only don't forget there's always your home if you want to come back." One cannot undo the past by a mood; missing the confirmation of response, she was never keenly aware of it herself, but there was a stir of appeal within her as she added the last words.
"Thank you," said David politely.
He went to look at the room during the luncheon hour next day. It was in. Soho: the ordinary lodging-house attic, with a rickety chest of drawers, a white paraffin lamp, and a low ceiling that dipped to a window which commanded a fairly extensive view of neighbouring chimneys. However, he was not dissatisfied. The window, indeed, rather attracted him by reason of a resemblance it bore to the one in the familiar prints of Chatterton. He settled to move in on the following Monday, and left a half-crown as deposit. Ownie, duly informed of his arrangements, said little but that she should expect him to come to see her on Sundays, wherever she might be. Not so Vivian; Vivian said that he would be very short on a pound a week, but that he was to be envied all the same. As for himself, he had thrown out hints of taking diggings too, and "the mater had sat on him promptly. Considering she meant to run a hash-house, her opposition was distinct rot, you know, because she would have plenty of people to talk to there without him!"
It would have been becoming for David to feel sentimental when he packed his books, and his clothes, and went to bed in his little room in The Woodlands for the last time; but he did not. He was vaguely surprised at the absence of appropriate emotions. A profound relief was in his heart, the relief with which the unwelcome embrace solitude. There is none deeper.
He had grown in fetters. The burden of knowledge had weighted his soul, hampered his speech, even cramped his gait; and he was to be free. His spirit stretched itself. The only love that had been given to him had passed away, and he expected life to yield no other, was resigned to know no other; he wasn't seventeen. To be alone, to be famous! as yet he asked no more. And he looked forward boldly. No suspicion of the disappointments, the disillusions that lay before him, no inkling of the difficulties that throng the path of the literary idealist, leavened his mood.
When he drew up the blind next morning, the sky was fair; the garden of his childhood glistened in the sunshine. Ownie was not an early riser, and when he had breakfasted, he went upstairs again to say good-bye to her. "Well!—don't forget to come on Sunday," she said, and he nodded assent. His trunk was to be called for and delivered at the lodging during the day, so he walked with Vivian to the station. Hampstead was alive with young men walking to the station, young men recently introduced into their fathers' businesses and proudly conscious of their first silk hats, and their gold watch-chains. No overcoats hid the watch-chains, though it was freezing. David marked the youths pityingly: to have no other prospect than an office all one's life!
He took his seat in Panzetta's with a new exhilaration. The hopes of glory that have faded on an office-stool might have provided him with another theme, but he did not think of that. Mentally he examined his manuscripts, and decided which of them to submit to an editor next. Nine-tenths of the journals published in London were unknown to him, his verse was as yet imitative, he believed that the best work was the easiest to sell. But the road was hidden from him, and he smiled.
A small fire was smoking in the attic when he reached it. His box had arrived. He lit the lamp, and produced from his pocket a purchase that he had just made—it was a penny bottle of ink. When he had had a cup of tea and some bread-and-butter, he put his clothes in the rickety chest of drawers, and arranged his books on the top of it. Then he took from the trunk pens and foolscap, drew the one chair to the table with infinite zest, and brushed the crumbs out of his way.
But he did not write. Memories flocked thick and fast. After awhile he got up and looked out over the chimney-pots. The view was very cold; under the moon the roofs shone white, and snow was falling. He thought of it falling on a grave. The poignancy of sorrow overcame him, and he sat huddled by the window, the tears dripping down his face.