R. Browning.
Following Rose's suggestion, and because for the time being there really seemed nothing for her to do, unless she could show herself a little better trained, Joan joined the County Council Night Schools in the neighbourhood. She would go there five evenings in the week; three for shorthand and two for typing. Her fellow scholars were drawn from all ages and all ranks—clerks, office boys, and grey-headed men; girls with their hair still in pig-tails, and elderly women with patient, strained faces, who would sit at their desks plodding through the intricacies of shorthand and paying very little attention to what went on all round them.
The boy and girl section of the community indulged in a little rough and tumble love-making. Even long office hours and the deadly monotony of standing behind desk or counter all day could not quite do away with the riotous spirit of youth. They giggled and chattered among themselves, and passed surreptitious notes from one form to the other when Mr. Phillips was not looking.
Mr. Phillips, the shorthand master, was a red-faced, extremely irascible little man. He came to these classes from some other school in the city where he had been teaching all day, and naturally, by the time evening arrived, his none too placid temper had been stretched to breaking-point. He was extremely impatient with any non-comprehension of his complicated method of instruction; and he would pass from row to row, after his dictation had been finished, snatching away the papers from his paralysed pupils and tearing them into fragments had the exercise been badly done.
Joan noticed the man who sat next her on the first and every night. He was quite the worst person she had ever seen at learning anything. He was not by any means young, grey already showed in the hair above his ears, and his forehead wrinkled with innumerable lines. He had, she thought, the most pathetic eyes, large and honest, but quite irredeemably stupid.
"I can't make head or tale of it," he confessed to her on the second night. "And Mr. Phillips gets so annoyed with me, it only muddles me more."
"Why do you bother to learn?" she asked. It seemed rather strange that a man of his age should have to struggle with so elementary a subject.
"I have worked in an office for the last ten years," he explained. "The new boss has suddenly decided that shorthand is necessary. I don't know," he spoke rather vaguely, his eyes wandering round the room, "but it is just possible he might ask me to go if I did not master it. I have been there so long I hardly like to have to look for another place."
"It seems such a shame," Joan told Rose afterwards, "that these people can never get a place where they feel really safe. They live always expecting to be turned off at a moment's notice, or to have somebody put in on top of them. Everybody seems to be fighting against everybody else; doesn't anyone ever stop to help?"
The older girl laughed. "Why, yes," she said. "The world, or at least the people in it, are not so bad as all that. Only life is a case of push and struggle, and it is only natural that people should want to get the best they can for their money. Also it wouldn't be fair if the ones who worked best were not preferred to the others."
Mr. Simpson, Joan's perplexed friend of the shorthand class, was certainly one of the stupidest people she had ever met, yet she was terribly sorry for him. He was the butt of the class, which did not add to the hilarity of his position, because of the torrent of abuse which he always drew from Mr. Phillips at some stage in the evening.
"Now," Mr. Phillips would call out, starting the lesson by a blackboard demonstration, "silence and attention, please."
He would draw a series of strokes and dashes on the blackboard, calling out their various meanings, and the class would set itself to copy them. The lesson would proceed for some time in silence, save for Mr. Phillips' voice, but presently the bewilderment caused by so many new outlines would terrify Mr. Simpson and he would lean forward to interrupt, stammering, as he always did when nervous.
"Why is 'M' made like that?" he would say. "Wouldn't it be much better if it were made the other way?"
"Why, why?" Mr. Phillips would thunder. "If you would just learn what you are taught, sir, and not try to think, it would be a great deal pleasanter for the rest of us."
Mr. Simpson would get a little red under the onslaught, but his eyes always retained their patient, perplexed expression. He seemed impervious to the impression he created in the back row. "Laughing-stock of the whole class," Mr. Phillips called him in a moment of extreme irritation, and the expression caught on.
"I am so silly," he said to Joan. "I really am not surprised that they think me funny."
She was the one person who was ever nice to him or who did attempt to explain things to him. Sometimes they would get there a little early and she would go over his exercises with him. He might be thick-skinned to the want of tolerance which the rest of the class meted out to him; he was undoubtedly grateful to Joan for the kindness she showed him.
One evening on his way to class he plucked up courage to purchase a small buttonhole for her, and blushed a very warm red when Joan took his offering with a smile and pinned it into her coat.
"How nice of you," she said. "I love violets, and these smell so sweet."
"They are not half sweet enough for you," he managed to say, stuttering furiously.
Joan had a moment's uneasiness. Surely the wretched little man was not going to fall in love with her? She glanced sideways at him during the class and what she saw reassured her. His clothes, his dirty hands, his whole appearance, put him in a different world to herself. However kind she might be to him, he surely could not fail to recognize that it was only the same kindness which would prompt her to cross the road to give a penny to a beggar?
Unfortunately Mr. Simpson belonged to a class which is very slow to recognize any difference in rank save that of wealth. He was a humble little man before Joan, but that was because he was by nature humble, and also because he was in love. He thought her very wonderful and beautiful beyond his range of words, but he imagined her as coming from much the same kind of home as his own, and she seemed to exist in the same strata of life.
A night or two after the flower episode he fixed adoring eyes on her and asked if he might be allowed to see her home.
"Well, it is rather out of your way," Joan remonstrated, she had so often seen him trudge off in the opposite direction.
"That is of no consequence," he replied, with his usual stutter.
The streets were dark, quiet, and deserted. Now and then as they hurried along, for Joan walked as fast as she could to ward off conversation, they passed a solitary policeman doing his beat, and dim, scarce seen lovers emerged out of the shadows holding each other's hands.
"Will you not take my arm?" Mr. Simpson ventured presently. He was slightly out of breath in his effort to keep up with her.
"No, thank you," Joan answered. The whole occurrence was too ridiculous, yet for once in her life her sense of humour was failing her. "And I wish you would not bother to come any further, it is quite unnecessary."
Her tone was more than chilly. Mr. Simpson, however remained undaunted. His slow and ponderous mind had settled on a certain course; it would need more than a little chilliness to turn it from its purpose.
"I was going to ask you," he went on, "whether you would do me the honour of coming to the theatre one evening? If you have a mind that turns that way sometimes."
"No, thank you," answered Joan once more. "I never go to theatres, and I shouldn't go with you in any case," she added desperately, as a final resource.
"I meant no offence," the man answered, humble as ever. "I should always act straight by a girl, and for you——"
"Oh, don't, please don't," Joan interrupted. She stopped in her walk and faced round on him. "Can't you see how impossible it would be for me——" she broke off abruptly, rather ashamed of her outburst. "I am going to be a snob in a minute, if I am not careful," she finished to herself.
"I know I am not amusing, or anything," the man went on; "but you have always seemed so kind and considerate. If I have offended in any way, I am more than sorry."
Joan felt that he was frowning as he always frowned in hopeless perplexity over his shorthand.
"I am not offended," she tried to explain more gently. "Only, please do not ask me to go out with you again, or offer to walk home with me. Here we are anyway, this is where I live." She turned at the bottom of Shamrock House steps and held out her hand to him. "Good-night," she said.
Simpson did not take her hand, instead he stared up at her; she could see how shiny and red his face was under the lamp.
"You are not angry with me?" he stuttered.
"Why, no, of course not," Joan prevaricated. Then she ran up the steps and let herself into the hall without looking back at him.
For two or three days she attempted to ignore the man's presence in class next her, and Simpson himself in no way intruded. He had taken her snubbing like a man; from the height of his dreams he had fallen into an apathetic despair; the only effect it had on him was to make him stupider than ever at his work. Then one evening, with a face working rather painfully, he told her that he did not intend to come any more.
"I am going to another centre," he said, gathering his books together and not looking at her.
"Has Mr. Phillips been too much for you?" she asked, wilfully ignoring the deeper meaning behind his words.
"No," he answered, "it is not that. It may seem quite absurd," he went on laboriously, "but I want to ask you to let me have your note-book. I have got a new one to give you in its place." He produced a packet from his pocket and held it out to her.
Later on, when she thought over the thing, she smiled. A note-book seemed so singularly unromantic, but at the time she felt nearer tears. The look in his eyes haunted her for many days. She had been the one glimpse of romance in his dreary existence, and she had had to kill the dream so ruthlessly.
Ruth Young.
There followed a weary time for Joan. The poem she had repeated on her first morning at Shamrock House had to be recalled again and again and fell away finally from its glad meaning in the bitter disillusionment which looking for work entailed. Wherein lay the value of cheerfulness when day after day saw her weary and dispirited from a fruitless search, from hope-chilling visits to registry offices, from unsuccessful applications in answer to the advertisements which thronged the morning papers? She went at it at first eagerly, hopefully. "To-day I shall succeed," was her waking motto. But every evening brought its tale of disappointment.
"There is no one in the world as useless as I am," she thought finally.
"It is only just a bad season," Rose Brent tried to cheer her up; "there is lots of unemployment about; we will find something for you soon."
But to Joan it seemed as if the iron of being absolutely unwanted was entering into her soul.
There was only one shred of comfort in all this dreariness. Life at Shamrock House was so cheap that she was eating up but very little of Uncle John's allowance. She wondered sometimes if the old people at home ever asked at the Bank as to how her money matters stood, or had they shut her so completely out of their lives that even that was of no interest to them? Miss Abercrombie wrote fairly regularly, but though she could give Joan news of the home people she had to admit that Aunt Janet never mentioned or alluded to her niece in any way.
"She is harder than I thought she could be," wrote Miss Abercrombie; "or is it perhaps that you have killed her heart?"
Once Joan's pride fell so low that she found herself writing Aunt Janet a pathetic, vague appeal to be allowed to creep back into the shelter of the old life. But she tore the letter up in the morning and scattered its little pieces along the gutter of Digby Street. Digby Street was sucking into its undercurrents her youth, her cheerfulness, her hope; only pride was left, she must make a little struggle to hold on to pride, and then news came from Miss Abercrombie that Aunt Janet had been ill and that the Rutherfords had gone abroad. Apart from her fruitless journeys in search of work, her days held nothing. She so dreaded the atmosphere of Shamrock House that very often she would have to walk herself tired out of all feeling before she could go back there; sometimes she cried night after night, weak, stupid tears, shut up in the dreariness of her little room, and very often her thoughts turned back to Gilbert—the comfort of their little flat, the theatres, the suppers, the dances and the passion-held nights when he had loved her. More and more she thought of Gilbert as the dreariness of Digby Street closed round her days.
If her baby had lived, would life have been easier for her, or would it only have meant—as she had first believed in her days of panic that it would mean—an added hardship, a haunting shame? It was the lack of love in her life that left so aching a void, the fact that apparently no one cared or heeded what became of her. The baby would at least have brought love to her, in its little hands, in its weak strength that looked to her for shelter.
"I should be happier," she said once stormily to Rose, "if I could have a cat to keep. I think I shall buy a kitten."
The other girl had looked at her, smiling dryly. "Pets are strictly against the rules in Shamrock House," she reminded her.
It was in one of her very despondent moods that Joan first met the young man with blue eyes. She never knew him by any name, and their acquaintance, or whatever it could be called, came to an abrupt end on the first occasion when he ventured to speak to her. Womanlike, she had been longing for him to do so for some time, but resented it bitterly when he did. Perhaps something faintly contemptuous, a shadowed hint that he had noticed her interest in him, flamed up the desire to snub him in her heart, or perhaps it was a feeling of self-shame to find herself so poor a beggar at friendship's gate.
For a week he had met her at the same place and followed her on her way down Victoria Street. Then one night, just as they came under the lights of Vauxhall Clock tower, he spoke to her.
"Doing anything to-night?" he said. "Shall we dine together?"
She turned from him in a white heat of anger, more with herself than with him, though that, of course, it was not given him to know. But he caught a glimpse of her face and read his answer, and since he was in reality a nice boy, and insult had been the last thought in his mind, he took off his hat quickly and apologized.
"I am sure I beg your pardon," he said; "I can see that I have made a mistake."
Joan did not answer him, she had moved quickly away in the direction of Digby Street, but as she passed by the dingy houses she knew that he was not following any more, and she felt the hot, hard lump in her throat which is so difficult to swallow. She had wanted to go to dinner with him, she had wanted to, that was the thought that mocked at her all night.
It was one evening about a fortnight after that episode that Rose called Joan into her room on their way upstairs.
"I want to talk to you," she said, closing the door behind them. "Has Miss Nigel spoken yet?"
"To me?" asked Joan; "what about?"
"I see, then, she hasn't," Rose answered, "but she will soon. Did you notice that the night before last Miss Wembly, who sits at the next table to ours, had a guest to dinner?"
"No," Joan admitted; "but why? What has it got to do with me?"
"I am coming to that," the other answered; she stood with her head averted, looking for a cigarette. "I am always a damned silent person myself," she went on, "and I do not think anyone can accuse me of being curious about their pasts. I do not want to know a blessed thing about yours, for instance, but that guest of Miss Wembly's was a nurse from St. George's Hospital."
"Oh," said Joan blankly; she was standing just within the door, her back against the clothes that hung on it.
"Well," Rose hurried on, "it has gone all round the place like lightning. They aren't fond of you because they hate me and we are friends. Yesterday one of them took the story to Miss Nigel and she is going to ask you to leave."
"What story?" asked Joan; she had not followed the other's swift deduction.
Rose lit a cigarette and held out the case to Joan. "Have one," she said, "and come and sit down. As I said before, I am not asking for personal history, I am telling you the facts as they affect this place. They say you were to have had a baby, and you are not married."
She shrugged her shoulders and sank into a chair.
"You mean," whispered Joan, "that the nurse told them that?"
"I suppose so," Rose admitted; "anyway, Miss Nigel spoke of it to me to-day. She is not a bad sort, Miss Nigel, she was very kind to me once, but she is going to tell you to go."
"What have you thought of it?" asked Joan.
"I don't think about other people's affairs," Rose answered. "Come and sit down, I have got some jam for you after the powder, for I believe I have found a job for you. But first you must move into diggings, these clubs are all in a league, every one of them will be shut to you."
"You are not bothering to ask if it is true," said Joan. She moved forward and sat down, her hands clenched on her lap. "I suppose——"
Rose interrupted, putting a swift hand on hers. "Don't," she said, "don't deny it or tell me the truth, whichever you were thinking of doing. It does not matter to me. Because I like you I have interfered as much as I have so that you may be prepared for Miss Nigel's attack." She smiled. "It will be an attack too—having a baby and no husband to people like Miss Nigel is worse than any criminal offence."
"Yes," Joan admitted. A vision of Aunt Janet's horror-stricken face came across her mind. "When I heard that it had been killed in the accident, I was glad, glad. I had not got the courage to go on and brave it out. I was glad to think that I could start life again, that no one would know or look at me like the people at home had looked at me when they knew. And now——"
"And now?" Rose repeated; she was studying Joan's face with her eyes half closed, a peculiar trick she had when her thoughts were unpleasant.
"And now it doesn't seem worth while going on any longer," Joan burst forth. "There must be other lives that are better worth living than this. Do you know that for the last ten days I have made fifteen shillings addressing envelopes from nine till six. It would be better, surely it would be better, to be what people call bad!"
Rose watched the flushed face. "If a life of that sort would give you any pleasure," she spoke slowly, "I should say live it by all means. The trouble is, it would not please you. If you care to listen, I will tell you a bit ofmy own story. It is not altogether pleasant, but in your present frame of mind it will not do you any harm to hear it."
She paused a moment, head thrown back, blowing smoke-rings to the ceiling.
"I came to London ten years ago," she began presently, "and I was twenty-one at the time. I had been keeping house for a brother in India, and I had had a good time, but a spirit of restlessness had come upon me and I would not leave him alone till he let me come home and start on my own. I had, of course, no people. Poor brother, he gave way after many arguments, knowing as little as I did about the life here, and I came. He died the year afterwards of enteric. I had been on an allowance from him before, but when he died that stopped and I was left absolutely penniless. You have had a bad time in that way, but I had a worse one. Still I was young and strong, and, above all, I was a fighter, so I won through. I got a post as typist in a city office and I drifted to Shamrock House. My working hours were lengthy, sometimes it was after half-past seven before I came out of office. Then I would hurry through the crowdedstreets, as you do now, and always that walk, through gaily lighted pleasure-seeking crowds, would end for me in the dark dreariness where Great Smith Street turns away from Victoria Street, a ten-minute walk through one of London's poorest neighbourhoods, and—Shamrock House! Those were the days in which I did my hardest kicking against fate; it was so unjust, so unfair, and all the while youth and power to enjoy, which is the heritage of youth, were slipping past me. That is how you feel, isn't it?" she asked suddenly.
"Yes," Joan said.
"I know," Rose answered softly; "well, wait and hear. I was in this mood, and feeling more than usually desperate, when I met the woman. I need not give her a name, not even to you; I doubt if I ever knew her real one. I had seen her several times, perhaps she had noticed me, thoughshe had quaint, unseeing eyes that appeared to gaze through you blankly. She was a beautiful woman with an arresting beauty hard to define, and she used, as far as I could see, neither paint nor powder. One evening, just as I was turning into Great Smith Street, I found her at my elbow.
"'You live down there,' she asked in a curious, expressionless way as if she hardly expected an answer.
"I was startled at her talking to me and at the same time interested.
"'Yes,' I said.
"'It is dark and very dreary,' she went on, talking almost to herself, 'why do you choose such a life?'
"I think the bitterness of my mood must have sounded in my answer, for suddenly she turned to me and laid a hand on my arm.
"'Leave it then,' she whispered, her face close up against mine, 'leave it, come home with me.'
"'Home with you,' I repeated, thoroughly astonished, and at that moment a policeman, tall and stolid, strolled across the road towards us.
"'Don't let him hear what we are saying,' whispered the extraordinary woman; 'just turn back with me a little way and I will explain to you.'
"Well, I went. Perhaps you can realize why, and I saw for a little into the outside edge of life as lived by these women. I wonder how I can best convey to you the horror and pity of it, for we—despite the greyness of our lives—have something within ourselves to which we can turn, but they have weighed even hopes and dreams with the weights of shame, and found their poor value in pounds, shillings and pence. That is why their eyes as they pass you in the streets are so blank and expressionless. Each new day brings them nothing, they have learnt all things, and the groundwork of their knowledge is—sin."
She rose abruptly and moved across to the window,pulling aside the blue-tinted curtains, staring out over miles and miles of roof-covered London. From far in the distance Big Ben shone down on her, a round, dim face in the darkness.
"You are wondering why I stayed with the woman," she went on presently. "The answer is easy and may make you smile. I met a man, one of the many she brought to the house, and fell in love with him. I was stupid enough to forget my surroundings and the circumstances under which he had met me, or I dreamt that to him also they were only the outside wrappers of fate, easy to fling aside. Does it sound like a thrilling romance, and am I making myself out to be the heroine of one crowded hour of glorious life? Because my hour was never glorious."
She repeated the last word with a wry laugh and turned to face Joan. "I don't know why I have raked up all this," she said. "I thought it had lost its power to hurt; but I was mistaken. I have liked you, perhaps that is the reason, and I have wanted to save you from making the same mistake as myself. For before you plunge out of monotony you must see that there is nothing in your heart that can be hurt, as these women have to be hurt every hour of their lives."
Joan could find nothing to say; the other girl's confidence had been so overpowering, it left her tongue-tied and stupid. Rose came back after a little silence and sat down opposite her again.
"I am sorry," she said, "I have talked you into a mood of black depression; never mind, perhaps you will have learnt something from it none the less. And meanwhile, things are going to be better for you; it is no loss having to leave Shamrock House, otherwise you might grow into the house as I have. You will have to see about getting a room to-morrow, and then if you can meet me in the afternoon, I will take you and introduce you to your job. It is quite a nice one, I hope you will like it."
Joan stood up. "I don't know what to say," she began; "you—oh, if only we could wipe out the past," she flamed into sudden rebellion, "and start afresh."
Rose laughed. "I don't know about that," she said—the inevitable cigarette was in her mouth again—"Ifor one would be very unwilling to lose a wisdom which has been so dearly bought."
R. L. Stevenson.
Joan was not to start her new work till the following Monday. She was to be typist—her first real post filled her with some degree of self-conscious pride—to the Editor of theEvening Herald. Rose had herself worked on the paper some years ago and was a friend of the Editor's.
"I want you to give a girl I know a chance, Mr. Strangman," she had pleaded; "she is clever and well-educated, but she needs experience. Take her, there is a good man, while your slack time is on, and she will be game for anything when you get busy again."
Mr. Strangman twisted long nervous fingers into strange positions.
"I don't know about this girl," he said; "we are never slack at the office."
It was a pet fallacy of his that he was the hardest-worked man in London. Rose smiled. "But her typing is quite good," she argued, "and you are such an easy dictator, I am sure she will get on all right."
She had been exceptionally pleased when Mr. Strangman reluctantly gave way. Joan would, she hoped, take kindly to newspaper work, and it might open up new roads to her.
Meanwhile Joan had been out on her own and taken a room for herself in a house standing in a quiet, withdrawn square in the neighbourhood of King's Road, Chelsea. To call it a room was to dignify it by a title to which it could lay no real claim. It was an attic, up the last rickety flight of stairs, with roofs that sloped down within two feet of the ground, and a diminutive window from which one could get but the barest glimpse of the skies. Still it had possibilities, its aspect was not so terribly common-place as had been that of the other rooms which Joan had seen that morning. The sloping roofs, the small pane of glass which looked out higher than the neighbouring chimney-tops, were in their way attractive. She would take it, she told a somewhat surprised landlady, and would pay—everything included—ten shillings a week for the noble apartment. The "everything included" swept in breakfast—"Such as a young lady like yourself would eat, Miss"—the woman told her, and attendance. Suppers and fires she would have to provide for herself, though Mrs. Carew was prepared to cook for her; lunch, of course, fell in office hours.
On Saturday, therefore, and having forestalled Miss Nigel's request by announcing that she was leaving for good, Joan moved her luggage over to her new home and took possession.
"I am going to like it better than I liked being at Shamrock House," she told Rose, who had come to assist in the moving. "It is more my own, I can do just as I like here."
Rose was craning her neck to see out of the window's limited compass. "Just as you like," she repeated, laughing as she spoke, "on twenty-five shillings a week and an attic. You are not ambitious, my child."
She turned round to face the room; even in mid afternoon, with the sun shining outside, it was dim—the corners in positive darkness. "I don't think I should have chosen it," she said; "there is no sun, and"—sheshook the thought off—"who else is in the house, did you ask?"
"There was not any need to," Joan answered. "Mrs. Carew, that is my landlady, you know, told me all their family histories while I was making up my mind whether I would come or not. Wait a minute," she paused in her unpacking to tick them off on her fingers. "There is the ground floor lady, who is an artist's model. No need to work just now though, for the last gentleman that painted her took a fancy to her and is paying for her at present. Drawing-room floor, old foreign lady who never seems to get out of bed. Second floor, retired army officer, 'fond of drink, more's the pity,'" she mimicked Mrs. Carew's voice, "and second floor back, young lady actress, who is not perhaps as good as she might be, 'but there, you can't always be blaming people'; and third floor, me! Doesn't sound respectable does it? But after Miss Nigel I am afraid of respectability."
Rose watched her with narrowed eyes. "It sounds anything but respectable," she agreed; "do not make a fool of yourself, kid, it won't be worth it, it never is."
"I am not likely to," Joan answered her. "My one real regret in leaving Shamrock House is that I shall not have you to talk to, oh, and the baths. Mrs. Carew does not hold with carrying too much water up these stairs."
"I am glad I rank before the baths," Rose laughed. She extricated herself from behind the luggage. "I will come and look you up sometimes," she announced, "though it probably won't be often; I am a bad hand at stirring myself out to see anyone in the evenings. Good-night, and I hope you will get on all right with Strangman, he is a kind little man really."
She went. Joan sat listening to her feet echoing down the stairs; a mouse could set the whole house creaking. She felt very much alone; Shamrock House, full as it had been of uncongenial companions, had yet been able to offer some distraction from one's own society.
The new office, to which she wended her way on the Monday morning, lay in a side alley opening off Fleet Street, a rickety old building, busy as a hive of bees in swarming time. The steep, wooden stairs, after she had been asked her business by the janitor in the box office and put in charge of a very small, very dirty boy, led her up and up into the heart of the building—past wide-open doors where numerous men sat at desks, the floor round them strewn with papers; up again, past rooms where the engines throbbed and panted, shaking the building with their noisy vibrations; up still further, till they landed her at that withdrawn and sacred sanctum, the Editor's room. Here worked Mr. Strangman and his satellites; spiders, in fact, in the centre of their cleverly-constructed web, throwing out feelers in search of news to all quarters of the globe.
Anything less like a spider than Mr. Strangman it would have been difficult to imagine. He was an alert, nervous man, with bright, kind eyes, a flexible mouth and very restless hands. His whole nature hung on wires, as if—which was indeed the case—his mental capacity was too big and overpowering for his physical strength. His manners under the strain of work were jerky and abrupt, but otherwise he was a very kindly and genial man. To Joan he was excessively polite, and so afraid that her capabilities might not come up to his expectations that for the first few days he left her practically with no work to do. She sat in a large, well-lit—if draughty—room, opposite Mr. Strangman at his table.
It was one of her duties, she discovered, to keep the aforesaid table tidy, and in time she learned that here more than anywhere else she could be of service to the man. He had an awe-inspiring way of piling up his desk with scraps of paper, cuttings, and slips, and stray manuscripts, and it was always under the most appalling muddle that the one small, indispensable news-slip would hide itself.
The Magazine Page-faker and the News-gleaner sat inthe same room, the latter at a table next Joan. He was a stout man with a beaming smile and an inexhaustible supply of good temper. He would sit over his work, which as far as she could see consisted solely of running his eye over the day's papers and cutting out what appeared to be workable news, making a great deal of noise with his feet on the floor, a gigantic cutting-out scissors in his hand and a whistle which never varied its tune from early morning till late in the evening—a soft, subdued, under-his-breath whistle, Joan never even discovered what the tune was. He was, despite this disadvantage, an indefatigable worker and an ever-ready helper, always willing to do other people's work for them if necessary.
Of the other people on the staff Joan saw very little; the reporters came early in the morning to take their orders for the day, and threw in their copy downstairs in the evening. Sometimes they would come upstairs to discuss some feature of their day's work with Mr. Strangman, or to put in an article to the Literary Editor, but, as a whole, she hardly learned to know them, even by name. Then there were the office boys, a moving, fluctuating crowd; always in mischief, always dirty, always irrepressibly cheerful. For the rest, her work—one might almost say her life—lay between the four walls of the office room, with the shaking vibrations of the engines under her feet and the musty, curious smell of papers in the making and pile upon pile of papers that had been made all round her.
She arrived at 9.30 and left about 6 p.m., and by then she was too numbed—for the working of a typewriter is monotonous work—to do anything save walk with the hurrying crowds as far as Charing Cross and take a bus from there to Montague Square. But since work filled her days she had less time for discontent or depression. Sometimes she would be tempted to wander off the direct route on her way home and she would walk up to Piccadilly and past the region of brightly-lighted shops, watching the faces in the crowd round her, envying those who met friends andstopped to talk to them, following with rather wistful eyes the couples who passed, hand clasped in hand; but generally speaking she was too tired in the evenings to do anything save go straight home, eat a hasty supper and tumble into bed.
Of Rose she saw, as the other had prophesied, very little. Joan realized that friendship, if their brief companionship could have been called such, counted for very little in Rose's life. The girl seemed entirely to ignore her once she was from constant sight, and since Joan could not herself call at Shamrock House and Rose habitually forgot to pay her promised visits, the friendship, such as it had been, faded away into the past.
The other inhabitants of 6, Montague Square, she saw very rarely. Occasionally she would encounter Miss Drummond, the downstairs tenant, paying off her taxi at the door—a tall, handsome girl, rather overblown in her beauty, who invariably stared at Joan with haughty defiance and stalked into her own room, calling loudly for Mrs. Carew. Once Joan had stumbled over the retired military gentleman from the second floor, sound asleep, in a very undignified position, half way up her own little stairs. The incident had brought with it a shudder of fear, and from that day onwards Joan was always careful to lock her door at night.
Miss Fanny Bellairs, the erring damsel on the second floor back, kept such strange hours that she was never visible; but Mrs. Carew had a large stock of not very savoury anecdotes about her which she would recount to Joan during the process of laying supper. As not even an earthquake would have stopped Mrs. Carew's desire to impart information, Joan gave up the attempt to silence her. Indeed, she sometimes listened with a certain amount of curiosity, and Fanny Bellairs assumed a marvellous personality and appearance in her mind's eye.
That the original did not in the least come up to her expectations was something of a surprise. About threemonths after her first arrival at Montague Square Joan reached home rather late one evening to find her room already occupied. A girl sat, her feet tucked underneath her, on the principal chair under the lamplight; she had been crying, for a tight, damp ball of a handkerchief lay on the floor, and at the sound of Joan's entry she turned a tear-stained face to greet her.
"I thought you were never coming"—the voice held a plaintive sob in it—"and I am that down-hearted and miserable."
Joan put down her things hastily and came across. "I am so sorry," she said, groping through her mind to discover who her visitor might be; "did Mrs. Carew tell you I was in?—how stupid of her."
The girl in the chair gulped back her tears and laughed. "No, she didn't," she contradicted; "she told me that you wouldn't want to see me if you were in; that the likes of you did not know the likes of me, and that I was not to come up. But I came"—she held out impulsive hands. "I guess you aren't angry," she said; "when I get the silly hump, which isn't often, I go mad if I have to stay by myself. I'll be as good as"—she glanced round the room—"as good as you," she finished, "if you will let me stay."
"Why, of course," said Joan. "I don't know what Mrs. Carew can have been talking about. I don't know you, so I can't see how she can have thought I would not want to see you."
"I can though." The girl shook forward a sudden halo of curls and laughed in a way which it was impossible to resist. "I am Fanny, from downstairs, and Mrs. Carew is a silly old woman who talks a lot, but she is not stupid enough not to know the difference between a girl like you and a fly-by-night like me. Now I have shocked you," she went on breathlessly, seeing Joan's flush, "just when I was setting out to be good. I'll bite my tongue out and start again."
She coughed once with alarming intensity. Joan movedslowly away and took off her hat and coat. So this was Fanny Bellairs, the girl whose doings provided such a purple background for her own dull existence. She looked again at the little figure, lying back now, eyes closed, lips tremulous from the struggle for breath which her fit of coughing had brought her. It was a perfectly-fashioned face, though when Joan had time to study it, she could see that the colouring was just a little crudely put on and that it had smudged in the shadows under her eyes where the tears had lain. She was such a thin, small slip of a girl, too, little dimpled hands and a baby face under the gold curls. Fanny opened her eyes at that moment, wide and innocent, and answered Joan's glance with a wistful smile.
"Thinking of all Mrs. Carew ever said about me?" she asked. "I am not as bad as she sometimes paints me. Still"—she stood up—"I'll go, if you would rather I did. Hate to make a nuisance of myself."
She moved slowly—it was, in reality, reluctantly—towards the door, and Joan came out of her reverie with a start.
"Please don't go," she said quickly. "You must think I am awfully rude, but really I was not thinking about Mrs. Carew or anything so disagreeable. I was thinking how pretty you were, and wondering how old you could be."
The girl at the door stopped and turned back. Laughter filled her eyes, yet there was a little hint of mockery behind the mirth.
"Go on!" she said, "you and your thoughts! I know just what they were, my dear; but it doesn't matter to me, I am used to it. Twenty-two, at your service, mum"—she came a little away from the door and swept Joan a curtsey—"and everything my own, even my hair, though you mayn't believe it."
Anon.
Fanny was a real daughter of joy. The name is given to many who in no sense of the word near its meaning. To Fanny, to be alive was to laugh; she had a nature which shook aside the degradation of her profession much as a small London sparrow will shake the filthy water of the gutters from off his sky-plumed wings. She brought such an atmosphere of sunshine and laughter into Joan's life that the other girl grew to lean on it. The friendship between them ripened very quickly; on Fanny's side it amounted almost to love. Who knows what starvation of the heart side of her went to build up all that she felt for Joan? Through the dreary days that followed, and they sapped in passing at Joan's health and courage, Fanny was nearly always at hand, with fresh flowers for the attic, with tempting fruit for Joan to eat in place of the supper which night after night she rejected. Fanny would sometimes be away for weeks at a time. She still followed her profession as an actress, Mrs. Carew would tell Joan, and on those occasions Joan missed her intolerably. But Fanny herself never spoke about her life, and Joan never questioned her.
Autumn faded into winter; winter blew itself out in a cold and boisterous March, and spring crept back to London. Nowhere else in the world does she come so suddenly, or catch at your heart with the same sense of soft joy. You meet her, she catches you unawares, so to say, with your winter clothes on.
"What is this?" she whispers, blowing against yourcheeks. "Surely you have forgotten my birthday, or you would never have come out in those drab old clothes."
Then with a little shake of her skirts she is gone, and your eyes are opened to the fact that the trees have put forth brave green buds, and that yellow crocuses and white snowdrops are dancing and curtseying to you from odd corners of the Park.
Joan's life at theEvening HeraldOffice, once the first novelty had worn off, and because it was spring outside, became very monotonous and very tiring. She nearly always ended the days conscious of a ridiculous desire to cry at everything. Because the buses were crowded, because the supper was greasy and unappetizing, or because Fanny was not at home to welcome her.
There was one afternoon in particular, on a hot, airless day in June, when Joan reached the last point of her endurance. Everything had combined to make the office unendurable. One of Mr. Strangman's most agitated moods held him. Early in the morning he had indulged in a wordy argument with Chester, the Literary Page editor, on the question of whether or not the telephone was to be used by the office boys to 'phone telegrams through to the post office. It was a custom just founded by Strangman and it saved a certain amount of time, but Chester—a thin, over-worked, intellectual-ridden gentleman, was driven nearly mad by occult messages, such as the following:
"Hulloa, hulloa, is that telegrams? Take a message please for theEvening Herald. What, can't hear? That's your fault, I am shouting and my mouth is near the tube. Look alive, miss. Listening? Well: to Davids. D for daddy, a for apples, v for varnish, i for I. I said I for i! Got it now? D for daddy again," and so on.
"The truth of it is," said Mr. Chester, during a pause in one of these wordy tussles, "I, or that telephone, will have to go, Strangman. I cannot work with it going on."
"My dear fellow"—Strangman was all agitation at once—"what is to be done? The messages must go andI must hear them sent or the boys would put in wrong words. I am sure it is not any pleasanter for me than it is for you; I have also got to work."
"T for Tommy, I keep telling you—Tommy, Tommy," the lad at the 'phone shrieked triumphantly.
Mr. Chester threw down his papers, pushed back his chair, and rose, tragic purpose on his face.
"It is not to be borne," he ejaculated.
"Oh, very well," stuttered Mr. Strangman, "that means, I suppose, that I shall have to do the 'phoning myself. Here, boy, get out, give me that."
And thereupon the message started over again, but this time breathed in Mr. Strangman's powerful whisper.
He certainly seemed to be able to manipulate it with less noise, only he soon wearied of the effort, and future wires were deputed to Joan. So, in addition to her other tasks, she had had the peculiarly irritating one of trying to induce attention into post office telephone girls.
Then, too, Mr. Strangman had not felt in the mood to dictate letters, with the result that at a quarter to six seven of them had to be altered and retyped. Joan was still sitting at her machine in a corner of the hot, noisy office, beating out: "Dear Sir, In answer to yours, etc.," when the clock struck six. Her back ached, her eyes throbbed, she was conscious of a feeling of intense hatred against mild, inoffensive Mr. Strangman.
That gentleman, having discovered the lateness of the hour by chance, kept her another quarter of an hour apologizing before he signed the letters.
Then he looked up at her suddenly.
"Do you think," he said, "that you could report on the dresses for us to-morrow night at the Artists' Ball?"
"I report?" Joan looked at him in astonishment; women reporters were disapproved of on theEvening Herald.
"I know it is unusual," Mr. Strangman admitted. "But Jones is ill, and our other men will all be busy onimportant turns. I just thought of you in passing; it is a pity to waste the ticket."
"I could try." Joan made an effort to keep the eagerness out of her voice.
"Yes, that is it, you could try. We should not want much," he added; "and it is not part of your duties as a secretary; still, you might enjoy it, eh?"
"Why, I should love it," she assented; hate was fast merging back into liking.
Strangman cackled his customary nervous laugh. "Then that is settled," he said, "and here is the ticket. You will have to have a fancy dress, hire it, I suppose, since the time is so short. That, and a taxi there and back, will come out of the paper. Hope it is a good show, for your sake."
Afterwards, when she looked back at that evening, at the Artists' Ball, Joan was ashamed to remember the eager heat of excitement which took possession of her from the moment when she stepped out of theEvening Heraldtaxi and ran along the passage to the ladies' cloak-room. She had, it seemed to her, no excuse; she was not young enough to have made it pardonable and she had long ago decided that the intoxication of life could be no longer hers. Its loss was to be part of the bitter lesson fate had taught her. Yet as she saw herself in the glass, a ridiculous figure in black flounces with just one scarlet rose pinned at her waist and another nodding on the brim of her hat, she could not keep the excitement from sparkling in her eyes and the colour of youth was certainly flaming in her cheeks. Fanny had fitted her out with clever fingers as a black Pierrette. A Pierrette, taken from the leaves of some old French book, with her hair done in little dropping curls just faintly powdered, as if a mist of snow lay over the brown.
She was young, after all, and the music called to her with insistent voice. "I am looking nice," Joan confided to her reflection, "and I will have a good time just for to-night."
Then she turned and went quickly, walking with light feet and eager eyes that sought for adventure into the crowded room.
It gave her first of all an immense sense of space. The whole opera house had been converted into a ballroom. There were hundreds of people present, and every imaginable fancy dress under the sun. Brilliant colours, bright lights and the constant movement of the crowd made up a scene of kaleidoscopic splendour.
There was a waltz in progress and Joan stood for a little with her back to a pillar of one of the boxes, bewildered by the noise and moving colours. Standing opposite her, in the shadow of the other looped-up curtain, was a man. A Pierrot to her Pierrette, only his costume was carried out in white, and on his head, instead of the orthodox hat, he wore a tight-bound black handkerchief. His eyes, for some reason, made her restless. It was not that he stared exactly, the man's whole figure was too blatantly bored for that, but there was something in their expression which made her look and look again. At their sixth exchange of glances the man smiled, or so it seemed to Joan, but the next moment his face was sombre again. None the less there had been something in her idea, for before the next couple of dancers swung past her the man had moved from the shadow of his curtain and was standing near her.
"Don't think it is awful impudence on my part," he said, "but are you here all alone?"
Now there was just something in his voice that, as far as most women were concerned would sweep away all barriers. He spoke, in short, like a gentleman. Joan looked up at him.
"Yes," she admitted; she caught her breath on a little laugh. "I am here as a reporter, you know; it is business and pleasure combined."
Once more his eyes made her uncomfortable and she dropped hers quickly.
"That is strange," said the man gravely, "for I am a reporter too."
He was certainly not speaking the truth. Joan was not inclined to believe that Fleet Street had ever produced reporters the least like her companion. Still, what did it matter? just for this evening she would throw aside convention and have a good time.
"How awfully fortunate," she answered, "because you will be able to help me. I am new to the game."
"Well then," he suggested, "let us dance to the finish of this waltz and I will point out a few of the celebrities as we pass them."
Just for a second Joan hesitated, but her feet were tingling to be dancing.
"Couldn't we do it better standing here?" she parried.
"No," he assured her, "we could not do it at all unless we dance; movement helps my memory."
He was a most perfect dancer. No one, so numberless women would have told Joan, could hold you just as Robert Landon did, steer you untouched through the most crowded ballroom as he did, make himself and you, for the time being, seem part and parcel of the swaying tune, the strange enchantment of a waltz.
Joan was flushed and a little breathless at the close; they had danced until the last notes died on the air, and she had forgotten her mission, the celebrities, everything, indeed, except the dance and its bewildering melody. The man looked down at her as she stood beside him, an eager light awake in his eyes. His voice, however, was cool and friendly.
"You dance much too well to be a reporter," he said.
"What a ridiculous remark!" Joan retorted; "one cannot dance all day, can one? Besides, I am not even a real reporter. I am only a typist."
"That is worse, to think of you as that is impossible," he said. "Let us go outside and find somewhere to sit."
"But what about our reporting," Joan remonstrated; "I thought you were going to point out celebrities?"
"Time enough for that," he answered. "I am going to take you out on to a balcony meanwhile. There will only be the stars to look at us, and I am going to pretend you are a fairy and that you live in the heart of a rose, not a typist or any such awful thing."
Joan laughed. "I wish you could see my attic," she said. "It is such a funny rose for any fairy to live in."
They sat out four dances, or was it more? Joan lost count. Out here on the balcony, with only the stars as chaperon and a pulse of music calling to them from the ballroom, time sped past on silver wings. For Joan the evening was a dream; to-morrow morning she would wake, put on her old blue coat and skirt, catch her bus at the corner of the square and spend the day in sorting and arranging Mr. Strangman's papers. To-night she was content to watch the bubble held before her by this man's soft words, his strange, intent eyes; she made no attempt to investigate it too closely. But for Landon the evening was one step along an impulse he intended to follow to the end. He was busy laying sure foundations, learning all there was to know of Joan's life and surroundings, of the difficulties that might lie in the way of his desire, of the barriers he might have to pull down.
"Things are not going to end here," he told Joan, as, the last dance finished, they stood among the crowd waiting for a taxi. He had helped her on with her cloak and the feel of his strong warm hands on her shoulder had sent the blood rushing to Joan's heart.
"I don't see how it is not going to end," she answered; "you must remember I am not even a reporter."
"No, and I am," he smiled; "I had forgotten."
He moved to face her, and putting his hands over hers, fastened up her cloak for her. It seemed his hands lingered over the task, and finally stayed just holding hers lightly.
"I am going to see it does not end, none the less," hesaid. "I shall come and fetch you at your office this day next week and you shall dine with me somewhere and go on to a theatre. What time do you get out of office?"
"At about six," Joan answered; "but how can you? Why, we do not even know each other's names!"
"No more we do, and I don't want to, do you?" He smiled down at her undecided eyes. "I would rather think of you as Pierrette than Miss anything, and I shall be Pierrot. It is a romance, Pierrette; will you play it?"
"Yes," she answered slowly, but her eyes fell away from his.
A. L. Gordon.
Impulse had always been a guiding factor in Robert Landon's life. If he saw a thing and wanted it, impulse would prompt him to reach out his hand and snatch it; if the thing were beyond his reach, he would climb—if necessary—over the heart of his best friend to obtain it; should it prove of very fragile substance and break in his hands, he would throw it away, but its loss, or the possible harm he had inflicted in his efforts to obtain it, brought no regrets. He made love deliriously, on fire himself for the moment, but never once had he so far forgot himself as to come from the flame in any way singed. Many tragedies lay behind the man, for impulse is hardly a safe guide through life; but he himself was essentially too level-headed, too selfish, to be the one who suffered.
He had spoken and danced and made love to Joan onan impulse. Beyond that, he set himself down seriously and painstakingly to win her. Most women, he knew, like to be carried forward on the wings of a swift-rushing desire, but there was some strange force of reserve behind this girl's constant disregard of his real meaning in the game they played. She was willing, almost anxious to be friends; it did not take him long to find out how lonely and dreary had been the life she was leading. She went out with him daily; it became a recognized thing for him to fetch her in his small car every evening at office. Sometimes they would dine together at one of the many little French restaurants in Soho, and go to a theatre afterwards; sometimes they would just drive about the crowded lighted streets, or slip into the Park for a stroll, leaving the car in charge of some urchin for a couple of pennies. Since he was out on the trail, as his friends would have said, every other interest in his life was given up to his impulse to beat down this girl's reserve, but all his attempts at passionate love-making left her unresponsive. She would draw back, as it were, into her shell, and for days she would avoid meeting him. Going out some back way at the office and never being at home when he called at Montague Square. Then he would write little notes to her and bribe the office-boy to deliver them, begging her pardon most humbly—he played his cards, it may be noticed, very seriously—imploring her to be friends again. And Joan would forgive him and for a little they would be the best of companions.
But through it all, and though she shut her eyes more or less to the trend of events, Joan's mind refused to be satisfied. She was restless and at times unhappy; she had her hours of wondering where it would all end, her spells of imagination when she saw Landon asking her to marry him. When she thought about it at all it always ended like that, for she could not blind her eyes to the fact of the man's love for her. Then she would shun his society, and endeavour to build up a wall of reserve betweenthem, for it was her answer to his question that she could not bring herself to face.
It was on one of these occasions that she made up her mind definitely to break with him altogether. She wrote him a short note, saying that she was going to be dreadfully busy at office and that as she had another girl coming to stay with her—both statements equally untrue—she was afraid it would be no use his calling to fetch her.
Landon accepted this attitude in silence, though one may believe it did something to fan the flame of his passion, and for ten whole days he left her entirely alone. Then he wrote.
Joan found the letter waiting for her on the hall table when she came home one evening after a peculiarly dull and colourless day. It had been delivered by hand and was addressed simply to "Pierrette, In the Attic." Mrs. Carew must have been a little surprised at such a designation. Joan took it upstairs to read, lingering over the opening of it with a pleasurable thrill. The days had been very grey lacking his companionship.
"Dear Pierrette," Landon had written, "is our romance finished, and why? The only thing I have left to comfort me is a crushed red rose. You wore it the first evening we ever met. Pierrette, you are forgetting that it is summer. How can you wake each morning to blue skies and be conventional? Summer is nearly over, and you do not know what you are missing. Come out and play with me, Pierrette; I will not kiss even your hands if you object. I can take you down next Sunday to a garden that I know of on the river, and you shall pick red roses. Will you not come, Pierrette?"
Joan sat on in the dark of her little attic (for if the lamp was not required before supper Mrs. Carew had a way of not bringing it up until it was quite dark) with the letter on her lap. She was making up her mind to tell Landon about Gilbert, about her principles which had been rather roughly shaken, about her ideas, which still held obstinateroot in her mind. If he loved her enough not to mind what was past, why should she not marry him? She had proved once how bitter it was to stand against the convictions of the world alone. His fortnight's absence had shown her how unbearable the dullness of her days had become; she could not struggle on much longer. Her mind played with the prospect of consenting, of how it would open up new worlds to her, of what a change it would bring into her life.
It was with a conviction anyway that great things might be in the balance that she stepped into Landon's car on Sunday afternoon and settled herself back against the cushions. They disregarded the fortnight's lapse in their friendship; neither referred to it in any way, and Landon was exceptionally cheerful and full of conversation on the drive out. Joan was content to sit quiet and listen and to let her eyes, tired of dusty files and hours of typewriting, feast on the country as they flashed past.
The garden that he had promised her proved all that his descriptions had claimed. It lay at the back of an old stone house, off the high road and away from the haunts of the ordinary holiday makers. Landon had chanced on it once and the place had taken a great hold on his imagination. One could be so alone at the foot of the garden, where it sloped down to the water's edge, that one could fancy oneself in a world of one's own.
The house itself was a quaint, old-fashioned building with small rooms and tiny windows, but the walled-in garden where the roses grew, and the river garden, which stretched right down to the brim of the river with its fruit trees and tall scented grasses, were both beautiful. They had tea out there, and they picnicked on the grass, watching the sun's reflections playing hide and seek in the river.
After tea, Landon insisted on strolling round and collecting all the roses he could lay his hands on for Joan. He threw them finally, a heavy heap of scented blossoms, onto her lap. He said their colour was reflected in her cheeks, their beauty in her eyes.
"It is a shame to have picked them so early," Joan remonstrated; "they will die now before we get home."
"Let them," he answered, "at least they have had their day and done well in it." He threw himself down on the grass beside her. "Aren't they glorious, Pierrette?" he said; but his eyes were not on the flowers.
Joan stirred uneasily. The great moment was drawing closer and closer, she was growing afraid, as are all women when the sound of Love's wings comes too near them.
"I wish you wouldn't call me by that name any more," she said, "because——"
"Well, why because?" Landon asked as she hesitated. "One of the things that do not seem quite right to you, like kissing, or holding hands?" He took up one of the roses from her lap and pulled it to pieces with ruthless hands. "What a puritan you are!" he went on abruptly. "Do you know we can only love once, isn't your heart hungry for life, Pierrette? Sometimes your eyes are."
"Don't!" said Joan quickly, "that is another thing I wish you would not do, make personal remarks; it makes me feel uncomfortable."
"Why don't you tell the truth?" he asked fiercely. "Why don't you say afraid?"
"Because it does not," she answered; her eyes, however, would not meet his. "I think uncomfortable describes it better."
Landon stared at her with sombre eyes. He was beginning to tire of their pretty game of make believe; perhaps impulse was waning within him. Anyway he felt he had wasted enough time on the chase. But to-day Joan seemed very charming, and her fear, for he could see plainly enough that she was afraid, was fanning the flame of his desire into a new spurt of life.
"I am going to make love to you, Pierrette," he said; "I am going to wake up that cold heart of yours. Doesthe thought frighten you, Pierrette? because even that won't prevent me doing it."
He had drawn her close to him, she could feel his arms round her like strong bands of iron. Joan lifted a face from which all the colour had fled to his.
"Don't, please don't!" Her bewildered mind struggled with all the carefully thought-out things she was going to have said to him. But the crisis was too overwhelming for her; she could only remember the one final thought that had been with her. "You may not want to marry me when you know about me," she whispered, and ended her words with a sob.
The man laughed triumphantly. "I don't want to marry you," he answered, "I want to love you and make you for a little love me, and this is how I begin the lesson." He bent his face to hers quickly, kissing her passionately, fiercely, on the lips.
For a second such a tumult of passionate amazement shook Joan that she stayed quiet in his arms. Then everything that was strong, all the inherited purity in her nature, came to her aid and summoned her fighting forces to resist. She struggled in his arms furiously, she had not known she held such stores of strength; then she wrenched herself free and stood up. Fear, if fear had been the cause of her early discomfort, had certainly left her; it was blind, passionate rage that held her silent before him.
The man rose to his feet and essayed a laugh, but it was rather a strained effort. "That was a most undignified proceeding, Pierrette," he said; "what on earth made you do it?"
"How dared you?" flamed Joan. "How dared you speak to me, touch me like that?"
"Dared?" the man answered; he was watching her with mocking eyes and something evil had come to life on his face. Cold anger that she should have made a fool of him and a baulked passion which could very easily turn to hate. "This outburst is surely a little ridiculous.What did you think I wanted out of the game? Did it really occur to you that I was going to ask you to marry me? My dear girl!" He shrugged his shoulders, conveying by that movement a vast amount of contempt for her dreams. "And as for the rest, I have never yet met a woman who objected to being kissed, though some of them may pretend they do."
Joan stared at him; he had stooped and was gathering up the roses that lay between them. Rage was creeping away from her and leaving her with a dull sense of undignified defeat. Once again she had pitted the ideal of a dream against a man's harsh reality, and lost. Love! She had dreamed that this man loved her, she had held herself unworthy of the honour he paid her. This was what his honour amounted to—"I have never yet met a woman who objected to being kissed."
She turned away and walked blindly towards the house.
Landon caught her up before she reached the gate of the garden. His arms were full of the roses and apparently he had won back to his usual good nature.
"Having made ourselves thoroughly disagreeable to each other," he said, "let us make it up again for the time being. It is all rather absurd, and you have got to get back to town somehow or other."
He helped her into the car with just his usual solicitude, tucking the rug round her and laying the pile of roses on her lap; but on the way home he was very silent and from the moment they started till the time came for saying good-bye he did not speak a word to her.