stood and stared at each other. The onus of invitation had somehow
shifted insensibly from Breezy to Pince-nez. The next remark would be
vital. Neither thought it worth while to incur the slight expense of a
luncheon that involved an hour in each other’s company. Yet it was
nothing stronger than a dread of possible boredom that dictated the
hesitancy.
“Not a bad idea,” agreed Pince-nez vaguely. “But I doubt if they’ll keep
a table after one o’clock, you know.”
“Never mind, then. You’re on the telephone, I suppose, aren’t you?”
called Breezy down the pavement, still moving slowly backwards.
“Yes, you’ll find it under the name of the hotel,” replied the other,
putting his head back round the door-post in the act of going in.
“My number’s not in the book!” Breezy cried back; “but it’s 0417
Westminster. Then you’ll ring me up one day? That’ll be very jolly
indeed. _Don’t forget the number!_” This shifting of telephonic
responsibility, he felt, was a master-stroke.
“Right-O. I’ll remember. So long, then, for the present,” Pince-nez
answered more faintly, disappearing into the restaurant.
“Decent fellow, that. I shall go to lunch if he asks me,” was the
thought in the mind of each. It lasted for perhaps half a minute, and
then--oblivion.
Ten days later they ran across one another again about luncheon-time in
Piccadilly; nodded, smiled, hesitated a second too long--and turned back
to shake hands.
“How’s everything?” asked the breezy one with gusto.
“First-rate, thanks. And how are _you_?”
“Jolly weather, isn’t it?” Breezy said, looking about him generally,
“this sunshine--by Jove----!”
“Nothing like it,” declared Pince-nez, shifting his glasses to look at
the sun, and concealing his lack of something to say by catching at the
hearty manner.
“Nothing,” agreed Breezy.
“In the world,” echoed Pince-nez.
Again the topic was a link. The stream of pedestrians jostled them. They
moved a few yards up Dover Street. Each was really on his way to
luncheon. A pause followed the move.
“Still at--er--that hotel up there?” The name had escaped him. He jerked
his head vaguely northwards.
“Yes; I thought you’d be looking in for lunch one day,” a faint memory
stirring in his brain.
“Delighted! Or--you’d better come to my Club, eh? Less out of the way,
you know,” declared Breezy.
“Very jolly. Thanks; that’d be first-rate.” Both paused a moment. Breezy
looked down the street as though expecting someone or something. They
ignored that it was luncheon hour.
“You’ll find me in the telephone book,” observed Pince-nez presently.
“Under X---- Hotel, I suppose?” from Breezy. “All right.”
“0995 Northern’s the number, yes.”
“And mine,” said Breezy, “is 0417 Westminster; or the Club”--with an air
of imparting valuable private information--“is 0866 Mayfair. Any day you
like. Don’t forget!”
“Rather not. Somewhere about one o’clock, eh?”
“Yes--or one-thirty.” And off they went again--each to his solitary
luncheon.
A fortnight passed, and once more they came together--this time in an
A.B.C. shop.
“Hulloa! There’s Smith,” thought Breezy “By Jove, I’ll ask him to lunch
with me.”
“Why, there’s that chap again,” thought Pince-nez. “I’ll invite him, I
think.”
They sat down at the same table. “But this is capital,” exclaimed both;
“you must lunch with me, of course!” And they laughed pleasantly. They
talked of food and weather. They compared Soho with A.B.C. Each offered
light excuses for being found in the latter.
“I was in a hurry to-day, and looked in by the merest chance for a cup
of coffee,” observed Breezy, ordering quite a lot of things at once,
absent-mindedly, as it were.
“I like the butter here so awfully,” mentioned Pince-nez later. “It’s
_quite_ the best in London, and the freshest, I always think.” As this
was not _the_ luncheon, they felt that only commonplace things were in
order. The special things they had to discuss must wait, of course.
The waitress got their paper checks muddled somehow. “I’ve put a
’alfpenny of yours on ’is,” she explained cryptically to Pince-nez.
“Oh,” laughed Breezy, “that’s nothing. This gentleman is lunching with
me, anyhow.”
“You’ll ’ave to make it all right when you get outside, then,” said the
girl gravely.
They laughed over her reply. At the paydesk both made vigorous search
for money. Pince-nez, being nimbler, produced a florin first. “This is
_my_ lunch, of course. I asked you, remember,” he said. Breezy demurred
with a good grace.
“You can be host another time, if you insist,” added Pince-nez,
pocketing twopence change.
“Rather,” said the other heartily. “You must come to the Club--any day
you like, you know.”
“I’ll come to-morrow, then,” said Pince-nez, quick as a flash. “I’ve got
the telephone number.”
“Do,” cried Breezy, very, very heartily indeed. “I shall be delighted!
One o’clock, remember.”
XII
THE IMPULSE
“My dear chap,” cried Jones, throwing his hands out in a gesture of
distress he thought was quite real, “nothing would give me greater
pleasure--if only I could manage it. But the fact is I’m as hard up as
yourself!”
The little pale-faced man of uncertain age opposite shrugged his
shoulders ever so slightly.
“In a month or so, perhaps----” Jones added, hedging instinctively, “If
it’s not too late then--I should be delighted----”
The other interrupted quickly, a swift flush emphasising momentarily the
pallor of his strained and tired face. Overworked, overweary he looked.
“Oh, thanks, but it’s really of no consequence. I felt sure you wouldn’t
mind my asking, though.” And Jones replied heartily that he only wished
he were “flush” enough to lend it. They talked weather and politics
then--after a pause, finished their drinks, Jones refusing the offer of
another, and, presently, the elder man said good-night and left the
Club. Jones, with a slight sigh of boredom, as though life went hard
with him, passed upstairs to the card-room to find partners for a game.
Jones was not a bad fellow really; he was untaught. Experience had
neglected him a little, so that his sympathies knew not those sweet
though difficult routes by which interest travels away from
self--towards others. He entirely lacked that acuter sense of life which
only comes to those who have known genuine want and hardship. A fat
income had always tumbled into his bank without effort on his part, the
harvest of another’s sweat; yet, as with many such, he imagined that he
earned his thousand a year, and figured somehow to himself that he
deserved it. He was neither evil-liver nor extravagant; he knew not
values, that was all--least of all money values; and at the moment when
his cousin asked for twenty pounds to help his family to a holiday, he
found that debts pressed a bit hard, that he owed still on his
motor-car, and that some recent speculations seemed suddenly very
doubtful. He was hard up, yes.... Perhaps, if the cards were lucky, he
might do it after all. But the cards were not lucky. Soon after midnight
he took a taxi home to his rooms in St. James’s Street. And then it was
he found a letter marked “Urgent” placed by his man upon the table by
the door so that he could not miss it.
The letter kept him awake most of the night in keen distress--for
himself. It was anonymous, signed “Your Well-wisher.” It warned him, in
words that proved the writer to be well informed, that the speculation
in which he, Jones, had plunged so recklessly a week before would mean a
total loss unless he instantly took certain steps to retrieve himself.
Such steps, moreover, were just possible, provided he acted immediately.
Jones, as he read it, turned pale, if such a thing were possible, all
over his body; then he turned hot and cold. He sweated, groaned, sighed,
raged; sat down and wrote urgent instructions to solicitors and others;
tore the letters up and wrote others. The loss of that money would
reduce his income by at least half, alter his whole plan and scale of
living, make him poor. He tried to reflect, but the calmness necessary
to sound reflection lay far from him. Action was what he needed, but
action was just then out of the question, for all the machinery of the
world slept--solicitors, company secretaries, influential friends,
lawcourts. The telephone on the wall merely grinned at him uselessly.
Sleep was as vain a remedy as the closed and silent banks. There was
absolutely nothing he could do till the morning; and he realised that
the letters he wrote were futile even while he wrote them--and tore them
up the next minute. Personal interviews the first thing in the morning,
energetic talk and action based upon the best possible advice, were the
only form relief could take, and these personal interviews he could
obtain even before the letters would be delivered, or as soon. For him
that money seemed as good as already lost ... and tossing upon his
sleepless bed he faced the change of life the loss involved--bitterly,
savagely, with keen pain: the lowered scale of self-indulgence, the
clipped selfishness, restricted pleasures, fewer clothes, cheaper rooms,
difficult and closely calculated travelling, and all the rest. It bit
him hard--this first grinding of the little wheels of possible
development in an ordinary selfish, though not evil, heart....
And then it was, as the grey dawn-light crept past the blinds, that the
sharpness of his pain and the keen flight of his stirred imagination,
projecting itself as by these forced marches into new, untried
conditions, produced a slight reaction. The swing of the weary pendulum
went a little beyond himself. He fell to wondering vaguely, and with
poor insight, yet genuinely, what other men might feel, and how they
managed on smaller incomes than his own--smaller than his would be even
with the loss. Gingerly, tentatively, he snatched fearful glimpses
(fearful, they seemed, to him, at least) into the enclosures of these
more restricted lives of others. He knew a mild and weak extension of
himself, as it were, that fringed the little maps of lives less happy
and indulgent than his own. And the novel sensation brought a faint
relief. The small, clogged wheels of sympathy acquired faster movement,
almost impetus. It seemed as though the heat and fire of his pain,
though selfish pain, generated some new energy that made them turn.
Jones, in all his useless life, had never _thought_; his mind had
reflected images perhaps, but had never taken hold of a real idea and
followed it by logical process to an end. His mind was heavy and
confused, for his nature, as with so many, only moved to calculated
action when a strong enough desire instinctively showed the quickest,
easiest way by which two and two could be made into four. His
reflections upon comparative poverty--the poverty he was convinced now
faced him cruelly--were therefore obscure and trivial enough, while
wholly honest. Wealth, he divined dimly, was relative, and money
represented the value of what is wanted, perhaps of what is needed
rather, and usually of what cannot be obtained. Some folk are poor
because they cannot afford a second motor-car, or spend more than £100
upon a trip abroad; others because the moors and sea are out of reach;
others, again, because they are glad of cast-off clothing and only dare
“the gods” one night a week or take the free standing-room at Sunday
concerts.... He suddenly recalled the story of some little penniless,
elderly governess in Switzerland who made her underskirts from the silk
of old umbrellas because she liked the frou-frou sound. Again and again
this thought for others slipped past the network of his own distress,
making his own selfish pain spread wider and therefore less acutely. For
even with a mere £500 his life, perhaps, need not be too hard and
unhappy.... The little wheels moved faster. His pain struck sparks. He
saw strange glimpses of a new, far country, a fairer land than he had
ever dreamed of, with endless horizons, and flowers, small and very
simple, yet so lovely that he would have liked to pick them for their
perfume. A sense of joy came for a moment on some soft wind of beauty,
fugitive, but sweet. It vanished instantly again, but the vision caught
for a moment, too tiny to be measured even by a fraction of a second,
had flamed like summer lightning through his heart. It almost seemed as
though his grinding selfish pain had burned the dense barriers that hid
another world, bringing a light that just flamed above those huge
horizons before they died. For they did die--and quickly, yet left
behind a touch of singular joy and peace that somehow glowed on through
all his subsequent self-pity....
And then, abruptly, with a vividness of detail that shocked him, he saw
the Club smoking-room, and the worn face of his cousin close before
him--the overworked hack-writer, who had asked a temporary £20, a
little sum he would assuredly have paid back before the end of the year,
a sum he asked, not for himself, but that he might send his wife and
children to the sea.
Impulse, usually deplored as weakness, may prove first seed of habit.
Whether Jones afterwards regretted his unconsidered action may be left
unrecorded--whether he _would_ have regretted it, rather, if the saving
of his dreaded loss had not subsequently been effected. As matters
stand, he only knew a sense or flattering self-congratulation that he
had slipped that letter--the only one he left untorn--into the
pillar-box at the corner before the sun rose, and that it contained a
pink bit of paper that should bring to another the relief he himself
had, for the first time in his life, known imaginatively upon that
sleepless bed. Before the day was over the letter reached its
destination, and his own affairs had been put right. And two days later,
when they met in the Club, and Jones noticed the obvious happiness in
the other’s eyes and manner, he only answered to his words of thanks:
“I wish I could have given it at once. The fact is I found letters on
getting home that night which--er--made it possible, you see ...!”
But in his heart, as he said it, flamed again quite suddenly the memory
of that fair land with endless horizons he had sighted for a second, and
the sentence that ran unspoken through his mind was: “By Jove, that’s
something I must do again. It’s worth it ...!”
XIII
HER BIRTHDAY
It was her birthday on the morrow, and I set forth to find a suitable
and worthy present. My means, judged by the standards of the big
merchants, seemed trivial; yet, could I but discover the right gift, no
matter how insignificant, I felt sure that it would please her, and so
make me doubly happy. And the kind of gift I already knew, for I had a
specimen of it in my humble lodgings; only of so poor a type that I was
ashamed to offer it. I must find somewhere a much, much better one, if
possible, perfect and without a single flaw. I went, therefore, into the
great shops and saw a thousand wonderful and lovely things....
So particular was I, however, and so difficult to suit, that I wearied
the salesfolk, and began to feel despondent. All that they showed me was
so wrong--so cheap. In the matter of actual expense there was no
disagreement, for I mentioned plainly beforehand the price that I would
pay, or, rather, that I was prepared to pay. But in the nature and
quality of the goods there was no satisfying me at all. Everything that
they spread before my eyes seemed ordinary, trifling, even spurious.
Marvellously fashioned, and of the most costly description, they yet
seemed somewhere counterfeit. The goods were sham. Already she possessed
far better. There was nowhere--and I went to the very best emporiums
where the rich and favoured of the world bought their offerings--there
was nowhere the little genuine thing I sought. The finest that was set
before me seemed unworthy. I compared one and all with the specimen,
broken yet authentic, that I had at home. And even the cleverest of the
salesfolk was unable to deceive me, because I _knew_.
“And this, for instance?” I asked at length, far from content, yet
thinking it might just do perhaps in place of anything better I could
find. “How much is this magnificent, jewelled thing, with its ingenious
little surprise for each day in the entire year? You mentioned----?”
“Ten million pounds, sir,” said the man obsequiously, while he eyed me
with a close and questioning glance.
“Ten million only!” And I laughed in his face.
“That was the price you named, sir,” he murmured.
I drew myself up, looking disdainfully, pityingly at him. And, though he
met my eye, he hesitated. Over his tired features there stole a soft
and marvellous expression. Something more tender than starlight shone in
his little eyes. And, as he answered in a gentle voice that was almost a
whisper, I saw him smile as a man may smile when he understands a
divine, unutterable thing. Glory touched him for an instant with high
radiance, and a hint of delicious awe hid shyly in his voice. I barely
caught the words, so low he murmured them:
“I fear, sir, that what you want is not to be had at all--in our
establishment. You will hardly find it. It is not in the market.” He
seemed to bow his head in reverence a moment. “It is not--for sale.”
And so I went back to my dingy lodgings, having made no single purchase.
I looked fondly at my own little specimen, trying to imagine it had
somehow gained in value, in beauty, almost in splendour. At least, I
said to myself, it is not spurious. It is real....
And, sitting down to my table, I dipped my broken pen into a penny
bottle of inferior ink, and began my birthday letter:--
“This is your birthday, dear, and I send you _all my love_----” Being
young, I underlined the words describing my little present, thinking to
increase its value thus.
But I did not complete the sentence, for there was another thing that I
must find to send her, or she would be disappointed. And a birthday
comes but once a year. But, again, though I already possessed a tiny
specimen of this other thing I sought, it did not seem to me nearly good
enough to offer. Though genuine, it was worn by frequent use. Its lustre
had dimmed a little, for I touched it daily. It seemed too ordinary and
common for a special present. I was ashamed to send it.
So I set out again and searched ... and searched ... in every likely and
unlikely place, even groping in the dark about the altars of the
churches where I found by chance the doors ajar, and penetrating to
those secret shrines where those who seek truth, it is said, go in to
pray. For I knew that there was this other little present from me that
she would look for--because she had need of it....
And my search was wonderful and full of high adventure, yet so long that
the moon had drawn the hood over the door of her silver tent, and the
stars were fading in the east behind the towers of the night, before I
returned home, footsore, aching, empty-handed, and very humble in my
heart. For nowhere had I been able to find this other little thing she
would be pleased to have from me. To my amazement, yet to my secret joy,
I found nothing better than what I had at home--nothing, that is,
indubitably genuine. In quantity it was not anywhere for sale. It was
more rare than I had guessed--and I felt delicious triumph in me.
I sat down, humble, reverent, but incommunicably proud and happy, to my
unfinished letter. Unless I posted it immediately she would not get it
when she woke upon her birthday morning. I finished it. I posted it just
as it was--brief, the writing a little shaky, the paper cheap, blot,
smudge, and all:
“..._and my worship_.”
And then, like a scrap of paper that enclosed the other gifts, yet need
not be noticed unless she wished it, I added (above the little foolish
name she knew me by) another tiny present--all that I had brought into
the world or could take out with me again when I left it:
I wrote: “Yours ever faith-fully.”
XIV
TWO IN ONE
Some idle talker, playing with half-truths, had once told him that he
was too self-centred to fall into love--out of himself; he was unwilling
to lose himself in another; and that was the reason he had never
married. But Le Maitre was not really more of an egoist than is
necessary to make a useful man. A too selfless person is ever
ineffective. The suggestion, nevertheless, had remained to distress, for
he was no great philosopher--merely a writer of successful tales--tales
of wild Nature chiefly; the “human interest” (a publisher’s term) was
weak; the great divine enigma of an undeveloped soul--certainly of a
lover’s or a woman’s soul--had never claimed his attention enough,
perhaps. He was somewhat too much detached from human life. Nature had
laid so powerful a spell upon his heart....
“I hope she won’t be late,” ran the practical thought across his mind as
he waited that early Sunday morning in the Great Central Station and
reflected that it was the cleanest, brightest, and most airy terminus
of all London. He had promised her the whole day out--a promise somewhat
long neglected. He was not conscious of doing an unselfish act, yet on
the whole, probably, he would rather--or just as soon--have been alone.
The air was fragrant, and the sunshine blazed in soft white patches on
the line. The maddening loveliness of an exceptional spring danced
everywhere into his heart. Yes, he rather wished he were going off into
the fields and woods alone, instead of with her. Only--she was really a
dear person, more, far more now, than secretary and typist; more, even,
than the devoted girl who had nursed him through that illness. A friend
she was; the years of their working together had made her that; and she
was wise and gentle. Oh, yes; it would be delightful to have her with
him. How she would enjoy the long sunny day!
Then he saw her coming towards him through the station. In a patch of
sunshine she came, as though the light produced her--came suddenly from
the middle of a group of men in flannels carrying golf-sticks. And he
smiled his welcome a little paternally, trying to kill the selfish
thought that he would rather have been alone. Soft things fluttered
about her. The big hat was becoming. She was dressed in brown, he
believed.
He bought a Sunday paper. “I must buy one too,” she laughed. She chose
one with pictures, chose it at random rather. He had never heard its
name even. And in a first-class carriage alone--he meant to do it really
well--they raced through a world of sunshine and brilliant fields to
Amersham. She was very happy. She tried every seat in turn; the blazing
sheets of yellow--such a spring for buttercups there had never
been--drew her from side to side. She put her head out, and nearly lost
her big hat, and that soft fluttering thing she wore streamed behind her
like the colour of escaping flowers. She opened both windows. The very
carriage held the perfume of may that floated over the whole
country-side.
He was very nice to her, but read his paper--though always ready with a
smile and answer when she asked for them. She teased and laughed and
chattered. The luncheon packages engaged her serious attention. Never
for a moment was she still, trying every corner in turn, putting her
feet up, and bouncing to enjoy the softness of the first-class cushions.
“You’ll be sitting in the rack next,” he suggested. But her head was out
of the window again and she did not hear him. She was radiant as a
child. His paper interested him--book reviews or something. “I’ve asked
you that three times, you know, already,” he heard her laughing
opposite. And with a touch of shame he tossed the paper through the
window. “There! I’d quite forgotten her again!” he thought, with a
touch of shame. “I must pull myself together.” For it was true. He had
for the moment--more than once--forgotten her existence, just as though
he really _were_ alone.