CONCERNING ROMEO.
It is a far cry from Verona to London. The ways of the Corso are not the
ways of Pall Mall. Therefore, when I admit that my heart cried “A
Romeo!” you are not to infer that I had fallen in love with him. I
merely mean that I recognised in my new friend the type of man who might
conceivably command my heart and me, should fate so will it.
When Romeo of Verona first saw his Juliet at the Capulets’ masque, ’tis
on record that, at first sight of her, he forgot fair Rosaline (for
whose sake but one hour earlier he was dying to die), and seizing his
new goddess’s hand, assured her, without preamble or introduction, that
his lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stood to smooth that rough touch
with a tender kiss; while Juliet, in return, was prepared to avow at a
glance that if the stranger were married her grave was like to be her
wedding bed. Those be the modes of Verona, as vouched by Shakespeare.
Our northern hearts, however, have not the instant electric
responsiveness of Italian breasts. Love with us is the child, not the
mother of acquaintance. And though I thought of my Romeo as Romeo from
the first moment I beheld him, never calling him in my soul by any other
name, yet ’twas but some prophetic fancy on my part. For many weeks he
figured as no more than my employer.
Juliet of Verona, if I recollect aright, when she flung herself upon
Romeo, was not yet full fourteen till Lammas night; at her age our
northern maid, with her fair hair down, has conceived a romantic
attachment for chocolate-creams and the prettiest of her governesses. I
was twenty-two; and twenty-two, that mature age, takes time to consider.
Moreover, it waits till its Romeo asks it.
For, pretend as we will, the plain truth is this: woman is plastic till
the predestined man appears; then she takes the mould he chooses to
impose upon her. Men make their own lives, women’s are made for them.
Why, one of my dearest friends at the Guild—an ethereal being—was wont
to pace the garden with a vellum-covered Rossetti or Pater in her
pocket, composing chants-royal to the moon and to divine love, till a
man loomed on the horizon—a man in a Norfolk jacket, with a commission
in the Guards and estates in the Midlands; whereupon she exchanged the
Rossetti all at once for a blear-eyed ferret, and strolled about the
lanes accompanied by a fox-terrier and a Cuban bloodhound. This is not
poetical, but ’tis life as I have noted it.
To cut moralising short, I settled down at once to work at my Romeo’s.
When I arrived there with my machine, more dead than alive with shame,
the good-looking clerk carried it upstairs for me reverently. He was a
comely youth, with a clean round face, Devonshire apple cheeks, and
pleasant parsonage manners; he came, indeed, as I discovered later, from
an Exmoor rectory. A table was set for me in Romeo’s own room. I feared
to invade that sanctum. “Am I to sit right here?” I asked. He smiled and
answered, “Right there.” So I took my place under protest. Thenceforth,
I was part of the furniture of his study.
My life at Romeo’s was a life of routine. Now routine (varied by
outbreaks) is excellent for the nerves; but it does not afford material
for romance. It is the drab of life: art insists rather on the purple
and scarlet. So I make no apology for dealing with it here only in a few
brief episodes.
All our history is episode, with blanks between, which just serve
conveniently to divide the chapters.
At home, my social circle was limited to Mr. Commissioner Lin: my
conversation to “Did ’ums, then? did ’ums?” At occasional intervals I
dined with my aunt, who abode at Paddington: but I did not yearn to make
that joy too common. My revered relation has all the vices of the
decayed gentlewoman: unheroic vices, which interest nobody. She hoards
bits of string, and half-sheets of note-paper. Her table, her ideas, and
her discourse are meagre. She entertains angels, disguised as curates,
and is a prop of the Deaconesses’ Institute.
At the office, I had my seat in Romeo’s own room. Poverty emancipates.
It often occurred to me how different things would have been had my dear
father lived, and had I remained a young lady. In that case, I could
have seen Romeo at intervals only, under shelter of a chaperon; as it
was, no one hinted the faintest impropriety in the fact that the
type-writer girl was left alone with him half the day in the privacy of
his study. Not that this freedom gave me much occasion (at first) for
talk with Romeo. He was courtesy itself, and by nature conversible: but
his chivalrous feelings, and his sense of my isolation, made him chary
of speaking. He dictated all day, or left me to transcribe; but he
seldom broke silence save on matters of business.
Nevertheless, from the outset, he was markedly kind to me. I had two
nice boys at hand to run errands and carry my notes; one, a skimpy
London imp, compact of saucy humour; I called him Puck: the other, a
slender lad of fifteen, pale, delicate, girlishly pretty, with long
straw-coloured hair and a distracted manner, whom I rechristened Ariel.
Romeo gradually adopted this trick of speech from me. It is a habit of
mine (as you may have observed) to invent names for my friends; and
these generally stick—I suppose because I borrow them as a rule from
the poets, who have classified us into types which recur perennially.
After I had been at the office a few weeks, I happened one day to slip
into some Americanism. Though I have seen little of America (having gone
there but once on a visit to my father’s folk at Salem when I was not
quite fifteen) I have inherited from my ancestry not a few Massachusetts
idioms, one or other of which I sometimes let drop, unconsciously to
myself, in the course of conversation. Romeo snapped at the word at
once. “Why, you must be a New Englander!”
“Not quite,” I answered, flushing. “My father was born at Salem, an
American citizen; but he became naturalised in England young, and was a
British officer.”
“Not in the army?” Romeo cried, surprised.
“Yes,” I answered. “Why not? A colonel.”
I grew hot as I spoke. For the first and only time, I think Romeo
doubted me. “Then you—must have—a pension,” he broke out, slowly.
It was partly desire to avoid telling the truth, partly a certain native
love of mystification—or rather of piquing other people’s curiosity;
but I answered with a touch of defiance, “An officer’s daughter loses
her pension on marriage. I may be married, perhaps—or separated—or a
widow.” And I bent down over my work to hide my heightened colour.
He gazed at me for a second; his eye fell on my left hand; then he
glanced away. I could see him saying to himself he had no right to
cross-question me. But interest in me prevailed. He drew near, and stood
over me. “You must forgive my persistence,” he said, gently, in his
modulated voice—each syllable clear as crystal—“but I feel constrained
to ask you. Have you really a pension? . . . . For if so, you have
misled me.”
I looked up at him with proud eyes. My father’s blood rose hot in me. “I
must tell you the truth,” I said, “or you will think I am ashamed of my
father. I am not ashamed; I am proud of him. He was an English colonel;
but I have no pension. He was a very brave man. He threw up his
commission, in time of war, at a moment of danger, almost in face of the
enemy, because he would not carry out orders which seemed to him unjust.
And he died of anxiety and fever just after, on the West Coast of
Africa.”
“I remember the case. Pray forgive me. It was cruel of me to drive you.”
“Not at all. I am glad you did. Now you will understand better.”
I rose, flushed, and faced him. “They say a soldier should resign his
conscience into the keeping of the Queen’s advisers. My father could
not. He felt wrong was being done. He would not make his judgment blind.
He left me poor by it; and I am proud of it—proud of him.”
“You have reason to be proud,” Romeo answered. “I recall it all now. His
previous record showed it was courage, not cowardice. I honoured him for
it at the time—though the world thought otherwise.”
“Thank you,” I said in a low voice. “May I go now? It is nearly five.
And I feel, after this, I can do no more work this evening.”
He opened the door for me and bowed even more respectfully than usual.
There was sympathy in every movement. I felt he understood. I felt I had
made a friend. I felt, still more surely than before, that _this_ was my
Romeo.