EASTER SUNDAY
One Easter Sunday, soon after his first clandestine meeting with Jill,
John was seated alone in his room in Fetter Lane. The family of Morrell
and the family of Brown--the plumber and the theatre cleaner--had united
in a party and gone off to the country--what was the country to them.
He had heard them discussing it as they descended the flights of
uncarpeted wooden stairs and passed outside his door.
"As long as we get back to the Bull and Bush by five," Mr. Morrell had
said emphatically, and Mr. Brown had said, "Make it half-past four."
Then Mrs. Morrell had caught up the snatch of a song:
"I've a tickly feelin' in the bottom of me 'eart
For you--for you,"
and Mrs. Brown has echoed it with her uncertain notes. Finally the door
into the street had opened--had banged--their voices had faded away into
the distance, and John had been left alone listening to the amorous
frolics on the stairs of the sandy cat which belonged to Mrs. Morrell,
and the tortoise-shell, the property of Mrs. Brown.
Unless it be that you are an ardent churchman, and of that persuasion
which calls you to the kirk three times within the twenty-four hours,
Easter Sunday, for all its traditions, is a gladless day in London.
There is positively nothing to do. Even Mass, if you attend it, is over
at a quarter to one, and then the rest of the hours stretch monotonously
before you. The oppressive knowledge that the Bank Holiday follows so
closely on its heels, overburdens you with the sense of desolation.
There will be no cheerful shops open on the morrow, no busy hurrying to
and fro. The streets of the great city will be the streets of a city of
the dead and, as you contemplate all this, the bells of your
neighbourhood peal out in strains that are meant to be cheerful, yet
really are inexpressibly doleful and sad. You know very well, when you
come to think about it, why they are so importunate and so loud. They
are only ringing so persistently, tumbling sounds one upon another, in
order to draw people to the fulfilment of a duty that many would shirk
if they dared.
The bells of a city church have need to be loud, they have to rise above
the greater distractions of life. Listen to the bells of St.
Martin's-in-the-Fields. The bell-ringers there know only too well the
sounds they have to drown before they can induce a wandering pedestrian
within. It was just the same in Fetter Lane. John listened to them
clanging and jangling--each bell so intent and eager in its effort to
make itself heard.
He thought of the country to which the families upstairs had departed;
but in the country it is different. In the country, you would go to
church were there no bell at all, and that gentle, sonorous note that
does ring across the fields and down the river becomes one of the most
soothing sounds in the world. You have only to hear it to see the old
lych-gate swinging to and fro as the folk make their way up the gravel
path to the church door. You have only to listen to it stealing through
the meadows where the browsing cattle are steeping their noses in the
dew, to see with the eye of your mind that pale, faint flicker of
candle-light that creeps through the stained glass windows out into the
heavy-laden air of a summer evening. A church bell is very different in
the country. There is an unsophisticated note about it, a sound so far
removed from the egotistical hawker crying the virtue of his wares as to
make the one incomparable with the other. John envied Mrs. Brown and
Mr. Morrell from the bottom of his heart--envied them at least till
half-past four.
For an hour, after breakfast was finished, he sat staring into the fire
he had lighted, too lonely even to work. That heartless jade,
depression, one can not call her company.
Then came Mrs. Rowse to clear away the breakfast things and make his
bed. He looked up with a smile as she entered.
"What sort of a day is it outside?" he asked.
"Cold, sir; and looks as if we was going to have rain."
She caught up the breakfast things, the china clattered in her fingers.
He turned round a little in his chair and watched her clear away. This
is loneliness--to find a sense of companionship in the woman who comes
to look after one's rooms.
"Whenever a man is lonely," wrote Lamartine, "God sends him a dog." But
that is not always so. Some men are not so fortunate as others. It
happens sometimes that a dog is not available and then, God sends a Mrs.
Rowse to clear away the breakfast things.
But Mrs. Rowse was in a hurry that morning. There was no money due to
her. You would not have found the faintest suspicion of lingering in
anything that she did then. Even the topic that interested her
most--her daughters--had no power to distract her attention.
She was going to take them out to the country--they were going down to
Denham to see her sister, as soon as her work was done--Lizzie, who
stuck labels on the jam-jars in Crosse and Blackwell's, and Maud, who
packed cigarettes in Lambert and Butler's.
There were those living in Peabody Buildings, who said that Lizzie would
have a beautiful voice, if she'd only practise. She could sing, "Love
Me and the World Is Mine." She could sing that lovely. And Maud--well,
Mrs. Rowse had even got a piano in their little tenement rooms for Maud
to learn on, but Maud would never practise neither. True, she could pick
up just anything she heard, pick it up quite easy with the right hand,
though she could only vamp, foolish-like, with the left.
Yet upon these portentous matters, Mrs. Rowse would say nothing that
morning. They were going to catch a mid-day train from Marylebone down
to Denham, and she had no time to waste.
"Would you mind me coming with you, Mrs. Rowse?" said John suddenly. As
suddenly he regretted it, but only because of its impossibility.
There is some sort of unwritten law which says that when you accompany
ladies on a journey by train, you must pay for their tickets, and all
women are ladies if they do not swear or spit on the ground. You should
take off your hat to everyone of them you know when in the street. It
may be that they are charwomen, that they stick labels upon jam-jars in
their spare hours, that they pack up little boxes of cigarettes when
there is nothing else to do, but in the street, they are women--and all
women, with the restrictions here mentioned, are ladies.
Now John could not possibly pay for their tickets. He could ill-afford
to pay for his own. It would mean no meal the next day if he did. And
here let it be said--lest any should think that his poverty is harped
upon--John was always poor, except for five minutes after an excursion
to the pawn-shop, and perhaps five days after the receipt of the
royalties upon his work. You may be sure at least of this, that John
will jingle the money in his pocket and run his finger-nail over the
minted edge of the silver when he has any. If he has gold, you will see
him take it out under the light of a lamp-post when it is dark, in order
to make sure that the sovereign is not a shilling. On all other
occasions than these, assume that he is poor,--nay, more than assume,
take it for granted.
Accordingly, directly he had made this offer to accompany Mrs. Rowse and
her daughters to Denham, he had to withdraw it.
"No," said he, "I wish I could come--but I'm afraid it's impossible.
I've got work to do."
Quite soon after that Mrs. Rowse departed.
"Hope you'll enjoy yourselves," said he.
"We always do in the country," replied she as she put on her hat outside
the door. And then--"Good-morning, sir,"--and she too had gone; the
door into the street had banged again, and the whole house, from floor
to roof, was empty but for the sandy cat, the tortoiseshell cat and
John.
He sat on there in the stillness. Even the cats grew tired of play and
were still. Then came the rain, rain that turned to sleet, that drove
against the roofs outside and tried, by hiding in the corners of the
chimneys, to look like snow. John thought of the tulips in Kensington
Gardens. Spring can come gladsomely to England--it can come bitterly,
too. Those poor people in the country! But would the country ever
permit such weather as this? Even supposing it did, they would not be
lonely as he was. Mr. Morrell had Mrs. Brown to talk to, and Mr. Brown
had the company of Mrs. Morrell. There were Lizzie and Maud for Mrs.
Rowse. Perhaps going down in the train, they would get a carriage to
themselves and Lizzie would sing, "Love Me and the World Is Mine," and
Maud would count cigarettes in her mind, and pack them up in her mind,
or more probably forget that there ever were such things as cigarettes
in the fresh delight of seeing the country with bread and cheese on all
the hedges. Those young green buds on the hawthorn hedges are the
pedestrian's bread and cheese. But you know that, every bit as well as
I.
Well, it seemed that everyone had company but John. He took out of his
pocket the last letter his mother had written him from Venice--took it
out and spread it before him. If only she were there! If only her
bright brown eyes were looking at him, what thousands of things there
would be to say! What short stories and beginnings of new books would
there not be to read her! And how sympathetically would she not listen.
How frequently would she not place those dear paralysed hands of hers in
his, as he read, at some new passage that she liked!
"_My darling boy----_"
He could hear that gentle voice of hers--like the sound you may hear in
the ring of an old china tea-cup--he could hear it, as she had dictated
it to his father to write----
"_This is where I begin counting the days to your visit. I dare not
begin sooner--too many figures always bewildered me. It is now just
about three months. Your father is much better than he was, and is
doing a little work these days._"
And here was added in a quaint little parenthesis of his father's: "_She
calls it work, my dear boy, just to please me--but when old men play,
they like to hear it called work. You've got to do my work. And she is
so quick--she has seen I have been writing more than she has said. I
shall persuade her to let this stay in nevertheless._"
Then, uninterrupted for a space the letter continued.
"_I'm so pleased that your work is going on so well. I thought your
last story was too sad, though. Must stories end unhappily? Yours
always seem to. But I think I guess. They won't always end like that.
But your father says I am not to worry you on that point; that you can't
paint in a tone of gold what you see in a tone of grey, and that what
you see now in a tone of grey, you will as likely as not see one day in
a tone of gold._"
Then, here, another parenthesis.
"_You will understand what I mean, my dear boy. I've read the story, and
I don't think it ought to end sadly, and you will no doubt say, 'Oh,
he's quite old-fashioned; he does not know that a sad ending is an
artistic ending.' But that is not because I am old-fashioned. It is
simply because I am old. When you are young, you see unhappy endings
because you are young enough to bear the pain of them. It is only when
you get older that you see otherwise. When you have had your sorrow,
which, you know, only as an artist I wish for you, then you will write
in another strain. Go on with your unhappy endings. Don't take any
notice of us. All your work will be happy one day, and remember, you
are not writing for but because of us. By the way, I think you spelt
paregoric wrong._"
Now again the dictation.
"_Well, anyhow, though I know nothing about it, I feel you write as
though you loved. You would tell me, would you not, if you did? I am
sure it must be the way to write, the way, in fact, to do everything.
Your father says the pictures he paints now lack strength and vigour;
but I find them just as beautiful; they are so gentle._"
Parenthesis.
"_One can't always love as one did at twenty-six--T.G. That sounds like
reverential gratitude for the fact, but you understand it is only my
initials._"
"_He has written something again, John--and he won't tell me what it is.
If he has said he is getting too old to love, don't believe him. He has
just leant forward and kissed me on my forehead. I have insisted upon
his writing this down. Your story about the girl in the chapel and the
last candle amused us very much. It interested me especially. If it
had been me, I should have fallen in love with you then and there for
being so considerate. What was she like? Have you ever seen her since?
I can't feel that you were meant to meet her for nothing. I have tried
to think, too, what she could have been praying to St. Joseph for, but
it is beyond me. It is not like a woman to pray for money for herself.
Perhaps some of her relations have money troubles. That is all I can
imagine, though I have thought over it every day since I got your
letter. God bless you, my darling. We are waiting eagerly for the
reviews of your new book. When will it be out--the exact date? I want
to say a novena for it, so let me know in good time. And if you meet
the Lady of St. Joseph--as you call her--again, you must promise to tell
me all about it. Your father wants the rest of the sheet of note-paper
on which to say something to you--so, God bless you always._"
"_Don't read the reviews when they come out, John. Send them along to
me, and I'll sort out the best ones and send them back to you to read.
As far as I can see, there are so many critics who get the personal note
into their criticisms, and to read these, whether praising or blaming,
won't do you any good; so send them all along to me before you look at
them. The first moment you can send me a copy, of course, you will.
Your loving father._"
Here the letter ended. Long as it was, it might well have been longer.
They were good company, those two old people, talking to him through
those thin sheets of foreign paper, one breaking in upon the other with
all due courtesy, just as they might with a "Finish what you have to
say, my dear," in ordinary conversation.
And now they had gone to the country, too--they had left him alone.
When he had folded up the letter, it was almost as if he could hear the
door bang again for the third time.
He leant back in his chair with an involuntary sigh. What a few people,
after all, there were in the world whom he really knew! What a few
people who would seek out his company on such a day as this! He stood
up and stretched out his arms above his head--it was----
He stopped. A sound had struck to his heart and set it beating, as when
the bull's-eye of a target is hit.
The bell had rung! His electric bell! The electric bell which had
raised him immeasureably in station above Mrs. Morrell and Mrs. Brown,
who had only a knocker common to the whole house--one, in fact, of the
landlord's fixtures! It had rung, and his heart was beating to the
echoes of it.
In another second, he had opened his door; in another moment, he was
flying down the uncarpeted wooden stairs, five at a time. At the door
itself, he paused, playing with the sensation of uncertainty. Who could
it be? If the honest truth be known, it scarcely mattered. Someone!
Someone had come out of nowhere to keep him company. A few
personalities rushed to his mind. It might be the man who sometimes
illustrated his stories, an untidy individual who had a single phrase
that he always introduced into every conversation--it was, "Lend me
half-a-crown till to-morrow, will you?" It would be splendid if it were
him. They could lunch together on the half-crown. It might be the
traveller from the wholesale tailor's--a man whom he had found begging
in the street, and told to come round to Number 39 whenever he was at
his wit's end for a meal. That would be better still; he was a man full
of experiences, full of stories from the various sleeping-houses where
he spent his nights.
Supposing it were Jill! A foolish, a hopeless thought to enter the
mind. She did not know where he lived. She might, though, by some
freak of